Galileo’s Dream

Galileo recalled standing in his garden at night, in the open air, under the stars. It was an experience this woman had never had. Possibly she could not imagine it. Possibly she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You don’t know what it is to be free,’ he said, surprised. ‘You don’t know what it is to stand free in the open air.’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘Have it your way.’

‘I will.’

Again her amused glance, as if she were looking down on a child. She said, ‘You were famous for that, as I recall. Until…’

The voice Pauline interrupted to announce they were near the bottom of the ice layer, and were in what she called brash ice. They could hear floating chunks and clinkers striking the hull, a grinding noise full of scrapes and thuds.

Then they were moving freely, in water. Galileo had spent so much time on barges and ferries, and on a few well-remembered trips out into the Adriatic, that he recognized the feel in his feet. Such kinetic sensations were so slight as to disappear when one focused on them, but when focusing attention elsewhere, one became aware of the totality of the effect.

Ganymede said, ‘Pauline, search for the Europans’ flue, also any other vessels, of course. And give us an analysis of the water, please.’

Pauline reported the water was nearly pure, with trace amounts of salts, floating particulates, and dissolved gases. Some of the crew began tapping madly at glyphs on their desktops. Outside the window was omnipresent black. They might as well have been deep in the bowels of the Earth. Only one’s sense of movement suggested they were in a liquid.

Thus it was a great surprise to see a brief flash of cobalt blue in the window, like the random blue spark one sometimes saw crossing the inside of the eyelid.

‘What was that!’ Galileo said.

‘We call that Cherenkov radiation,’ Ganymede said.

‘Somebody’s patron?’ Galileo inquired, glancing at Hera.

‘The discoverer of the phenomenon,’ she said firmly.

Ganymede ignored their fencing. ‘There are tiny particles called neutrinos, which pour through our manifold in great numbers but very seldom interact with anything. Once in a while one hits a proton, which is a small but substantial part of an atom-hits a proton in such a way that the proton releases a muon, which is a very small component of a proton. If that happens in an ocean like this, the muon will fly through the water in such a way as to spark a short trail of light in the blue wavelength. We will see a few per minute.’

Another little flare of blue appeared, again like the flaws that plagued Galileo’s vision. ‘Like shooting stars,’ he noted.

‘Yes. A very subtle fire.’

‘A fire in water.’

‘Well, a light, let us say. Though some fires will burn in water, of course.’

Galileo tried to imagine that. Of course there were different kinds of fire. Blue streaks in blackness…This dream was testing him in all sorts of ways: could he find a way to test it back? Maybe answer the basic question: was this really happening? He looked around to see if there was something small that he could take and conceal in his coat. Stealing ideas from dreams-perhaps it wasn’t so unusual. Perhaps it was a fundamental mode of thought.

The next flick of blue light was followed by a blue ball, which rapidly expanded, then became a kind of diffuse polyhedron, shedding spicules and other radiola of blue light which then curved away from the polyhedron in spirals, some of them tight equable spirals, making cylindrical coils, others equiangular spirals, growing wildly outward in conic shapes. One of these flashed right by the window, and for a second or two their chamber pulsed sapphire.

Some of the crew cried out; then there was silence.

Galileo said, ‘What was that?’

Ganymede appeared astonished; he stood pressed against the window, his blade of a nose touching it.

He straightened up, expression black, ‘It’s here. I knew it. The anomalies made it very clear, I’ve been saying so all along.’ He turned to his crew. ‘We shouldn’t be here! Have the Europans shown up yet?’

‘We haven’t seen them,’ one replied.

‘Find their flue then! Get to it-we have to get to it before they do, to stop them!’

They turned back to their screens and their crowded desktops. After a time one said, ‘We’ve found it. We can hear them within it. They’re descending. We’re closing on it-wait. There they are. Two of them, just leaving their flue.’

Ganymede hissed. ‘Go!’ he exclaimed. ‘Ram them! Get under them and ram them from below! Full speed until you reach them, then get in position to shove them right back up the flue!’ He looked stricken, grim beyond telling. ‘We have to make them leave!’

‘How can you do that?’ Hera asked.

‘We’ll ram them until they turn back.’

‘Are you going to warn them?’

‘I don’t want to break radio silence. Who knows what effect it might have on what’s in here?’

‘What about the sound of collisions? What about the sounds and the exhaust from your engines?’

‘That’s what I’ve been saying to them! None of us should be here!’

Another blue conic spiral flashed by them. Ganymede read the screens and the desks. ‘That could be some kind of signal. Speech, or thought, in some language of light.’

‘Who would it speak to?’

‘The light may be secondary. Who knows who it talks to. I have my suspicions, but…’

‘Try numbers,’ Galileo suggested. ‘Display a triangle, see if it knows the Pythagorean theorem.’

Ganymede shook his head, visibly trying to remain patient. ‘That’s what the Europans will do, I’m afraid. Reckless interventions like that. They have no idea what they may be getting into.’

‘Is it some kind of fish?’

‘Not a fish. But on the floor of the ocean are layers of something. Perhaps a slime that is organized into larger structures.’

‘But how would a slime make light?’

Ganymede clutched his black hair in his hands. ‘Light from slime is bioluminescence,’ he said tightly. ‘Slime from light is photosynthesis. Both are very common. They’re like alchemical interactions.’

‘But alchemy doesn’t really work.’

‘Sometimes it does. Be quiet now. We have to get the Europans out of here.’

On the screen that had held the rainbow images of the flue, there stood now an image all in greys, in which near-white shapes defined an object much like their own vessel, shifting against a rumpled grey field. Ganymede took over at one desk and began to tap gently on the array of tabs and knobs. A solid bump, and then the screen showed nothing but the ghostly image of another ship. ‘Hold on,’ Ganymede ordered grimly, and began tapping harder than ever. ‘Pauline, keep the vectors such that we push it up into its flue.’

Then a loud bang and instant deceleration knocked them all forward and up into the air. When they fell back Galileo found himself in a heap of bodies in the corner, Hera under him. He got up and tried to give her a hand, but staggered back as the vessel tipped again.

The voice named Pauline said, ‘They’re in their flue now, but they can descend out of it again, of course.’

‘Go after the other one anyway. Wait, while we’re in contact with them, speak hull to hull and tell them to get back to the surface. Tell them if they don’t we’ll ram them hard enough to breach both ships. Tell them who we are and tell them I’ll do it.’

Suddenly a storm of blue flashes exploded in the window, and all the screens lit up as if with torn rainbows. The visual chaos was split by black lightning that somehow was just as devastating to the eyes as white lightning. Cries of alarm filled the air. Then the vessel lurched down and began to spin. Everyone had to hold on to something to stay upright; Galileo clutched Hera by the elbow, as high as his shoulder, and she held him up with that same arm, while grasping a chair back with her other hand. One of the crew clutched her desk while pointing at her screen with the other hand. Ganymede moved like an acrobat across the bucking deck, inspecting one screen and then another. The officers shouted at him over a high ringing tone. On the screens Galileo caught sight of a swirl of a steep conic spiral rising from the depths, now revealed to be immense, a matter of many miles. The blue light flashed in their chamber again.