_The Red Spot_
[Sidenote: What is the mystery centered in Jupiter's famous "Red
Spot"? Two fighting Earthmen, caught by the "Pipe-men" like their
vanished comrades, soon find out.]
Commander Stone, grizzled chief of the Planetary Exploration Forces,
acknowledged Captain Brand Bowen's salute and beckoned him to take a
seat.
Brand, youngest officer of the division to wear the triple-V for
distinguished service, sat down and stared curiously at his superior.
He hadn't the remotest idea why he had been recalled from leave: but
that it was on a matter of some importance he was sure. He hunched his
big shoulders and awaited orders.
"Captain Bowen," said Stone. "I want you to go to Jupiter as soon as
you can arrange to do so, fly low over the red area in the southern
hemisphere, and come back here with some sort of report as to what's
wrong with that infernal death spot."
He tapped his radio stylus thoughtfully against the edge of his desk.
"As you perhaps know, I detailed a ship to explore the red spot about
a year ago. It never came back. I sent another ship, with two good men
in it, to check up on the disappearance of the first. That ship, too,
never came back. Almost with the second of its arrival at the edge of
the red area all radio communication with it was cut off. It was never
heard from again. Two weeks ago I sent Journeyman there. Now _he_ has
been swallowed up in a mysterious silence."
An exclamation burst from Brand's lips. Sub-Commander Journeyman!
Senior officer under Stone, ablest man in the expeditionary forces,
and Brand's oldest friend!
Stone nodded comprehension of the stricken look on Brand's face. "I
know how friendly you two were," he said soberly. "That's why I chose
you to go and find out, if you can, what happened to him and the other
two ships."
Brand's chin sank to rest on the stiff high collar of his uniform.
"Journeyman!" he mused. "Why, he was like an older brother to me. And
now ... he's gone."
* * * * *
There was silence in Commander Stone's sanctum for a time. Then Brand
raised his head.
"Did you have any radio reports at all from any of the three ships
concerning the nature of the red spot?" he inquired.
"None that gave definite information," replied Stone. "From each of
the three ships we received reports right up to the instant when the
red area was approached. From each of the three came a vague
description of the peculiarity of the ground ahead of them: it seems
to glitter with a queer metallic sheen. Then, from each of the three,
as they passed over the boundary--nothing! All radio communication
ceased as abruptly as though they'd been stricken dead."
He stared at Brand. "That's all I can tell you, little enough, God
knows. Something ominous and strange is contained in that red spot:
but what its nature may be, we cannot even guess. I want you to go
there and find out."
Brand's determined jaw jutted out, and his lips thinned to a
purposeful line. He stood to attention.
"I'll be leaving to-night, sir. Or sooner if you like. I could go this
afternoon: in an hour--"
"To-night is soon enough," said Stone with a smile. "Now, who do you
want to accompany you?"
Brand thought a moment. On so long a journey as a trip to Jupiter
there was only room in a space ship--what with supplies and all--for
one other man. It behooved him to pick his companion carefully.
"I'd like Dex Harlow," he said at last. "He's been to Jupiter before,
working with me in plotting the northern hemisphere. He's a good man."
"He is," agreed Stone, nodding approval of Brand's choice. "I'll have
him report to you at once."
He rose and held out his hand. "I'm relying on you, Captain Bowen," he
said. "I won't give any direct orders: use your own discretion. But I
would advise you not to try to land in the red area. Simply fly low
over it, and see what you can discern from the air. Good-by, and good
luck."
Brand saluted, and went out, to go to his own quarters and make the
few preparations necessary for his sudden emergency flight.
* * * * *
The work of exploring the planets that swung with Earth around the sun
was still a new branch of the service. Less than ten years ago, it had
been, when Ansen devised his first crude atomic motor.
At once, with the introduction of this tremendous new motive power,
men had begun to build space ships and explore the sky. And, as so
often happens with a new invention, the thing had grown rather beyond
itself.
Everywhere amateur space flyers launched forth into the heavens to try
their new celestial wings. Everywhere young and old enthusiasts set
Ansen motors into clumsily insulated shells and started for Mars or
the moon or Venus.
The resultant loss of life, as might have been foreseen, was
appalling. Eager but inexperienced explorers edged over onto the wrong
side of Mercury and were burned to cinders. They set forth in ships
that were badly insulated, and froze in the absolute zero of space.
They learned the atomic motor controls too hastily, ran out of
supplies or lost their courses, and wandered far out into space--stiff
corpses in coffins that were to be buried only in time's infinity.
To stop the foolish waste of life, the Earth Government stepped in. It
was decreed that no space ship might be owned or built privately. It
was further decreed that those who felt an urge to explore must join
the regular service and do so under efficient supervision. And there
was created the Government bureau designated as the Planetary
Exploration Control Board, which was headed by Commander Stone.
* * * * *
Under this Board the exploration of the planets was undertaken
methodically and efficiently, with a minimum of lives sacrificed.
Mercury was charted, tested for essential minerals, and found to be a
valueless rock heap too near the sun to support life.
Venus was visited and explored segment by segment; and friendly
relations were established with the rather stupid but peaceable people
found there.
Mars was mapped. Here the explorers had lingered a long time: and all
over this planet's surface were found remnants of a vast and intricate
civilization--from the canals that laced its surface, to great cities
with mighty buildings still standing. But of life there was none. The
atmosphere was too rare to support it; and the theory was that it had
constantly thinned through thousands of years till the last Martian
had gasped and died in air too attenuated to support life even in
creatures that must have grown greater and greater chested in eons of
adaptation.
Then Jupiter had been reached: and here the methodical planet by
planet work promised to be checked for a long time to come. Jupiter,
with its mighty surface area, was going to take some exploring! It
would be years before it could be plotted even superficially.
* * * * *
Brand had been to Jupiter on four different trips; and, as he walked
toward his quarters from Stone's office, he reviewed what he had
learned on those trips.
Jupiter, as he knew it, was a vast globe of vague horror and sharp
contrasts.
Distant from the sun as it was, it received little solar heat. But,
with so great a mass, it had cooled off much more slowly than any of
the other planets known, and had immense internal heat. This meant
that the air--which closely approximated Earth's air in density--was
cool a few hundred yards up from the surface of the planet, and dankly
hot close to the ground. The result, as the cold air constantly sank
into the warm, was a thick steamy blanket of fog that covered
everything perpetually.
Because of the recent cooling, life was not far advanced on Jupiter.
Too short a time ago the sphere had been but a blazing mass. Tropical
marshes prevailed, crisscrossed by mighty rivers at warmer than blood
heat. Giant, hideous fernlike growths crowded one another in an
everlasting jungle. And among the distorted trees, from the blanket of
soft white fog that hid all from sight, could be heard constantly an
ear-splitting chorus of screams and bellows and whistling snarls. It
made the blood run cold just to listen--and to speculate on what
gigantic but tiny-brained monsters made them.
Now and then, when Brand had been flying dangerously low over the
surface, a wind had risen strong enough to dispel the fog banks for an
instant; and he had caught a flash of Jovian life. Just a flash, for
example, of a monstrous lizard-like thing too great to support its own
bulk: or a creature all neck and tail, with ridges of scale on its
armored hide and a small serpentine head weaving back and forth among
the jungle growths.
* * * * *
Occasionally he had landed--always staying close to the space ship,
for Jupiter's gravity made movement a slow and laborious process, and
he didn't want to be caught too far from security. At such times he
might hear a crashing and splashing and see a reptilian head loom
gigantically at him through the fog. Then he would discharge the
deadly explosive gun which was Earth's latest weapon, and the creature
would crash to the ground. The chorus of hissings and bellowings would
increase as he hastened slowly and laboriously back to the ship,
indicating that other unseen monsters of the steamy jungle had flocked
to tear the dead giant to pieces and bolt it down.
Oh, Jupiter was a nice planet! mused Brand. A sweet place--if one
happened to be a two-hundred-foot snake or something!
He had always thought the entire globe was in that new, raw, marshy
state. But he had worked only in one comparatively small area of the
northern hemisphere; had never been within thirty thousand miles of
the red spot. What might lie in that ominous crimson patch, he could
not even guess. However, he reflected, he was soon to find out, though
he might never live to tell about it.
Shrugging his shoulders, he turned into the fifty story building in
which was his modest apartment. There he found, written by the
automatic stylus on his radio pad, the message: "Be with you at seven
o'clock. Best regards, and I hope you strangle. Dex Harlow."
* * * * *
Dex Harlow was a six-foot Senior Lieutenant who had been on many an
out-of-the-way exploratory trip. Like Brand he was just under thirty
and perpetually thirsting for the bizarre in life. He was a walking
document of planetary activity. He was still baked a brick red from a
trip to Mercury a year before: he had a scar on his forehead, the
result of jumping forty feet one day on the moon when he'd meant to
jump only twenty; he was minus a finger which had been irreparably
frost-bitten on Mars; and he had a crumpled nose that was the outcome
of a brush with a ten-foot bandit on Venus who'd tried to kill him for
his explosive gun and supply of glass, dyite-containing cartridges.
He clutched Brand's fingers in a bone-mangling grip, and threw his hat
into a far corner.
"You're a fine friend!" he growled cheerfully. "Here I'm having a
first rate time for myself, swimming and planing along the Riviera,
with two more weeks leave ahead of me--and I get a call from the Old
Man to report to you. What excuse have you for your crime?"
"A junket to Jupiter," said Brand. "Would you call that a good
excuse?"
"Jupiter!" exclaimed Dex. "Wouldn't you know it? Of course you'd have
to pick a spot four hundred million miles away from all that grand
swimming I was having!"
"Would you like to go back on leave, and have me choose someone else?"
inquired Brand solemnly.
"Well, no," said Dex hastily. "Now that I'm here, I suppose I might as
well go through with it."
Brand laughed. "Try and get you out of it! I know your attitude toward
a real jaunt. And it's a real jaunt we've got ahead of us, too, old
boy. We're going to the red spot. Immediately."
* * * * *
Dex's sandy eyebrows shot up. "The red spot! That's where Coblenz and
Heiroy were lost!"
"And Journeyman," added Brand. "He's the latest victim of whatever's
in the hell-hole."
Dex whistled. "Journeyman too! Well, all I've got to say is that
whatever's there must be strong medicine. Journeyman was a damn fine
man, and as brave as they come. Have you any idea what it's all
about?"
"Not an idea. Nobody has. We're to go and find out--if we can. Are you
all ready?"
"All ready," said Dex.
"So am I. We'll start at eleven o'clock in one of the Old Man's best
cruisers. Meanwhile, we might as well go and hunt up a dinner
somewhere, to fortify us against the synthetic pork chops and bread
we'll be swallowing for the next fortnight."
They went out; and at ten minutes of eleven reported at the great
space ship hangars north of New York, with their luggage, a
conspicuous item of which was a chess board to help while away the
long, long days of spacial travel. Brand then paused a little while
for a final check-up on directions.
They clambered into the tiny control room and shut the hermetically
sealed trap-door. Brand threw the control switch and precisely at
eleven o'clock the conical shell of metal shot heavenward, gathering
such speed that it was soon invisible to human eyes. He set their
course toward the blazing speck that was Jupiter, four hundred million
miles away; and then reported their start by radio to Commander
Stone's night operator.
The investigatory expedition to the ominous red spot of the giant of
the solar system was on.