Jupiter

“I tried…”

“Try again,” Wo said softly. “Try with me.”

The director grasped the arms of his powerchair and pushed himself to a standing position. There were no braces on his legs, Grant saw. Dr. Wo stood, trembling with the effort.

“If I can do it,” he said, perspiration breaking out on his upper lip and brow, “you can, too.”

Hardly breathing, his anger forgotten, Grant slid his legs off the bed and stood up. The legs hurt, but he stood erect.

“Good,” said Wo. “Excellent. Now walk to me.”

Grant took a tottering step. Wo did the same, holding his arms out as if to balance himself. Another step. Grant’s legs felt as if they did not belong to him. He had to consciously tell them to move. Wo stepped shakily toward him, arms extended. Grant walked, slowly, hesitantly, feeling like Lazarus rising up from death.

“Good,” Wo encouraged. “Very good.”

The director’s legs suddenly buckled. As he sagged Grant reached for him, grabbed him under the arms, and held him up.

“Thank you,” Wo gasped. “Your legs are strong enough to support the two of us.”

Grant laughed, and the director even allowed a slight chuckle to escape his lips. Grant helped the older man back into his powerchair. Wo sat gratefully, squirming a little to make himself comfortable. Grant stood in front of him, feeling a little shaky but knowing now that he would not be a cripple. Even the pain seemed lessened.

“Very good, Mr. Archer,” said Wo, looking up at Grant. “Report for intensive training immediately. Zheng He is scheduled for launch in three days.”

Wo abruptly spun the chair around and rolled out of the infirmary, leaving Grant standing there, flabbergasted, not knowing whether to be angry or grateful.

For the rest of the day, Lane, Egon, and Muzorawa took turns working with Grant, helping him to learn to walk again.

“You have to reestablish the neural paths,” Karlstad told him, as Grant hung onto his shoulder while they walked slowly along the row of beds in the infirmary. Only two of them were occupied. One of the patients was an engineer whose spacesuit had been slightly ruptured while she was out on the surface of Io. She’d breathed a whiff of sulfur dioxide before the team she was with sealed her suit The other was a station beancounter being treated for alcoholism.

“Get the nerves in your legs that connect with the spinal cord to start talking to each other again,” Karlstad coaxed as he helped Grant along. “It takes a day or so.”

“We don’t have a day or so,” Grant muttered, perspiring with the effort of trying to walk normally. “Wo wants to launch in three days.”

Karlstad shrugged. “Well, you don’t really need to be able to walk once you’re immersed in the goo.”

Lane helped him, too, although it troubled Grant to cling to her as they walked together. He closed his eyes and tried to picture Marjorie, but Lane’s softly subtle perfume kept his wife’s image a confused blur.

Muzorawa worked with him all through the night: helpful, nondemanding, patient. He was strong enough to lift Grant and carry him the length of the station’s main corridor, Grant knew, yet he offered only as much help as was needed, nothing more.

“It’s tough,” Grant said as he limped past the row of beds. He was walking on his own now; the pain he felt was almost entirely psychosomatic, the infirmary staff assured him; he was making good progress.

“Of course it’s tough,” Muzorawa sympathized, pacing slowly beside Grant. “You must learn to walk all over again. We all had to.”

“I’m pretty slow, aren’t I?”

“You are like the centipede in the old story.”

“Centipede?”

“You know, one of the animals in the forest asks the centipede how he can possibly control all those feet. And the centipede replies that it’s simple, really. But as he explains how he does it, and he begins thinking about how he controls his one hundred little feet, he becomes so confused that he can’t walk at all.”

Grant nodded. “Yes, I remember that from kindergarten.”

“We all learned to walk so early in life that we take it for granted. When we are forced to learn it all over again, we begin to see how much effort it takes.”

Grant stumbled slightly and reached for one of the empty beds for support.

“Four-legged animals don’t need to be taught how to walk,” Muzorawa said, keeping his hands at his sides as Grant straightened up and resumed pacing. “Human babies crawl on all fours quite naturally. But they must be taught how to walk on their two feet—that’s a sign that we evolved from four-legged creatures, I believe.”

“You really think so?” Grant asked.

“I am not a biologist, but, yes, I believe that is so.”

“You believe in Darwinian evolution.”

“Does that offend you?”

“No,” Grant answered truthfully. “I suppose I do, myself.”

“Suppose?” Muzorawa asked, arching a brow.

Grant swiftly changed the subject. “Wish we were in zero-gee.”

“That’s the irony of it,” said Muzorawa. “On the mission, we will be immersed and floating buoyantly. We won’t need our legs for walking. Not at all.”

“That’s pretty ironic, all right,” Grant agreed.

Lifting a hand like an ancient seer about to deliver a prophecy, Muzorawa went on, “But our legs will have a different function, a far more important function, during the mission.”

And he smiled, as if remembering something that was beautifully pleasurable.

Grant started to realize what Muzorawa was talking about when he began his hurried training sessions in the simulator.

Driven by Dr. Wo’s increasingly anxious prodding, Grant stumbled from the infirmary to the aquarium, donned a wetsuit and full-face mask, and joined Zeb, Lane, and Egon in the converted fish tank—under Krebs’s remorseless command.

If she’s a Zealot, Grant thought as he fumbled his way through the first day’s simulations, she’s hiding it very well. She acts as if this mission is her personal quest.

Maybe it is, a voice in his head answered. If she’s seeking some sort of next-world reward by destroying us all, what better way than to be in absolute command of the mission?

Very soon, though, Grant was far too busy even to think about Krebs’s true loyalties. She drove them through the simulator session mercilessly, demanding that they go through the entire simulation of disconnecting from the station and entering the Jovian atmosphere without a break.

“Stop whining! You’ll get no time for relaxation when we are diving into those clouds,” Krebs snarled at them.

They used the manual controls for the first session. When at last it was finished, Wo told them from his post in the control center, “Tomorrow you will be immersed and work in Zheng He instead of the simulator.”

“Does that mean we performed okay?” Grant asked, from inside his transparent mask.

Muzorawa gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. But Krebs said sourly, “It means that we must stick to the accelerated schedule no matter how poorly you oafs have performed.”

Immersion frightened Grant all over again, but at least this time he faced it without the security guards forcing him.

He felt cold as he stood in the access tunnel with the others, clad only in flimsy tights. We might as well be naked, Grant thought. These tights don’t conceal anything. He had to force his eyes away from O’Hara’s nipples and stare at the curved blank metal wall of the tunnel.

Muzorawa went through the airlock first, then Lane. The butterflies in Grant’s stomach felt the size of pelicans. His legs still ached; they probably would forever, if Karlstad and the others were to be believed. Accept it,