Eight

But apparently it was just an illusion; they now seemed to be rising to the surface, only very slowly. I typed to Jonathan, "The only thing visible here is a mass of bubbles, undoubtedly released from the ship. But since there is absolutely nothing else to describe, here is what they look like. The mass is about a meter in diameter, I would guess; though, since there is no reference point to establish distance here, it is hard to be accurate. If this is its size, I would judge the individual bubbles in it to range from about three centimeters in diameter to a half-centimeter or so.

"From where we are, they look silvery rather than transparent, probably because of the viscosity of the liquid they are in. Another indication of extreme viscosity is that they are rising to the surface at not much more than a couple of centimeters per second--and even appeared almost to be going downward once--and also that we have not seen even one bubble break away from the mass.

"The mass itself is amorphous, and very slowly changing its shape, probably in response to subtle currents that cannot be detected as motion in the ship at all.

"We still have our first stage attached to us, by the way, and it looks as if we'll be able to bring it back with us. It is a shame we won't be able to bring anything back in it, but there is absolutely nothing to bring, so far anyway."

"Why does it seem like it's looking at us?" asked Michele.

"It must be all those little bubbles that are in the shade of the other ones," I answered. "They look black, like pupils of an eye."

Michele laughed. "Can you imagine if they were eyes? They just appear and disappear all over it. If you wanted to see in some direction, all you'd have to do is put an eye over there and look."

"I think I'll leave that out of the report," I said.

"It is a funny thing, though," she said. "The black bubbles seem to be only on this side."

"Probably because this is the only side we can see clearly," I answered.

"I never thought I'd see the day," said Mike "when we'd all be intrigued over a mass of bubbles."

"Yeah," I answered. "But of course they can tell us a lot about the nature of the liquid out there. Judging by what they're doing, there'd be no trouble in us going out there in it."

"If there were anything to go out for."

"Don't lose hope," said Michele. "We may find something yet. There they go," she added as the bubbles began rising out of sight, as if whatever was holding them down close to the ship had lost its force. She was closest to the window where they had been, and leaned over to get a last glimpse as they curved out around the overhanging first stage.

"You know something funny?" she said. "There are some black bubbles on the bottom."

"So what?" said Mike.

"The light's coming from the bottom."

"Maybe it's reflections from the ship or something," I said.

She looked a little disappointed. "You have an answer for everything."

"What else could it be?"

"Don't you get it, Paul?" said Mike. "She thinks that John visited Jupiter before he wrote the Book of Revelation, and this is one of those "living beings full of eyes round and within them."

"We're too far away from home to get blasphemous," she retorted.

"We're also too far away from home to go nuts," he said.

"I like that! If I'm the one that's nuts, who got us here in the first place?"

"Don't look at me; it was your loving brother's brainstorm. It runs in the family."

"Well, you came along with us, which doesn't speak too well for your own sanity."

"You forget that I didn't want to come."

There was an embarrassed pause.

After a few minutes, Mike said, "Well, here we are, back to zero." We stared out at the blank again for a few minutes. "At least the bubbles were a diversion," he remarked, as once again the emptiness pulled our minds into it. You could almost feel your soul being breathed out with every exhalation.

"Okay, now what do we do?" he said. At least, he wasn't afraid to talk.

"Isn't it time to eat?" I asked. "We'll be in better shape to decide something if we have food in our stomachs."

How little I knew what I was saying! Another unlovely aspect of this friendly planet was discovered as soon as we tried to pick the food out of the containers.

"What is it this time?" Mike was asking. "Chicken sandwich. Oh, joy. Hey! It weighs a ton! I can barely lift it!"

"Of course!" I exclaimed. "We've got mass-reducers on the envelope, but we can't reduce the mass of the food. Will we be able to eat it?"

"Well, we'll have to try," said Mike.

"No, wait!" said Michele. "It could kill us, you know. We don't have to eat now; we can wait a while to see if there's anything to see here, and leave before we eat."

"That would be giving up," said Mike, "and I for one don't give up this soon. I want to find out why everything's so calm here, if the planet's just one big storm outside this place. You're the biologist. How likely is it that we'll die if we eat this? It's only chicken, after all."

"I have no idea. It just might rupture something as it goes down."

"Well, there's one way to find out," said Mike suddenly, popping a minuscule fragment into his mouth before I could stop him. Michele gave a little shriek and looked at him with horror.

"Tastes like chicken," he said, "but it's a little hard on the tongue and the lower jaw." He swallowed and his eyes popped. "Whoo-ee!" he said.

"Are you all right?" cried Michele, frantic with worry.

He was reclining on his seat, and looked over and saw the expression on her face. He grinned feebly. "If I said I tore my stomach open, would it make any difference?"

"Mike, don't make jokes! Are you okay?"

"Don't get excited; everything's fine," he said, a look of disappointment coming over his face. "It just feels a little uncomfortable, that's all."

"What a damn-fool thing to do!" I exclaimed, now that I could breathe again. "we would've had to bury you here!"

He went into half-hysterical laughter. "I can see the obituary now: 'Michael Wang, beloved son of Paul and Teresita Wang, on Jupiter as the result of eating a piece of chicken sandwich.'"

"It's not funny."

"What's the problem?" he said, calming down. "I proved that we can eat, didn't I?"

"And put your life in danger for no useful purpose."

"What do you mean, 'no useful purpose'? If we stay here, we've got to eat."

"we don't have to stay here."

"Nuts. We can stay now if we want to. Go ahead and eat; it won't hurt you."

I looked at him, and picked up a piece of sandwich, which looked soft, but weighed just an enormous amount, and said, "Well, don't do anything more like that."

"Paul," he answered, "let's get something straight. You're more or less in charge here, but you're not our captain, and I'm not in the navy, and we're all adults. I do what I do. As long as it does no harm to anybody else, what I do is my responsibility. Even if I decide to kill myself, that's my business."

"Oh yes?" said Michele. "You talk as if what you do to yourself has no effect on us. Suppose you hadn't killed yourself just then, but just got an internal hemorrhage, and we had to doctor you all the way back."

"You could've let me die. It was my choice."

"Oh, sure!" she said. "Don't tempt me!"

"Okay, okay," he said. "I'm not planning to commit suicide--at the moment anyway. And I promise that if I do anything, I'll take all the effects into account. I just wanted to let Paul know that he's not my master. I'll listen to reason, but not to orders."

"Let's eat, shall we?" I didn't like the undercurrent that I heard in what Mike was saying, though I couldn't for the life of me fathom why he harbored what was evidently a death-wish. But at the moment I was more preoccupied with resentment at his accusing me of giving him orders, when most of the time all I was doing was playing the diplomat and soothing the troubled waters that he and Michele kept stirring up.

Eating was anything but amusing, except perhaps to an outside observer, if there had been anything outside that could have observed. Drinking the water that had turned to liquid lead was the worst; and then there was the feeling of extreme torpor afterward for about an hour, as the food stayed there with all its mass before it got digested and entered into our systems. We ate silently, partly because of Mike's remarks, but even more because it was just so much work.

After the food entered my stomach, I could sympathize with Mike's evident depression. Absolutely nothing mattered except digestion; the slightest outside impression was a distraction, to be avoided at all costs. For a while, even death looked like a relief, even though there was no pain, but only the heaviness inside me--and I knew the others felt the same way. When it was all over, we just lay on our seats and stared at the ceiling for almost an hour.

I should stress here that this first meal on Jupiter was far and away the worst, because our systems were totally unprepared for it. Gradually, as we became accustomed to living there, we found that our bodies immediately attacked any food that was put into them; and while we still had to be careful, and eat very small bites at a time, and learn to sip drinks, the period of lassitude after eating shortened considerably. It was, however, uncomfortable enough so that it would take a great deal of motivation to keep us on Jupiter any appreciable length of time.

And the motivation came as we were still recovering from that lunch.

Michele happened to glance over at the window beyond Mike's seat, and say, "I think there's another set of bubbles."

"Oh," said Mike, and turned his head. "Yeah, you're right." Then it was his turn to sit up. "They are moving down! Look!"

"What?" I said, sitting up myself. As I did so, I thought I could see several new dark spheres appear in the mass.

"By God, did you see that?" said Mike. "Did you see the black bubbles pop out? No current made that happen!"

"It must have seen us sit up," said Michele, who was also upright now, staring out the window. "They are eyes!"

The thing was moving closer to the window, still slowly, keeping a few dozen eyes fixed on us--if they were eyes, as they must have been.

I don't know how the others felt, but I was terrified into immobility at the sight. I suppose I could have handled seeing little green men zipping around in saucers, with peculiar antennae sticking up out of their heads; but this giant amoeba surpassed anything the Star Trek shows had ever given me sleepless nights over.

It kept advancing on the window, looking with those naked eyeballs; you can't imagine the impression it made. It was repulsive, disgusting, horrifying--

"Are you people still alive up there?" came Jonathan's voice, like a pistol shot, making us all jump--and the creature, evidently noticing the movement, stopped and formed itself into a kind of pyramid, still with most of its eyes trained on us. It was definitely something alive.

Jonathan's voice was going on, " . . . we've been discussing how you should go about eating. Judging by the readings we've been getting, the food shouldn't do you any damage, but you'll discover that it still has all its mass, and . . . " and so on, for another ten minutes.

The thing outside the window had recovered from its fit of triangularity, and was approaching again. I pulled the communicator over, and began radioing back, "We've eaten. You won't believe this, but those bubbles are alive, and are full of eyes round and within them. We are not crazy, but let us alone. We don't want to scare it off." Always supposing that it didn't scare us off first.

"Look!" said Michele. The thing had gone into something like a backward somersault, and rolled itself into a spiral; then came into a more or less oval shape, and looked at us once more out of what would have been its stomach if it were Humpty Dumpty.

All of a sudden "BEEP!" went the receiver attached to the high-gain antenna, and the creature made itself into a pyramid again, and then somersaulted into its spiral.

"I bet it heard you, Paul." said Michele.

"Heard my radio signal?"

"Sure. That noise evidently came from it; and if it can make radio noises, it can probably sense them. It can see, or it wouldn't have reacted to us moving; and radio waves are just low-frequency light--and it reacted as soon as we started transmitting.

"I thought you might have hurt it when it went into its spiral there, but it just did another one, and gave the beep in reply."

"Well, there's a simple way to test that," said Mike. "Switch the little radio to 'send' and give it a beep back."

I felt like an idiot, but I turned on the radio, and said, "BEEP!" as nearly as I could imitate the sound that came over the speaker.

The thing made another spiral, and then suddenly flashed into a bewildering variety of shapes before it, beginning and ending with the pyramid we had seen at first; but in between it was like a kaleidoscope twirled by a little boy who wanted to see how fast he could make the patterns change.

Then the creature became an egg again, evidently waiting. "Now what was that all about?" said Mike.

"He asked us a question, I'll bet," said Michele. "That must be the way they talk."

"Talk!" scoffed Mike.

"What else?"

"Then what that means is that they don't normally communicate by those radio signals, even though they can make them and sense them," I said. "They communicate by changing shapes."

"Isn't that just ducky!" said Michele. "How on earth are we ever going to communicate with them?"

"Which is the point, of course," said Mike. "We're not on earth."

"Well, if the mountain won't come to Muhammad," I said, "let's see if we can teach them to talk our way."

"Provided they can say something besides 'Beep!'" said Mike.

"Well, we can find that out, I suppose, if this guy's smart enough. He expects an answer to his question, if it was one. Let's see . . . " I pulled the mike over and said, "Hello, there."

A pyramid. More shapes. A cigar. Then "Oh . . . eyrrr" came over the speaker.

"There it is! He was trying to imitate you! They're not only alive, they're intelligent! Think of it!"

"And he's not only intelligent, he's pretty sharp," I said. He's figured out that we're intelligent, and that we talk this funny way--"

"At this point, the creature made a set of patterns, beginning with a rather prolonged pyramid, and at a pause, we heard "ehoh,eyre, ello,eyrrr" and then the pyramid came again.

"I'll bet he's asking whether we talk this way," said Michele. "I'll bet that pyramid thing is a question mark."

"What should I say?"

"HHhhh. Hh. Hello. Hello,eyre. DDddh. Dh. Hellodh. Hellodththth. Thth. Hello, there. Hello, there," said the speaker. The creature made the pyramid.

"Man, will you listen to that!" said Mike. "And he only heard it once! Tell him 'yes,' Paul. I think Michele's right about the question mark."

"Yes," I said into the microphone.

"Eh," said the thing. "IIiii. yeh. Sss. Sseh. Yes. Hello, there. Yes."

"I got an idea," said Mike, and he stood up and went close to the window. The Jovian looked at him for a few seconds, and the flowed into a reproduction of Mike from the waist up, which was all he could see. He even had a face of sorts, with two of his eyes where Mike's were, and a little row of eyes where Mike's mouth was.

"What're those eyes going down the front?" asked Mike, and then said, "Oh, I see. My buttons. You know, friend, for the first time I begin to think you're good-looking. Well now, if you can catch on, you'll see we can't do any shape-changing to speak of."

Mike moved his arms, and the creature moved it's Mike-arms. Mike showed his hands, and the thing's arms suddenly had hands on it. But then Mike began pulling at his face and his body, and the Jovian at first tried to imitate him, but pulled himself all out of shape, and then went into a pyramid again.

"Tell him 'no' while I'm doing this," said Mike.

"I get you," I said, and told the Jovian "No."

The Jovian turned into his egg shape. Suddenly, he became a star, and then made a beautiful set of shapes, and said, "NNNnn. No." and then turned into his reproduction of Mike and said, "Hello, there. Yes."

Mike took the microphone away from me and said, "Yes."

The creature became a star again for an instant, and then said "Yes," in a perfect imitation of Mike's voice.

"He sure can imitate," said Mike.

"I think he's caught on to what "yes" and "no" mean, too," said Michele. That set of shapes probably meant, 'This is the way we talk, but you--no' and the "Hello there, yes" means 'that's the way you talk.'"

"Now where do we go from here?" I asked.

"Let's see," she said. "I know. Let's each go up to the window and say our names; and then when we've done this once, we can go back again and say the other two names with 'no' after them, and our own name with 'yes.' That way, he'll probably see that we're referring to ourselves, and it'll confirm 'no' and 'yes.' Let's try it, anyway. You first, Mike."

Mike went up to the window and very distinctly said his name. The creature repeated it after practicing the consonants a couple of times, but remained an oval. Then Michele went to the window, and said "Michele," and the creature made a representation of her, and she said "Yes," and he said "Missshello, Mishell, Michele, Yes." And then I went over, and said Paul, which first came out "Kaul," as he made himself look like me--though it would be hard to distinguish his rendition of Mike from me. I said, "Michael, no. Michele, no. Paul, yes"

"Yes, Paul," he said. "Michael, no."

Mike took my place. The creature said, "Michael, yes. Paul, no. Michele, no."

"Good!" said Mike

The creature made a pyramid.

"How do I explain?" He said into the microphone, "Yes yes yes. Good."

He then made a sphere, a cube, a star, and a kind of feather in rapid succession, and said, "Yes. Michael, no. Michele, no. Paul, no," and he made the shapes again, and said, "Yes."

"That's his name!" said Michele.

"Brother!" said Mike. "How're we going to handle this one?"

"Here, let me," said Michele, and went to the window, and pointed to herself and each of us in turn. "Michele, Michael, Paul," and then, pointing outside to the creature, she said, "Saint Peter!"

The Jovian fell over backwards into a spiral again, and then began practicing the sounds he hadn't heard yet in his name. "Saint Peter," he finally said in Michele's voice, and went into his spiral again.

"I know what that is!" said Michele. "He's laughing!"

"Why St. Peter?" said Mike.

"I don't know. It just popped into my head--probably associated with Paul, I suppose--and I guess because he's the one who met us at the heavenly gates."

"If this is heaven, give me hell."

"There are times when I'd like to."

"All right, you two," I said.

St. Peter seemed to have recovered from his laughing fit, because he became a kind of generic human torso, with an arm that pointed, and said, "Paul, yes. Michele, yes. Michael, yes. St. Peter, yes. Good!"

We were wondering what step to take next, when St. Peter took matters into his own hands, and dashed at us, crashing gently against the window with a rattle of clicks.

"Good heavens!" said Michele. "I hope he didn't hurt himself!"

He had backed off and made his question mark. I went up to the window, and made as if to push my hand through, knocking on it. "No," I said. "Solid."

"He'll think that's its name," said Michele. She knocked on several other things St. Peter could see, while he made his egg of concentration, and said "Solid" to each one, and then went to the window and said, "Glass. Solid."

By this time, St. Peter had a fair command of pronunciation, and so it was no time before he said, "Glass, solid, yes."

"We've got almost a sentence!" said Michele. "This is fascinating! Let's see." She held her left hand up, with the fingers spread apart, and then held her right hand, fingers down, above the left one and moved the hand by the left hand, having the fingers pass through the fingers of the left hand. "Pass," she said, and did it again. "Pass, yes." Then she closed her left hand and bumped the fingers into it. "Pass, no."

"Glass, solid; pass, no" said St. Peter.

"Good!" said Michele. "Good!" said St. Peter.

"Boy, he's bright," I said, and Mike interjected, "Did you hear those clicks when he hit the window? He's pretty solid himself. What do you suppose he could be made of?"

That hadn't occurred to me, I was so busy with the language problem. I thought for a few seconds, and said, "Got me. There's nothing around but hydrogen, as far as we can tell."

But while we were discussing this, St. Peter was not idle. He had come to the window, and he and Michele were scrutinizing each other, Michele pointing to various parts of her body, and saying their names, with him repeating them with increasing accuracy of intonation and diction, while making enlarged imitations of strands of hair, hands, and so on. When Michele pointed to her eye, however, he produced a number of dark spheres and said, "Eye" and made the pyramid.

"Yes," said Michele.

"Good," he answered, and began showing what he could do with his eyes, while Michele tried to indicate that ours were fixed in one place--which he did not seem to find surprising. But then he came close to the window, said, "Michele, Paul, Michael," and swam back a way. He repeated this, and then said, "Pass, St. Peter, no. Michele, Paul, Michael, yes pass."

"He wants us to come out," said Michele.

"What do we tell him?" I said. "It's clearly too dangerous to go out just yet."

"What's the problem?" said Michele. "He's obviously friendly." "Yeah, but until we can get some real communication going, he might accidentally hurt us somehow. No, I think we'd better wait a while--if ever. What do you say, Mike."

"I suppose after a while, we might go out and meet him--and any friends he has. I suppose he's not alone. But I agree, not now. We'll have to see how things develop."

"How do we say that?" said Michele, who still had the microphone. "Well, what the heck. Pass no now; Later pass yes."

"Michele pass."

"Michele pass no now."

"Michele pass yes."

"Now no."

"Now" Pyramid.

"Later, yes. No now."

Egg. Then he said, "No St. Peter now. Later St. Peter, yes. No pass Paul, Michael Michele. Later St. Peter," and suddenly, he was off like an arrow, or better like a drop of water falling sideways, in a few seconds becoming a speck off in the orange distance, and finally disappearing altogether.

"Look at him go," said Mike. "I wonder what he meant."

"Simple," said Michele. "He said, 'You people wait here; I'll be right back.'"

"That does sound like it. He certainly knows how to make the most of a limited vocabulary."

"I imagine that it's Take Me To Your Leader time; only it looks like he's going to bring the leader to us," said Mike.

"Probably. He'll probably come back with a bunch of--it sounds funny to be calling things like that people," I said.

"Why not?" said Michele. "If they're at all like him, they're very nice people, too."

"At least at first--well, maybe second--glance," said Mike. "By the way, Paul, the atmosphere above here is ammonia and methane, right?"

"Yeah. So what?"

"Well, that gives us carbon, and down here we have lots of hydrogen--but no oxygen. My guess is that he's made of some kind of hydrocarbon. Now put that together with the sound you heard against the window, and what does it make you think of?"

I thought for a minute, and then said, "You mean to tell me you think the people on Jupiter are made of plastic?"