Ben Bova - Leviathans of Jupiter

To Barbara and Peter Brusco, with love

But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

C HARLES D ARWIN

Contents

THE BOUNDLESS SEA

It is an endless ocean, more than ten times wider than the entire planet Earth. Beneath the swirling clouds that cover Jupiter from pole to pole, that ocean has never seen sunlight, nor has it ever felt the rough confining contours of land. Its waves have never crashed against a craggy shore, never thundered upon a sloping beach, for there is no land anywhere across Jupiters enormous girth: not even an island or a reef. The oceans billows sweep across the face of the deeps without hindrance, eternally.

Heated from below by the planets seething core, swirled into frenzy by Jupiters hyperkinetic spin rate, ferocious currents race through this endless sea, liquid jet streams howling madly, long powerful wave trains surging uninterrupted all the way around the world, circling the globe over and over again. Gigantic storms rack the ocean, too, typhoons bigger than whole planets, hurricanes that have roared their fury for century after century.

Jupiter is the largest of all the solar systems planets, more than ten times bigger and three hundred times as massive as Earth. Jupiter is so immense it could swallow all the other planets easily. Its Great Red Spot, a storm that has raged for centuries, is itself wider than Earth. And the Spot is merely one feature visible among the innumerable vortexes and streams of Jupiters frenetically racing cloud tops.

Yet Jupiter is composed mainly of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, more like a star than a planet. All that size and mass, yet Jupiter spins on its axis in less than ten hours, so fast that the planet is clearly not spherical. Its poles are noticeably flattened. Jupiter looks like a big, colorfully striped beach ball thats squashed down as if some gigantic invisible child were sitting upon it.

Spinning that fast, Jupiters deep, cloud-topped atmosphere is swirled into bands and ribbons of multihued clouds: pale yellow, saffron orange, white, tawny yellow-brown, dark brown, bluish, pink and red. Titanic winds push the clouds across the face of Jupiter at hundreds of kilometers per hour. What lies beneath them? For a century planetary astronomers had cautiously sent probes into the Jovian atmosphere. They barely penetrated the cloud tops before being crushed by overwhelming pressure.

But the inquisitive scientists from Earth persisted and gradually learned that some fifty thousand kilometers beneath those cloudsnearly four times Earths diameterlies that boundless ocean, an ocean almost eleven times wider than Earth and some five thousand kilometers deep. Heavily laced with ammonia and sulfur compounds, highly acidic, it is still an ocean of water. Everywhere in the solar system, where there is liquid water, life exists.

They also found that organic compounds form naturally in the clouds and precipitate down into the sea: particles constantly wafting into the restless ocean, like manna falling from heaven.

Eventually the scientists found that life exists in Jupiters boundless ocean, as well. Enormous creatures, as big as cities, cruise through those raging currents as easily as a lad poling a raft along a quiet stream on Earth, feeding themselves on the organics constantly drifting down from above. Lords of their world, these creatures exist where humans and their most inventive technology can barely penetrate.

The humans called them leviathans. And they wondered: Could these beasts be intelligent?

I

FUSION TORCH SHIP AUSTRALIA

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ulysses

CERES ORBIT:
CHRYSALIS II HABITAT

Big George Ambrose was far from happy.

I still dont see why they need a fookin microbiologist, he grumbled. Bloody beasts on Jupiter are big as mountains, arent they?

His daughter Deirdre nodded in agreement. The two of them were waiting in Chrysalis II s departure lounge for the torch ship from the Earth/Moon system to dock at the habitat. No one else was in the departure lounge; no one else from the habitat was heading for Jupiter.

They did not look much like father and daughter. George was a huge bushy mountain of a man, with a tangled mop of brick red hair and a thick unruly beard to match, both bearing the first telltale streaks of silver. Deirdre was almost as tall as he, but seemed dwarfed next to him. She was strikingly beautiful, though, with wide innocent almond eyes that had a slight oriental cast to them and high cheekbones, thanks to her mother. She had her fathers strong jaw and auburn hair that glowed like molten copper as it streamed down past her shoulders. She was wearing a simple pullover blouse and comfortable slacks, but they couldnt hide the supple curves of her ample figure.

Youll miss my retirement party, George growled.

Im sorry about that, Deirdre said. But they promised me a full scholarship to the Sorbonne if Id put in a year at the research station in Jupiter orbit. A full scholarship, Daddy!

On Earth.

Yes! On Earth!

George shook his shaggy head. Earths a dangerous place. Too many people. All sorts of diseases and maniacs runnin around.

Daddy, its Earth ! Deirdre exclaimed. Its civilization. Its culture. I dont want to spend my whole life cooped up in this habitat. I know you love it, but I want to see the real world!

George muttered something too low for his daughter to catch.

George Ambrose had been director of the rock rats habitat orbiting the asteroid Ceres for the past quarter century. He had helped build the original Chrysalis for the miners and prospectors who combed the Asteroid Belt in search of the metals and minerals that fed the human races expansion through the solar system. He had directed the building of Chrysalis II when the rock rats first habitat had been destroyed in the Asteroid Wars.

And he had presided over the trial of the mercenary killer who had wiped out the original habitat.

Now he stood with his only daughter scowling at the display screen that spread across one entire bulkhead of the departure lounge. It showed the long, sleek torch ship from Earth making the final delicate maneuvers of its rendezvous with the slowly revolving wheel of the habitat. George saw tiny puffs of cold gas squirting from the ships maneuvering rockets: thruster farts, he said to himself.

Like most of the habitat, the departure lounge was strictly utilitarian: a row of hard benches ran along its facing gray bulkheads, the scuffed, dull heavy steel hatch of the airlock between them. No windows; the only outside view was from the wide display screen that stretched above one of the benches.

Across from the wall screen, though, was a mural that Deirdre had painted as a teenager, a seascape she had copied from memory after studying a docudrama about Earths oceans. Deirdres murals decorated many of the otherwise drab sections of the habitat: Even the crude, gaudy daubings she had done as a child still remained on the otherwise colorless bulkheads of Chrysalis II . They were little better than graffiti, but her father would not permit anyone to remove them. He was proud of his daughters artistry, which had grown deeper and richer as she herself blossomed into adulthood.

But George was not admiring his daughters artwork now. Still staring at the display screen, he impatiently called out, Screen, show Ceres.

The display obediently shifted from the approaching torch ship to show the cratered, dusty rock of the asteroid around which the habitat orbited. Largest of the roids in the Belt, Ceres was barely a thousand kilometers across, an oversized boulder, dusty, pitted, dead. Beyond its curving limb there was nothing but the dark emptiness of infinity, laced with hard pinpoints of stars bright enough to shine through the cameras protective filters.