“My reasoning wasn’t this clear when I began. At the time I was simply interested in the orbits of the meteor swarms. Previously we had simply followed their orbits backwards until we could be sure they came from far out. I extended the calculation.”
My father pressed a button and the screen flickered for a moment. The moon orbits were in yellow; now blue lines crawled away from Jupiter’s circle and spiraled outward.
“This is a history of the meteor orbits, run backwards. This first swarm spreads out a little”—the blue lines fanned open—“and then bunches together again. That is unusual in itself. But notice where they bunch.”
The lines focused together and intersected the eleventh Jovian moon.
“There isn’t very much error in this work; we got good fixes on the swarm.”
“Are you certain they had to strike J-11?” Dr. Kadin said. “It is a very small satellite”.
“About twenty miles across, in fact. But the swarm had to hit it; I’m sure of that.”
“Dad, ‘hit’ is the wrong word, isn’t it? This display is running backwards. You mean the swarm started from J-11, don’t you?”
“Right. Sloppy terminology. The program is still going though—watch this next swarm. The same pattern—spiraling out, bunching.”
We watched the lines inch away from Jupiter. They came together just as they met the yellow dot that was J-12.
“Zap!” Mr. Jablons said. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but it looks beautiful.”
“And strange,” the Commander murmured.
“There’s more.” Dad said. “I’ll speed it up.”
Another family of lines wound outward, meeting at J-11. The next group was a little slower, they took their time, but they all ended up at J-12.
“Three earlier swarms show the same pattern.”
“You have verified these calculations?” Dr. Kadin said. “Yes.”
“I am no astrophysicist.” Commander Aarons said. “Maybe I am missing something in all this.”
Dad shook his head, “I don’t think you are, sir. This is something new to all of us. There isn’t any handy explanation.”
The room was quiet. Everyone was watching the screen. Blue lines crept out from Jupiter again.
“What could possibly cause it?” I said.
Dr. Kadin narrowed his eyes as he studied the lines.
“Let us go and find out,” he said.
Chapter 15
I was on an emotional roller-coaster, of course. I had been for days, without really realizing it.
Soon Dr. Kadin fell into conversation about how to investigate J-11 and J-12. I sat and listened and slowly, slowly, the tension drained out of me. The room got very clear and bright. My arms and legs felt warm and tingly. The things people were saying were very interesting and I followed the conversation closely. But somehow I couldn’t understand. The words were there, sure…but making the connections got harder…and harder. My eyes were sandy…and my eyelids kept creeping down.
I woke up the next morning. In my own bed.
I lay there for a while, feeling lazy and warm and letting my body drift. I thought about all that had happened. So much had come about by accident, the random collisions between people and events. Or it seemed random…
I mused about that for a while and then I got up. No point in lying around forever. Mom and Dad had already left for work. They left me a note on the newspad, telling me to take it easy and rest up. So I went for a walk, of course.
In the corridors outside, as I walked, I watched the faces. They were intent, but the mood was different from…was it only yesterday? People bustled along with fresh energy. A few recognized me. They stopped and slapped me on the back and said boisterous things. I smiled and told them it was just luck, nothing more, because that was the truth.
Zak was punching into a cubbyhole terminal near the comp center. He was frowning and typing as fast as he could. He looked over and saw me. His eyebrows shot up and he typed faster. In a minute he had cleared his program and gave up the terminal. “Matt-o!” He jumped up and came over to me. “I thought you’d be sipping champagne with the Commander.”
“I’d settle for a bowl of cereal.”
“I suppose you know you’re the man on the white horse around here.”
“Dumb luck.”
“Don’t fight it. People need heroes.”
I grunted. Somehow I knew I wasn’t going to like being the center of attention. “What’s the update?” I asked.
“You don’t know? The Sagan is going out to J-11. The crew’s been selected. Aarons announced it an hour ago.”
“Really? He’s moving fast.”
“Aarons wants to follow up your discovery, pronto. The way I figure it is, he doesn’t want to give ISA time to react.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll advise extreme caution—you know bureaucracies. And some factions will say we’re faking it, as a last-ditch measure to keep the Can alive.”
“Jeee-sus.”
“Welcome to the real world.”
“So Aarons is going for J-11. What about probing Jupiter’s atmosphere near the poles?”
Zak shrugged. “Most of the bio boys say that stuff you found comes from deep down—too deep for us to reach.”
“Ummm. Hey, you said the crew’s been selected?”
“Yeah. Aarons said—oh, I get it.” He grinned. “You want to go.”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but…” He scowled. “My stock’s not so high right now, anyway.”
“Huh? Why not?”
Zak smiled wryly. “It’s because of you, basically. You remember how Kadin got all fired up about those meteor swarm orbits?”
“Yeah.”
“He assigned a couple of numerical specialists to comb back through the deep-memory storage and get all the records we had. That’ll give us a history of the activity, Kadin thought. Maybe the early automated satellites—the post-Voyager craft—had picked up some odd stuff. So these numerical types went in and got everything out of storage, even the post-Voyager stuff, and started going through it, and…”
He paused significantly. A suspicion blossomed in my mind. “And you… Rebecca and Isaac…”
Zak nodded sourly.
“You said you had a foolproof place to store ’em.” I couldn’t help laughing.
“No need to cackle with glee,” Zak muttered.
“And it had your ident code, right? So they knew right away whose it was.”
“I never thought anybody’d go back into that old crap.”
“Who nailed you?”
“Aarons called me in. Christ, I didn’t think it would be that big a thing. I mean, with all that’s going on—”
“What’d he say?”
“He gave me a long look and said something about improper use of facilities, and how I’d have a watchdog program on all my work from now on.”
“You got off easy.”
“Yeah. I guess. But I’m not any fair-haired boy, I can tell that. The comp center people keep laughing behind my back.”
“Laughing?”
“Yeah. They seem to find some of what Rebecca and Isaac did, well, amusing.”
“Ummm. Not, uh, exciting?”
“I guess not.” Zak looked sour. I could tell he was more bothered by the laughter than the watchdog program. I mean, to have your sexual fantasies taken as inept comedy…
I suppressed a smile and slapped him on the back. “Come on and have some breakfast.”
“Don’t you want to see the crew manifest for Sagan?”
“Oh yeah.” Zak handed me a disposable printout. I scanned the names. Military people, mostly.
“Going to be some trip, all right,” Zak mused.
“Yeah.” Suddenly I wanted to go. To trace the swarms to their origin.
Zak could read my face. “Come on,” he said. “Forget it. You may be the accidental savior, but you’re still a kid.”