Leviathans of Jupiter Read Free Page B

Authority’s governing council. The directors of the IAA expected their new member to be flattered and malleable. They planned to use her as a public relations figurehead: a handsome, philanthropic woman who could speak the usual platitudes about the importance of scientific research before government councils and influential donors.
    They did not realize that Katherine Westfall had her own agenda in mind. “Get to the top,” her mother had often told her. “Whatever you do, get to the top. You’re not safe until you’re on top.”
    So Katherine Westfall initiated a subtle yet relentless campaign to be elected chairman of the IAA’s governing council. From that position no one could challenge her, she would never have to worry about falling back into obscurity.
    There were others who coveted the chairmanship, of course, but Katherine realized that her most dangerous rival was a man who claimed he had no interest in the position whatsoever: Grant Archer, director of the research station out at Jupiter. Archer was a danger to her, Katherine knew, despite his protestations of modest disinterest. He had to be stopped.
    Halfway through dinner in the captain’s quarters, Guerra asked her, “But why Jupiter, if I may ask? Why don’t you start with the research bases on Mars? After all, that’s where the most interesting work—”
    She didn’t wait for him to finish. “The leviathans,” she said, her voice still muted but quite firm. “The leviathans are on Jupiter. Nothing else in the entire solar system is so interesting, so … challenging.”
    Captain Guerra’s shaggy brows knit. “Those big whales? What makes them so interesting to you?”
    Katherine Westfall smiled sweetly, thinking that if Archer could prove that those Jovian creatures were intelligent, the IAA would offer him their chairmanship on a silver platter.
    To Guerra, however, she said merely, “The scientists want an enormous increase in their budget so they can study those creatures. I’ve got to pay them the courtesy of visiting their facility in person to see what they’re doing.”
    To herself she added, I’ve got to stop them. Cut them off. Bring Archer down. Otherwise I won’t be safe.

LEVIATHAN
    Leviathan glided among the Kin along the warm upwelling current that carried them almost effortlessly through the endless sea. But the food that had always sifted down from the cold abyss above was nowhere in sight. All through Leviathan’s existence, the food had been present in abundance. But now it was gone. The Elders flashed fears that the Symmetry had been disrupted.
    At least there was no sign of darters, Leviathan’s sensor parts reported. They watched faithfully for the predators. As a younger member of the Kin, Leviathan was placed on the outer perimeter of the vast school of the creatures, constantly alert for the faintest trace of the dangerous killers.
    Even so, a deeper part of its brain puzzled over the strangeness. Could the Symmetry truly be broken?
    More than that, something new and different was imposing on the Kin. Something alien. Strange, cold, insensitive creatures had appeared in the world. Tiny and solitary, they came from the cold abyss above, cruised off at a distance from the Kin, then disappeared up into the cold again. Uncommunicative creatures, smaller than one of Leviathan’s flagella members. When Leviathan and others of the Kin had flashed a welcome to them, the aliens blinked in gibberish and then fled.
    Troubling. It disturbed the Symmetry, even though the Elders maintained that such pitifully small creatures could pose no danger to the Kin. They do not eat of our food, the Elders pictured, and they do not attack us. They can be safely ignored.
    But then the flow of food from the cold abyss above had faltered and finally stopped. Leviathan wondered. Could the aliens be the cause of the break in the