"Maybe?"
"Burton had limited. Biological training. Understanding of neural functions may be. Imperfect."
"Wonderful."
"Or. Maybe not."
"Gotcha."
Heat radiated up from the bottom of the crater. Even protected and shielded as she was by her suit's HVAC systems, she felt the difference between front and back. It was like standing in front of a fire on a very cold night.
They had talked, or maybe negotiated was a better word for it, for a long time.
Finally Martha had said, "You savvy Morse code? You savvy orthodox spelling?"
"Whatever Burton. Understood. Is. Understood."
"Yes or no, damnit!"
"Savvy."
"Good. Then maybe we can make a deal."
She stared up into the night. The orbiter was out there somewhere, and she was sorry she couldn't talk directly to Hols, say good-bye and thanks for everything.
But Io had said no. What she planned would raise volcanoes and level mountains.
The devastation would dwarf that of the earthquake caused by the bridge across Lake Styx.
It couldn't guarantee two separate communications.
The ion flux tube arched from somewhere over the horizon in a great looping jump to the north pole of Jupiter. Augmented by her visor, it was as bright as the sword of God.
As she watched, it began to sputter and jump, millions of watts of power dancing staccato in a message they'd be picking up on the surface of Earth. It would swamp every radio and drown out every broadcast in the Solar System.
THIS IS MARTHA KIVELSEN, SPEAKING FROM THE SURFACE OF IO ON BEHALF OF MYSELF, JULIET BURTON, DECEASED, AND JACOB HOLS, OF THE FIRST GALILEAN SATELLITES EXPLORATORY MISSION. WE HAVE MADE AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY ...
Every electrical device in the System would dance to its song!
Burton went first. Martha gave the sledge a shove, and out it flew, into empty space. It dwindled, hit, kicked up a bit of a splash. Then, with a disappointing lack of pyrotechnics, the corpse slowly sank into the black glop.
It didn't look very encouraging at all.
Still ...
"Okay," she said. "A deal's a deal." She dug in her toes and spread her arms. Took a deep breath. Maybe I am going to survive after all, she thought. It could be Burton was already halfway-merged into the oceanic mind of Io, and awaiting her to join in an alchemical marriage of personalities. Maybe I'm going to live forever. Who knows? Anything is possible.
Maybe.
There was a second and more likely possibility. All this could well be nothing more than a hallucination. Nothing but the sound of her brain short-circuiting and squirting bad chemicals in all directions. Madness. One last grandiose dream before dying. Martha had no way of judging.
Whatever the truth might be, though, there were no alternatives, and only one way to find out.
She jumped.
Briefly, she flew.