A Meeting with Medusa

Jupiter, but all the giants.”

Webster looked at the figures, and whistled.

“Why not start with an easier planet. Uranus, for example? Half the gravity, and less than half the escape velocity. Quieter weather too, if that’s the right word for it.”

Webster had certainly done his homework. But that, of course, was why he was head of Long-Range Planning.

“There’s very little saving when you allow for the extra distance and the logistics problems. For Jupiter, we can use the facilities of Ganymede. Beyond Saturn, we’d have to establish a new supply base.”

Logical, thought Webster, but he was sure that it was not the important reason. Jupiter was lord of the solar system, Falcon would be interested in no lesser challenge.

“Besides,” Falcon continued, “Jupiter is a major scientific scandal. It’s more than a hundred years since its radio storms were discovered, but we still don’t know what causes them and the Great Red Spot is as big a mystery as ever. That’s why I can get matching funds from the Bureau of Astronautics. Do you know how many probes they have dropped into that atmosphere?”

“A couple of hundred, I believe.”

“Three hundred and twenty-six, over the last fifty years, about a quarter of them total failures. Of course, they’ve learned a hell of a lot, but they’ve barely scratched the planet. Do you realise how big it is?”

“More than ten times the size of Earth.”

“Yes, yes, but do you know what that really means?”

Falcon pointed to the large globe in the corner of Webster’s office.

“Look at India, how small it seems. Well, if you skinned Earth and spread it out on the surface of Jupiter, it would look about as big as India does here.”

There was a long silence while Webster contemplated the equation:

Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India. Falcon had deliberately, of course, chosen the best possible example…

Was it already ten years ago? Yes, it must have been. The crash lay seven years in the past (that date was engraved on his heart), and those initial tests had taken place three years before the first and last flight of the Queen Elizabeth.

Ten years ago, then, Commander (no, Lieutenant) Falcon had invited him to a preview a three-day drift across the northern plains of India, within sight of the Himalayas. “Perfectly safe,” he had promised. “It Will get you away from the office and will teach you what this whole thing is about.”

Webster had not been disappointed. Next to his first journey to the Moon, it had been the most memorable experience of his life. And yet, as Falcon had assured him, it had been perfectly safe, and quite uneventful.

They had taken off from Srinagar just before dawn, with the huge silver bubble of the balloon already catching the first light of the Sun. The ascent had been made in total silence; there were none of the roaring propane burners that had lifted the hot-air balloons of an earlier age. All the heat they needed came from the little pulsed-fusion reactor, weighing only about two hundred and twenty pounds, hanging in the open mouth of the envelope. While they were climbing, its laser was zapping ten times a second, igniting the merest whiff of deuterium fuel. Once they had reached altitude, it would fire only a few times a minute, making up for the heat lost through the great gasbag overhead.

And so, even while they were almost a mile above the ground, they could hear dogs barking, people shouting, bells ringing. Slowly the vast, Sun-smitten landscape expanded around them. Two hours later, they had levelled out at three miles and were taking frequent draughts of oxygen. They could relax and admire the scenery, the on-board instrumentation was doing all the work, gathering the information that would be required by the designers of the still-unnamed liner of the skies.

It was a perfect day. The southwest monsoon would not break for another month, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. Time seemed to have come o a stop, they resented the hourly radio reports which interrupted their reverie. And all around, to the horizon and far beyond, was that infinite, magnificient landscape, drenched with history, a patchwork of villages, fields, temples, lakes, irrigation canals…

With a real effort, Webster broke the hypnotic spell of that ten-year-old history. It had converted him to lighter-than-air flight and it had made him realise the enormous size of India, even in a world that could be circled within ninety minutes. And yet, he repeated to himself, Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India …

“Granting your argument,” he said, “and supposing the funds are available, there’s another question you have to answer. Why should you do better than the, what is it, three hundred and twenty-six robot probes that have already made the trip?”

“I am better qualified than they were, as an observer, and as a pilot. Especially as a pilot. Don’t forget I’ve more experience of lighter-than-air travel than anyone in the world.”

“You could still serve as controller, and sit safely on Ganymede.”

That’s just the point! They’ve already done that. Don’t you remember what killed the Queen?”

Webster knew perfectly well, but he merely answered: “Go on.”

“Time lag, time lag! That idiot of a platform controller thought he was using a local radio circuit. But he’d been accidentally switched through a satellite. Oh, maybe it wasn’t his fault, but he should have noticed. That’s half-second time lag for the round trip. Even then it wouldn’t have matered flying in calm air. It was the turbulence over the Grand Canyon that did it. When the platform tipped, and he corrected for that it had already tipped the other way. Ever tried to drive a car over a bumpy road with a half-second delay in the steering?”

“No, and I don’t intend to try. But I can imagine it.”

“Well, Ganymede is a million kilometres from Jupiter. That means a round-trip delay of six seconds. No, you need a controller on the spot to handle emergencies in real time. Let me show you something. Mind if I use this?”

“Go ahead.”

Falcon picked up a postcard that was lying on Webster’s desk, they were almost obsolete on Earth, but this one showed a 3-D view of a Martian landscape, and was decorated with exotic and expensive stamps. He held it so that it dangled vertically.

“This is an old trick, but helps to make my point. Place your thumb and finger on either side, not quite touching. That’s right.”

Webster put out his hand, almost but not quite gripping the card.

“Now catch it.”

Falcon waited for a few seconds, then, without warning, he let go of the card. Webster’s thumb and finger closed on empty air.

“I’ll do it again, just to show there’s no deception. You see?”

Once again, the falling card had slipped through Webster’s fingers.

“Now you try it on me.

This time, Webster grasped the card and dropped it without warning. It had scarcely moved before Falcon had caught it. Webster almost imagined he could hear a click, so swift was the other’s reaction.

“When they put me together again,” Falcon remarked in an expressionless voice, “the surgeons made some improvements. This is one of them and there are others. I want to make the most of them. Jupiter is the place where I can do it.”

Webster stared for long seconds at the fallen card, absorbing the improbable colours of the Trivium Charontis Escarpment. Then he said quietly: “I understand. How long do you think it will take?”

“With your help, plus the Bureau, plus all the science foundations we can drag in, oh, three years. Then a year for trials we’ll have to send in at least two test models. So, with luck, five years.

“That’s about what I thought. I hope you get your luck, you’ve earned it. But there’s one thing I won’t do.”

“What’s that?”

“Next time you go ballooning, don’t expect me as passenger.