ACCIDENT

Grant raced to the control center, thudding into Nacho Quintero when the two of them tried to get through the narrow aisle to the consoles at the same time. Ordinarily both of them would have laughed at their clumsiness.

“Watch it, estupido,” Quintero snapped.

“Lard ass,” Grant snarled silently.

Ukara and Frankovich were already at their consoles. The wallscreens were dark, and Grant saw that all the screens were lifeless, as well. All except Wo’s: His console was lit up like a Christmas tree—almost all green lights, although there were several amber and one glaring red.

“Where is Dr. Buono?” Wo demanded, his rasping voice trembling slightly.

“Here,” the physician called as she hurried through the doorway to sit at her console.

“We received the following message from Captain Krebs,” Wo said, his fingers deftly tapping on his keyboard.

Everyone’s console lit up. Grant was grateful that the propulsion and power systems seemed to be in no trouble. Two amber lights, the rest solidly green.

Krebs’s face appeared on the wallscreen, five times bigger than life, strained, etched with anxiety. Or maybe fear, Grant thought.

“Dr. Pascal has collapsed,” Krebs reported with no preliminaries. “She complained of a chest pain and then lost coordination of her limbs. Within ten minutes she doubled over, vomited bile, and lost consciousness.”

Grant glanced at Patti Buono’s console. The physician was frowning worriedly as more and more of the lights on her board flared a sullen, glowering red.

“Transmit her complete medical readouts,” Buono called out. “The patient may be undergoing cardiac—”

“She can’t hear you,” Wo snapped. “This is a recording from a data capsule.”

“How long ago was the message recorded?”

Wo glanced at his console screen. “One hour and seventeen minutes ago.”

“Are they heading back?”

“I don’t know,” Wo answered, shaking his head slowly. “I would presume so.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do until we hear from them again.”

“You can diagnose Dr. Pascal’s condition!”

Buono bit her lips. “The data given here isn’t enough for an effective diagnosis. Besides, if we can’t communicate with them, what’s the use—”

“What has happened to Pascal?” Wo demanded.

The physician’s eyes flared angrily. But she turned back to her console lights and said, “It looks like cardiac arrest, but it might be an infarction or something else altogether. I just can’t make a definitive diagnosis on this meager data!”

“What has caused her to collapse?” Wo insisted.

“I don’t know!”

“Could it be from the high pressure they are exposed to?”

“Yes,” Buono said. It sounded almost desperate to Grant. “Or it could have nothing to do with the pressure.”

“Pah!” Wo smacked his hands on his emaciated thighs in frustration.

“Life-support systems are all in the green,” Frankovich reported, trying to relieve the tension. “At least, they were when Krebs fired off the data capsule.”

“What of it?” Wo snapped. “If Pascal is incapacitated, we must learn why.”

Incapacitated? Grant thought. What a bloodless way of putting it. Irene could be dead, for God’s sake.

A yellow light started to blink on Wo’s console: the communications indicator. He banged it with a heavy fist.

The wallscreen image immediately changed. It was Krebs again, but the picture was grainy, streaked with interference. But it was a real-time image; the submersible was in contact with the station again.

“We are forced to return to the station,” she said. “Please acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged,” Wo said, almost in a snarl.

“What is Dr. Pascal’s condition?” Buono asked.

Krebs blinked at the camera. “She is unconscious. We have placed her in her berth and put a breathing mask on her, to force extra perfluorocarbon into her lungs.”

Buono was working her keyboard swiftly, fingers almost a blur. Each of the crew had medical sensors fixed to their skin. Grant saw what he thought was an EKG trace on Buono’s console screen, but the green wormline tracing Irene’s heartbeat looked weak, irregular, to him.

“Put pressure cuffs on her legs and arms,” Buono ordered. “Keep the blood in her torso and head.”

There was a slight but noticeable delay in Krebs’s answer. Grant realized that Zheng He was still deep below the cloud deck.

“There are no pressure cuffs in the medical stores,” Krebs said.

Buono muttered something under her breath.

Grant leaned toward Frankovich and asked, “Is Irene going to die?”

Frankovich shrugged elaborately, said nothing.

Grant tried to look past Krebs’s dour, grim face to see the rest of the crew, but the camera was set at an angle that did not show them.

“Patti,” he called to the physician, “should you check on the monitors for the rest of the crew?”

Buono shot him a venomous glance. “And what good would that do?”

Grant had to admit she was right. There was nothing they could do to help the crew, not until they returned to the station.

“It’s all being recorded,” Buono added in a softer tone.

“Yeah, okay,” Grant said.

After more than six hours of communicating with Krebs, Wo told Grant, Quintero, and Ukara that they could leave the control center.

“But you are to consider yourselves on standby alert,” the director added. “Be ready to return to duty instantly.”

Slowly, tiredly, Grant slid out of his seat. Quintero sprang up, quick and lithe despite his bulk.

“Do you want me to bring you a tray?” Grant asked Frankovich.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“You’re going to be here for a long time,” Grant pointed out. “I’ll bring some sandwiches and something to drink.”

Frankovich conceded with a nod. “Maybe some fruit, too.”

“Right.” Grant started for the door.

“And remember,” Wo said sharply, “you are to discuss this incident with no one. No one! Understand me?”

The three of them nodded.

Grant headed for the cafeteria. He saw that it was early for dinner, yet a fair number of people were heading the same way he was. The line at the sandwich counter was short, though, and in quick order Grant filled his tray.

“Why so glum, chum?”

It was Tamiko Hideshi, grinning at him. It took Grant a moment to realize that, to all the hundreds of other people in the station, this was a perfectly normal workday. Nothing unusual was happening in their lives. Things were going along as always. They weren’t worried about a friend who might be dying in a ship beneath the clouds of Jupiter.

“Hi, Tami,” he said.

Nodding at his heavily laden tray, Hideshi said, “For a guy who’s stoking up for a picnic, you look awfully unhappy. What’s up with you?”

Grant shook his head. “I’ve got to get back to the control center.”

“The picnic’s in there?”

He stepped past her, offering over his shoulder, “It’s no picnic, believe me.”