OUT IN SPACE
I was out in space with Joan for the sixth time. It might as well have
been the eighth or tenth. It went on and on. Every time I rebelled Joan
would shrug and murmur: "All right, Richard. I'll go it alone then."
Joan was a little chit of a girl with spun gold hair and eyes that
misted when I spoke of Pluto and Uranus, and glowed like live coals
when we were out in space together.
Joan had about the worst case of exploritis in medical history. To
explain her I had to take to theory. Simply to test out whether she
could survive and reach maturity in an environment which was hostile
to human mutants, Nature had inserted in her make-up every reckless
ingredient imaginable. Luckily she had survived long enough to fall in
love with sober and restraining me. We supplemented each other, and as
I was ten years her senior my obligations had been clear-cut from the
start.
We were heading for Ganymede this time, the largest satellite of
vast, mist-enshrouded Jupiter. Our slender space vessel was thrumming
steadily through the dark interplanetary gulfs, its triple atomotors
roaring. I knew that Joan would have _preferred_ to penetrate the
turbulent red mists of Ganymede's immense primary, and that only my
settled conviction that Jupiter was a molten world restrained her.
We had talked it over for months, weighing the opinions of Earth's
foremost astronomers. No "watcher of the night skies" could tell us
very much about Jupiter. The year 1973 had seen the exploration of the
moon, and in 1986 the crews of three atomotor-propelled space vessels
had landed on Mars and Venus, only to make the disappointing discovery
that neither planet had ever sustained life.
By 2002 three of the outer planets had come within the orbit of human
exploration. There were Earth colonies on all of the Jovian moons now,
with the exception of Ganymede. Eight exploring expeditions had set
out for that huge and mysterious satellite, only to disappear without
leaving a trace.
I turned from a quartz port brimming with star-flecked blackness to
gaze on my reckless, nineteen-year-old bride. Joan was so strong-willed
and competent that it was difficult for me to realize she was scarcely
more than a child. A veteran of the skyways, you'd have thought her,
with her slim hands steady on the controls, her steely eyes probing
space.
"The more conservative astronomers have always been right," I said.
"We knew almost as much about the moon back in the eighteenth century
as we do now. We get daily weather reports from Tycho now, and there
are fifty-six Earth colonies beneath the lunar Apennines. But the
astronomers knew that the moon was a sterile, crater-pitted world a
hundred years ago. They knew that there was no life or oxygen beneath
its brittle stars generations before the first space vessel left Earth.
"The astronomers said that Venus was a bleak, mist-enshrouded world
that couldn't sustain life and they were right. They were right about
Mars. Oh, sure, a few idle dreamers thought there might be life on
Mars. But the more conservative astronomers stood pat, and denied that
the seasonal changes could be ascribed to a low order of vegetative
life. It's a far cry from mere soil discoloration caused by melting
polar ice caps to the miracle of pulsing life. The first vessel to
reach Mars proved the astronomers right. Now a few crack-brained
theorists are trying to convince us that Jupiter may be a solid, cool
world."
Joan turned, and frowned at me. "You're letting a few clouds scare
you, Richard," she said. "No man on Earth knows what's under the mist
envelope of Jupiter."
"A few clouds," I retorted. "You know darned well that Jupiter's
gaseous envelope is forty thousand miles thick--a seething cauldron of
heavy gases and pressure drifts rotating at variance with the planet's
crust."
"But Ganymede is mist-enshrouded too," scoffed Joan. "We're hurtling
into _that_ cauldron at the risk of our necks. Why not Jupiter instead?"
"The law of averages," I said, "seasoned with a little common sense.
Eight vessels went through Ganymede's ghost shroud into oblivion. There
have been twenty-six attempts to conquer Jupiter. A little world cools
and solidifies much more rapidly than a big world. You ought to know
that."
"But Ganymede isn't so little. You're forgetting it's the biggest
satellite in the solar system."
"But still little--smaller than Mars. Chances are it has a solid crust,
like Callisto, Io, and Europa."
There was a faint, rustling sound behind us. Joan and I swung about
simultaneously, startled by what was obviously a space-code infraction.
A silvery-haired, wiry little man was emerging through the beryllium
steel door of the pilot chamber, his face set in grim lines. I am not
a disciplinarian, but my nerves at that moment were strained to the
breaking point. "What are you doing here, Dawson," I rapped, staring
at him in indignation. "We didn't send for you."
"Sorry, sir," the little man apologized. "I couldn't get you on the
visi-plate. It's gone dead, sir."
Joan drew in her breath sharply. "You mean there's something wrong with
the cold current?"
Dawson nodded. "Nearly every instrument on the ship has gone dead, sir.
Gravity-stabilizers, direction gauges, even the intership communication
coils."
Joan leapt to her feet. "It must be the stupendous gravity tug of
Jupiter," she exclaimed. "Hadley warned us it might impede the
molecular flow of our cold force currents the instant we passed
Ganymede's orbit."
Exultation shone in her gaze. I stared at her, aghast. She was actually
rejoicing that the Smithsonian physicist had predicted our destruction.
Knowing that vessels were continually traveling to Io and Callisto
despite their nearness to the greatest disturbing body in the Solar
System, I had assumed we could reach Ganymede with our navigation
instruments intact. I had scoffed at Hadley's forebodings, ignoring the
fact that we were using cold force for the first time in an atomotor
propelled vessel, and were dependent on a flow adjustment of the utmost
delicacy.
Dawson was staring at Joan in stunned horror. Our fate was sealed and
yet Joan had descended from the pilot dais and was actually waltzing
about the chamber, her eyes glowing like incandescent meteor chips.
"We'll find out now, Richard," she exclaimed. "It's too late for
caution or regrets. We're going right through forty thousand miles of
mist to Jupiter's _solid_ crust."