Installment #3

Chapter 7

Adrian went to the front viewing port as the cruiser started its approach to the space station. Jupiter was magnificent. It was enormous. It filled the entire screen. It was beautiful in its own way. Broad stripes of pinks and orange, with bands of brown and white. It looked like a pale, pastel painting. No blues and greens, or purples, or yellows. Even the Red Spot was not all that red. It was more of a pale red ochre.

The Red Spot was clearly visible. While it appeared to be stationary, he knew that it was a churning cauldron of gases, rotating at over 700 miles per hour and moving forward at around 100 miles per hour. And he also knew that the trailing edge of the storm was by now a few thousand miles beyond the mining facility. He couldn't see it, of course. While the mining structure was enormous, it was miniscule in the scheme of things. And it was thousands of miles below the gaseous surface, hidden from view.

But he knew that in less than 24 hours he would be leading a team down to the facility. What would they find? A structure in ruins? A dead restart team? A group of stranded scientists scared shitless? Aliens and monsters? It was always the unknown that was both exhilarating and frightening. More than once he has gone on a mission that he thought was routine, only to find that his life was on the line. A few times he had gone on a death-defying mission only to find that it was a piece of cake.

No one can predict in advance what he would actually encounter. That's why it was imperative to have the best team possible. A team that has expertise in every field that is likely to be required, and a few fields that no one could anticipate. That's why he required both specialists and generalists on his teams. Backed up by a cadre of grunts – gung ho soldiers that were not afraid to die – his team had to be prepared for potentially anything. It seems clear that nobody knew what the hell had happened down there. That's why Campbell specifically request him and his team. If any group of people is prepared to handle whatever they will encounter in that invisible structure hidden away in that toxic soup that encases Jupiter, its his team.

The sudden change in the cruiser's orientation snapped him back to reality. While he still could not see the space station perhaps 100,000 miles ahead, the cruiser was clearly in communication with the station's navigational system and adjustments were being made to its trajectory to bring it in for a landing. And that was a good thing, since Adrian had absolutely no experience in piloting anything larger than a paper airplane. And even as a child, it was more likely than not that his fragile flying machine would end up nose diving into the pavement, crinkling its nose and making it unworthy of any encore flight.

But he had been a passenger in cruisers like this one dozens of times over the last decade. They were originally flown by a pair of pilots. But as aeronautical technology improved, cruisers were manned by a single pilot for a while, and finally were totally automated – like today's automobiles. You just dial in the destination, sit back and technology does the rest. Although these auto-controlled vehicles had a perfect flight record, Adrian was always concerned that the computer controls might malfunction for some inexplicable reason, and he would be hurtled into interstellar space to die a slow death by starvation or crash into a planet or other solid object. But he had been told repeatedly that every system contained multiple fail-safe devices, which made such an event impossible.

Impossible . . . . That's a good word. Today so many things just could not happen. It was impossible that such a thing could happen. And yet those impossible things had a strange habit of happening anyway. Adrian couldn't count the number of times he was briefed for a mission and told that it was impossible that something could happen. And sure enough, it was the impossible event that could never happen that had happened, and he had to fix it. Impossible events had made him a wealthy man.

He had decided long ago that something was only "impossible" to a person who was either ignorant of the actual situation or found it easier not to think about it by labeling it as impossible. He was curious to hear what would be labeled as impossible during the briefing he and his team would receive later today.

Adrian lurched forward as the cruiser slowed perceptibly. He still could not see the station, but was sure that Jupiter's gravitational field was exerting an increasingly strong pull on the cruiser, and the retro engines were beginning to strain against the force to slow the cruiser down for landing.

Suddenly, he saw a glint of something metallic far ahead. He was sure it must be the station reflecting the sunlight. He squinted hard to try to discern the station against the bright backdrop of Jupiter, but saw nothing. Then, another flash. Staring hard at the spot where the flash emanated, he thought he could discern a small black dot against the background. After a few more seconds he was sure that his eyes were not playing tricks on him. There was definitely something there. He decided to go and freshen up before the landing.

Chapter 8

By the time he returned to the viewing port, the station was quite visible. It was big and ugly. Those who hadn't traveled to the outer reaches had this romanticized notion that space stations were shiny, streamlined disks rotating slowly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Space stations did not have to be aerodynamic since they were not subject to an atmosphere, nor did they have to be shiny. Even if they started out that way, their constant bombardment by cosmic rays, micro meteorites, atoms of various elements, caustic and otherwise, and all sorts of other stuff, would "weather" any exposed surface. There was still enough smooth surface to reflect some sunlight, but certainly not the highly polished surface most people think.

And as with most stations, this one had grown organically, with modules added willy-nilly. There was nothing elegant about the monstrosity that he was slowly approaching. And, unlike popular myth, space stations did not rotate to create an artificial gravity. At least they haven't since gravity generators were developed two centuries ago. Today, stations were stable platforms, which made it much easier to use them as platforms for scientific experiments, as well as military purposes. But this station had no military trappings. It was, primarily, a scientific outpost, but also served as a supply depot, medical facility and way station for those coming and going from the dozens of mining facilities on Jupiter and its many moons. Indeed, the station itself had been built from resources mined and processed on two of Jupiter's moons – Io and Callisto -- as was the mining facility he was heading for – Site 209.

[Word count this installment = 1,208]
[Total word count = 6,628]