THROUGH THE CLOUD BLANKET
I thought of Earth as we fell. Tingling song, and bright awakenings and
laughter and joy and grief. Woodsmoke in October, tall ships and the
planets spinning and hurdy-gurdies in June.
I sat grimly by Joan's side on the pilot dais, setting my teeth as I
gripped the atomotor controls and stared out through the quartz port.
We were plummeting downward with dizzying speed. Outside the quartz
port there was a continuous misty glimmering splotched with nebulously
weaving spirals of flame.
We were already far below Jupiter's outer envelope of tenuous gases
in turbulent flux, and had entered a region of pressure drifts which
caused our little vessel to twist and lunge erratically. Wildly it
swept from side to side, its gyrations increasing in violence as I cut
the atomotor blasts and released a traveling force field of repulsive
negrations.
I thanked our lucky stars that the gravity tug had spared the atomotors
and the landing mechanism. We hadn't anything else to be thankful for.
I knew that if we plunged into a lake of fire even the cushioning force
field couldn't save us.
Joan seemed not to care. She was staring through the quartz port in an
attitude of intense absorption, a faint smile on her lips. There are
degrees of recklessness verging on insanity; of courage which deserves
no respect.
I had an impulse to shake her, and shout: "Do you realize we're
plunging to our death?" I had to keep telling myself that she was still
a child with no realization of what death meant. She simply couldn't
visualize extinction; the dreadful blackness sweeping in--
Our speed was decreasing now. The cushioning force field was slowing us
up, forcing the velocity needle sharply downward on the dial.
Joan swung toward me, her face jubilant. "We'll know in a minute,
Richard. We're only eight thousand miles above the planet's crust."
"Crust?" I flung at her. "You mean a roaring furnace."
"No, Richard. If Jupiter were molten we'd be feeling it now. The
plates would be white-hot."
It was true, of course. I hadn't realized it before. I wiped sweat from
my forehead, and stared at her with sombre respect. She had been right
for once. In her girlish folly she had out-guessed all the astronomers
on Earth.
The deceleration was making my temples throb horribly. We were
decelerating far too rapidly, but it was impossible to diminish the
speed-retarding pressure of the force field, and I didn't dare resort
to another atomotor charge so close to the planet's surface. To make
matters worse, the auxiliary luminalis blast tubes had been crippled by
the arrest of the force current, along with the almost indispensable
gravity stabilizers.
The blood was draining from my brain already. I knew that I was going
to lose consciousness, and my fingers passed swiftly up and down the
control panel, freezing the few descent mechanisms which were not
dependent on the interior force current in positions of stability and
maximum effectiveness, and cupping over the meteor collision emergency
jets.
Joan was the first to collapse. She had been quietly assisting me, her
slim hands hovering over the base of the instrument board. Suddenly as
we manipulated dials and rheostats she gave a little, choking cry and
slumped heavily against me.
There was a sudden increase of tension inside my skull. Pain stabbed at
my temples and the control panel seemed to waver and recede. I threw
my right arm about Joan and tried to prevent her sagging body from
slipping to the floor. A low, vibrant hum filled the chamber. We rocked
back and forth before the instrument board, our shoulders drooping.
We were still rocking when a terrific concussion shook the ship,
hurling us from the dais and plunging the chamber into darkness.
Bruised and dazed, I raised myself on one elbow and stared about me.
The jarred fluorescent cubes had begun to function again, filling the
pilot chamber with a slightly diminished radiance. But the chamber
was in a state of chaos. Twisted coils of _erillium_ piping lay at my
feet, and an overturned jar of sluice lubricant was spilling its sticky
contents over the corrugated metal floor.
Joan had fallen from the pilot dais and was lying on her side by the
quartz port, her face ashen, blood trickling from a wound in her cheek.
I pulled myself toward her, and lifted her up till her shoulders were
resting on my knees. Slowly her eyes blinked open, and bored into mine.
She forced a smile. "Happy landing?" she inquired.
"Not so happy," I muttered grimly. "You were right about Jupiter.
It's a solid world and we've landed smack upon it with considerable
violence, judging from the way things have been hurled about."
"Then the cushioning force field--"
"Oh, it cushioned us, all right. If it hadn't we'd be roasting merrily
inside a twisted mass of wreckage. But I wouldn't call it happy
landing. You've got a nasty cut there."
"I'm all right, Richard."
Joan reached up and patted my cheek. "Good old Richard. You're just
upset because we didn't plunge into a lake of molten zinc."
"Sure, that's it," I grunted. "I was hoping for a swift, easy out."
"Maybe we'll find it, Richard," she said, her eyes suddenly serious.
"I'm not kidding myself. I know what a whiff of absolute zero can do to
mucous membranes. All I'm claiming is that we've as good a chance here
as we would have had on Ganymede."
"I wish I could feel that way about it. How do we know the atomotors
can lift us from a world as massive as Jupiter?"
"I think they can, Richard. We had twelve times as much acceleration as
we needed on tap when we took off from Earth."
She was getting to her feet now. Her eyes were shining again,
exultantly. You would have thought we were descending in a stratoplane
above the green fields of Earth.
"I've a confession to make, Richard," she grinned. "Coming down, I was
inwardly afraid we _would_ find ourselves in a ghastly bubble and boil.
And I was seriously wondering how long we could stand it."
"Oh, you were."
"Longer than you think, Richard. Did you know that human beings
can stand simply terrific heat? Experimenters have stayed in rooms
artificially heated to a temperature of four hundred degrees for as
long as fifteen minutes without being injured in any way."
"Very interesting," I said. "But that doesn't concern us now. We've
got to find out if our crewmen are injured or badly shaken up. Chances
are they'll be needing splints. And we've got to check the atmosphere
before we can think of going outside, even with our helmets clamped
down tight.
"Chances are it's laden with poisonous gases which the activated carbon
in our oxygen filters won't absorb. If the atmosphere contains phosgene
we'll not be stepping out. I'm hoping we'll find only carbon monoxide
and methane."
"Nice, harmless gases."
"I didn't say that. But at least they'll stick to the outside of the
particles of carbon in the filter and not tear our lungs apart."
"A thought, Richard. Suppose we find nickel carbonyl. That's harmless
until it is catalyzed by carbon. Then it's worse than phosgene."
"There are lots of deadly ingredients we _could_ find," I admitted
with some bitterness. "Gases in solid toxic form--tiny dust granules
which would pass right through the filters into our lungs. Jupiter's
atmosphere may well be composed entirely of gases in solid phase."
"Let's hope not, Richard."
"We've been talking about lung corrosives," I said, relentlessly. "But
our space suits are not impermeable, you know. There are gases which
injure the skin, causing running sores. Vesicant gases. The fact that
there are no vesicants on Io and Europa doesn't mean we won't encounter
them here. And there are nerve gases which could drive us mad in less
time than it takes to--"
"Richard, you always were an optimist."
I stared at her steadily for an instant; then shrugged. "All right,
Joan. I hope you won't fall down on any of the tests. We've got to
project an ion detector, a barometer and a moist cloud chamber outside
the ship through a vacuum suction lock, in addition to the atmosphere
samplers. And we've got to bandage that face wound before you bleed to
death."