Free The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley

told Purunkita and Misinchikov. (Five figures gathered around a fire on a beach within the ship, whispering.) No one knows whether to believe her story, but it’s the only one we’ve got. This is what she said.
    The Invaders come from a gas giant planet like Jupiter. Their purpose in coming to the solar system was not the invasion of Earth, but unknown motives concerned with the inhabitants of Jupiter. Bronson said there are intelligent Jovians who are much like the Invaders. (Animation sequence in the Jovian atmosphere. Huge shadowy shapes swim by.)
    The invasion of Earth was secondary. It wasdone for the benefit of the three intelligent species of Earth: sperm whales, “killer” whales, and bottle-nosed dolphins. (Stock footage of aquatic mammals.)
    Bronson said there are levels of intelligence in the universe. On top are the Jovians and Invaders. One step below are the dolphins and whales. Humans, birds, bees, beavers, ants, and corals are not considered intelligent.
    No one knows if any of this is right. But it’s all we have.
    There were no explanations given to humanity. No ambassadors appeared, no ultimatums were offered. Humans resisted the Invasion, but the resistance was ignored. H-bombs would not go off, tanks would not move, guns would not fire. (Panic in the streets, helicopter shots of jammed highways.) No one ever saw an Invader. Pictures show distortions in the sky that no observer noticed at the time, like blind spots in the human eye. Perhaps these things were the Invaders. (Still, flat photos of buildings toppling, streets being uprooted, with colorful whirlpools in the sky.)
    As far as anyone knows from information sent up before the transmitters went dead, the Invaders never killed a human. What they did was destroy utterly every artifact of human civilization. In their wake they left plowed ground, sprouting seedlings, and grass.
    In the next two years, ten billion humans starved to death.
    Poseidon is an irregular chunk of rock. It is the most distant object of any size that Jupiter can be said to claim. Being retrograde and inclined one hundred and fifty degrees from Jupiter’s equator, it is one of the more difficult bodies in the solar system to rendezvous with.
    The
Earthhome II
was a free-faller, a cargo shipdesigned to carry bulky, nonpriority freight. It traveled by hyperbolic orbits, not the straight lines of a high-booster.
    “Congratulations, Captain,” Lilo said. “That was a neat bit of work.”
    “Huh? Oh, you mean the approach?” He shrugged, but she saw he was pleased. She had gotten to know him pretty well on the twenty-nine-day trip to Jupiter.
    “Really,” she said. “Most ship pilots are like slideway operators nowadays. They make travel pretty dull.”
    “Yeah, I won’t argue with you on that.”
    “You make me think of the days when people just set out. Nothing on the other end, no refueling stations, no air, nothing at all. And I think you like it.”
    He smiled at her. “I guess I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t. I always felt born in the wrong age, though. No adventure. This run is about the most dangerous thing you can do, and it’s illegal. You must have wondered how we get away with this, going to Jupiter.” Iphis explained Tweed’s system.
    It was illegal to assume a closed orbit around Jupiter, or to land on any of the moons. The loophole was that it was legal to use Jupiter to alter an orbit on the way to somewhere else. Passenger ships never did it—too many people were afraid to approach Jupiter at all. But there were plenty of independent operators who were willing if it would save them time and fuel.
    The trick was to have two ships. Tweed had obtained one at Pluto, listed as missing and presumed lost. An identical ship had been purchased openly. Now both ships bore the same registration numbers. More important, they had the same captain. Lilo went to Jupiter in the
Earthhome II
, captained by Iphis II. But there was an
Earthhome I
, and an