24: He Flies Through The Air With The Greatest Of Ease

The workers - all Jovians - were quick to accept the orders that Argus had given.

But the looks they gave him were not entirely admiring, and he couldn't help but think they partly hoped he would get killed.

He was still, for all practical reasons, the Terran enemy - and one reckless doomed rescue attempt would not turn their minds. He decided not to give a damn about their looks.

Unknown to Argus, Caver Pi moved among the miners, having arrived shortly before Argus under a false identity. The request for jetpacks gave him a perfect opportunity for sabotage.

Momentarily, the equipment was in his hands, being assembled, and he knew the other workers would look the other way if he cut something with his wrist laser.

He had five seconds to make his move.

"Faster!" Argus called out in the cold, thin air, and Caver threw him a quick, scared glance. No water vapor came from the cyborg's open mouth, even when he spoke.

Not human, thought Caver Pi. The Kansler's puppet, shouting the Kansler's orders. Then he noticed how Argus was pointing urgently at the drifting airship out in the clouds, and how the cyborg kept following it with his artificial eyes that did not need a protective face-mask. Four men lost, to save my family. What does that machine care about us? It's worth it, it's worth it, it's...

He waited too long, and the opportunity was lost; Argus started to watch his every movement. Caver Pi and the other miners finished assembling the improvised jetpack harness, undamaged.

He turned to the taller, ink-black body that stood a few feet from him, and said quickly: "All done. Ship gone in half a minute or less. Go."

With that, he and the other miners quickly evacuated the entire inflated chamber.

Caver heard a miner in the crowd ask: "Can he?"

Another miner said in the ensuing silence: "No. He Charlie."

The meaning of "Charlie", in miner slang, was obvious.

***

Argus slipped into the harness, tried to avoid thinking how incredibly far below the "ground" was, lifted the jetpack bundle, and cut open the transparent plastic wall.

It peeled like a burning cinder, and the raw atmosphere of Jupiter tossed him and his jetpacks out into the clouds. The fall was so intense, the wind so forceful it frightened him. He instinctively held his breath - as if it would make a difference - and ignited the ten jetpacks.

On his internal display, the warnings came fast:

DANGER!
BODY TEMP DOWN 40%, SINKING
EMERGENCY HEATING ON - TIME LEFT 20 SEC
WARNING!
IF BODY TEMP SINKS BELOW -100 DEG, SUPERCONDUCTING STATE OCCURS
BODY MAY ABSORB STATIC CHARGES
RISK OF SYSTEM FAILURE

The jetpacks worked, and with his superhuman reaction speed Argus steered it quickly enough to overcome the winds. A normal human would have been blown way past the drifting airship in a few seconds.

To Argus, it was like swimming through a raging river, and the power cable that stretched out after him twisted and dragged in the never-ending storm; it might be torn apart after all.

He switched to infrared, then ultraviolet vision as he passed through a methane cloud and dimly saw the airship a kilometer away, a hundred meters below.

The drifting ship with its crew of four had powerful engines, a large helium balloon, and normally received energy by laser-transfer from the many satellites above. v But the sudden turbulence had disturbed its position enough to disrupt the energy feed, and as it drifted into the cloud layers, less and less laser energy got through the clouds to reach the airship's receptor disk.

Its crew sat silent in their work-cocoons, still in radio contact with Kun'Lun, desperately trying to raise their ship back into the light.

But without an influx of power, it was impossible...

Something hard hit the hull of the ship. It jolted a little, and they all started; then they heard another hit, and three rhythmic, smaller blows.

Outside, clinging to the airship's plastic hull, Argus not only had to grab the railings of the hull with all his might. He also had to bend his lower body away from it, so as not to burn a hole in the hull with his jetpack.

He spent a second pushing with the jetpack and himself against the ship, but dared not try harder, for he felt the hull might tear from the pressure.

He spotted one of several receptor disks on top of the airship, and directed more power to his arms.

The railings creaked as he rapidly climbed up along them like a humanoid spider, twenty meters in less than six seconds, and reached for the power cable drum at his waist.

The thin, very strong elastic cable was now used up, and its full length of 1.5 kilometers began to stretch between Argus and the floating city above. He had only a few seconds to connect it to the power feed.

From the thickest, darkest nearby cloud, an electric charge materialized - and engulfed the airship instantly. Only a fraction of a second later, the crack of thunder sent vibrations through the entire ship, and through Argus as he dangled on top of it.

Several smaller electric charges, fully visible as blue energy patterns across the airship hull, passed over his black outer skin, and he shut his eyes hard. Some of the electric charge passed through the skin and into him - it hurt like fire and cramp multiplied by ten.

He recalled what someone had once said to him: It's all in your mind! He did not have to lose his hold unless he let it happen. He could ignore the pain, as long as the electric shock wasn't strong enough to override his own muscle control.

There it was, just below the receptor disk: an isolated power socket made to fit the one on his power cable.

He pulled the cable toward it - the cable began to stretch dangerously hard - only a few centimeters would do it - he pulled harder, concentrating all available power into his arms, until he thought the very metal skeleton would snap - and the sockets connected.

The ship's engines hummed with the power surge, and the airship began to lift itself out of the clouds.

Argus held the cable in place for a few more agonizing seconds, until the lamps on all the receptor disks lit up green; the ship was receiving full power from the satellite network again, plus some extra power to manage lifting the added weight of Argus.

He untied his now spent jetpack bundle, and saw it plunge into the clouds, drawn away on the ever-present winds. That could have been me, he thought.

For a very brief moment just before his success, Argus considered putting his own hand into the airship's emergency socket to bridge the last small distance, and let the power cable feed through him into the ship.

Had he done so, the ensuing overload might have killed him - and afterwards he asked himself, if he had truly been ready for that ultimate sacrifice to save four men. Thinking of Venix being left alone, he wasn't sure he would have done it.

***

A few minutes later, when they had flown close enough to the floating city and been towed in by other ships, Argus let go of the railings.

He hauled himself into an airlock, which shut itself around him. Then he curled up on the deck and groaned; his massive body began to shake, or rather vibrate and shake.

His teeth rattled in his jaw, and he rolled around like some stiff toy. He wondered if it was just the mental shock that made him shake so badly, or the artificial muscles loosening up from the cold Jupiter atmosphere plus the intense strain.

Later, he understood it was all three things combined.

He let the fit come and go, and after a minute he managed to stand up again.

"That does it," he groaned, "this is my last visit to Jupiter."

He became aware of the many Jovians watching him from various transparent sections of the floating city, from the passing airships, and the crew of four that were being helped out of the landing-dock one section away.

Someone shone a spotlight at him. Rogan Din's voice over the city's loudspeaker system warned that the section Argus stood in was dangerously overloaded with people, and commanded people to evacuate the section before it collapsed.

Reluctantly, and in remarkable silence, the workers obeyed. The gravity prevented them from looking over their shoulders as they walked away, so they moved backwards...

Argus retreated into the section, away from the spotlight, and told Rogan over the com-link: "I'll be heading back to my shuttle right away. Just give me a minute to recharge."

"Yes, yes, no problem. An amazing rescue action. You'll get a medal for this, the workers are in -"

Argus shut off the intercom link and found a wall niche where workers used to expose themselves to a small sunlamp, for health reasons. He turned it on and let his receptor membrane soak up the ultraviolet rays. Next best thing to a shower, thought the cyborg... and carefully turned around. Nearby footsteps, felt through the thin floor, alerted his attention.

On the other side of the corridor stood a sole Jovian worker.

"You Argus-A?" the man asked.

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THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.