Jupiter Read online

  PRAISE FOR BEN BOVA

  “Jupiter is a new favorite destination for SF exploration, and Bova’s take on the planet is unique and enticing.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Jupiter

  “With Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein gone, Bova, author of more than 70 books, is one of the last deans of traditional science fiction. And he hasn’t lost his touch.”

  —Kansas City Star on Venus

  “[Bova’s] excellence at combining hard science with believable characters and an attention-grabbing plot makes him one of the genre’s most accessible and entertaining storytellers.”

  —Library Journal

  “Bova manages to bring the planet alive as a force of nature indifferent to the struggles, hopes, or presence of the humans who are attempting to make the first successful landing on her surface.”

  —Bookpage on Venus

  TOR BOOKS BY BEN BOVA

  The Aftermath*

  As on a Darkling Plain

  The Astral Mirror

  Battle Station

  The Best of the Nebulas (ed.)

  Challenges

  City of Darkness

  Colony

  Cyberbooks

  Empire Builders

  Escape Plus

  The Green Trap

  Gremlins Go Home

  (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Jupiter

  The Kinsman Saga

  Mercury

  The Multiple Man

  Orion

  Orion Among the Stars

  Orion and the Conqueror

  Orion in the Dying Time

  Out of the Sun

  The Peacekeepers

  Powersat

  The Precipice

  Privateers

  The Prometheans

  The Rock Rats

  The Sam Gunn Omnibus

  Saturn

  The Silent War

  Star Peace: Assured Survival

  The Starcrossed

  Tales of the Grand Tour

  Test of Fire

  Titan

  To Fear the Light (with A. J. Austin)

  To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)

  The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)

  Triumph

  Vengeance of Orion

  Venus

  Voyagers

  Voyagers II: The Alien Within

  Voyagers III: Star Brothers

  The Winds of Altair

  *Forthcoming

  JUPITER

  BEN BOVA

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JUPITER

  Copyright © 2001 by Ben Bova

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-812-57941-3

  ISBN-10: 0-812-57941-0

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-048021

  First Edition: January 2001

  First Mass Market Edition: February 2002

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5

  To Danny and T.J., my favorite “Jovians.”

  To Thomas Gold, who would rather be wrong than dull.

  And to Barbara, always and forever.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Mark Chartrand, George W. Ferguson, and Frederic B. Jueneman, who offered invaluable advice and assistance in writing this novel. The technical accuracy of this story is due in large part to their generous assistance; any inaccuracies stem from my stretching the known facts.

  Details of the life of Zheng He and the Ming Empire’s “treasure fleet” can be found in Louise Levathe’s fine book, When China Ruled the Seas, published in 1994 by Simon & Schuster.

  The rash assertion that “God made man in His own image” is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.

  —Arthur C. Clarke

  Prologue: Orbital Station Gold

  It took six of them to drown him.

  Reluctantly, grudgingly, Grant Archer had stripped himself naked, as they had ordered him to do. But once they pushed him to the edge of the big tank he knew he would not go into it without a fight.

  The augmented gorilla grabbed Grant's right arm; she was careful not to snap his bones but her powerful grip was painful all the same. Two of the human guards held his left arm while a third grasped him around the middle and still another lifted his bare feet off the deck so he couldn't get any leverage for his wild-eyed struggles.

  All this in nearly total silence. Grant didn't scream or roar at them, he didn't plead or curse. The only sounds were the scuffing of the guards' boots on the cold metal deck plates, the hard gasps of their labored breathing, and Grant's own panicked, desperate panting.

  The guard captain grimly, efficiently, grasped Grant's depilated head in his big meaty hands and pushed his face into the tank of thick, oily liquid.

  Grant squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath until his chest felt as if it would burst. He was burning inside, suffocating, drowning. The pain was unbearable. He couldn't breathe. He dared not breathe. No matter what they had told him, he knew down at the deepest level of his being that this was going to kill him.

  No air! Can't breathe!

  Reflex overpowered his mind. Despite himself, despite his terror, he sucked in a breath. And gagged. He tried to scream, to cry out, to beg for help or mercy. His lungs filled with the icy liquid. His whole body spasmed, shuddered with the last hope of life as they pushed his naked body all the way into the tank with a final pitiless shove and he sank down, deeper and deeper.

  He opened his eyes. There were lights down there. He was breathing! Coughing, choking, his body racked with uncontrollable spasms. But he was breathing. The liquid filled his lungs and he could breathe it. Just like regular air, they had told him. A lie, a vicious lie. It was cold and thick, utterly foreign, alien, slimy and horrible.

  But he could breathe.

  He sank toward the lights. Blinking, squinting in their glare, he saw that there were other naked, hairless bodies down there waiting for him.

  'Welcome to the team,' a sarcastic voice boomed in his ears, deep, slow, reverberating.

  Another voice, not as loud but even more basso profundo, said, 'Okay, let's get him prepped him for the surgery.'

  BOOK I

  My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

  Psalm

  Chapter 1 - Grant Armstrong Archer III

  Despite being born into one of the oldest families in Oregon, Grant Archer grew up in an environme
nt that was far from affluent. His earliest memories were of watching his mother rummaging through piles of hand-me-down clothes at the Good Will shop, looking for sweaters and gym shoes that weren't too shabby to wear to school.

  His father was a Methodist minister in the little suburb of Salem where Grant grew up, respected as a man of the cloth but not taken too seriously in the community because he was, in the words of one of the golf club widows, 'churchmouse poor.'

  Poor as far as money was concerned, but Grant's mother always told him that he was rich in the gift of intelligence. It was his mother, who worked in one of the multifarious offices of the New Morality in the state capital, who encouraged Grant's interest in science.

  Most of the New Morality officials were suspicious of science and scientists, deeply worried about these 'humanists' who so often contradicted the clear word of Scripture. Even Grant's father urged his son to steer clear of biology and any other scientific specialty that would bring the frowning scrutiny of New Morality investigators upon them.

  For Grant, there was no problem. Since he'd been old enough to look into the night sky with awe and wonder, he'd wanted to be an astronomer. In high school, where he was by far the brightest student in his class, he narrowed his interest to the astrophysics of black holes. Although Grant thrilled to the discoveries on Mars and out among the distant moons of Jupiter, it was the death throes of giant stars that truly fascinated him. If he could learn how collapsed stars •warped spacetime, he might one day discover a way for humans to use such warps for interstellar journeys.

  He longed to work at the Farside Observatory on the Moon, studying collapsed stars far out in the cold and dark of deep interstellar space. Yet Grant had been warned that even at Farside there were tensions and outright dangers. Despite all the strictures of the New Morality and the stern rules laid down by the observatory's directors, some astronomers still tried to sneak time on the big telescopes to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. When such prohibited activities were discovered those responsible were inevitably sent back to Earth in disgrace, their careers blighted.

  That did not bother Grant, however. He intended to keep his nose clean, to avoid antagonizing the ever-present agents of the New Morality, and to study the enigmatic and entirely safe black holes. He was careful never to use the dreaded word 'evolution' when speaking about the life cycles of stars and their final collapse into black holes. 'Evolution' was a dangerous word among the New Morality eavesdroppers.

  By the time he was finishing high school, he had grown into a quiet, square-shouldered young man with a thick thatch of sandy-blond hair that often tumbled over his light brown eyes. He was good-natured and polite; the high-school girls considered him a 'delta' in their merciless rating system: okay as a friend, especially when it came to help with school work, but too dull to date except in an emergency. A shade under six feet tall and whipcord lean, Grant played on the school's baseball and track teams, no outstanding star but the kind of reliable performer that made his coaches sleep better at night.

  As his senior year approached, Grant was offered a full scholarship in return for a four-year commitment to Public Service. The service was inescapable: every high-school graduate was required to do at least two years, and then another two at age fifty. The New Morality advisor in his high school told Grant that by accepting a four-year term now, he could get a full scholarship to the university of his choice, with the understanding that his Public Service would be in the field for which he was trained: astrophysics.

  Grant accepted the scholarship and the commitment, his eyes still on Farside. He went to Harvard and, much to his delighted surprise, fell in love with a raven-haired biochemist named Marjorie Gold. She made him feel important, for the first time in his life. When he was with her, the quiet, steady, sandy-haired young astronomy student felt he could conquer the universe.

  They married during their senior year even though he knew he'd be off to the Farside Observatory for four years while Marjorie would be doing her Public Service with the International Peacekeeping Force, tracking down clandestine biological warfare factories in the jungles of South-East Asia and Latin America.

  But they were young and their love could not wait. So they married, despite their parents' misgivings.

  'I'll come down from Farside at least every few months,' Grant told her as they lay together in bed, contemplating the next four years.

  'I'll get leave when you're here,' Marjorie agreed.

  'By the time I've finished my four years I'll have my doctorate,' he said.

  'Then you can get on a tenure track at any university you like.'

  'And after the four years is over we can apply to have a child,' Grant said.

  'A boy,' said Marjorie.

  'Don't you want a daughter?'

  'Afterward. After I learn how to be a mother. Then we can have a daughter.'

  He smiled in the darkness of their bedroom and kissed her and they made love. It was a safe time of Marjorie's cycle.

  They both graduated with high honors; Grant was actually first in his class. Marjorie received her Public Service commission with the Peacekeepers, as expected. Grant, though, was shocked when his orders sent him not to the Farside Observatory on the Moon, but to research station Thomas Gold in orbit around Jupiter, more than seven hundred million kilometers from Marjorie at its closest approach to Earth.

  Chapter 2 - '… Which Side You're On'

  Grant's father counselled patience.

  'If that's where they want to send you, they must have their reasons. You'll simply have to accept it, son.'

  Grant found that he could not accept it. There was no patience in him, despite earnest prayers. His father had been a meek and accepting man all his life, and what had it gotten him? Obscurity, genteel poverty, and condescending smiles behind his back. That's not for me, Grant told himself.

  Despite his father's conciliatory advice, Grant fought his assignment all the way up to the regional director of the New Morality's North-eastern office.

  'I can't spend four years at Jupiter,' he insisted. 'I'm a married man! I can't be that far away for four years! Besides, I'm an astrophysicist and there's no need for my specialty at Jupiter. I'll be wasting four years! How can I work on my doctorate when there's no astrophysics being done there?'

  The regional director sat behind a massive oak desk strewn with papers, tensely upright in his high-backed chair, his lean, long-fingered hands steepled before him as Grant babbled on. His name was Ellis Beech. He was a serious-looking African-American with dark skin the color of sooty smoke. His face was thin, long with a pointed chin; his eyes were tawny, somber, focused intently on Grant without wavering all through his urgent, pleading tirade.

  At last Grant ran out of words. He didn't know what more he could say. He had tried to control his anger, but he was certain he'd raised his voice unconscionably and betrayed the resentment and aggravation he felt. Never show anger, his father had counseled him. Be calm, be reasonable. Anger begets anger; you want to sway the regional director to your point of view, not antagonize him.

  Grant slumped back in his chair, waiting for some reaction from the regional director. The man didn't look antagonized. To Grant's eyes, he didn't look as if he'd heard half of what Grant had said. Beech's desk was cluttered with paper, from flimsy single sheets to thick volumes bound in red covers; his computer screen flickered annoyingly; he was obviously a very important and very busy person, yet his phone had not beeped once since Grant had been ushered into the warmly panelled, carpeted office.

  'I was supposed to go to Farside,' Grant muttered, trying to get some response out of the brooding man behind the desk.

  'I'm fully aware of that,' Beech said at last. Then he added, 'But unfortunately you are needed at Jupiter.'

  'How could I be needed—'

  'Let me explain the situation to you, young man.'

  Grant nodded.

  'The scientists have had their research station in Jupite
r orbit for nearly twenty years,' Beech said, stressing the word scientists ever so slightly. 'They have been poking around with the life-forms that exist on two of the planet's moons.'

  'Three,' Grant corrected without thinking. 'Plus they've found life-forms in Jupiter's atmosphere, as well.'

  Beech continued, unfazed. 'The work these scientists do is enormously expensive. They are spending money that could be much better used to help the poor and disadvantaged here on Earth.'

  Before Grant could respond, Beech raised a silencing hand, 'Yet, we of the New Morality do not object to their work. Even though many of those scientists are doing everything they can to try to disprove the truth of Scripture, we allow them to continue their godless pursuits.'

  Grant didn't think that studying the highly adapted algae and microbes living in the ice-covered seas of the Jovian moons was a godless pursuit. How could any attempt to understand the fullness of God's creation be considered godless?

  'Why do we not object to this enormously expensive waste of funds and effort?' Beech asked rhetorically. 'Because we of the New Morality and similar god-fearing organizations in other nations have seen fit to establish a compromise with the International Astronautical Authority — and the global financial power structure, as well, I might add.'

  'Compromise?' Grant wondered aloud.

  'Fusion,' said Beech. 'Thermonuclear fusion. The world's economic well-being depends on fusion power plants. Without the energy from fusion, our world would sink back into the poverty and chaos and corruption that spawned wars and. terrorism in earlier years. With fusion, we are lifting the standards of living for even the poorest of the poor, bringing hope and salvation to the darkest corners of the Earth.'

  Grant thought he understood. 'And the fuels for fusion - the isotopes of hydrogen and helium - they come from Jupiter.'