Galileo pursed his lips. There might be some truth to what she had said, but still he felt it obscured a real difference. Worm or not, he said, and she was a rather magnificently shaped worm, he did not add, you could stay alive on Earth by breathing, eating, and staying warm. Granted these take effort, but you could make the effort. You have tools to help you, but they dont have to remain unbroken for you to survive. A single man alone on an island could do it. There are no mechanical contrivances that surround you and protect you, like a fortress, that have to function successfully forever or else you very quickly die.
She shook her head. Its like a sea voyage. You could not have your ship sink and survive.
But you people never land. You sail on forever.
Yes, thats true. But its true for everyone, always.
Galileo recalled standing in his garden at night, in the open air, under the stars. It was an experience this woman had never had. Possibly she could not imagine it. Possibly she had no idea what he was talking about. You dont know what it is to be free, he said, surprised. You dont know what it is to stand free in the open air.
She shook her head impatiently. Have it your way.
I will.
Again her amused glance, as if she were looking down on a child. She said, You were famous for that, as I recall. Until things went wrong.
The voice Pauline announced they were coming to the bottom of the ice layer, and were in what she called brash ice. They could hear floating chunks and clinkers striking the hulla grinding noise full of scrapes and thuds.
Then they were moving freely, in water. Galileo had spent so much time on barges and ferries, and on a few well-remembered trips out into the Adriatic, that he recognized the feel in his feet. Such kinetic sensations were so slight as to disappear when one focused on them, but when focusing attention elsewhere, one became aware of the totality of the effect.
Ganymede said, Pauline, search for the Europans flue, also any other vessels, of course. And give us an analysis of the water too, please.
Pauline reported the water was nearly pure, with trace amounts of salts, floating particulates, and dissolved gases. Some of the crew began tapping madly at their desktops. Outside the window, the omnipresent blue had long since turned black. They might as well have been deep in the bowels of the Earth. Only ones sense of movement suggested they were in a liquid.
Thus it was a great surprise to see a brief flash of cobalt blue in the window, like the random blue spark one sometimes saw crossing the inside of the eyelid.
What was that! Galileo said.
We call that Cherenkov radiation, Ganymede said.
Somebodys patron? Galileo inquired, glancing at Hera.
The discoverer of the phenomenon, she said firmly.
Ganymede ignored their fencing. There are tiny particles called neutrinos, which pour through our manifold in great numbers, but very seldom interact with anything. Once in a while one hits a protonwhich is a small but substantial part of an atomhits a proton in such a way that the proton releases a muon, which is a very small component of a proton. If that happens in an ocean like this, the muon will fly through the water in such a way as to spark a short trail of light in the blue wavelength. We will see a few per minute.
Another little flare of blue appeared, again like the flaws that plagued Galileos vision. Like shooting stars, he noted.
Yes. A very subtle fire.
A fire in water?
Well, a light, let us say. Though some fires will burn in water, of course.
Galileo tried to imagine that. This dream was testing him in all sorts of ways. Could he find a way to test it back? Maybe answer the basic question: Was this really happening? He looked around to see if there was something small that he could take and conceal in his coat. Stealing ideas from dreamsperhaps it wasnt so unusual. Perhaps it was a fundamental mode of thought.
The next flick of blue light was followed by a blue ball, which rapidly expanded, then became a kind of diffuse polyhedron, shedding spicules and other radiola of blue light that then curved away from the polyhedron in spiralssome of them tight equable spirals, making cylindrical coils, others equiangular spirals, growing wildly outward in conic shapes. One of these flashed right by the window, and for a second or two their chamber pulsed sapphire.
Some of the crew cried out, then there was silence.
Galileo said, What was that?
Ganymede appeared astonished. He stood pressed against the window, his blade of a nose touching it.
He straightened up, expression black, Its here. I knew it. The anomalies made it very clear. Ive been saying so all along. He turned to his crew. We shouldnt be here! Have the Europans shown up yet?
We havent seen them, one replied.
Find their flue, then! Get to itwe have to get to it before they do, to stop them!
They turned back to their screens and their crowded desktops. After a time one said, Weve found it. Theyre descending. Were closing on itwait. There they are. Two of them, just leaving their flue.
Ganymede hissed. Go! he exclaimed. Ram them! Get under them and ram them from below! Full speed until you reach them, then get in position to shove them right back up the flue! He looked stricken, grim beyond telling. We have to make them leave.
How can you do that? Hera asked.
Well ram them until they turn back.
Are you going to warn them?
I dont want to break radio silence. Who knows what effect it might have on whats in here?
What about the sound of collisions? What about the sounds and the exhaust from your engines?
Thats what Ive been saying to them! None of us should be here.
Another blue conic spiral flashed by them. Ganymede read the screens and the desks. That could be some kind of signal. Speech, or thought, in some language of light.
Who would it speak to?
The light may be secondary. Who knows who it talks to? I have my suspicions, but
Try numbers, Galileo suggested. Display a triangle, see if it knows the Pythagorean theorem.
Ganymede shook his head, visibly trying to remain patient. Thats what the Europans will do, Im afraid. Reckless interventions like that. They have no idea what they may be getting into.
Is it some kind of fish?
Not a fish. But on the floor of the ocean are layers of somethingperhaps a slime that is organized into larger structures.
But how would a slime make light?
Ganymede clutched his black hair in his hands. Light from slime is bioluminescence, he said tightly. Slime from light is photosynthesis. Both are very common. Theyre like alchemical interactions.
But alchemy doesnt really work.
Sometimes it does. Be quiet now. We have to get the Europans out of here.
On the screen that had held the rainbow images of the flue, there stood now an image all in grays, in which near-white shapes defined an object much like their own vessel, shifting against a rumpled gray field. Ganymede took over at one desk and began to tap gently on the array of tabs and knobs. A solid bump, and then the screen showed nothing but the ghostly image of another ship. Hold on, Ganymede ordered grimly, and began tapping harder than ever. Pauline, keep the vectors such that we push it up into its flue.
Then a loud bang and instant deceleration knocked them all forward and up into the air. When they fell back, Galileo found himself in a heap of bodies in the corner, with Hera under him. He got up and tried to give her a hand, but staggered back as the vessel tipped again.
The voice named Pauline said, Theyre in their flue now, but they can descend out of it again.
Go after the other one anyway. Wait, while were in contact with them, speak hull to hull and tell them to get back to the surface. Tell them if they dont, well ram them hard enough to breach both ships. Tell them who we are and tell them Ill do it.
Suddenly a storm of blue flashes exploded in the window, and all the screens lit up as if with torn rainbows. The visual chaos was split by black lightning that somehow was just as devastating to the eyes as white lightning. Cries of alarm filled the air. Then the vessel lurched down and began to spin. Everyone had to hold on to something to stay upright. Galileo clutched Hera by the elbow, as high as his shoulder, and she held him up with that same arm while grasping a chair back with her other hand. One of the crew clutched her desk while pointing at her screen with the other hand. Ganymede moved like an acrobat across the bucking deck, inspecting one screen and then another. The officers shouted at him over a high ringing tone. On the screens, Galileo caught sight of a swirl of a steep conic spiral rising from the depths, now revealed to be immensea matter of many miles. The blue light flashed in their chamber again.
It doesnt want us here, Ganymede said. Pauline, open radio contact with those ships. Send this: Get out! Get out! Get out!
A high moan lofted up Galileos spine, leaving his short hairs as erect as a hedgehogs. The sound resembled wolves howling at the moon. Often Galileo had heard them in the distance, late at night, when the rest of the world slept. But the sound filling him now was to wolves howls as wolves howls were to human speecha sound so uncanny that actual wolves would surely have run away whimpering. Fear turned his bowels watery, and he saw all the others in the craft were just as afraid. He clutched Heras thick biceps, felt himself moaning involuntarily. It was too loud now for anyone to hear him; the super-lupine howls became a keening shriek that seemed everywhere at once, both inside and outside him. The blue flashes were now inside the vessel, even inside his eyes, though they were squeezed shut.
Go! Hera shouted. Galileo wondered if anyone else could hear her. In any case the vessel was spiraling upward now, so forcefully that Galileo was knocked to his knees. Hera swung him up and around the way he would have swung a child, and plopped him into a chair. She staggered, almost landed on him, then sat hard on the floor beside him. Black flashes still shot through them like lightning, through floor to ceiling, as if carrying them along in some stupendous explosion, aquatic but incorporeal, everything spiraling in a dizzying rise. It was like being in the grip of a living Archimedes screw. Up and up again, until there was an enormous crash, casting everyone up onto the ceiling, after which they flailed awkwardly down and thumped to the floor. They had struck the shell of ice capping the ocean, Galileo presumed, and it seemed the vessel might have cracked and everyone would soon drown. Then Galileo felt shoved toward the floor, indicating a new acceleration, as when rocked back on a bolting horse. The vessel itself now creaked and squealed, while the eerie shriek was muffled. The chamber was still bathed in flickers of blue fire. Ganymede, propped on both arms before the biggest table of screen and instruments, conferred in sharp tones with crew members holding on beside him. It seemed they were still trying to steer the thing.