"I'm sorry, honey. But we can't risk twenty lives and a quarter million
credits' worth of Corporation property on the hazard of finding one
man. Give the order, Mr. Todd!"
Todd said willingly, "Aye, sir!" and reached out to push the audio
stud. My heart sank. The needle was almost upon the split second that
should have seen us putting Biggs' mysterious plan into operation. I
yelled, "Skipper, _please_!"
"Give the order, Todd!" repeated Hanson regretfully.
But Todd's hand never reached the button. For just then there came a
terrific, straining lunge of the ship; the floor seemed to slip beneath
my feet, I toppled headlong to my knees. Plates groaned and creaked in
metal agony. I felt a sensation of wild acceleration, a dizzying sense
of speed intensified, plunging us forward--downward--
And Todd cried, "Too late! Too late, Skipper! God help us--we're
falling onto Jupiter!"
* * * * *
I told you folks say I'm hard-boiled. People also claim I'm a wingding.
They say lots of things about me--none of them nice. But I'll say this
one thing for myself in self-defense. That once in a million times I
show a good streak of common sense.
This was one of those times. While everyone else was wailing and
hollering and going off the top of their buds, I got smart and carried
on.
I roared, "Dammit all, Lanse _knew_ this was going to happen, and
planned for it. Depress that No. 3 lever, Todd! Shoot the juice through
those coils we've been building!"
And Todd was so rattled that he obeyed me. Like I told you before, we'd
created a wild-looking network of wires all over the framework of the
_Saturn_. We had even constructed a whole new inner hull, juicing it
according to some diagram that didn't appear to make sense.
Now rheostats rheostated and condensers condense and the air got so
full of electricity that my teeth began to hum like bees in a bathtub.
And it got hot in the control-turret. But--
But our frightful plunging motion ceased! Not just like _that_, you
know; I don't mean we stopped stock-still and hung motionless in space.
But we drifted into an easy glide. A gentle, leaf-in-the-breeze sort of
motion.
Cap Hanson's jaw fell down to his fourth button. A gasp worked its way
up out of his lumbar region. "It--it's impossible!" he said. "I--I
don't believe it!"
I didn't either. For what we were seeing mirrored on the turret
visiplate was something no man in the universe had ever seen
before--and lived to tell about it. We were seeing the troposphere, the
stratosphere, the surface atmosphere of the massive planet Jupiter at
easy visual range. And we were drifting to solid ground so gently that
we were in no more danger than a parachutist approaching a field full
of sofa cushions!
It didn't even occur to me, then, to notice how far off the scientists
had been in attributing fantastic characteristics to unstudied
Jupiter. Because its density was so much less than Earth's, they had
envisioned it as a gaseous or semi-liquid planet. Which was so much
hogwash. It was a normal-sized core surrounded by blankets, thousands
of miles deep, of atmosphere. It was lush, luxuriant, green. Steamy
with vapors, riotous with vegetable life. Protected by its swaddling
clothes, it was the most likely abode of life Man had ever found
outside his native Earth!
But as I say, I scarcely noticed this at first. I was conscious only of
my own pulse-numbing astonishment, of the casual, lazy motion of our
ship, of Captain Hanson gasping beside me in a cracked, incredulous
voice, "Anti-gravitation! _He's found it!_"
Our task was not yet done. The instructions called for the lifting and
depression of a dozen more studs. But by now, Dick Todd--who is a damn
sight better navigator than he is a mental giant--was hunched over his
controls playing the intricate keys like a master organist.
In three hours that sped by like as many minutes we had gained the
surface of Jupiter. We sought the declension points Biggs' ghost had
set forth to us. We hovered over the juncture ... spotted a small,
glistening mote of silver beneath us ... lowered on our amazing
anti-gravitational beam. It was a perfect landing. Less than an eighth
of a mile from the lean, gangling, radiant, unspace-suited figure who
came racing across the field toward us--
* * * * *
Afterward, when everyone had stopped trying to talk at once, and a
modicum of coherence worked its way into our glad reunion, I pressed
Biggs for explanations. He grinned in that amiable, modest way of his.
"Why, it wasn't much, really, Sparks," he protested. "I never was lost
in hyper-space, of negative space, at all! You see, when I cut myself
loose in the life-skiff from the 'infinite mass' of the _Saturn_, in
order to reestablish the ship's finiteness, I also made my _own_ craft
finite again. Which is pure common sense. Anything less than infinite
is necessarily finite--"
"Comes the dawn," I groaned. "And I like to think I've got brains. But
go on!"
"Well, by sheer accident, the spot in space where I became finite
again happened to be here. On the surface of Jupiter. I was pretty
much surprised, as you can guess, to learn that this is a definitely
habitable planet. Good air, plenty of food and water--no handicaps but
its tremendous bulk." He sobered momentarily. "None of the others who
ever crashed here survived, I guess," he said. "I've found three or
four spaceships, broken to bits--
"Well, anyway--I realized that the only way for me to ever get away was
to find some method of counteracting the planet's terrific gravity.
And it suddenly occurred to me that the answer lay in a laboratory
curiosity created way back in the 20th Century. A piece of magnetized
steel that floated within upright supports above a counter-magnetized
plate.
"I adapted this principle and gave it a few refinements of my own. The
instructions I gave you created a dual-magnet hull for the _Saturn_.
Inner hull positively charged, outer hull negative. Counterbalance,
you see. The outside of the ship repelled the gravitational attraction
of Jupiter so strongly that it could never have landed. The inner hull
tempered the effect of the outer so that an easy, drifting motion was
obtained. You could vary the speed of this simply by altering the
amount of E.M.F. running through the coils--"
"We discovered that," interrupted the Old Man. "But you still haven't
told us, son, about your 'ghost.' You like to scared the almighty hell
out of all of us. How--"
Lance grinned shyly.
"Well, I can't take credit for that, Skipper. You see, it was sheer
accident. I found a deposit of some strange new substance here on
Jupiter with the most peculiar properties. The stuff seems to polarize
light at its source--and reorganize it into a tri-dimensional image at
a distance which can be controlled by electric power.
"When I discovered that my own life-skiff couldn't make the long trip
to Europa or Io, I decided to project my image out into space in the
hope I'd find someone. The telekaleidoscopic rays--I guess we can call
'em that till we get a better name--are naturally attracted to metals.
This cut down the haphazardness of the attempt.
"It was sheer chance, though, that you should be my rescuers. Though I
might have known you wouldn't abandon me without a long search. I--I'm
mighty grateful to you, sir."
His words struck Hanson like a thunder-clap. And the Old Man groaned.
"_Omigawd!_"
"What's wrong, Skipper?"
"I just remembered--we was supposed to be on Europa twenty-four hours
ago! By this time, all the available claims will be gobbled up. When
the Corporation learns about this, we're all going to be sunk!"
Diane said indignantly, "Ridiculous! You've made the first landing on
Jupiter, Daddy. Surely that should be enough glory for them."
"That's glory," admitted Hanson dolefully, "but it ain't enough glory
for _them_. I know this outfit, honey. I been working for them, man and
boy, for nigh onto forty years. Their motto is: Get all you can and
then some!
"It ain't going to matter to them that we found our lost First,
discovered anti-grav, and made the first landing on a new planet. No
sirree! They sent us out to find polarium deposits, and if we don't
come home with the best claim--"