Jupiter's Reef (12 page)

Baltadonis snorted contemptuously. “Republicans never change, that’s the nub of it.”

Alex smiled and shook his head. He had found a coffee service built into the bar and made himself a cup of coffee. Then he took it to a sofa and sat down. “Save the legs, Mary,” he said.

Mary couldn’t resist books; especially the large ones full of text and large pictures. “I could spend a thousand years in this room,” she said, turning around.

“I inherited some,” said Stubbs. “Several grandfathers worth, no doubt.”

Unexpectedly Harry struck the bare wood of his desk with a wooden gavel that was sitting there. Everyone jumped involuntarily.

“Wonderful communicator, that,” said Stubbs with a bemused smile. “I had a pile of lids for a while. It came in mighty handy. It gets attention.”

All the eyes in the room proved him right. There was a moment of silence while Harry Stubbs shuffled some papers. “We have to get down to business for a tick. I hate to do this to you, Alex and Mary, but it’s for your good as well. We have to pick a plan ... a flight plan, and we need to map out what’s needed so the boys outside can get to work.”

Everyone nodded. “I could take her back as she stands,” said Alex. “Assuming we were stoked and smokin’ all the way.”

“Balloons,” said Johnny. “You need a redesigned, professionally built balloon package. You may not think so, but without that package you wouldn’t have made it back.”

“That’s all dings, Johnny,” said Alex. “We had power the whole time. Never got snagged like that, where the loss of the balloons would have swamped us.”

Mary shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s true. They let you sleep. They saved lots of energy that we used in the null-gee.”

“Okay, okay,” said Alex. “We needed the balloons.”

Stubbs cleared his throat. “We’re going to follow your plan. But we were talking of spending a bit more time in the reef.”

“How much more?” asked Alex. Mary joined him on the sofa, as she sat down she admired the large yellow flowers that were quilted into the golden upholstery. She sat, like Alex did; with both feet squarely in front of her and both arms limp on the seat at her sides.

“While you were touring the world, Johnny and I, and some teammates from MIT and Stanford, were running scenarios for a return. The MIT guys decided to make off with the balloon package and will be in tonight on the web with their designs.”

Professor Stubbs took a breath, then continued. “Alex, the way we’ve got it going so far is like this. You’re pilot. Johnny, A. Sciarra and Matt Howarth, from MIT and Stanford, respectively, will be going along with you and Mary.”

“Two guys I don’t know. And I’m taking them into the reef?” said Alex, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa. “Why all that added weight? I never figured for more than Mary and me. Now there’s Johnny and these chums of yours?”

“We’re talking here,” said Johnny. “Nothing’s in stone, yet.”

A voice came from a speaker in the ceiling somewhere.

“What?” it said. “When do I ..?”

“This is stupid,” said another. “This skulking around would alienate a turnip.”

Professor Stubbs smiled. “We have established the links for our conference. I want this to be as expedient as possible. Alex and Mary need to be free of Earth’s gravity, at least at night.”

“Their ship,
Diver
. How come it got that name?” said one of the voices.

“You made it up for the trip, right?” said the other. “Diving into Jupiter?”

“Tony and Matt, this is Alex, and Mary. And Johnny Baltadonis, of course. How’s the balloon design coming, Tony?” asked Stubbs.

Tony didn’t waste any time. “We’re talking heated helium and sculpted balloons made of new EM neutral polycer web. The package should be indestructible and weigh a pound. And Matt’s already got the new shielded cabin under construction.”

“Let me interrupt,” said Stubbs. “We need you and Mary to stay at the spaceport a few days until
Diver
is rebuilt.”

“Rebuilt?” protested Alex. “She’s all we’ve got in the world. If you rebuild her, then what’s legally ours?”

“It’ll still be your ship,” said Stubbs. “But in order to go back as a Science Ship of the AAA designate,
Diver
needs an overhaul. The panels will contain sensor arrays, radar focusers and a new null gee augmenting micro-frame. The ship will weigh a third of its current weight. The balloon package will be retractable and your ship will be outfitted with a three hundred link microfusion chain.”

“No sulphur bugs there,” Johnny whispered to Alex, with a wink on the side to Mary.

Alex felt like he was either in a courtroom or a sales showroom, he couldn’t decide which. But he knew that they had to make some quick decisions. Stubbs was right. It was a mission for science, and Alex had to flatly accept that. As he himself might say; he’d had his shot. Now it was up to the experts.

As the experts around him formulated their plans, Alex drifted back to the reef. Sometimes at night, since he’d been there, his dreams were filled with the clicker men; the creatures Alex had come to think of as the keepers of Jupiter’s Reef. He remembered vividly standing before
Diver
’s window and watching the waltzing, pulsing motions of those strange creatures.

Alex looked at Mary, and he remembered her being tortured by the creatures’ radio blasts.

Radio blasts. The thought repeated in his mind. It brought him back to Earth.

Johnny was arguing with Matt Howarth of Stanford about the necessary electrical systems and the weight that could be saved by eliminating them.

“Don’t leave out the radio, even if you do have Mary aboard,” said Alex, injecting his words into a space in the conversation.

“Is that Rose?” asked A. Sciarra.

“Call me Alex. You know me. I’m the driver for this mob.”

“I’m told you were a miner on Io?”

“My hobby, yes,” said Alex with a grin. “My job is discovering ecologies on other planets. What’s yours?”

There was a lot of laughter in the room and over the speaker phone.

“I’m an engineer,” said Sciarra, still chuckling softly.

“A Sciarra,” said Alex. “Like you’re a thing?”

“Call me Tony, why don’t you?”

“He’s definitely a thing,” said Matt Howarth.

“Kiss and make up, you two,” said Stubbs. “The clock’s ticking.”

What Stubbs said was true. Outside the picture window were at least a dozen soldiers. Who they were or what they were there for was beyond Alex’s ken, but it was obvious that they waiting for something; probably answers. And from what he was hearing they had a long wait ahead of them.

Alex stood up and looked around at everyone.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “You guys are used to this gravity, maybe, but Mary and I just got off our ship. We’d like to locate in some low gravity place while you sort this out. I’m just the pilot of this mission, but I still hold the license to that ship you’re talking about de-boning.”

“I like that,” said Sciarra. “De-boning the ship. Gotta meet this guy.”

Alex’s temper wasn’t lessened by Tony’s levity.

“Look,” he said. “I’m serious. Not to be rude, but Mary is flopped here like a rag doll while you make your plans. I see no reason for us to be here and I especially don’t see why you chose this moment for this pow-wow.”

Mary looked up at Alex but otherwise didn’t move a muscle. “I’m not a rag doll!” she growled.

Alex hung his head, frustrated. “Is this necessary? I can’t believe you waited for us to arrive before you started making any plans.”

“It’s only been a couple of days since you got here, guy.” said the voice of Howarth. “And we’ve been burning the juice all night since we got Stubbs’ call about your reef. We’re on fire, here, Alex, and it’s your fault. This is your briefing, so lighten up, guy.”

“Lighten up.” That was a tall order for someone whose life had changed so quickly and so radically. Alex was farther out of his domain than he realized.

He felt angry, lost and confused.

A few months ago he was on the sulphur moon Io planning to hijack a ship and run away with Mary, and only a few weeks ago he’d been exploring Jupiter’s reef.

Since then, he’d witnessed the Ra Patera disaster, visited Mars, returned to Earth, and now, here he was, planning to return to the reef.

But what seemed strangest to Alex was that fate had let him get away with everything; the ship, the girl, and the credit.

Alex watched the figures milling outside. Guns or not, their presence bothered him. He was afraid to ask the real question on his mind: Why was the military watching over a scientific mission? Or were they secretly watching Mary and him?

Alex leaned back in the sofa and folded his arms defensively across his chest.

“Lighten up? Okay, fine. Mary and I are slowly being crushed to death,” he said. “Maybe lightening up will help.” He felt Mary’s eyes on him but his eyes remained fixed on the window behind Stubbs’ desk.

Professor Stubbs looked at Alex and Mary sympathetically. “We all know how hard this has been for you both,” he said. ”And it’s not really a fitting expression of our appreciation for what you’ve done to keep you here while our gravity is nagging at you. But you have to realize that your data has released the hounds of science. The questions are heaping up and there’s pressure on all of us to get them answered. That’s our job. That’s what we’re doing, or trying to do, here. And it’s the
President who’s giving us orders, not just scientific curiosity. I thought that was obvious when you met President Brown.”

“Not obvious enough, I guess,” said Johnny, smiling. “What if I was to suggest that we might be the first cargo to be carried by the
Houston
? Would that cheer you up, Alex?”

Mary sat up straight. “The G-pulse cruiser?”

“That’s right. It’s making jump runs between Lib-Station and Ganymede. It is scheduled to begin testing with cargo this month.”

“You could put
Diver
in its bay?” said the voice of Howarth. “Wow, that’s a big ship. But I heard it wouldn’t be operational for another few years.”

“Operational.” said Stubbs. “That’s a relative term.”

“Yeah. Blue flashers,” said Sciarra.

“What’s he talking about?” asked Alex.

Stubbs explained; “The press calls the G-Pulse tests ‘blue flashers’ because of the flash of light, deep blue light, that accompanies the launch. So far they can’t explain it.”

“Can’t explain it?” said Mary. “An energy burst. That’s a little worrisome, don’t you think?”

“To me?” said Harold Stubbs, turning his chair to face the bay windows.

Two guards outside noticed Stubbs’ movement and looked at him. Stubbs gestured as if shooing flies and the men responded immediately. In less than a minute the yard was clear.

The sun was low in the sky and an amber glow flooded the room. Stubbs swiveled in his chair. “This is the color of the light every evening at this time,” he said. “It’s been like this since the Mumbai meteor.”

“Dawwwk,” said Tony. “World history. I’m outa here. We can talk tomorrow.”

Stubbs picked up some papers on his desk and looked at them. “Okay, but before you go ...” He ran through a litany of logistical details and announced to everyone that they’d be meeting for real in about a week. Then he excused the phone guests and stood up.

“Alex and Mary. Thanks for bearing with us. The military will take you to your hotel. We’ll have you back in your ship within a week. Meanwhile, we’ll meet as you suggested via com link. Or in person at your suite in the hotel.”

Part 4

1
From the moment Alex and Mary left
Diver
they were careful about what they said to anyone. If the truth about them got out it would have to come from Johnny.

But so far they’d been treated like V.I.Ps and Mary was beginning to love Earth, now that the gravity issue was settled and New America was picking up the tab.

They joined Johnny in his suite which had three bedrooms, a conference area fully equipped with teleconferencing, a full kitchen and bar. The mechanical bartender had even been programmed with alluring tropical delights at Mary’s request.

Then there was the micro-gravity rec room and the low-gee pool and its Calypso solarium and sauna. Mary spent a week exhausting the hotel’s various spa attractions. The waterfall that graced the spa’s hub was, to Mary, poetry in slow motion. The place even came with a hypo-allergenic animal, a cat who lived in the zero-gee Atrium that surrounded the spa. Mary got to know the cat and introduced it to Alex.

But even with charm and amenities like these, Mary and Alex grew quickly bored with hotel life. Every day passed like the one before; a report at noon, a visit by telly with the various planners, and the work on
Diver
continued. They said it would take a week, now it was looking like three.

By the second week Sciarra and Howarth arrived and registered at the Bradenton Arms.

Stubbs said that they were usually on one another over something, but they both chose to room together in a low gee suite. They chose an even lower gravity level than Alex and Mary, telling Stubbs that they wanted to get acclimated to space as soon as possible.

The night they arrived Alex and Mary invited them to Johnny’s suite for drinks.

“Come in and get comfortable,” said Johnny, answering their knock at the door. “We’re expecting a briefing later from Stubbs via telecom. Have a drink while you wait.”

Tony was carrying a bottle as he and Matt entered the room. They waved to Alex and Mary who were seated on the sofa. “Don’t get up,” said Tony. “I brought my own drinks, thanks.”

Sciarra shook hands with Alex and Mary then got a glass from the bar. Before he filled it from the small bottle he’d brought with him, he offered some to everyone, saying it was vodka from Poland. Everyone but Johnny declined. Johnny filled a glass with ice and shoved it eagerly toward Tony, who happily filled it nearly to the brim.

Matt sat in a chair next to a small table and took some paraphernalia from a shirt pocket and placed it on the table. He picked up a white ceramic tube and pushed it into a small cylinder. He then touched a pocket lighter to it, and blew out a puff of acrid smoke. He said it was a blend of Ladak, a black Russian tobacco paste, and Afshaad hashish from ‘somewhere in Asia.’