The pink-purple light of a Jupiter evening shone on the face of the sleeping Martian.
When the medical monitors chimed to inform him that Trayne Springer was beginning to wake at last, Falcon reluctantly turned away from his conversation with Ceto. Not for the first time since his first encounter with the medusae—which had been, astonishingly, nearly two centuries ago—Falcon found himself puzzling over the content of one of the great beasts’ communications. He could tell Ceto was concerned, however. Even frightened about something—the multiple references to the Great Manta in her long radio songs were proof enough of that . . .
But for now Ceto would have to wait.
The young Martian stood upright in his atmospheric-entry support unit like a mummy in a coffin, all but encased in exoskeletal armour that left only the flesh of his face visible. His gloved hands were crossed over his breast—partially obscuring the gaudy image on the chest plate, of a springbok leaping over the Valles Marineris. It was a personal adornment that would have told Falcon all he needed to know about the boy’s family background even if he hadn’t known his name. Trayne’s eyes remained closed, he breathed to an accompaniment of a steady hiss from the machines that helped inflate his lungs in the heavy gravity, and the pale-pink dribble at his mouth was a last trace of the suspension fluid that had supported his frame and internal organs through the worst of the thirty gravities’ acceleration the Ra had endured during its entry into the Jovian atmosphere.
Falcon took a tissue and gently dabbed the stray fluid away.
“Thanks.”
The Martian’s voice startled Falcon, and he rolled back. Trayne’s eyes were open now, and he was smiling. Falcon knew he was just thirty years old; he looked younger with those wide blue eyes and the very Martian pallor of his skin. Falcon said, “I’m a pretty good nurse for an old rust-bucket. So you’re awake at last.”
Trayne frowned. “At last?”
Falcon believed in being blunt. “Your recovery took a lot longer than your countrymen on Ganymede predicted. Days, in fact, rather than hours.”
Trayne seemed concerned. “Well, this was an experimental procedure.” Martians sent to work in the Jovian atmosphere, though braced against Jupiter’s steady gravitational pull, were generally brought down in slow-descent, low-deceleration trajectories that could take days, rather than the mere savage hours of Falcon’s preferred, more direct method. Now, given the Martians’ involvement in the Machines’ Core Project, Trayne had been a guinea pig for a new, physically tougher strategy. “I hope there’s been no lasting damage.”
“None that the monitors can detect. But let’s check it out. You remember your name?”
“Trayne Springer.”
“Good.”
“And you’re Commander Howard Falcon. My cousin Thera, that Terran fuddy-duddy, is in command up on Amalthea—”
“No need to show off. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Trayne concentrated, then smiled. “Before we began the atmospheric entry, you set the hull to transparent to show me Halley’s Comet. Quite a sight.”
Falcon smiled back. “It’s the fourth encounter I’ve witnessed. You get used to it. What’s the date?”
“AFF 298.”
Falcon puzzled over that, until he got the reference. “AFF—after the first footstep on Mars, by John Young in 1986. Correct?”
“According to the archaic calendar still used by your World Government—”
Falcon held his hands up. “Your World Government too; you’re as much a citizen of it as I am. And I notice you count in Earth years, not Martian.”
“Only to avoid confusing the Terrans.”
Falcon suppressed a sigh. Only offworlders called citizens of Earth “Terrans.” “Evidently you’re just as compos mentis, and just as annoying, as when you stowed away on my craft up on Amalthea.”
Trayne grinned. “I’m relieved to hear it.”
“But that ten-gee deceleration knocked you flat, not to mention the thirty-gee peaks. I’d say the trial has already proven its point—you Martians will need a hand when you challenge the heart of Jupiter alongside the Machines. Wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ll leave that to my bosses. Now, could you help me out of this coffin . . . ?”