One gets used to hearing it, thought Caver Pi, putting on his oxygen mask and eye-goggles with swift, ingrained habit. He ran to the nearest emergency tunnel door, closely followed by his wife who carried their youngest baby. She put on a protective mask first on her 1-year-old baby, then on herself. The draft grew to a roar of wind; electric fans whined in protest as they pumped in air to compensate for the fresh leak.
Caver Pi, being no taller than the average midget-size adult colonist, was a pale, blocky man. His serious face was covered with the traditional thick dark-brown beard. The long mustaches were set with knots and beads in the clan colors, the customary way of distinguishing one another in this crowded underground society.
His wife sported a white shawl over her blond head, and her large eyes were accentuated by white eyeliner. The use of white, inherited from the spacesuits of previous generations of colonists, signified an attachment to the past. Terrans often misinterpreted the red dot on a Jovian's forehead as the mark of a Hindu - while in fact the mark was painted on every child born in the Jupiter sector, symbolizing the Red Spot on the face of Jupiter. Caver Pi was second-generation Ganymedean, his wife first-generation.
The couple was not alone in running; all around them, people were in a hurry, rushing on short legs, or used spindly, wheeled vehicles to travel as fast as the environment allowed. Ganymedeans usually moved in couples or families, so as not to lose each other in the tunnel mazes; as a rule, parents never, ever left their children out of sight until their twelfth birthday.
300 kilometers to their north, cover fire from the retreating Terran Fleet had scored a lucky hit, and penetrated the outer crust of Ganymede. One driller missile had detonated, and several Jovians were buried in cave-ins. The artificial atmosphere was leaking out faster than it could be replenished, until the breach could be repaired. But those problems were minor compared to the worst damage done: Ganymede's major power station was in danger of overheating.
Caver Pi received the news in his helmet communicator. Serving this year's duty as head of the planetary defense council, Caver Pi was told everything of importance to the survival of the colonists. It was not a job he would have volunteered for, but the council's computers had picked him for his skills.
"Can repair by self?" Caver Pi asked through the communications link, talking to a team of nuclear engineers 200 kilometers northwest.
"No," said the chief engineer through the tiny display above Caver Pi's left eye, a pudgy midget called Cranny Origo. "Need one damper unit twenty minutes, or reactor too hot to enter and repair. And spare circuits. Our workshop caved in, we can't free in time. You find parts from another node?"
Caver Pi checked his map-computer. "Yes. Node 5-6-19, just near. I can there few minutes."
"Main tunnel breach between us you -"
"No blow. Skimmer faster. See you fifteen minutes. Off."
Caver Pi led his wife across a small rope-bridge, crossing a gaping narrow ice chasm, and followed the signs pointing to Node 5-6-19. Here lived a thousand or more colonists in numerous larger caves, and a workshop for spare parts was active. The moment he ran in through the workshop entrance, a team of workers was ready to hand him a backpack, loaded with the requested spare parts. The planet-wide communications network had alerted every single node about the shortage; Caver Pi could have walked into any of 50 workshops across Ganymede and received the same service.
"Good," he said briefly, letting two workers help him into a prepared midget-size spacesuit, while three others led him toward an elevator shaft. In the elevator capsule, a newly prepared skimmer was already tanked and ready for flight.
"Heavy fire up there," the head engineer of the node warned Caver Pi. "You need a driver. Slush Delta! Suit up."
"Assist!" shouted the young worker Slush Delta, fumbling with a dirty midget spacesuit that the head engineer had tossed at him.
"Care," said Caver Pi's wife to her husband, and gave him a quick but warm kiss just before someone pushed the helmet onto his head.
"Love," he snapped back. Through generations of radio-slang, spaceflight and hardships, Ganymedeans had evolved a rapid, terse shorthand version of English that wasted no time. Slovenliness was a crime that could, and had, cost lives.
The two astronauts were swiftly helped into their seats and the elevator shot upward, hurling them the 3 kilometers to the surface. They spent the time checking their suits for leaks, and that their two-way radios functioned. Once on the surface, they would be on their own.
"Flight mapped?" Caver asked the driver.
"In brain," the freckled young man said with a grin, pointing one stubby gloved hand at his own helmet. "Best place not to lose things."
"Blabber," Caver Pi retorted, flashing him a smile - a not-too-serious scolding. By Ganymedean standards, Slush Delta was annoyingly talkative.
The elevator capsule began to vibrate as the brake jets decelerated it, and the two passengers felt the blood rush from their heads -- Caver Pi moaned as he nearly passed out, and Slush Delta rustled him back to awareness. They jolted to a stop at the surface; a hatch opened at the top of the capsule, and their skimmer was elevated to ground level.
The exit-station lay concealed in one of the countless dark ridges of ice and rock crisscrossing the surface of Ganymede. Above them, partly in shadow, the vast crest of Jupiter seemed to almost bulge across the horizon.
Caver and Slush wasted no time admiring the view, but started up the skimmer's jet thrusters and took off. With Slush at the controls, the tiny craft accelerated to the velocity of a speeding bullet within a minute. He took a course parallel with the ridge around them, staying just ten meters above ground - if an enemy scan or infiltrator probe spotted them, they'd be defenseless.
Caver Pi punched up a display onto the inside of his space-helmet, and could see the course Slush Delta mapped out. The glittering, craggy hills rushed past at a dazzling speed - but it was the silence of the landscape, always the silence that made the view so astounding. The two travelers could sense the vibrations of the skimmer's jet thrusters in their pilot-seats, hear their own breathing, the ringing note of a loose part somewhere - but no wind, no loud ambience of running feet, no nasal murmur of dwarfish speed-talk. Above them in the black sky, the Red Spot began to slowly crawl across Jupiter's horizon like a vast, bloodshot eye.
"The Nipple rising," Slush Delta said over the radio, pointing up at the Red Spot. "Seem so close, I could bite into it."
"Kansler want to suck it dry," Caver Pi joked.
Then, in the corner of the map display they shared, Caver Pi spotted a small photo clip, no larger than his thumb.
"On your photo, who?"
"Family, back at old 5-6-19. I love skimming, but miss them bad every time. Scared too, that I lose track of them, get lost out here in the vastness."
"You fine pilot, Slush. No worries. Okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah."
"You blabber, though."
If Slush had intended a reply - blabbermouth as he was - he never got the opportunity. A warning flashed on their radar displays.
TERRAN SPY NETWORK DETECTED YOU
The camouflaged gun turrets in the valley were not visible to the naked eye, but the astronauts could see bursts of flashes in the sky, which meant the Ganymedean defense system was shielding them from incoming enemies. The skimmer's Geiger counter began to clatter more rapidly... cosmic radiation, plus radiation from the explosions.
"Evade?" Caver Pi asked, a note of higher than normal urgency in his voice. In the plain rearview mirrors, they glimpsed the impact of something; a plume of ice and dust shot up from the valley a few hundred feet south, immediately receding into the distance like some mirage.
"Turn seat, use gun," shouted Slush, radio crackling from his loud reply, and Pi realized just how young, how frightened his pilot was. He carefully unlocked and rotated his seat, grabbed hold of the lasergun that was mounted on a makeshift tripod, and switched on a small targeting screen.
Almost immediately, the telescopic detector reacted:
INCOMING
TERRAN REMOTE-POD
APPROACH VELOCITY 0.1KMPS
APPROACH ANGLE 02 DEG
Caver Pi told the pilot, who moved his hand across the control rods of the skimmer. A panoply unfolded on top of the craft, a camouflage roof no larger than five feet across. Caver Pi tracked the incoming pod - and lost track of it, as it suddenly changed course and darted off into the hills. Its angle suggested it was still behind them, somewhere - flying so low, even the gun turrets couldn't target it.
"Low flying hunter!" he alerted Slush Delta. "Coming fast. Speed!"
"This fast max - any faster, and we break landing net, go splat!"
"There! I can see it - southeast following!"
"Cover me!"
It was a command to Caver Pi, not the Ganymedean defense command - which couldn't intercept their communication anyway. Caver Pi longed for the relative safety of the crowded Command Central, full of comforting data screens, deep below their feet. He activated the crude laser-sight and took aim at the moving dot that pursued them. The hunter pod might be no larger than the skimmer itself - semi-automatic or remote-controlled, one of hundreds sent out by the Terran Fleet to make life miserable for the rebellious satellites.
But those Jovians who worked in Jupiter's atmosphere, the gas-trawlers, were not harassed by the Fleet... as long as the deuterium export to the Inner Planets went on, Caver Pi thought bitterly. The only thing that kept the Jovians from shutting down their supply route to Earth was the need to make a living. The regular trade lines had to be maintained, even between planets at war - or they would all starve. Smugglers existed, as they always had, but were to few and too far between to replace regular trade in case of a blockade.
This is not a war, Caver Pi thought, his two eyes aching as he struggled to get a straight aim at the hunter pod. It's a make-believe war, to keep the Kansler's image looking good. So that he can say to the fat, decadent Terran voters: See how I keep the colonists in check. In your dreams, you murdering bastard. You even bought my brother, made him a hostage to your cause. Tried to blackmail me with a traitor. It won't work. Kill that traitor, I don't care... I don't. Care.
He fired several pulses - invisible as they shot across the airless ridges - and little dots of light indicated the impacts in distant hillsides. The hunter pod closed in, moving more irregularly but without the deft reactivity of Slush Delta. The helmet display indicated their skimmer was less than a minute from its destination; it would not have to slow down for landing, unless it went any faster.
"We'll make it?" Caver Pi asked.
"No. Pod seconds away. Your jetpack. Aim at the entrance-point. Program this fall trajectory." Slush wired over a trajectory algorithm from his personal computer, to the one in Caver Pi's suit. "At my signal, I rotate skimmer and you jump off. Momentum is enough to throw you inside."
"But -"
"Deliver package!"
Momentarily, Slush turned in his seat and made a thumbs-up sign. Caver couldn't quite see the young man's freckled face, but he could hear Slush's rapid, tense breathing over the radio. A warning signal blinked in his helmet display; he had a few seconds to prepare for takeoff.
Slush Delta throttled the forward drive, and let only the keel thrusters keep the skimmer hovering above ground. Caver Pi unbuckled his seat belt, and the skimmer turned around its center, pointing backward as it flew. Pi saw the landing-signal, switched on his jetpack, and took a forward leap. Almost at the same instant, Slush Delta turned on the forward drive and began to brake. The Terran hunter pod hurtled toward him, too fast to calculate the second target that had ejected from the skimmer...
A snapping noise over the radio was all that Pi heard, as Slush Delta and his skimmer were blown to a cloud of fragments. Caver Pi couldn't see the explosion, but felt a shockwave push his falling body and the package forward. He frantically tried to adjust his course with the hand controls, and found himself plunging against a featureless rock face.
The instruments told him his trajectory was right, yet he shut his eyes in fear... and fell right through the wall hologram that masked the twenty-meter wide entrance. At breathtaking speed, Caver Pi and his large backpack landed in an elastic emergency net that stretched across the cave opening. The impact hit Pi like a punch in the stomach, and he lost his sense of orientation, feeling the vibrating strings of the net as it stretched out to dampen his fall.
The bungee-cord net stretched out along the length of the oblong, artificial hangar - almost three hundred meters - before it was held up and stopped by mechanical arms, and Caver Pi was lifted out of it.
The net was released, and slung back the three hundred meters, accompanied by warning lights that ran along the cave walls. Caver dropped down from the hanging rescue crane, onto a cargo sled, and let the crew unload his backpack. The sled zoomed into a small tunnel and down two levels, then entered the wide, low chamber that held the damaged reactor.
"Still time?" he asked, as he replaced his space helmet with a breathing-mask. He felt sick from the landing, or maybe it was his pilot's death.
"Enough, yeah," replied Cranny Origo from his seat. "We'll make it. Thanks, Pi. You a hero!"
The crew started to cheer Caver Pi and they patted his shoulders; he smiled reluctantly, not wanting to sound smug. He wondered what to tell Slush Delta's family.
"Slush Delta no blabber," he said, perhaps only to himself, but the others heard him - and fell silent, as the sled brought them to their goal. Their node was saved, for now.
Caver Pi couldn't allow himself to rest, until he had seen the damper unit installed and the reactor secured. Then, the mission completed, he felt incredibly tired and fell asleep in a small office. He woke up, abruptly, when a hand touched his forehead. It was his wife, Strata Rho-Pi, sitting next to him. They embraced and kissed each other, while she mumbled her thanks to the stars for bringing him safely back.
"Where Junior?" Caver Pi asked, suddenly worried, but Strata held him back.
"Sssh. My family came with me, you slept, they look after Junior. Relax."
"Love you, Strata," he smiled. "Can't go on like this, but for you and your family."
"Our family."
"The only family I have. That, and our home, this planet. I love you all."
They had been husband and wife for two years; he knew how she was going to respond. So he looked away when Strata's rounded, pretty face, partly obscured by a single orange braid falling over her brow, slowly grew worried.
"One more left. Your brother."
Caver Pi turned hard and remote in her arms, refusing to let her soft voice reach him.
"One day, Cave, you forgive him. Wasn't he killed your family. Terrans did, not him."
"He's dead to me. We alive. Is enough. Be with me this sleep phase, Strata."
"Sssh," she whispered into his ear, and sat in his lap. "Let Ganymede wait for its turn to be saved. Me first..."
In public life, Jovians were short on speech and stature - in private, they made up for it. In their world, the Popularity Points system had not yet invaded the sphere of the home. With one free leg, Strata kicked the panel that shut the door to the room and gave them complete privacy.
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