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Authors: Charles Sheffield
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your heading for fifteen minutes. You'll be moving in the same sense as cloud rotation. Any circulation will speed you up. When you come around and out, there should be three or four Von Neumanns right in front of you."
"Check." Wilsa's hands felt huge and clumsy, like monstrous gauntlets, as she slowly operated the Leda 's control levers. The submersible tilted and began the long slide downward. Another faint voice was chanting numbers, matching a red readout in the upper left corner of the image display. It reported isobaric depth in kilometers: "One-three-one-two. One-three-one-three, One-three-one-four." Thirteen hundred kilometers below the planet's upper cloud layers. The pressure would exceed a hundred standard atmospheres. It was no longer cold. The submersible flew through a helium-hydrogen mixture bubbling at nearly three hundred degrees Celsius. A little deeper and the heat around the ship would melt lead.
The swirling cloud was towering closer on Wilsa's right. She stared hypnotized into its jagged, broadening helix: orange and umber turbulence, transformed by the synesthetic imaging system to a sickly, mottled yellow, rising up forever. The thunderhead was stately, black-centered, and threatening. Flickers of lightning ran around its perimeter and lit the dark interior of the submersible with random pulses of intense green.
Wilsa gazed into its deadly heart. As she did so, another voice spoke unbidden from the secret depths of her mind. Its imperative banished every other thought. The broad, royal theme that it proclaimed rose irresistibly from a low E-flat, arching up to take command of her brain.
The melody of Jupiter itself. Her piloting of the submersible became unconscious as she allowed the theme to grow, shaping and reshaping in long, cantabile phrases while the Leda slid around and beneath the cloud base. She exulted as the tune soared higher, rising as majestic as the helical cloud in front of her. Like the starting point for all of her compositions, its arrival came as a complete surprise. Two minutes earlier she could have offered no hint of form, tempo, or key—or even predicted that anything creative was on the way. Everything else in a composition could be produced by thought and hard work, but melody remained aloof, beyond conscious control. And this one, she knew already, was a beauty.
"That will do." Tristan Morgan's voice entered from a million miles outside, touching but not breaking the creative spell. "I know you've decided you can fly blindfolded, but bring it out now."
"Okay." The rolling cloud vanished behind as Wilsa changed course; it was replaced by streaks that ran across the whole field of view. East-west. She recalled Tristan Morgan's earlier warning: "Don't forget that the small-scale shear is all east-west. And don't forget that any one of those little pencil lines holds enough energy to tear the ship in two."
But the black, broken striations on the horizon carried another message. They initiated a persistent little sawtooth of a tune, running as an ostinato counterpoint to the earlier theme. Wilsa wove the two together, feeling out the harmony. Then, as an experiment, she transposed the whole thing to the key of G Major. Not so good. She had been right the first time. E-flat was much better.
"One-three-two-two," said the depth monitor suddenly.
"Wilsa, your brain's on autopilot again." Tristan's voice was sharp. "Stop the turn and look half-left. You'll see three Von Neumanns—no, make that two. The other one's got a full cargo and it's starting to ascend. If you don't hurry, you'll miss it."
"I'm not sleeping. I'm working ." But as she snapped back her answer and tucked the nascent composition safely away in the back of her mind—there was no danger that she would forget it—Wilsa was scanning the atmosphere ahead for her first sight of a Jovian Von Neumann.
There. And not far from it, a second one. But the third that Tristan had mentioned was already far above,
"Check." Wilsa's hands felt huge and clumsy, like monstrous gauntlets, as she slowly operated the Leda 's control levers. The submersible tilted and began the long slide downward. Another faint voice was chanting numbers, matching a red readout in the upper left corner of the image display. It reported isobaric depth in kilometers: "One-three-one-two. One-three-one-three, One-three-one-four." Thirteen hundred kilometers below the planet's upper cloud layers. The pressure would exceed a hundred standard atmospheres. It was no longer cold. The submersible flew through a helium-hydrogen mixture bubbling at nearly three hundred degrees Celsius. A little deeper and the heat around the ship would melt lead.
The swirling cloud was towering closer on Wilsa's right. She stared hypnotized into its jagged, broadening helix: orange and umber turbulence, transformed by the synesthetic imaging system to a sickly, mottled yellow, rising up forever. The thunderhead was stately, black-centered, and threatening. Flickers of lightning ran around its perimeter and lit the dark interior of the submersible with random pulses of intense green.
Wilsa gazed into its deadly heart. As she did so, another voice spoke unbidden from the secret depths of her mind. Its imperative banished every other thought. The broad, royal theme that it proclaimed rose irresistibly from a low E-flat, arching up to take command of her brain.
The melody of Jupiter itself. Her piloting of the submersible became unconscious as she allowed the theme to grow, shaping and reshaping in long, cantabile phrases while the Leda slid around and beneath the cloud base. She exulted as the tune soared higher, rising as majestic as the helical cloud in front of her. Like the starting point for all of her compositions, its arrival came as a complete surprise. Two minutes earlier she could have offered no hint of form, tempo, or key—or even predicted that anything creative was on the way. Everything else in a composition could be produced by thought and hard work, but melody remained aloof, beyond conscious control. And this one, she knew already, was a beauty.
"That will do." Tristan Morgan's voice entered from a million miles outside, touching but not breaking the creative spell. "I know you've decided you can fly blindfolded, but bring it out now."
"Okay." The rolling cloud vanished behind as Wilsa changed course; it was replaced by streaks that ran across the whole field of view. East-west. She recalled Tristan Morgan's earlier warning: "Don't forget that the small-scale shear is all east-west. And don't forget that any one of those little pencil lines holds enough energy to tear the ship in two."
But the black, broken striations on the horizon carried another message. They initiated a persistent little sawtooth of a tune, running as an ostinato counterpoint to the earlier theme. Wilsa wove the two together, feeling out the harmony. Then, as an experiment, she transposed the whole thing to the key of G Major. Not so good. She had been right the first time. E-flat was much better.
"One-three-two-two," said the depth monitor suddenly.
"Wilsa, your brain's on autopilot again." Tristan's voice was sharp. "Stop the turn and look half-left. You'll see three Von Neumanns—no, make that two. The other one's got a full cargo and it's starting to ascend. If you don't hurry, you'll miss it."
"I'm not sleeping. I'm working ." But as she snapped back her answer and tucked the nascent composition safely away in the back of her mind—there was no danger that she would forget it—Wilsa was scanning the atmosphere ahead for her first sight of a Jovian Von Neumann.
There. And not far from it, a second one. But the third that Tristan had mentioned was already far above,
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