In the pale air, a thousand hot-air balloons hovered in formation.
Falcon, once more at his control station in the Ra with Trayne at his side, was awed despite his own previous jaunts into Jupiter. Each of those tremendous envelopes, around two hundred metres in diameter, was emblazoned with the sigil of the World Government, an Earth cradled in human hands—a design, Falcon knew and few others probably remembered, based on the mission patch of the Apollo-Icarus 6 spacecraft—and boldly marked with an identification number. And beneath each golden balloon was a knot of equipment, a suspended factory that Falcon knew must be an atmospheric processing plant, with a dock for small, needle-shaped craft, evidently orbital shuttles, freighters. Even as Falcon watched, one craft sparked rocket fire and soared away from its balloon, out of the farm and up into the higher atmosphere, heading for orbit and a rendezvous with an interplanetary tanker, into which it would offload its precious cargo of fusion fuel for delivery to Earth and the colony worlds.
But it was the precise formation of the balloons together that was so impressive: a neat array in the hydrogen-helium sky, maintained despite a battering from the turbulent Jovian winds. It was a fantastic sight—and yet Falcon was reminded of a place and time far from here, of images of a wartime London sheltering under a sky full of barrage balloons: images that had been only a century old when he was born.
The World Government Space Development Secretariat had supplied Falcon with more information than he needed on this, its grandest project: its helium-3 extraction operation, dozens of plants like this established deep in the clouds of Jupiter. Now Trayne consulted a display, bending forward stiffly in his exposit. “So this is the North Temperate Band Atmospheric Processing Station Number Four—NTB-4. The station’s a long way from the lower-latitude zones where the native biota tends to congregate.”
That positioning was an act of conservation, Falcon saw, but also of simple common sense. He imagined a creature like a manta being drawn into one of those great extractor fans, or a medusa, kilometres across, at play in that forest of balloons . . .
“There are a thousand aerostat plants in this one station alone, with ninety-eight percent fully operational at present. It seems there are frequent breakdowns.”
“Hence the need for a crewed presence,” Falcon muttered.
Trayne said dryly, “If you count Machines as crew, yes. There are said to be ten Machines for each Martian working at this facility. Each plant processes three thousand cubic metres of Jovian atmosphere per second, in order to extract one gram of the isotope helium-3 . . .”
It sounded so little, just the merest trace to be extracted from Jupiter’s enormous reservoir of air. But that trace was enough to sustain a mighty interplanetary civilisation. And, economically, it was an effective, indeed a highly profitable operation.
The Martians were paid either in credit or in trade goods—oil or other complex organics—or sometimes in high-tech gear they could not yet manufacture themselves. It had always been that way, Falcon thought sourly. An empire bought bulk raw materials from its colonies in exchange for complex products from the centre, just as the Romans had traded with the provincial British, and the British in turn had traded with the colonial Americans. The Machines, meanwhile, had been rewarded with access to a few inner-system asteroids rich with the metals they craved.
But, Falcon knew, a dependence on this collection strategy made Earth vulnerable too. Fallbacks were being explored, he had heard; since Geoff Webster’s day Falcon had maintained contacts in the World Council and other high echelons of the WG, so he knew that Space Development was already trying to establish similar atmospheric-mining operations in the clouds of Saturn.
All that for the future. Right now it was time for Howard Falcon, agent of the government, to go to work.
Viewscreens on Falcon’s console lit up with images of a human, evidently a Martian, a male aged perhaps forty, head cradled in a massive brace, and alongside him a Machine, its own “head” an ungainly cluster of sensor gear. Even after all these years, each time he encountered a Machine Falcon found himself looking into camera lenses in search of a soul.
“Calling Ra,” said the human. “Welcome to Station NTB-4.”
“Ra reporting in, NTB-4.”
“I am Hans Young,” said the Martian. “Citizen Second Grade. I’m in charge of the human team attached to the Orpheus project. And before you ask—no, no relation.”
Relation to whom? Oh, yes, John Young. Falcon ignored that bit of Martian bragging. “We’ve corresponded, Dr. Young. Good to see you.”
Young waved. “And hi to you too, Trayne. How’s your mother?”
“Good, thank you, Hans.” Trayne glanced at Falcon. “Mars is a small world.”
“So I gather.”
“And I,” intoned the Machine in a smooth synthetic voice, “will be known for the purposes of this expedition as Charon 1.”
“Charon . . . More classical mythology. Orpheus’s guide across the Styx?”
“Correct. I will guide the first stage of the descent. There will be further ‘Charons’ later. The mission must proceed in stages, adapting to the conditions we encounter as we travel deeper into Jupiter. It was thought appropriate to establish a series of base camps as we progressed. The logic is rather as when humans once challenged mountains such as Everest.”
Falcon said dryly, “I can tell you that Earthlings still climb mountains.”
“And so do Martians,” put in Trayne.
“Let’s review the strategy,” Falcon said. “We won’t be able to track Orpheus even as deep as the thermalisation layer—we’ll manage only a few hundred kilometres, less than one percent of the journey he’s undertaking.”
“Nevertheless your company will be welcome. And you will stay on station as one of a chain of relays.”
“As agreed.” Falcon glanced at a clock. “I see Orpheus is prepared for launch. Is there any need for us to come aboard?”
Young smiled. “Commander Falcon, one thing you learn when working with Machines: there’s no ritual, no routine. When they’re ready to go, they just go. Not so much as a countdown.”
“I concur with that.”
An image of a black cube appeared in the viewscreens.
“It is I. Orpheus. Or, ‘Falcon Junior.’ Welcome to the project, Commander Falcon. Adam sends his personal regards.”
“Thank you—”
“Follow me if you dare.”
The images relayed from NTB-4 shuddered, just a little.
Hans Young glanced at an off-screen monitor. “He’s gone—he and the remaining Charons—bathyscaphe away!”
“Just like that?”
Young smiled. “Told you.”
Trayne nudged Falcon and pointed through a window. “Look! There he goes!”
A kind of ship had tumbled out of the base of one of the hovering balloons, a silvered sphere no more than a few metres across. As it fell through the air a canopy deployed and quickly inflated, slowing the drop to a steady sinking.
Falcon tapped his controls and felt the Ra turn sluggishly in response. “There he goes indeed,” he muttered. “Come on, Trayne, we have an explorer to chase . . .”