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CHAPTER I
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."

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CHAPTER 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.