chapter three
The surface transporter climbed smoothly above the eternal veil of methane-ammonia haze that cloaked Pithead Base and leveled out onto a southerly course. For nearly two hours it skimmed over an unchanging wilderness of a stormy sea sculptured in ice and half immersed in a sullen ocean of mist. Occasional outcrops of rock added texture to the scene, standing black against the ghostly radiance induced by the serene glow of Jupiter’s enormous rainbow disk. And then the cabin view screen showed a tight group of perhaps half a dozen silver spires jutting skywards from just over the horizon ahead-the huge thermonuclear Vega shuttles that stood guard over Ganymede Main Base.
After taking refreshments at Main, Hunt’s party joined other groups bound for J5 and boarded one of the Vegas. Soon afterward they were streaking into space and Ganymede rapidly became just a smooth, featureless snowball behind them. Ahead, a pinpoint of light steadily elongated and enlarged, and then resolved itself into the awe-inspiring, majestic, mile-and-a-quarter-long Jupiter Five Mission command ship, hanging alone in the void; Jupiter Four had departed the week before, bound for Callisto where it would take up permanent orbit. The computers and docking radars guided the Vega gently to rest inside the cavernous forward docking bay, and within minutes the arrivals were walking into the immense city of metal.
Danchekker promptly disappeared to discuss with the 15’s scientists the latest details of their studies of the terrestrial animal samples from Pithead. Without shame or conscience Hunt spent a glorious twenty-four hours totally relaxing, doing nothing. He enjoyed many rounds of drinks and endless yarns with Jupiter Five crew members he had become friendly with on the long voyage out from Earth, and found unbounded pleasure in the almost forgotten sense of freedom that came with simply sauntering unencumbered along the seemingly interminable expanses of the ship’s corridors and vast decks. He felt intoxicated with well-being-ex
uberant. Just being back on Jupiter Five again seemed to bring him nearer to Earth and to things that were familiar. In a sense he was home. This tiny, manmade world, an island of light and life and warmth drifting through an infinite ocean of emptiness, was no longer the cold and alien shell that he had boarded high above Luna more than a year ago. It now seemed to him a part of Earth itself.
Hunt spent the second day paying social calls on some of J5’s scientific personnel, exercising in one of the ship’s lavishly equipped gymnasiums and cooling off afterward with a swim. A little while later, enjoying a well-earned beer in one of the bars and debating with himself what to do about dinner, he found himself talking to a medical officer who was snatching a quick refresher after coming off duty. Her name was Shirley. To their mutual surprise it turned out that Shirley had studied at Cambridge, England, and had rented a flat not two minutes’ walk from Hunt’s own student-day lodgings. Before very long one of those instant friendships that springs up out of nowhere was bursting into full bloom. They dined together and spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing and drinking, and drinking and laughing and talking. By midnight it had become evident that there would be no sudden parting of the ways. Next morning he felt better than he had for what he was sure was an unhealthily long time. That, he told himself, was surely what medical officers were supposed to make people feel like.
On the following day he rejoined Danchekker. The results of the two years of work that Hunt and Danchekker had spearheaded were by now a subject of worldwide acclaim, and the names of the two scientists had been in the limelight as a consequence. The Jupiter Five Mission director, Joseph B. Shannon, an Air Force colonel prior to world demilitarization fifteen years earlier, had been informed of their presence on the ship and had invited them to join him for lunch. Accordingly, halfway through the official day, they found themselves sitting at a table in the director’s dining room, savoring the mellow euphoria that comes with cigars and brandy after the final course and obliging Shannon with their personal accounts of the other sensational discovery that had rocked the scientific world during those two years-the discovery of Charlie and the Lunarians. It ranked in sensationalism with that of the Ganymeans.