He'd seen the specs on the Skydiver's design, fine-tuned somewhat since Keefer and O'Reilly had taken their plunge, and he knew how much pressure it could handle. Even so, the actual raw numbers still left his stomach feeling a little queasy. He lifted his cup to his lips—

And at that precise second, something slammed into the side of the probe.

"Sheester's Mother," Chippawa swore, grabbing for the stabilizer controls.

"What was that?" Faraday managed as his coffee tried to go down the wrong tube. Trained reflexes set in, sending his cup flying as he grabbed at his own controls and checked the emergency board.

No hull breach; no oxygen tank or fuel-cell rupture; no hint of any other equipment malfunction.

"Sheester's Mother," Chippawa repeated, almost reverently this time. Faraday looked up—

And caught his breath. There, floating outside the thick Quadplexi window, squarely in the center of the probe's external lights, was a two-meter-long solid object. It looked something like a cross between a dolphin and a very large, very fat manta ray with a pair of long tails trailing behind it.

And as he watched, it rolled over and flapped away through the roiling atmosphere, its twin tails beating rhythmically at the air. A second later, two more of them swam into view around the sides of the probe and charged off after the first.

Slowly, Faraday turned to look at Chippawa. Chippawa was looking back at him.

Chippawa said it first. "I guess Keefer wasn't imagining things," he said, his voice studiously casual.

Faraday nodded, all the data from all of the manned and unmanned probes for all of the past twenty years flashing through his mind There was no life on Jupiter. None. Zip, zero, nada. All the books, all the studies, all the experts agreed on that.