Yet that conclusion raised another question, and one vital to Leonov’s mission. Now that life had been discovered on the moons of Jupiter – did it have any connection with the Tycho monolith, and the still more mysterious artifact in orbit near Io?
That was a favourite subject to debate in the Six O’Clock Soviets. It was generally agreed that the creature encountered by Dr Chang did not represent a high form of intelligence – at least, if his interpretation of its behaviour was correct. No animal with even elementary powers of reasoning would have allowed itself to become a victim of its instincts, attracted like a moth to the candle until it risked destruction.
Vasili Orlov was quick to give a counter-example that weakened, if it did not refute, that argument.
‘Look at whales and dolphins,’ he said. ‘We call them intelligent – but how often they kill themselves in mass strandings! That looks like a case where instinct overpowers reason.’
‘No need to go to the dolphins,’ interjected Max Brailovsky. ‘One of the brightest engineers in my class was fatally attracted to a blonde in Kiev. When I heard of him last, he was working in a garage. And he’d won a gold medal for designing spacestations. What a waste!’
Even if Dr Chang’s Europan was intelligent, that of course did not rule out higher forms elsewhere. The biology of a whole world could not be judged from a single specimen.
But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment. Above all, how could marine creatures ever develop a technology without the aid of fire?
Yet perhaps even that was possible; the route that humanity had taken was not the only one. There might be whole civilizations in the seas of other worlds.
Still, it seemed unlikely that a space-faring culture could have arisen on Europa without leaving unmistakable signs of its existence in the form of buildings, scientific installations, launching sites, or other artifacts. But from pole to pole, nothing could be seen but level ice and a few outcroppings of bare rock.
No time remained for speculations and discussions when Leonov hurtled past the orbits of Io and tiny Mimas. The crew was busy almost non-stop, preparing for the encounter and the brief onset of weight after months in free-fall. All loose objects had to be secured before the ship entered Jupiter’s atmosphere, and the drag of deceleration produced momentary peaks that might be as high as two gravities.
Floyd was lucky; he alone had time to admire the superb spectacle of the approaching planet, now filling almost half the sky. Because there was nothing to give it scale, there was no way that the mind could grasp its real size. He had to keep telling himself that fifty Earths would not cover the hemisphere now turned toward him.
The clouds, colourful as the most garish sunset on Earth, raced so swiftly that he could see appreciable movement in as little as ten minutes. Great eddies were continually forming along the dozen or so bands that girdled the planet, then rippling away like swirls of smoke. Plumes of white gas occasionally geysered up from the depths, to be swept away by the gales caused by the planet’s tremendous spin. And perhaps strangest of all were the white spots, sometimes spaced as regularly as pearls on a necklace, which lay along the tradewinds of the middle Jovian latitudes.
In the hours immediately before encounter, Floyd saw little of captain or navigator. The Orlovs scarcely left the bridge, as they continually checked the approach orbit and made minute refinements to Leonov’s course. The ship was now on the critical path that would just graze the outer atmosphere; if it went too high, frictional braking would not be sufficient to slow it down, and it would go racing out of the Solar System, beyond all possibility of rescue. If it went too low, it would burn up like a meteor. Between the two extremes lay little margin for error.
The Chinese had proved that aerobraking could be done, but there was always the chance that something would go wrong: So Floyd was not at all surprised when Surgeon-Commander Rudenko admitted, just an hour before contact: ‘I’m beginning to wish, Woody, that I had brought along that icon, after all.’
14
Double Encounter
‘… papers for the mortgage on the Nantucket house should be in the file marked M in the library.
‘Well, that’s all the business I can think of. For the last couple of hours I’ve been recalling a picture I saw as a boy, in a tattered volume of Victorian art – it must have been almost one hundred and fifty years old. I can’t remember whether it was black-and-white or colour. But I’ll never forget the title – don’t laugh – it was called “The Last Message Home”. Our great-great-grandfathers loved that kind of sentimental melodrama.
‘It shows the deck of a windjammer in a hurricane – the sails have been ripped away and the deck’s awash. In the background, the crew is struggling to save the ship. And in the foreground, a young sailor boy’s writing a note, while beside him is the bottle he hopes will carry it to land.
‘Even though I was a kid at the time, I felt he should have been giving his shipmates a hand, not writing letters. All the same, it moved me: I never thought that one day I’d be like that young sailor.
‘Of course, I’m sure you’ll get this message-and there’s nothing I can do to help aboard Leonov. In fact, I’ve been politely requested to keep out of the way, so my conscience is quite clear as I dictate this.
‘I’ll send it up to the bridge now because in fifteen minutes we’ll break transmission as we pull in the big dish and batten down the hatches – there’s another nice maritime analogy for you! Jupiter’s filling the sky now – I won’t attempt to describe it and won’t even see it much longer because the shutters will go up in a few minutes. Anyway, the cameras can do far better than I could.
‘Goodbye, my dearest, and my love to you all – especially Chris. By the time you get this, it will be over, one way or the other. Remember I tried to do my best for all our sakes – goodbye.’
When he had removed the audio chip, Floyd drifted up to the communications centre and handed it over to Sasha Kovalev.
‘Please make sure it gets off before we close down,’ he said earnestly.
‘Don’t worry,’ promised Sasha. ‘I’m still working on all channels, and we have a good ten minutes left.’
He held out his hand. ‘If we do meet again, why, we shall smile! If not, why then, this parting was well made.’ Floyd blinked.
‘Shakespeare, I suppose?’
‘Of course; Brutus and Cassius before battle. See you later.’
Tanya and Vasili were too intent upon their situation displays to do more than wave to Floyd, and he retreated to his cabin. He had already said farewell to the rest of the crew; there was nothing to do but wait. His sleeping bag was slung in preparation for the return of gravity when deceleration commenced, and he had only to climb into it – ‘Antennas retracted, all protective shields up,’ said the intercom speaker. ‘We should feel first braking in five minutes. Everything normal.’
‘That’s hardly the word I’d use,’ Floyd muttered to himself. ‘I think you mean “nominal”.’ He had barely concluded the thought when there was a diffident knock on the door.
‘Kto tam?’
To his astonishment, it was Zenia.
‘Do you mind if I come in?’ she asked awkwardly, in a small-girl voice which Floyd could scarcely recognize.
‘Of course not. But why aren’t you in your own cubicle? It’s only five minutes to re-entry.’
Even as he asked the question, he was aware of its foolishness. The answer was so perfectly obvious that Zenia did not deign to reply.
But Zenia was the very last person he would have expected: her attitude toward him had invariably been polite but distant. Indeed, she was the only member of the crew who preferred to call him Dr Floyd. Yet there she was, clearly seeking comfort and companionship at the moment of peril.
‘Zenia, my dear,’ he said wryly. ‘You’re welcome. But my accommodation is somewhat limited. One might even call it Spartan.’
She managed a faint smile, but said nothing as she floated into the room. For the first time, Floyd realized that she was not merely nervous – she was terrified. Then he understood why she had come to him. She was ashamed to face her countrymen and was looking for support elsewhere.
With this realization, his pleasure at the unexpected encounter abated somewhat. That did not lessen his responsibility to another lonely human being, a long way from home. The fact that she was an attractive – though certainly not beautiful – woman of barely half his own age should not have affected the issue. But it did; he was beginning to rise to the occasion.