aquarium. He passed dozens of people, scooters and coverall-clad technicians and administrators in their neatly pressed shirts and slacks. All of them working on the studies of Jupiter’s moons, all of them intent on their careers, their lives. There’s only ten of us involved in the real work, Grant reminded himself. Eleven, counting Wo. None of these others knows what we’re doing.
Or do they? he wondered. It’s impossible to keep the deep mission totally secret. Certainly Red Devlin knows more about it than he should. Anybody can see that the submersible is gone.
Looking into the faces of the people as he passed them, Grant asked himself, Which one of them is a Zealot? Which one of them would kill us all, just to stop Wo’s crazy notion that there’s intelligent life down there? God, he’s just as fanatical as any of them!
Grant found himself in front of the closed hatch that led into the aquarium. A new graffito had been scrawled in bloodred ink next to the keypad on the bulkhead:
With a sigh of understanding, Grant tapped out the entry code. The lock clicked and Grant pushed through. The aquarium was chilly and quiet. No one here. Grant walked slowly, hesitantly, along the big tanks, seeing the gliding, gulping fish only out of the corner of his eye.
She ought to be around here someplace, Grant thought. She wouldn’t be in her pen in the middle of the day.
But Sheena was nowhere to be found. With a sudden lurch in the pit of his stomach, Grant bolted from the aquarium and sprinted for the surgical laboratory, down by the station’s infirmary.
“Sheena?” The lone nurse on duty at the infirmary glared at him. “I wouldn’t let that ape within fifty kilometers of here. Do you have any idea of what she did the last time we tried to work on her?”
Leaving the angry-faced nurse, Grant went to the first wall phone he could find out in the corridor and asked the computer where Sheena was.
“There is no listing under Sheena,” said the synthesized voice.
She doesn’t have a phone, Grant realized. That was stupid.
Not knowing what else to do, Grant asked the phone for Dr. Wo.
“The director is not to be disturbed, except for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency!” Grant snapped.
Wo’s face immediately appeared on the phone’s tiny screen. “I am unable to take your call. Leave a message.”
Grant wanted to pound the wall with frustration. “Dr. Wo, I can’t find Sheena! Nobody seems to know where she is.”
The screen went blank.
Security, Grant thought. I ought to notify security. If Sheena’s loose somewhere in the station … He hesitated. Security might panic. They might hurt her.
He made up his mind and strode through the corridor to the administrative area. I wonder who’s on security this week. Maybe it’s somebody I know.
It was a stranger sitting behind the minuscule desk of the security office. A tall, rangy man with a stubbly beard and dark tousled hair. He wore a zippered set of coveralls. Probably a technician of some sort, Grant thought.
“This may be silly,” he started, without introducing himself. “But Sheena seems to be missing and—”
“The gorilla?”
“Yes. She’s not in her—”
“This time of day she’s usually taking her afternoon exercise in the gym. Did you look there?”
Grant gaped at him. “The gym? No… I didn’t know…”
The security officer punched at his phone keypad. “Hey, Ernie, is the monkey in there with you?”
Grant couldn’t see the phone’s screen, but he heard the reply. “Sure, she’s playing with the—”
“EMERGENCY!” the overhead speaker blared. “ALL MISSION CONTROL PERSONNEL REPORT TO YOUR STATIONS IMMEDIATELY!”
The voice was Dr. Wo’s. It sounded frantic.
ACCIDENT
Grant raced to the control center, thudding into Nacho Quintero when the two of them tried to get through the narrow aisle to the consoles at the same time. Ordinarily both of them would have laughed at their clumsiness.
“Watch it, estupido,” Quintero snapped.
“Lard ass,” Grant snarled silently.
Ukara and Frankovich were already at their consoles. The wallscreens were dark, and Grant saw that all the screens were lifeless, as well. All except Wo’s: His console was lit up like a Christmas tree— almost all green lights, although there were several amber and one glaring red.
“Where is Dr. Buono?” Wo demanded, his rasping voice trembling slightly.
“Here,” the physician called as she hurried through the doorway to sit at her console.
“We received the following message from Captain Krebs,” Wo said, his fingers deftly tapping on his keyboard.
Everyone’s console lit up. Grant was grateful that the propulsion and power systems seemed to be in no trouble. Two amber lights, the rest solidly green.
Krebs’s face appeared on the wallscreen, five times bigger than life, strained, etched with anxiety. Or maybe fear, Grant thought.
“Dr. Pascal has collapsed,” Krebs reported with no preliminaries. “She complained of a chest pain and then lost coordination of her limbs. Within ten minutes she doubled over, vomited bile, and lost consciousness.”
Grant glanced at Patti Buono’s console. The physician was frowning worriedly as more and more of the lights on her board flared a sullen, glowering red.
“Transmit her complete medical readouts,” Buono called out. “The patient may be undergoing cardiac —”
“She can’t hear you,” Wo snapped. “This is a recording from a data capsule.”
“How long ago was the message recorded?”
Wo glanced at his console screen. “One hour and seventeen minutes ago.”
“Are they heading back?”
“I don’t know,” Wo answered, shaking his head slowly. “I would presume so.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do until we hear from them again.”
“You can diagnose Dr. Pascal’s condition!”
Buono bit her lips. “The data given here isn’t enough for an effective diagnosis. Besides, if we can’t communicate with them, what’s the use—”
“What has happened to Pascal?” Wo demanded.
The physician’s eyes flared angrily. But she turned back to her console lights and said, “It looks like cardiac arrest, but it might be an infarction or something else altogether. I just can’t make a definitive diagnosis on this meager data!”
“What has caused her to collapse?” Wo insisted.
“I don’t know!”
“Could it be from the high pressure they are exposed to?”
“Yes,” Buono said. It sounded almost desperate to Grant. “Or it could have nothing to do with the pressure.”
“Pah!” Wo smacked his hands on his emaciated thighs in frustration.
“Life-support systems are all in the green,” Frankovich reported, trying to relieve the tension. “At least, they
