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“They wished to make some scientific observations of the Jovian surface,” said Thua. “Horx guided them, like you. Let him describe their activities.”
The pilot stirred in his chamber, spreading black wings. “We simply cruised about a few times. They had optical instruments, and took various spectroscopic readings. They said it was for research in solid-state physics.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Flandry. He stroked his mustache. “They have as many Jovoid planets in their sphere as we do. The detailed report on Jovian conditions which the first Ymirite settlers made to Terra, under the treaty, has never been secret. No, I just don’t believe that research yarn.”
“It did seem dubious,” agreed Thua, “but I do not pretend to understand every vagary of the alien mind. It was easier to oblige them than argue about it.”
Chives cleared his throat and said unexpectedly: “If I may take the liberty of a question, sir, were all these recent visitors of the Merseian species?”
Thua’s disgust could hardly be mistaken: “Do you expect me to register insignificant differences between one such race and another?”
Flandry sighed. “It looks like deadlock, doesn’t it?” he said.
“I can think of no way to give you positive assurance that Ymir is not concerned, except my word,” said Thua. “However, if you wish you may cruise about this planet at random and see if you observe anything out of the ordinary.” His screen went blank.
“Big fat chance!” muttered Flandry. “Give me a drink, Chives.”
“Will you follow the governor’s proposal?” asked Horx.
“Reckon so.” Flandry flopped into a chair. “Give us the standard guided tour. I’ve never been on Jupiter, and might as well have something to show for my time.”
The city fell behind, astonishingly fast. Flandry sipped the whiskey Chives had gotten from the supplies they had along, and watched the awesome landscape with half an eye. Too bad he was feeling so sour; this really was an experience such as is granted few men. But he had wasted hours on a mission which any second-year cadet could have handled … while guns were gathered at Syrax and Vixen stood alone against all hell … or even while Lady Diana danced with other men and Ivar del Bruno waited gri
“We’re rising, sir,” said Chives much later.
Flandry saw mountains which trembled and droned, blue mists that whirled about their metallic peaks, and then the Jovian ground was lost in darkness. The sky began to turn blood color. “What are we heading for now?” he asked. He checked a map. “Oh, yes, I see.”
“I venture to suggest to the pilot, sir, that our speed may be a trifle excessive,” said Chives.
Flandry heard the wind outside rise to a scream, with subsonic undertones that shivered in his marrow. Red fog flew roiled and tattered past his eyes. Beyond, he saw crimson clouds the height of a Terrestrial sierra, with lightning leaping in their bellies. The light from the screens washed like a dull fire into the cabin.
“Yes,” he muttered. “Slow down, Horx. There’ll be another one along in a minute, as the story has it—”
And then he saw the pilot rise up in his chamber, fling open a door, and depart. An instant afterward Flandry saw Horx beat wings against the spaceship’s furious slipstream; then the Ymirite was whirled from view. And then Chives saw the thing which hung in the sky before them, and yelled. He threw his tail around Flandry’s waist while he clung with hands and legs to a bunk stanchion. And then the world exploded into thunder and night.
V
Flandry awoke. He spent centuries wishing he hadn’t. A blurred green shape said: “Your aneurine, sir.”
“Go ’way,” mumbled Flandry. “What was I drinking?”
“Pardon my taking the liberty, sir,” said Chives. He pi
“Remind me to shoot you, slowly.” Flandry gagged for a while. The medicine took hold and he sat up. His brain cleared and he looked at the screen bank.
Only one of the viewers still functioned. It showed thick, drifting redness, shot through with blues and blacks. A steady rough growling, like the breakup of a polar ice pack, blasted its way through the ultimate rigidity of the force bubble — God, what must the noise be like outside? The cabin was tilted. Slumped in its lower corner, Flandry began to glide across the floor again; the ship was still being rolled about. The internal gravity field had saved their lives by cushioning the worst shock, but then it had gone dead. He felt the natural pull of Jupiter upon him, and every cell was weary from its own weight.
He focused on a twisted bunkframe. “Did I do that with my own little head?”
“We struck with great force, sir,” Chives told him. “I permitted myself to bandage your scalp. However, a shot of growth hormone will heal the cuts in a few hours, sir, if we escape the present dilemma.”
Flandry lurched to his feet. His bones seemed to be dragging him back downward. He felt the cabin walls tremble and heard them groan. The force bubble had held, which meant that its generator and the main power plant had survived the crash. Not unexpectedly; a ship like this was built on the “fail safe” principle. But there was no access whatsoever from this cabin to the pilot room — unless you were an Ymirite. It made no difference whether the ship was still flyable or not. Human and Shalmuan were stuck here till they starved. Or, more likely, till the atomic-power plant quit working, under some or other of the buffets this ship was receiving.
Well, when the force-field collapsed and Jovian air pressure flattened the cabin, it would be a merciful death.
“The hell with that noise,” said Flandry. “I don’t want to die so fast I can’t feel it. I want to see death coming, and make the stupid thing fight for every centimeter of me.”
Chives gazed into the sinister crimson which filled the last electronic window. His slight frame stooped, shaking in the knees; he was even less adapted to Jovian weight than Flandry. “Where are we, sir?” he husked. “I was thinking primarily about what to make for lunch, just before the collision, and—”
“The Red Spot area,” said Flandry. “Or, rather, the fringe of it. We must be on an outlying berg, or whatever the deuce they’re called.”
“Our guide appears to have abandoned us, sir.”
“Hell, he got us into this mess. On purpose! I now know for a fact there’s at least one Ymirite working for the enemy — whoever the enemy is. But the information won’t be much use if we become a pair of grease spots.”
The ship shuddered and canted. Flandry grabbed a stanchion for support, eased himself down on the bunk, and said, very quickly, for destruction roared around him:
“You’ve seen the Red Spot from space, Chives. It’s been known for a long time, even before space travel, that it’s a … a mass of aerial pack ice. Lord, what a fantastic place to die! What happens is that at a certain height in the Jovian atmosphere, the pressure allows a red crystalline form of ice — not the white stuff we splash whisky onto, or the black allotrope down at the surface, or the super-dense variety in the mantle around the Jovian core. Here the pressure is right for red ice, and the air density is identical, so it floats. An initial formation created favorable conditions for the formation of more … so it accumulated in this one region, much as polar caps build up on cozier type planets. Some years a lot of it melts away — changes phase — the Red Spot looks paler from outside. Other years you get a heavy pile-up, and Jupiter seems to have a moving wound. But always, Chives, the Red Spot is a pack of flying glaciers, stretching broader than all Terra. And we’ve been crashed on one of them!”