Jupiter

He called up the flight program, then instructed the computer to plug in their current velocity. The screen went blank for a heartstopping instant, then displayed a graph with a green curve showing the thrust vector needed to achieve orbit. The computer can hear my voice, Grant marveled, even though I can’t.

The numbers showed that he had a very small window of opportunity to ignite the thrusters. It would open in twelve seconds and close half a minute later.

Without further debate, Grant started the thrusters. Low, just minimum power, he told himself. Give the Jovian a warning of what’s to come. In the back of his mind he realized that the giant creature was performing as a first-stage booster, giving Zheng He an initial burst of energy in the long battle to break free of Jupiter’s massive gravity and achieve orbit.

Not a nice way to treat someone who’s saved your life, Grant said to himself. Sorry, my Jovian friend.

He edged the thrusters to one-quarter power.

Even through its thickly armored hide, Leviathan felt the heat. Its sensor-members shrilled an alarm. The others of the Kin, swimming with Leviathan, flashed their warnings, also.

Leviathan hesitated only for a moment, then plunged down, leaving the stranger to itself.

The Elders flashed superior wisdom: The alien rewards you with pain.

Its ways are different from ours, Leviathan answered.

It is just as well, the Elders pictured as one. We could not have climbed much farther into the cold. Come, let us return to our home region and resume the Symmetry.

Leviathan agreed reluctantly. But it took one last look at the tiny, frail stranger. It was shooting up through the water now, driven by the hot steam emerging from its vents, heading upward into the cold abyss.

The steam pushes it through the water! Leviathan marveled. Like the Darters, it uses jets instead of flagella!

And it is racing up into the cold abyss. It must want to be there. That must be its home region.

How could anything live up there? Leviathan wondered. There is so much that we don’t know, so much to be learned.

One moment they were riding the Jovian’s back, climbing smoothly through the ocean. Then, when Grant edged the thrusters’ power higher, the Jovian flicked them off its massive back and dove downward, returning to the warmer layers of the ocean. Grant pushed full power and Zheng He climbed, rattling, its cracked and battered hull shaking like an ancient fragile airplane caught in a storm.

Even in the viscous liquid Grant could feel the growing acceleration as he watched the one working screen on his console. A red blip showed the ship’s position along the green curve of the orbital injection trajectory. They were close to the curve, not exactly on it, but close.

Close enough?

Maybe, he decided. If the ship holds together long enough. Then he remembered the rest of the crew. He reached for Karlstad’s shoulder again, shook him out of his concentration on the sensors’ view.

He typed on his keyboard: ZEB? LANE? KREBS?

Karlstad shrugged helplessly.

TAKE A LOOK, Grant commanded.

Slowly Karlstad disconnected his optical fibers and swam back to the hatch. It was sealed shut; Egon had to punch in the emergency code to get it to slide open. It must have closed automatically when we were in all that turbulence, Grant thought.

He stood alone on the wrecked bridge, feeling the ship straining against the jealous pull of Jupiter’s gravity, struggling to climb through the thick heavy ocean, through the deep turbulent atmosphere with its swirling, slashing deck of clouds, and out into the calm emptiness of orbital space.

Karlstad swam back beside him. Without bothering to link his biochips he typed, I STRAPPED THM IN.

HOW ARE THEY? Grant asked.

ALL UNCONSCIOUS. ZEB BLEEDING INTERNALLY. KREBS CONCUSSION, MAYBE WORSE. LAINIE IN COMA, NO PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS I CAN DETECT GET US OUT OF HERE!!!

TRYING, Grant wrote.

WHAT ABOUT CAPSULES?

Grant thought it over swiftly, then typed, WAIT.

The seconds ticked by slowly as the ship rose, shuddering, buffeted by swift currents. Through the sensors Grant peered into unending darkness, broken only by an occasional glimmer of light so faint that it was gone when he turned his full attention to it. Luminescent creatures out there? he asked himself. Optical illusions? Or maybe just flickers of nerve impulses; maybe my brain cells are starting to break down in this pressure.

He felt the power of the thrusters as an animal roar in his mind, a mighty beast screaming in mingled strength and pain. Keep going, Grant pleaded silently to the thrusters. Only a few more minutes, not even half an hour. You can do it. Just keep on going. Yet the pain was growing worse. The thrusters were heading for catastrophic failure; the only question was how soon.

The view outside seemed to brighten somewhat. The utter darkness gave way grudgingly to a slightly lighter tone. Yes, it was definitely getting gray out there, Grant saw, like the sullen dawn of a midwinter morning.

He felt a pressure on his arm, turned to see Karlstad squeezing his shoulder.

GETTING OUT OF IT, Karlstad had typed on his screen.

Yes, Grant thought. If the thrusters hold up.

Definitely lighter outside. They were climbing through the murky haze of the region between Jupiter’s planet-wide sea and its hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

CAPSULES READY? Grant asked.

YES!!!

Grant touched his communications screen. Nothing. It remained dark inert.

YOUR COMM SCREEN WORKING? he asked Karlstad.

Egon tapped his screen and it lit up.

“This is Research Vessel Zheng He,” Grant said, even though he could not hear his own voice. He hoped the comm system could. “We are lifting up, out of Jupiter’s ocean, hoping to reach orbit and return to Research Station Gold. ”

On and on Grant talked, unable to hear a syllable of his own recitation, as the badly damaged submersible climbed into the clear air above the ocean, shaking and shrieking, rising on its plume of star-hot plasma toward the racing jet streams of Jupiter’s cloud deck. Karlstad stood silently by his console, fully linked to what remained of the ship’s systems now, unable to hear any of Grant’s long speech.

At last Grant finished. Zheng He was climbing through clear atmosphere now. Far off in the vast distance Grant could see a cluster of colorful balloonlike medusas floating placidly through the air.

He typed, SET CAPSULE TRANSMITTERS FOR WIDEST POSSIBLE FREQUENCIES—FULL SPECTRUM.

Karlstad looked puzzled. NOT NECE—

Grant slapped his hand away from his keyboard. DO IT, he insisted.

With a shrug, Karlstad did as Grant commanded.

READY TO GO, he typed.

RELEASE BOTH CAPSULES.

DONE.

The thrusters were close to failure now. Grant felt their pain flaming across his shoulders and down his back. The underside of the cloud deck was inching nearer, nearer. The graph on his one working screen showed that they had almost achieved orbital velocity, but if the thrusters failed while they were below the clouds or even in them, atmospheric drag would pull them down to a final, fiery plunge back into the ocean.

Lightning flashed across the underside of the clouds. Grant could hear through the ship’s microphones the rumble of thunder. The audio centers in my brain still function, he realized. It’s my ears that are damaged.

Winds began to buffet the ship. Doggedly Grant watched the tiny red blip on his screen crawling along the green curve. Almost there. Almost. Almost.

They plunged into the clouds, shaking and rattling. The thrusters’ pain was making Grant’s eyes blur.