Jupiter

Fully linked to all the ship’s systems, she was riding out this storm with something approaching joy.

He recalled how he had felt when they’d entered the cloud deck, the thrill of power, the sexual excitement of feeling the ship’s generator and thrusters overcoming the turbulent winds and storms of Jupiter. How must it feel, Grant wondered, to be connected to the whole ship while it’s fighting its way through a storm? The surges of thruster power, the flashes of electrical energy, the superhuman views through the sensors. She must feel each tremor of the ship as a shudder of her own body. It must feel like she’s being stroked, caressed. He studied her face: eyes half closed, that strange little smile on her doughy face. My God, she looks as if she’s engaged in foreplay.

Grant dived through the hatch and slid into his bunk. He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to force the image of Krebs out of his mind. The ship lurched and staggered, tossing him from one side of his narrow berth to the other. Sleep was impossible.

“Grant … are you awake?” It was Karlstad’s whispering voice.

Sliding feet-first out of the coffin-shaped cubicle, Grant saw that Karlstad was sitting on the end of his bunk, feet hooked on its stumpy metal legs, hunched over a palmcomp he held in one hand. Its screen threw a ghostly greenish light on his face that wavered in the ripples of their liquid milieu.

“Are we near the Red Spot?” Grant asked.

Karlstad looked up at him. “Huh? The Spot? No, nowhere close. We’re on the other side of the planet.”

“Oh. Good.”

The ship lurched heavily, almost throwing Grant off his bunk.

“This is bad enough, don’t you think?” Karlstad asked, looking up toward the overhead with wide, frightened eyes. “Don’t even mention the Spot.”

“I just thought…”

“She’s deliberately pushing us through this storm,” Karlstad said grimly.

“Why would she do that?” Grant questioned.

“She’s taking us back to our primary entry position,” Karlstad said. “She’s following the mission plan as blindly as a lemming marching off a cliff.”

“Right back into the storm we avoided? That’s crazy!”

Karlstad held his palmcomp to his mouth and began speaking commands to it. Grant moved across and sat beside him on the end of his bunk. The ship plunged briefly, then surged upward. Grant’s stomach heaved.

“Here, take a look.” Karlstad held the computer so Grant could see its glowing screen. His hands were shaking so much that Grant put his own hands over Egon’s to steady them.

“Wind speed’s dying down, at least. It’s just a tad under fifty-five hundred centimeters per second,” Karlstad muttered, tapping the screen with his forefinger. “That’s less than two hundred kilometers per hour. We’re coming out of it.”

“I imagine she didn’t expect the storm to be whipping up so much turbulence down at this low altitude,” Grant muttered.

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Karlstad grumbled. Then he said to the computer, “Display exterior pressure gradients.”

The screen went blank for a moment.

“You’re linked to the ship’s computer?” Grant asked.

“What else?”

The screen showed a wildly undulating curve with a huge dip at its center.

“See?” Karlstad pointed at the graph. “It’s a small, compact storm. There’s the eye. We’re skirting through this region, here.”

“Why didn’t Krebs avoid the storm altogether?” Grant wondered. “We didn’t have to go through any part of it.”

With a bitter smile, Karlstad answered, “Like I told you, she’s following the mission plan. We’re supposed to be at this location, so we go to this location, no matter what the conditions outside.”

Grant shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you’re a pathological anal retentive, the way she is.”

“Maybe she just wants to get data on the storm,” Grant suggested. “She’s a scientist, after all. Nobody’s gotten data from inside a Jovian cyclonic system. This is an opportunity.”

“The true scooter,” Karlstad sneered. “Out to get the data even if it gets us all killed.”

“The ship’s not in trouble,” Grant said. “Not really. We can ride through a storm like this.” But in his mind’s eye he still saw Krebs’s enraptured expression as the ship shuddered through the storm’s fury. And remembered his own passion.

Karlstad’s expression soured. “I’ve gone through the ship’s medical files.”

“Is there anything about her?”

“The personal files are all locked,” Karlstad said. “Nothing in the open files much more than first-aid instructions and directions for cryogenic freezing in case of a major accident.”

“It was no help, then?”

“I think I can set a broken bone now, but no, there’s nothing here that helps us determine what’s ailing our squint-eyed captain.”

“It’s just as well, I suppose,” said Grant. “What would we do with the information if we had it?”

Karlstad pursed his lips briefly, then said, “I’m not finished. The next time she takes a nap I’m going to access the station’s medical files.”

“But she’s cut off all communications with the station!”

With a careless shrug, Karlstad said, “All I need is a quick squirt of data. A few picoseconds should be enough. She’ll never know.”

“But they’ll know on the station,” Grant said. “They’ll know that we’re not out of communication contact. They’ll know that the message she sent in the data capsule is a bare-faced lie!”

Karlstad actually laughed. “So what? Don’t be such a straight-arrow, Grant. Besides, nobody’s going to notice a picosecond burst from the ship. No human being will even be involved. They don’t have people monitoring the medical files twenty-four hours a day. It’s just a medical query from our ship’s computer to the station’s medical computer, zap! That’s all. They’ll never even notice it.”

“You hope,” Grant said.

“Listen to me. Would you rather risk bending the captain’s order against communicating with the station or risk riding down into that ocean with a crazy woman running the ship?”

The ship shuddered again. Grant thought he heard a hollow booming noise, like distant thunder.

“You can’t say that she’s crazy.”

“Can’t I? You think a sane person would deliberately drive us through a storm like this?”

By the time Grant reported for duty on the bridge, the storm was mostly behind them.

The ship still trembled from occasional gusts, but the big heart-stopping plunges and yaws had stopped.

Grant hooked up and linked with the generator and thrusters once more. Remembering what it was like to be connected while driving through the clouds, his cheeks reddened with shame. He glanced at Krebs, floating sternface behind him. She knows what it’s like. She’s connected with every system in the ship, not an electron vibrates in this vessel without her knowing it, feeling it. No wonder she doesn’t want to disconnect. No wonder she avoids sleep.

Muzorawa and O’Hara unlinked and went to the food dispenser. Grant looked across at Karlstad, weaving slightly as he stood before his console, feet anchored in the floor loops.

“Dr. Karlstad?” Krebs called. Grant felt an eerie tingle along his spine. Egon’s right, he thought. It’s as if she can’t see us.

“Captain?” Egon replied.

Krebs focused her eyes on him. “You will pilot the ship during this watch, in addition to monitoring the life- support systems.”

“I’m honored, Captain.”

If Krebs caught the sarcasm in Karlstad’s voice, she gave no sign of it. “Mr. Archer?”