“Oh, I’ve been in worse spots, Jim. There was that time . . .”
“Shut up. I ain’t going to listen to any more of your fish yarns.” He had thrown up his head and now whirled to face me. His lips were white, trembling. “Well, I’m not going down there, Denny, y’ understand? I’m not going. You can’t take me in there!”
I knew Small had been jumpy of late. I’ve seen men go off the handle like that before. A word usually straightened them out. I smirked, and in my most jovial manner: “What you going to do, old man? Get out and walk home?”
He came close, leaning over the desk, his face on the level with mine. I saw beads of perspiration on his brow. “Now listen here, Denny, you’re not taking me in there I tell you. Call it mutiny, if you like, but there’s no reason why you and me should commit suicide for a woman we’ve never seen in our lives. I refuse, Denny, I refuse—FLAT!”
As he spoke he pounded the top of the desk, but now he caught my right hand and dragged it from the manuals. Half-rising in my seat I drove my left to his chin so that he dropped like a stone to the metal floor of our cubicle. To tell the truth, I was squeamish myself about entering the Jovian atmosphere, but a girl in distress is a girl in distress, just as orders are orders.
It was with hard work and careful application to my studies that I had gained my present position of captain of a two-man patrol-ship. True, the duties of an ordinary patrolman are not a too-responsible job. Usually, it’s simply a matter of following a prescribed beat a few thousand miles out in space from Jupiter waiting orders to scout after a space-yacht that has dared to come too close to Jupiter, or because of the incompetency of its crew, is on the point of falling toward that great planet whose powerful gravitation is felt far out in space.
Not all ships are highly powered enough to withstand that “pull”; only the two-man bulldogs of the Jupiter Patrol are built to cruise near the surface, carrying with them enough power to drag another helpless ship back to safety. Four ten-man ships of the Union Patrol were the exception to the rule, but rarely did they ever encroach on our territory.
Jupiter was the last stronghold to withstand the onslaught of civilization. In the first place, the settling of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn was of recent date. There was much to be accomplished on these worlds, and it would be a long while yet before man was ready to push on to the monster planet where the surface gravity was 2.52 times that of Earth.
It would be next to impossible for the human race to live there without artificial agencies. Science must first lead the way for human habitation, and as yet science had not put its mark of approval on Jupiter. The human race was more concerned with the four central moons of Jupiter, but although the last four moons are very small, valuable minerals and ores have been discovered upon them, so that there were small settlements on their surface to reap the harvests.
Io, the second satellite, headquarters of the Outer Planets’ Union was also headquarters of the Jovian patrol. Many of Earth’s wealthy have bought homes upon these worlds and traffic between the first five satellites is quite extensive. That is the reason for the two-man patrols, a safe-guard against private yachts from being caught and dragged down by Jupiter as they pass the larger world on their journeys to and from the various moons.
The belief that Jupiter is still in a molten state is fostered by the presence of the heavy cloud-banks hiding the surface from view, slightly luminous clouds that seem to glow with fires from below. To add to this theory are the various “spots” that appear suddenly in this envelope, remaining for a time and then disappearing again in somewhat the same manner as the solar sun-spots. Of these spots the Great Red Spot is the most noteworthy.
Making its first appearance in 1989 it has persisted for several centuries so that now in the early twenty-third century it appears permanent, remaining the most prominent feature of the great planet. It lies in the vicinity of Jupiter’s equator, and is roughly 45,000 miles long and 8000 miles wide. Its center is a deep red, and unlike other spots of the past it does not rotate with the planet, but remains in one place, always facing the sun. It was close to this spot that the kidnapper’s ship was seen to enter the atmosphere.
l Corlis Breeley, renowned astronomer of Europa, put forth the theory that Jupiter, after all, is actually a solid; and to prove his theories several expeditions within the past eight months had dived into Jupiter’s thick envelope, only to become lost. Not a single man from any of the three expeditions had, to date, returned to tell his tale.
One could scarcely denounce Jim Small for not wanting to go down there, and as I have said I was doubtful about the outcome of our adventure. Yet, the months that I had spent in the close proxmity of those whirling mists had engendered in me the desire to enter, to see for myself what lay below. Perhaps my desire arose from the same feeling some men are said to feel when they peer over great heights, the desire to jump! Nothing could have stopped me from taking that initial plunge.
With hands on the controls I waited for Small to rise from the floor. Close to my right hand lay my gun, filled with mean little explosive “bullets whose peppery fire could make mince-meat of a man even though the bullets or “pills,” as they are called in the vernacular, are of minute size. I had no intention of doing damage to Small, but I had it beside me just in case. Frightened men can lose complete control of their reasoning faculties.
Small came up whining. “Come on, Denny, be a sport. Cut this job and call it quits. Why, man alive, it’s suicide for us both. Come on. We’ll scoot for Saturn.
I know a guy out that way that’d be glad to get two huskies like us with a bull-dog. He’d pay us double what those small timers on Io pay, and plenty beside for the ship. Don’t be a fool. It’s death, rotten death in there . . .”
At his words I saw red; I forgot to grin. No man could propose desertion to me. “You dirty rat,” I cried. “I always knew you were yellow. I know the guy you mention, and one of these days, after I do this job, I’m going to take a ten-man and clean out that den of thieves!”
“Yah! Well, listen, mug. We’re not going to Jupiter. See!” And he brought his gun to the level of my eyes. “Take those hands of yours off the controls,” he ordered.
He was standing slightly behind my chair, his eyes on me.
“LOOKOUT!” I yelled pointing a finger toward the forward port. Small did what I expected of him, jerking his head in fear toward the window, while his gun arm slid forward. As I spoke I had given my chair a backward shove, was upon my feet, and before Small realized what I was about I had flung him to the floor again. Under the menace of my gun he got to his feet and I ordered him to the forward chair that stood in front of the control desk. He took off his belt at my instruction, and I fastened his arms securely to the chair back. Then I returned to the controls.
When orders came to follow the abductors of Willa March we were abreast of Jupiter’s north pole. It was approximately 60,000 miles to the Great Red Spot, and as soon as we passed over Jupiter’s equatorial bulge I could see the giant maelstrom long before we arrived. The sight of that twisting, turning whirlpool was aweinspiring. Having observed the Spot many times I knew it was a storm center for winds of more than hurricane and cyclonic force, and I doubted any ship could live in its proximity.
In his chair Small was strangely silent, not saying a word, and I could see that the side of his face, which was in my line of vision, was contorted, his eyes bulged half out of their sockets as he stared in downright fright at the Spot. The thick, vaporous atmosphere beyond the Spot gave no clue of what lay below, but outside the rim of the storm area the clouds were fairly quiet; only, now and then, were they rumpled as a vagrant wind swept through them. And it was at this point that the kidnappers had been seen by the telescopes of Io to enter the clouds.
I said no word to Small as I turned the ship’s blunt nose downward, but as we slid into that luminous mist I heard moans issuing from his mouth. No doubt, he considered himself dead already, expecting to see great fla
mes come up through the mists to lick the shell of our ship. A stiff wind caught the nose of the bulldog, but I steadied it as I kept my eye on the instrument, bank washed now by the pale copperish glow that is part and parcel of the planet. Inside our ship was the silence of the tomb, though I could imagine the shriek of the winds that my instruments told were sweeping around us. Then, suddenly, the instrument board went hay-wire. Dials swung, spun, twisted wildly and stopped.
Unbelieving I stared at them. As long as I had my dials to depend upon I was unafraid, but without them how was I to know where we were? What diabolical demon lurked in these opaque mists? How far was down? How long had we been falling? Where? How? Why?
Never before had I realized how dependent man is upon his mechanical senses, his chronometers, his altitude and atmospheric gauges. It was as if we were tossed back into the stone-age of man. We were a ship without a rudder, a man without a compass in the forest primeval. I feared to touch a control. A twist of a lever might send us flying parallel to the surface, lost in the luminous opacity that was neither solid nor gaseous, headed for the Red Spot itself.
A heavy wind caught the ship around the belly and I dared not do a thing to right it. There was the crackle of static electricity in the air, my hair stood on end as if each individual hair had been wired. Blue sparks flew from my clothes if I moved a single muscle. The ship had been magnetized; we were in a powerful electromagnetic field!
Tentatively I reached forward a hand to the gravity-nullifiers. Would they work? Or had the plates of the ship’s hull also become magnetized? I switched on the lower hull connections, waited. And behold, the mists were clearing. Soon we’d see the sun, the blessed sun. I was retreating.
But there was no sun! Instead, above us was lying a land, a land tinted a copperish red, a rolling country, a country of low-lying hills clothed in verdure, trees. The gleam of a lake shone in the far distances, a river meandered through a pretty country. That some of it was cultivated country was evident by the alternate patches of bare earth and blocks of growing things, geometrically straight lines between the blocks, low rock fences! But for a difference in coloring it might have been an Earthly scene, only here the verdure was for the most part purple, although I saw patches of red, blue, orange; and the soil was pale lavender.
CHAPTER II
The Lilliputians
l So! This was Jupiter.
When I thought we were hull downward, we were really upside down, and the nullifers had forced us toward the surface! Small stared as I stared, wondering, thrilled at our great find. His past fears were forgotten as he drank in that peaceful, beckoning scene. I was busy righting the ship, or rather trying to right it. Our gravitators made up or down the same to us whatever the position of the ship, but to land we must be right side up. And the ship was responding sloppily. It was sluggish, needed a great deal of coaxing. Before I had leveled it out we had approached the surface by several hundred feet.
I turned to Small. “Well, what do you think of Jupiter now, Jim? Ready to behave yourself?”
“Sure, Denny. I guess—I sorta lost my head. Nerves! Sorry I acted like a fool. You can untie me now, on my word of honor.”
I came to his side, unbuckled his belt. “Where you bound for now?” He wanted to know as he stretched his arms and rubbed stiff muscles. He was trying to act as if the past were forgotten.
“Got to find the kidnappers—in case they managed to get through . . .” I switched the telescopic eye of our vision screen toward the ceiling, but the clouds above were serene, untroubled so far as I could see. “Guess, we’d better course ’round a bit, make circles if we have to, until we find something . . .”
In his attempt to make the past wholly forgotten Small became very much preoccupied with the forward screen, carefully scanning every foot of the surface below. The kidnappers might have landed. Once he called out that he had seen something suspiciously like a wrecked ship, but a more careful study showed it to be nothing more than a windbreak formed by the fall of a number of trees. But the next time he called out, he had something to show. Below us lay a city!
It wasn’t the sort of city men of Earth build on their far-flung possessions, but its collection of low buildings was enough to warrant the name. They were hardly more than round huts with conical roofs, set between narrow streets with plan and foresight, and there was a rude-stone fence encircling the village. Beyond were the well-cultivated fields of this native people. A herd of some sort of bovines were grazing in a field. But what sort of creatures the people were we could not guess; not a single inhabitant was in sight. Most likely all had fled for cover at the appearance of our ship.
The very fact that the town was deserted killed my sudden hope that this was a town-site erected by the survivors of the three scientific expeditions that had come here within the past year. They would not have fled from a space-ship. Had we not been seeking other game I would have brought the patrol down beside the village. I said to Small instead: “To think we’ve been patrolling this planet all these months while there were people just below our feet. We’ll visit this place later, when we get the girl.”
“You notice anything strange about this place, Denny?” Small wanted to know a few moments later. “I mean the—er—seeing qualities . . .”
“Yes, I’ve noticed. The light seems rather deceptive. Things that look close, suddenly change around, sideslip sorta.”
“Yah! It’s like looking through the small end of a telescope one time, and through the other end the next. You can’t seem to get a decent perspective on anything!” I had noticed the strange effect Small mentioned. It was as if our eyes refused to focus properly. A scene near at hand inexplicably changed its relation with us and the ship, and slid into the distance. The trouble seemed to lay with the quality of the copperish light that filled this world as if it were denser in one place than at another. It was very disconcerting.
Small cried out again that he had sighted a second village, but like the first, it was deserted also. I did not give it a glance, for I was otherwise preoccupied. Since breaking through the clouds I had been trying to calculate the height at which we were flying. Without the instruments working it was proving a tall order. I spoke to Small. “How’re your weather eyes? How high d’you think we are? The dials all went fluey in the clouds.”
He looked around spectulatively. “Hum. I should say the ceiling’s ’bout a thousand feet up, and we’re—no, it’s only five or six hundred. Damn this light I . . .”
“Don’t bother, with the ceiling. How far are we from the surface?
“Why, I should say we’re six or seven hundred up. No, about four—er make it seven . . .”
“Make up your mind.” But I knew he could do no better. It seemed to our eyes that either our ship was bobbing up or down, else the land and clouds were unsteady, shifting. According to my calculation, and the relative size of the landscape below us, we should have been from seven to eight hundred feet up, but what with that unsettled appearance of everything, and the distance of the horizon it didn’t seem to agree at all.
I said as much to Small who laughed: “You seem to be forgetting that this world is just eleven times the size of Earth, and therefore your horizon’s only eleven times further away, or something to that effect. I ain’t the navigator, though. Figger it out yourself.
I had no time for figuring, however, for in the next instant Small was screaming that he had sighted the remains of the kidnapper’s ship. It lay near what looked like a huddle of low hills, its twisted shell quite recognizable from the height at which we flew. It must have had a terrific crash to have cracked up the way it was. I doubted anyone could have lived through such a crash. Still, someone might have survived, and fervently I hoped it was the girl.
With my hand lightly pressing the de-gravitating lever I felt out our descent foot by foot since the dials no longer registered, but, as I have already explained, nothing was responding properly within the ship. Suddenly I was horrified to see the gr
ound rushing at us with terrifying force. I yanked back on the lever under my hand, but it was jammed.
All I remember of that crack-up was the ear-splitting shriek of Small’s, a terrific soul-filling crash, and then darkness, a heavy sticky darkness that hurt.
l My return to consciousness was slow, full of dreams.
It seemed I was in an ant’s nest, and hundreds of tiny things crawled over me, pinching, pulling me. There were tiny, piping voices, and at the same time a great pressure, as if tons of stone, were weighing me down. I awoke, but the pressure did not leave me, and my body was a dull ache of pain. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to open my eyes.
Denny, Denny, my God, where are you?”
It was Small’s voice that forced me to open my eyes. It was with effort that I brought my own voice from my diaphragm. “Here, Jim. Lord, turn off that light!” My eyelids seemed weighed down by the copperish light that flowed into them.
“I can’t see you,” whimpered Small, terrified.
My interest was in other things. I found I was lying on my side, in a tangle of tiny ferns. I was on my right side, and my right arm was under me, while the side of my face was pressed against the ground so the odor of the fresh earth and vegetation was in my nostrils. I tried to lift my head, but was astounded to find that that was an impossibility; I couldn’t even lift a hand, nor a finger!
Move I could, however, and I moved my head a trifle, only to be startled by the explosive “Ouch” that burst from between my lips. No one had pulled my hair since I was a kid, but now it was as if someone had pulled out a handful. I had to move my head again to discover that it was my own action that caused the pain.
Raising my eyes, I sought to find what it was that was catching my hair, only to see the supine form of Jim Small lying a few feet from my eyes. Slowly my eyes ranged over his form, and in that survey I received answer for my own predicament. Small was tied to the ground, bound in innumerable places by tiny strands of cord, thin, wire strands that crossed and criss-crossed his chest, his legs, his arms, his head. There were even tiny strands of wires tied to individual strains of his black hair! And each little wire was held to the ground by tiny wooden pegs!
Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks) Page 64
