Leviathans of Jupiter Read online

“Me,” Andy said. For once, he looked totally serious.

  PASSENGER QUARTERS

  Dorn accompanied Deirdre to her stateroom once dinner was finished. As Dr. Pohan had told her, the map screens placed strategically along the passageway bulkheads showed where her quarters were and how to get there. All she had to do was ask.

  Despite her assurances to her father, the higher g force of the ship’s acceleration was making Deirdre feel weary, slow.

  “Thank you,” she said as they walked slowly along the passageway. “I appreciate your protecting me from Dr. Yeager.”

  “I learned courtesy from a very noble woman,” Dorn said, his voice low, heavy.

  With a tired smile, Deirdre added, “I’ve fended off showoffs like Yeager most of my life, but I’m glad I didn’t have to do it alone, tonight.”

  “De nada,” he said.

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “She did.”

  “You must have loved her very much.”

  Dorn shook his head slowly. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Oh.”

  Following the maps displayed upon the wall screens, they at last found Deirdre’s stateroom. Its door was like all the others that lined the passageway except that the oblong electronic screen on it bore her name. Another couple came up the passageway from the other side, deep in whispered conversation. They stared at Dorn as they squeezed by.

  “I should be jealous of you,” Deirdre said, once they had passed.

  “Jealous?”

  “Usually I’m the one people stare at.”

  Dorn said nothing.

  “Since I was twelve,” she went on.

  It was impossible to read the expression on the human side of his face. For long moments they simply stood there in the passageway, silent. For the first time in many years, Deirdre wasn’t sure what she should say, how she should handle this … cyborg.

  “Thank you,” Dorn said at last.

  She blinked at him. “For what?”

  “For not asking about my past. For not probing into my life story.”

  “It’s painful to you.”

  “Painful. Yes.”

  Very softly, she said, “Everybody has pain in their lives, Dorn.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” he said, without much conviction.

  Even more unsure of herself, Deirdre said, “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  This was the moment when guys made their move, Deirdre knew, but the cyborg merely bowed stiffly a few centimeters, then turned and started walking up the passageway.

  But after a few steps he stopped and said over his shoulder, “My dossier is on file at Ceres. Look under the name ‘Dorik Harbin.’ ”

  Then he proceeded up the passageway, the overhead lights glinting off the etched metal of his skullcap. Deirdre watched him for several moments, then touched the fingerprint-coded lock that opened her door.

  Dorik Harbin, she thought. He is the man who wiped out the original Chrysalis, slaughtered all those people! He’s the man Dad wanted to execute. Yet he doesn’t seem like a murderer now. He’s … She searched for a word, decided at last to give it up. Then she remembered that Yeager said Dorn was a priest of some sort.

  A priest?

  It’s been a strange first night, Deirdre thought as she stepped into her stateroom. And we have two more weeks to go.

  She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt that it would be good to get into bed and stop fighting this heavy gravity that was pulling on her.

  Then she looked around the spacious compartment for the first time. Deirdre’s stateroom was considerably more splendid than the quarters she was accustomed to at home. All this space for one person! she marveled. Of course, she realized, it’s designed for a couple. Eying the wide, low bed, she giggled at the thought that it was big enough for a team of acrobats.

  Her one travel bag was sitting on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. She unpacked, then undressed, did her ablutions in the handsomely appointed lavatory, and avoided the temptation to try out the deep tub of the spa. Pulling on a shapeless old pullover shirt that reached to her hips, Deirdre sat on the bed and tried not to look at the blank wall screen.

  Go to sleep, she told herself. Don’t pry into the man’s past.

  Yet it was Dorn himself who told her that the rock rats’ settlement at Ceres held a dossier on him, under the name Dorik Harbin. She wondered why he no longer called himself that.

  Yeager seemed to know something about him, Deirdre thought. All through dinner the engineer behaved as if he knew all about Dorn’s past. But then Yeager acted as if he knew everything about everything, she told herself.

  Forget about it, she told herself. Let sleeping cyborgs lie. She stretched out on the bed and pulled the thin sheet up to her chin. But in her mind’s eye she kept seeing Dorn, half human, half machine. Why? How?

  She remembered a line she’d read at school about a famous financier who had faced an ethical problem of some importance. “Bernard Baruch sat on his favorite park bench, struggling with his conscience,” the author had written. Then he added, “He won.”

  Smiling to herself, Deirdre decided that she would override her conscience, too.

  She sat up and called, “Computer, what’s the time lag between here and Ceres?”

  The wall screen glowed softly and the computer’s synthesized voice answered, “Four seconds, one way.”

  I can get the information in less than eight seconds, Deirdre realized.

  “Computer, query the Chrysalis II habitat for the personnel dossier of Dorik Harbin.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Deirdre lay back on the bed again and commanded the lights to switch off. I’ll read his file in the morning, she said to herself. After a good night’s sleep.

  But she found that she could not sleep. Tired from the heavy gravity though she was, she was too curious to fall asleep. She got up and went to the tiny swivel chair at the compartment’s built-in desk and switched on the computer again.

  And there it was: Dossier, Dorik Harbin. Born in Montenegro, Earth. Parents, two sisters killed in ethnic cleansing. Joined local militia at age twelve. Recruited by International Peacekeeping Force. Quit IPF to join Humphries Space Systems as mercenary soldier. Convicted of destroying original Chrysalis habitat, killing one thousand seventeen men, women, and children. Sentenced to permanent exile from Chrysalis II and all other Asteroid Belt communities.

  Deirdre stared at the words on the wall screen. Her blood ran cold. He’s been involved in death and murder since he was a child!

  She watched the video of Dorik Harbin’s trial. He offered no defense. He seemed to expect to be executed, seemed to want to be killed. But then an elderly woman in a powerchair rolled herself up to the cyborg and pled for mercy, saying that he had completely changed his personality, begging the inhabitants of Chrysalis II to exile Dorik Harbin, not kill him.

  The dossier stopped with the rock rats’ decision to exile Dorik Harbin. They had no further interest in Dorik Harbin. But Deirdre did. She was riding out to Jupiter with a mass murderer. He may say he’s a priest now but he has blood on his hands. She wanted to know a lot more about this Dorik Harbin, or Dorn, as he now called himself. A lot more.

  KATHERINE WESTFALL’S SUITE

  Katherine Westfall’s three-room suite was up near the top of Australia’s long, slim body, one level down from the captain’s quarters. The staff people she had brought with her were ensconced two levels lower, separated from Mrs. Westfall by “officer’s territory,” the compartments where the ship’s officers were quartered. Still, even her staff’s accommodations were much more spacious and sumptuously decorated than the compartments for ordinary passengers and the ship’s crew.

  Katherine was reclining against a mound of pillows on her bed, gazing out through the glassteel port set
into the bulkhead of her bedroom. Countless stars hung out there, brilliant jewels against the eternal darkness, steady and unblinking. Earth and its bleak, sad-faced Moon were far behind the ship as it hurtled through space toward distant Jupiter.

  Her personal communicator lay on the bed beside her, its palm-sized screen displaying a star chart. Katherine was teaching herself astronomy, or trying to. The chart didn’t seem to match what she was seeing outside, though.

  Her slim brows knitting in frustration, she thought she understood where the problem was. The stupid tutorial on the screen was displaying how the stars would look from the surface of Earth. The ship was in space, and many, many more stars were visible. Thousands of stars too dim to be seen through Earth’s thick atmosphere now glowed at Katherine, blanketing the outlines of the constellations that she should be finding.

  Her frustration gave way to understanding. Too many stars, she told herself. God’s overwhelming me with more information than I need. It was a trick she had used herself, from time to time. Drown an investigator in data. Give them what they want, but bury it in so much information that they’ll never be able to find the pattern they’re looking for.

  Katherine Westfall smiled at the stars. And she thought that an astronomy display that showed all the myriad of stars one sees in space, but highlights the stars that one would see from Earth, might make a decent profit for an entrepreneur who knew how to bring a new product to market. She filed the idea away in her mind, alongside other ideas that she had stored there. It’s never too late to make a profit, she reminded herself. I may be retired from the corporate world, but that doesn’t mean I have to stick entirely to philanthropy.

  Philanthropy. The word jogged her back to reality. You’re not here to study astronomy, she told herself. You’re spending six precious weeks heading for Jupiter to do what’s needed out there. It’s time to cut them off. No excuses. No mercy. Take a good look around their research station and then send them all packing back to Earth. Take Archer down before he can make his move against you.

  Grant Archer was a threat. The head of the scientific team at Jupiter was on the short list to be appointed the next director of the IAA, the position Katherine wanted for herself. Not merely a council member; she had to be the director. Had to be. She heard her mother’s voice in her mind: “Get to the top, Katie. Whatever you do, get to the top. You’re not safe until you’re on top.”

  She knew that Archer and his staff of scientists were feverishly trying to complete a new submersible craft and send a crew of volunteers down into that murderous ocean. To study the leviathans. It was supposed to be a secret, but the scientists could keep no secrets from her. She had her sources of information in place aboard the research station.

  He thinks that a successful mission to study those creatures will guarantee his appointment to the IAA directorship. He thinks he’ll be able to jump ahead of me.

  Unconsciously, Katherine shook her head. Archer and his scientists may say they want to study those Jovian beasts, but what they’re really going to do is kill more people. Like they killed Elaine.

  It had been a shock to Katherine Westfall when she discovered that she had a sister. Her mother had never told her of it. Not in all the years they had lived together had her mother once mentioned that she’d had another daughter, years before Katherine: Elaine.

  Katherine discovered her sister’s existence the day after her mother’s funeral, as she went through the pitiful remnants that her mother had left behind. A scattering of photos, most of them obviously taken many years earlier, when her mother had been young and pretty, long before the years of toil had ground her down to a hard, suspicious shell of a gray-haired woman.

  Two images in the computer file showed her mother with a baby. Only two images out of hundreds that had accumulated over the years. But those two images sparked Katherine’s lively interest because both dated from before her own birth. Who was this baby? Why was her mother cradling the infant so tenderly in her arms?

  The advantages of wealth include the ability to buy information. Katherine used her corporate security office to hire private investigators and track down this mystery child.

  She learned at last that her mother had borne a daughter to one of her earliest lovers, nearly ten years before Katherine had been born. The man was wealthy, powerful. He refused to marry her mother, but took the baby from her to raise as his own. Mother never saw her again, Katherine realized. That’s what made her so bitter. That’s why she was so wary when Katherine met Farrell Westfall. “Get him to marry you,” Mother had insisted. “Marriage or nothing.”

  So she had married. And her mother had died wealthy and comfortable. And Katherine learned she had a sister.

  Her sister was a scientist who had been at research station Thomas Gold, orbiting Jupiter. But now, Katherine had found, she was back on Earth. In a convalescent hospital in Ireland.

  She had traveled halfway across the world to meet her sister and arrived exactly two hours too late. Elaine O’Hara had died at almost the moment Katherine had left Sydney. She had been in poor health physically and emotionally since she’d taken part in the ill-fated mission into Jupiter’s deep, seething ocean.

  Jupiter had killed Katherine’s only sister.

  No, she told herself as she lay on the bed in her luxurious stateroom aboard Australia. It wasn’t Jupiter that had killed her; it was the single-minded, blindly arrogant scientists who had sent her to her death.

  She smiled to herself, coldly. The sister she had never known would become the excuse she needed to kill the scientists’ investigation of Jupiter. One way or another, she was going to send them all packing back to Earth. And if anyone questioned her motives, she could always tell them about her dear, martyred sister and point the finger of accusation at Archer and all the other heartless scientists who willingly sent innocents to their deaths.

  ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP

  Andy Corvus was not smiling as he bent over the electronics components scattered across the worktable.

  “Murphy’s Law,” he muttered to himself. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” Dorn asked.

  The cyborg was sitting easily on a swivel-topped stool a meter or so from Corvus, who was on his feet, staring unhappily at the hardware strewn along the table. The electronics workshop was small, hardly big enough for the two men. Its one workbench was fully equipped, though, with tools and diagnostic instruments. Corvus wondered how Australia’s maintenance crew kept the ship going with such a minuscule workshop, but then he guessed that the ship’s systems got inspected and overhauled regularly in port, after a trip was finished.

  Corvus looked up at Dorn and his face went from a frustrated scowl to a sheepish expression. “I’ve been working on this rig since we left Selene and it’s still not right.” Pointing at a gray titanium cylinder resting on the workbench, no bigger than his fist, he said, “I’ve got to get all these components to fit into that container. Six kilos of goods in a five-kilo bag.”

  Dorn waved his human hand. “Get a bigger container.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Corvus said, looking chagrined. “The size of the container is dictated by the volume available in the dolphin’s skull.”

  “Dolphin?”

  Grinning crookedly, Andy said, “Sure. Didn’t you know we’re carrying dolphins aboard the ship? Taking them out to the Gold station.”

  “Dolphins.” Dorn seemed incredulous.

  “It’s part of my work,” Corvus explained. “I’m brain-linking with the dolphins as a sort of preliminary test, to see if I can make contact with the leviathans.”

  “And we’re carrying dolphins on this ship all the way out to Jupiter?”

  Corvus nodded enthusiastically. “We sure are. Four whole decks have been converted into an aquarium for them.”

  Dorn shook his head in disbelief.

  “I was going to try to make contact with them later today, but if I can’t get m
y transceiver into the volume they’ve allowed for their skulls…”

  “You’ll have to make smaller components,” Dorn said, quite matter-of-factly. Then he added, “Or make more room in the dolphins’ skulls.”

  * * *

  Deidre had slept poorly, her dreams filled with scenes of war and bloodshed. Dorn—Dorik Harbin—didn’t appear in those dreams; at least she didn’t remember his presence. But the dreams were horrifying, people being slaughtered, villages burned to the ground. And the old Chrysalis habitat methodically destroyed, slashing laser beams ripping its components apart, people blasted into the vacuum of space, not even able to scream as their lifeblood spewed out of them.

  She was glad that Dorn wasn’t in the dining room when she came down for breakfast. But as she slid her tray along the dispenser tables she saw Max Yeager sitting off in a corner by himself, as if he’d been waiting for her.

  As soon as he saw Deirdre the burly engineer got up from his solitary table and buzzed over to her.

  “Good morning,” he said, smiling widely. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Not very,” Deirdre replied.

  She filled her tray with a plate of eggs, a mug of fruit juice, and a dish of melon balls, Yeager beside her every step of the way. She found an empty table and Yeager immediately pulled out a chair in his meaty hands and held it for her.

  “I didn’t sleep all that well, either,” he said as he sat across the table from her. “Strange surroundings, eh? Have you done much traveling?”

  With a shake of her head, Deirdre admitted, “This is my first trip away from home.”

  “I’ve traveled a lot,” Yeager said. “Been to Mercury twice, helping Yamagata Corporation design those big solar energy satellites they’re putting up out there. Rumor is, they want to use some of ’em to power lasers that’ll propel lightsail ships out to Alpha Centauri.”

  “Alpha Centauri?” she marveled.

  Before Yeager could respond, Deirdre’s pocketphone buzzed. She fished it from the pocket of her slacks and saw the text message on its minuscule screen: “DEIRDRE AMBROSE, PLEASE REPORT TO DR. POHAN IN THE INFIRMARY. AT ONCE.”