Gregory Benford, a physics professor at the University of California at Irvine, includes a little experimental plasma physics and an alien artefact in this delightful story.

"The Jovian Astronautical-Biological Orbital Laboratory circles Jupiter and its moons - a metal shell bathed in lethal radiation, held in tenuous place by the gravity of the massive gas giant like a fragile glass ornament in a monstrous fist."