The Early Asimov. Volume 2

They were walking through a shallow pass in which the yellow lupiter light gave way to a clammy darkness.

Orloff was disturbed. He had never had the case presented to him in this fashion before. He said, 'But the reason, man. What reason did we give them -'

'No reason! It was simply this: the Jovians had finally discovered from our messages - just where and how I don't know - that we were not Jovians.'

'Well, of course.'

'It wasn't "of course" to them. In their experiences they had never come across intelligences that were not Jovian. Why should they make an exception in favour of those from outer space?'

'You say they were scientists.' Orloff's voice had assumed a wary frigidity. 'Wouldn't they realize that alien environments would breed alien life? We knew it. We never thought the Jovians were Earthmen though we had never met intelligences other than those of Earth.'

They were back in the drenching wash of Jupiter light again, and a spreading region of ice glimmered amberly in a de-pression to the right.

Birnam answered, 'I said they were chemists and physicists -but I never said they were astronomers. Jupiter, my dear commissioner, has an atmosphere three thousand miles or more thick, and those miles of gas block off everything but the Sun and the four largest of Jupiter's moons. The Jovians know nothing of alien environments.'

Orloff considered. 'And so they decided we were aliens.

What next?'

'If we weren't Jovians, then, in their eyes, we weren't people. It turned out that a non-Jovian was "vermin" by definition.'

Orloff's automatic protest was cut off short by Birnam, 'In their eyes, I said, vermin we were; and vermin we are. Moreover, we were vermin with the peculiar audacity of having dared to attempt to treat with Jovians - with human beings. Their last message was this, word for word - "Jovians are the masters. There is no room for vermin. We will destroy you immediately." I doubt if there was any animosity in that message - simply a cold statement of fact. But they meant it.'

'But why?'

'Why did man exterminate the housefly?'

'Come, sir. You're not seriously presenting an analogy of that nature.'

'Why not, since it is certain that the Jovian considers us a sort of housefly - an insufferable type of housefly that dares aspire to intelligence.'

Orloff made a last attempt, 'But truly, Mr. Secretary, it seems impossible for intelligent life to adopt such an attitude.'

'Do you possess much of an acquaintance with any other type of intelligent life than our own?' came with immediate sarcasm. 'Do you feel competent to pass on Jovian psychology? Do you know just how alien Jovians must be physically? Just think of their world with its gravity at two and one half Earth normal; with its ammonia oceans - oceans that you might throw all Earth into without raising a respectable splash; with its three-thousand-mile atmosphere, dragged down by the colossal gravity into densities and pressures in its surface layers that make the sea bottoms of Earth resemble a medium-thick vacuum. I tell you we've tried to figure out what sort of life could exist under those conditions and we've given up. It's thoroughly incomprehensible. Do you expect their mentality, then, to be any more understandable? Never! Accept it as it is. They intend destroying us. That's all we know and all we need to know.'

He lifted a gloved hand as he finished and one finger pointed, 'There's Ether Station just ahead.'

Orloff's head swiveled, 'Underground?'

'Certainly! All except the Observatory. That's that steel and quartz dome to the right - the small one.'

They had stopped before two large boulders that flanked an earthy embankment, and from behind either one a nosepieced, suited soldier in Ganymedan orange, with blasters ready, advanced upon the two.

Birnam lifted his face into Jupiter's light and the soldiers saluted and stepped aside. A short word was barked into the wrist mike of one of them and the camouflaged opening between the boulders fell into two and Orloff followed the secretary into the yawning air lock.

The Earthman caught one last glimpse of sprawling Jupiter before the closing door cut off the surface altogether.

It was no longer beautiful!

Orloff did not quite feel normal again until he had seated himself in the overstuffed chair in Dr. Edward Prosser's private office. With a sigh of utter relaxation, he propped his monocle under his eyebrow.

'Would Dr. Prosser mind if I smoked in here, while we're waiting?' he asked.

'Go ahead,' replied Birnam, carelessly. 'My own idea would be to drag Prosser away from whatever he's fooling with just now, but he's a queer chap. We'll get more out of him if we wait until he's ready for us.' He withdrew a gnarled stick of greenish tobacco from its case, and bit off the edge viciously.

Orloff smiled through the smoke of his own cigarette, 'I don't mind waiting. I still have something to say. You see, for the moment, Mr. Secretary, you gave me the jitters, but, after all, granted that the Jovians intend mischief once they get at us, it remains a fact,' and here he spaced his words emphatically, 'that they can't get at us.'

'A bomb without a fuse, hey?'

'Exactly! It's simplicity itself, and not really worth discussing. You will admit, I suppose, that under no circumstances can the Jovians get away from Jupiter.'

'Under no circumstances?' There was a quizzical tinge in Birnam's slow reply. 'Shall we analyze that?'

He stared hard at the purple flame of his cigar. 'It's an old trite saying that the Jovians can't leave Jupiter. The fact has been highly publicized by the sensation-mongers of Earth and Ganymede and a great deal of sentiment has been driveled about the unfortunate intelligences who are irrevocably surface-bound, and must forever stare into the Universe without, watching, watching, wondering, and never attaining.

'But, after all, what holds the Jovians to their planet? Two factors! That's all! The first is the immense gravity field of the planet. Two and a half Earth normal.'

Orloff nodded. 'Pretty bad!' he agreed.

'And Jupiter's gravitational potential is even worse, for because of its greater diameter the intensity of its gravitational field decreases with distance only one tenth as rapidly as Earth's field does. It's a terrible problem - but it's been solved.'

'Hey?' Orloff straightened.

'They've got atomic power. Gravity - even Jupiter's - means nothing once you've put unstable atomic nuclei to work for you.'

Orloff crushed his cigarette to extinction with a nervous gesture. 'But their atmosphere -'

'Yes, that's what's stopping them. They're living at the bottom of a three-thousand-mile-deep ocean of it, where the hydrogen of which it is composed is collapsed by sheer pressure to something approaching the density of solid hydrogen. It stays a gas because the temperature of Jupiter is above the critical point of hydrogen, but you just try to figure put the pressure that can make hydrogen gas half as heavy as water. You'll be surprised at the number of zeros you'll have to put down.

'No spaceship of metal or of any kind of matter can stand that pressure. No Terrestrial spaceship can land on Jupiter without smashing like an eggshell, and no Jovian spaceship can leave Jupiter without exploding like a soap bubble. That problem has not yet been solved, but it will be some day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not for a hundred years, or a thousand. We don't know, but when it is solved, the Jovians will be on top of us. And it can be solved in a specific way.'

'I don't see how -'

'Force fields! We've got them now, you know.'

'Force fields!' Orloff seemed genuinely astonished, and he chewed the word over and over to himself for a few moments. 'They're used as meteor shields for ships in the asteroid zone -but I don't see the application to the Jovian problem.'