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shuddered at the thought. But immediately he started composing another video message for Marjorie, mentioning nothing about the captain, of course. And, despite himself, wondering what VR sex might be like.

Chapter 6 - Arrival
    Peering through the transparent glassteel of the observation bubble, Grant could see that Jupiter was not merely immense, it was
alive
.
    They were in orbit around the planet now, and its giant curving bulk loomed so huge that he could see nothing else, nothing but the bands and swirls of clouds that raced fiercely across Jupiter's face. The clouds shifted and flowed before his eyes, spun into eddies the size of Asia, moved and throbbed and pulsed like living creatures. Lightning flashed down there, sudden explosions of light that flickered back and forth across the clouds, like signaling lamps.
    There was life beneath those clouds, Grant knew. Huge balloon-like creatures called Clarke's Medusas, that drifted in the hurricane-force winds surging across the planet. Birds that have never seen land, living out their entire lives aloft. Gossamer spider-kites that trapped microscopic spores. Particles of long-chain carbon molecules that form in the clouds and sift downward, toward the global ocean below.
    Unbidden, the words of a psalm sang in his mind:
    The heavens proclaim the glory of God;
    And the firmament declareth the work of his hands…
    And there was the Red Spot, a gigantic swirling storm that had been raging for more than four hundred years, bigger than the whole planet Earth. Lightning rippled endlessly around its perimeter; to Grant it looked like the thrashing cilia of some titanic bacterium, flailing its way across the face of the giant planet.
    Somewhere in a closer equatorial orbit around the planet was Research Station
Gold
, Grant's destination, the largest man-made object in the Solar System, outside of the space cities orbiting between the Earth and its Moon. But
Gold
was an invisible speck against the enormous, overwhelming expanse of Jupiter.
    It's like watching an abstract painting, Grant thought as he stared at the hurtling clouds of delicate pale yellow, russet brown, white and pink and powder blue. But it's a dynamic painting, moving, shifting, flecked with lightning — alive.
    Mars was a dead world, cold and silent despite its lichen and ancient clifFside ruins. Venus was an oven: sluggish, suffocating, useless. Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, the nearby moons of Jupiter, almost the size of the planet Mercury, bore fragile ecologies of microscopic creatures beneath their perpetual mantles of ice.
    But to Grant's awestruck eyes, Jupiter looked vibrant, powerful, teeming with energy.
    For the past four days the captain had been gradually increasing the ship's spin, so that now it was revolving around its empty cargo bay fast enough to produce almost full terrestrial gravity force in the habitation module. After almost a year at one-half £, the increased sense of weight made Grant feel tired, aching, dispirited.
    Except when he was in the observation bubble. Sitting there in its lone padded chair, staring out at the immensity of Jupiter, Grant's mind raced as fast as the swirling multi-hued clouds. He had no idea of what his assignment would be once they made rendezvous with
Gold
. Certainly the International Astronautical Authority had not paid for his transportation all the way out to Jupiter to have Grant study pulsars and black holes, as he would have preferred to do.
    No, he thought, still staring with fascination at Jupiter, the IAA's main thrust out here in the Jovian system was with the microscopic life-forms on frozen Europa and Callisto, and the creatures living in Jupiter's atmosphere. They should be bringing biologists and geologists for that kind of work, not a frustrated astrophysicist.
    Yet the New Morality claimed that the scientists had sent a manned craft into Jupiter's swirling clouds. In secret. Was it true? What did they find? Why would they keep such work a