“Sorry, sir,” the little man apologized. “I couldn’t get you on the visiplate. 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.”
II
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 outguessed 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
