Farthest Reef Read Online Free

had called to him. But had it really, or was that a fantasy? Certainly, down there in the reef he’d often had the feeling he had been drawn there. As Stubbs had pointed out many times, though, however things may appear it takes scientific inquiry before one can be certain of anything. All Alex knew was that life existed where science had least expected to find it, inside the biggest hurricane in the solar system.
    But had they found intelligence? Professors Stubbs and John Baltadonis, the two men who had planned the second mission to the reef, contended that the clicker men had demonstrated curiosity but not necessarily intelligence. Mary didn’t agree. The clicker men had talked to her, but she couldn’t prove it. It was something she knew inside, and science had nothing to do with it.
    Now that his data had been handed over to EarthCorp, Alex couldn’t ignore the possibility that he had erred on a scale that transcended mere human morality. He had violated a closed biological system and brought mankind to Jupiter’s reef. Would that cause its destruction? Would history see him as a discoverer or a destroyer of worlds?
    He thought of his final futile act after leaving the reef, the destruction of the sample canisters and all they contained. How long would that hold mankind at bay? Johnny had said that it didn’t matter, his spectrographic and bio-sniffer records contained samples aplenty. Those, combined with the terabytes of records, would give scientists material for years of analysis.
    Alex remembered Professor Baltadonis patting him on the shoulder sympathetically as he said: “Well, the good news is that we won’t be needing to visit the reef any time soon.” But that was over three years ago. For all he knew they had been back, maybe even planted a sub-station there somehow. It didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do to protect the reef. He had followed his heart and found his heart’s desire, but the reef still haunted him, and only Mary’s arms and the ice mines of Ganymede provided respite from his conscience.
    Tony Sciarra was the only human to ever actually wade in the reef, and he had nearly become slug food in the process. At the end of the mission he told Alex: “Face it, Rose. You got lucky.”
    Stubbs had assured him they would study the contamination question very seriously before proceeding with any comprehensive study of the reef. but those were EarthCorp assurances, made by bureaucrats. All Alex had ever wanted to know was whether the reef was there, a living, floating mat of material that had evolved over millions of years, a reef bigger than two Earths. But he hadn’t considered what it would be like after he found it. “Take the credit and run,” was how he might have said it. Now he didn’t know what to say.
    What haunted him most was the sound they had heard as Diver lifted out of the reef, fifty miles below the clouds of Jupiter. With lightning and phosphorescent creatures glowing all around them, everyone aboard had heard it clearly, blended with the incessant radio static of the reef: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy . Not even Stubbs doubted it when he heard the tape. The reef had sung to the invaders from Earth one of humankind’s loftiest melodies.
    No intelligence? Alex wondered if the whole reef was intelligent. After all, something had been calling to him all those years. Something had made him secretly outfit a ship.
    Perhaps Mary, in her own way, had given him the most reassurance. “You did what you could, Alex,” she had said one night after he woke from a nightmare in a cold sweat. “You did what you had to do. So did I. And so did Stubbs.” Now Stubbs seemed to be playing games. Why had he told Mary she was “going along” and said nothing to Alex? And what did he mean by that? Going where? Back to the reef?
    The Enceladus shuddered and the cabin lights flickered for a moment. Alex knew from experience that the creaking bulkheads meant that the ship was breaking