Jupiter

Several more Jovians coasted down toward the sub, Grant saw, swimming in gigantic circles around the wounded little submersible, flashing their lights in endless complex patterns.

Are they trying to communicate with us? Grant asked himself again. Almost without thinking consciously about it, he turned on the sub’s outside lights. Only two of them still worked, and one of them flickered dimly.

And the whales matched its flicker rate exactly, in less than a heartbeat. Grant gasped with awe. The pictures running along the whales’ immense flanks were far too complex for him to understand, but they were flashing on and off at the same rate as the damaged lamp’s flicker.

Mimicry or intelligence? Grant asked himself.

Karlstad’s nudge against his shoulder startled Grant.

GET US UP!!! Egon had typed on his console screen.

I can’t, Grant confessed silently. I can’t. But his fingers typed, TRYING.

Grant ran a quick diagnostic. His heart sank as the results flashed across his closed eyelids. The thrusters were close to catastrophic failure. The crack in the outer hull was spreading, branching like a crack in an ice- covered pond. The inner hulls were still intact, but the pressure was building. It was only a matter of minutes before they started to break up. Worst of all, the sub was still spiraling downward, its steering vanes useless, its control jets too weak to stop its sinking spin.

“We’re finished,” Grant said. He couldn’t hear the words. Neither could Karlstad, a meter away, who launched both the data capsules at that precise moment.

LEVIATHAN

The stranger was trying to talk to them, Leviathan saw. Its language was odd: one steady light and one flashing on and off in an irregular rhythm. What could it mean?

Leviathan nosed deeper, watching as the stranger slowly spiraled down toward the hot abyss. Several of the Kin circled near it, watching, calling to it, trying to imitate its enigmatic signals.

It is hurt, Leviathan flashed to the Kin.

Yes, it seems so, one of the Elders agreed. It no longer boils the water.

Still they did nothing but watch. Sinking into the hot abyss will kill it, Leviathan thought. It came from the cold above; it must be so hurt that it cannot control itself.

It will die, he said to the Elders.

Swimming patiently around the wounded Leviathan, the Elders replied in unison, Perhaps it will begin to bud.

It is too small to bud, Leviathan said.

How can you know that? This strange creature has its own ways undoubtedly.

We cannot allow it to die without trying to help it, Leviathan insisted.

Help it? How?

Help it to go up toward the abyss above, where it came from.

What good would that do?

That is its home. Even if it must die, we can help it to die in the realm of its origin.

The Elders turned dark, thinking. New ideas were difficult for them to accept.

Leviathan decided not to wait for them to make up their minds.

SALVATION

Grant felt as if his entire body were in a vise that was slowly crushing him. Dimly he remembered that the Puritans in Massachusetts had crushed a man with heavy stones during the Salem witchcraft hysteria.

He started to pray, but the thought that flooded his mind was I don’t want to die. O God, God, don’t make me die. Don’t kill me here, in this dark and distant sea. Help me. Help me.

Karlstad hovered beside him, eyes blank and staring at whatever inner universe filled his soul, his body curled into a weightless fetal posture. He’s given up, Grant thought. He knows we’re going to die.

Still Grant’s fingers raced across the touchscreens, seeking some measure of control over the sinking submersible, picking out links to the backup systems, trying to bring the auxiliaries on-line.

Help me, God, he pleaded. Don’t tell me this ocean is beyond Your realm. God of the universe, help me!

The ship shuddered.

Instinctively Grant looked up, then turned toward Karlstad. Egon blinked, stirred.

The bridge seemed to tilt, then righted itself. Grant floated free of his one intact floor loop, then his feet touched the deck once more.

Closing his eyes, he tried to see outside through the few sensors still working. Nothing. Only a mottled gray —the ship quivered again, swayed. One of the glowering red lights on Grant’s console suddenly turned amber and then green.

Peering through the ship’s sensors, Grant realized that what he was seeing was the immense stretch of a Jovian, so close that it was actually touching the sub, nudging it gently, like an elephant delicately balancing a baby carriage on its back.

Grant could hardly breathe. Glancing at his battered console, he saw that the green light was the attitude indicator. Zheng He was no longer spiraling downward.

He reached across and shook Karlstad by the shoulder, then typed, SENSORS.

Egon licked his lips, purely a reflex in their liquid surroundings, then tapped into the sensors.

Grant squeezed his eyes shut and saw that the sub was resting on the gigantic back of one of the whales. No, not just any of them; it was the Jovian who’d been attacked by the sharks. Grant could see wide swaths of raw flesh where the sharks had ripped away its skin.

WE RISING? Karlstad asked.

YES!!!! Grant’s heart was hammering beneath his ribs. A guardian angel! A million-ton, ten-kilometer-long Jovian guardian angel is carrying us up and out—

His elation snapped off. The Jovian can’t carry us out of the ocean. It can’t fly us home.

The thrusters. Grant checked the entire power and propulsion systems. The fusion generator was undamaged, working normally. The thrusters—could they last long enough to push them out of the ocean, through the atmosphere and clouds, out into orbit?

DATA CAPSULES, Grant typed. Even if we don’t make it, we have to give them all our information. He banged away on his keyboard as Karlstad prepared the last pair of the data capsules.

They were rising swiftly now. Through the ship’s sensors Grant could see the entire community of Jovians swimming around them, sleek and smooth, making hardly a ripple as they propelled themselves through the sea far faster than Zheng He could have gone on its own. The Jovians flashed signals back and forth among themselves; pictures, Grant was certain, hoping that the ship’s cameras were still working well enough to record it all.

The thrusters were still shut down. Can I power them up without causing them to fail? Then a new thought struck him: I can’t power them up while we’re riding on the Jovian’s back. The superheated steam would hurt him.

Would it? Yes, of course it would, Grant told himself. The Jovian’s made of flesh, its skin isn’t a heat shield. You killed a couple of the sharks with the thrusters’ exhaust, of course it’ll hurt the Jovian.

But if I don’t light them up we won’t get out of here. The whale can carry us only so far. The rest of the way we’ll need the thrusters.

Grant turned toward Karlstad, but he would be no help, he saw. Egon was standing rigidly now, fists clenched at his sides, eyes squeezed shut, watching the scene outside through the ship’s sensors.

Decide, decide! Grant raged at himself.