Jupiter, largest of the solar system’s planets, might have the chemical ingredients for life swirling in its multicolored clouds. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Jupiter as the most likely place to find some form of extraterrestrial life. Not intelligent life, most likely. But you never know.
Sadly, this story contains a glaring anachronism. Carl Sagan died in late 1996, more than two years after this story was written, and a thousand years too soon. He is a living character in the story, just as his dedication and drive are still living influences in the continuing search for extraterrestrial life.
They were all there, all the Grand Old Men of the field: McKay, Kliest, Taranto—even Sagan, little more than an ancient withered husk in his electric wheelchair. But the fire still burned in his deep, dark eyes.
All the egos and superegos who had given their lifetimes to the search for extraterrestrial life. Often derided by the media, scorned by the politicians, even scoffed at by their fellow scientists, this was going to be their day. One way or the other.
Jupiter was going to reveal its secrets to them. Today. Life on another world at last. Make or break.
I could feel the tension in the room, like just before a thunderstorm, that electrical smell in the air that makes the hair on your arms stand on end. Careers would be made today, or broken. Mine included. That’s why everyone was here, waiting impatiently, chattering nervously, staring at the display screens that still showed nothing but crackling streaks of random noise.
The mission control center was a big room, huge really, but now it was jammed with bodies, hot and sweaty, buzzing with voices in half a dozen languages. The project scientists, all the top government officials, invitees like Sagan, hangers-on who inveigled their way in, everybody who thought or hoped they’d capture some of the glory of the moment, and more than a hundred news reporters and photographers, all crammed into the mission control chamber, all talking at once. Like a tribe of apes, jabbering, gesticulating, posturing to hide their dreams and ambitions and fear.
They didn’t want to miss the first images from beneath the cloud tops of Jupiter. Even if it killed them, they had to be at mission control when the probe’s first pictures came in.
Most of the reporters clustered around Sagan, of course, although quite a few hung near Lopez-Oyama, the center’s director. Our boss.
Beautiful Allie stayed at Lopez-Oyama’s side. Allison Brandt, she of the golden hair and pendulous breasts. I dreamed about Allie, saw her flawlessly naked, smiling at me willingly. In my waking hours I thought about her endlessly, picturing myself doing things with her that not even my dreams dared to imagine.
But she stayed beside the director, next to the power and the attention. I was merely an engineer, neither powerful nor glamorous. Still, I longed for Allie. Lusted after her. Even as she smiled for the photographers I noticed how she had artfully undone an extra couple of buttons on the front of her blouse.
«Imagery systems check,» droned the voice of the mission controller. The huge room fell absolutely silent. I held my breath.
«Imagery systems functioning.»
We all let out a sigh of relief. Me especially. The imagery systems were my responsibility. I built them. If they failed, the mission failed, I failed, six dozen careers would go down the tubes, six dozen frustrated scientists would be seeking my blood.
Our probe into Jupiter was unmanned, of course. No astronaut could survive the crushing pressures and turbulent storms beneath the cloud deck of Jupiter. No one knew if our robotic probe was sturdy enough to reach below the cloud tops and survive.
Over the years, the earlier probes had shown that beneath those gaudy colorful swirling clouds there was an ocean ten times larger than the whole Earth. An ocean of water. Heavily laced with ammonia, to be sure, but water nonetheless. There was only one other world in the solar system where liquid water existed—Earth. We knew that liquid water meant life on Earth. Did it on Jupiter?
«Jupiter represents our best chance for finding extraterrestrial life.» Lopez-Oyama had said those words to the congressional committee that ruled on NASA’s budget, when he went begging to them for the money to fund our mission.
«Life?» asked one of the congressmen, looking startled, almost afraid. «Like animals and trees and such?»
I watched those hearings on TV; we all did, sitting on the edges of our chairs in the center’s cafeteria while the politicians decided if we lived or died. I had picked a seat next to Allie, although she barely acknowledged my presence beside her. She stared unwaveringly at the screen.
With a tolerant little shake of his head, Lopez-Oyama replied, «It probably won’t be life as we know it here on Earth, sir. That would be too much to hope for.»
«Then what will it be like?»
«We just don’t know. We’ve never found life on another world before.» Then he added, «But if we don’t find life on Jupiter, then I doubt that life of any form exists anywhere else in the solar system.»
«Do you mean intelligent life?» asked the committee chairwoman sharply.
Lopez-Oyama smiled winningly at her. «No, ma’am,» he said. «Intelligent life would be too much to expect. I’ll be happy if we find something like bacteria.»
Now, as the moment of truth approached, the scientists cramming mission control were busily spinning theories about what the cameras would find in Jupiter’s global ocean. They couldn’t wait for the actual pictures, they had to show how clever they were to impress the reporters and each other. A bunch of alpha male apes, preening and displaying their brains instead of their fangs. Competing for primacy and the attention of the news reporters who were clustered around them, goggle-eyed, tape recorders spinning. Even the women scientists were playing the one-upmanship game, in the name of equality.
To her credit, Allie remained quiet. She was as clever a scientist as any of them, but she refused to involve herself in the primate competition. She didn’t have to. Her ranking in the hierarchy was as secure as could be.
None of them paid the slightest attention to me. I was only the engineer who had built the imaging system. I wasn’t a scientist, just the guy with dirt under his fingernails who made the machinery work. I’d be ignored unless something went wrong.
To tell the truth, I paid damned little attention to them and their constant gabbling. My eyes were focused on long-legged Allie, by far the most desirable female in the pack. How could I make her notice me? How could I get her to smile in my direction instead of clinging so close to the boss? How could I get to be an alpha male in her lustrous eyes?
«Data coming through.»
From nearly a thousand million kilometers away, my cameras were functioning. Had already functioned, as a matter of fact, more than eight hours ago. It took that long for the telemetry signal to travel from Jupiter to our antennas out in the desert.
Suddenly all their jabbering stopped. Mission control fell absolutely silent. The first images began to raster across the main display screens, line by line. Live, from beneath the endless cloud deck of Jupiter.
Each display screen showed imagery from a different wavelength. We had blue, green, red, infrared, and even radar imaging systems. Despite all their theories, none of the scientists had been able to tell me which wavelengths would work best beneath Jupiter’s cloud deck.
I had asked them how much sunlight filtered through the clouds. None of them could tell me. Which wavelengths of sunlight penetrated the clouds? None of them knew. I had to grope blindly and include as broad a spectrum of instruments as possible.