Pressure Man

by Zach Hughes

  “That’s fine to say,” Ellen said.

  “We will not dive in without testing the hull,” Dom said in a firm voice. J.J. looked at him. “I’m not going to lower myself to the level of a Firster,” Dom said. “I value my life. I value each life aboard this ship. So we’ll poke our nose in, test the compression qualities of the hull, and then we’ll lower in easy stages.”

  “And if every little thing doesn’t please you?” J.J. asked.

  “My decision,” Dom said. “I will take the responsibility.”

  “I just wonder if it would be worth going back if we fail,” J.J. said.

  “It’s human to cling to life even when there is no hope,” Dom said.

  “Especially if you’ve just been married,” J.J. said.

  Dom looked at J.J. levelly. “I resent that, J.J. My private life is my own as long as it doesn’t keep me from performing my duties. I defy you to point out one instance of my private considerations having affected my judgment or the performance of my duties.”

  “Sorry, Flash,” J.J. said. “I’m worried, that’s all.”

  “We all are,” Doris said.

  Dom set the crew to work on dry runs of making the descent run. It was a little early, but they were getting edgy and the rehearsals kept them busy. Privacy time was cut. Dom and Doris deliberately avoided being alone together, as if to prove to the others that their changed status did not affect performance.

  Three days before time to go into orbit around the gas giant, the Kennedy’s RDF locked onto the signal from the alien ship. It seemed to be a miracle that the signal was still steady, still the same strength as it was so long ago when the Kennedy was nothing more than a dream and some often-conflicting data in the DOSEWEX computer. The fact that the ship was still down there, beeping away, reinforced the theory that she was trapped and incapable of escaping the gravitational and atmospheric fields of the giant planet.

  “If there is anyone or anything aboard her,” Art said, “he, she, or it will be happy to see us.”

  Doris was very busy in those last days before going into orbit. She checked and rechecked all data. The task of putting the ship into orbit and then lowering her gently, oh so gently, into the fringe of atmosphere was Doris’ baby. Her fingers and data from the shipboard computer had to be right, had to feed the right information into the automatics and to Neil.

  They passed the last picket ship and received a good luck from the crew. As space distances go, they were right next door to the smaller ship, but they did not get a visual on her. The picket ship would stay on orbit to observe as Kennedy went down.

  They were there. The mass of Jupiter covered half of space. Moons were visible to the naked eye. The ship moved swiftly around the planet, subjected to radiation, the electrical field, the gravity of the giant. Kennedy functioned flawlessly.

  Because of the speed of Jupiter’s spin, and the vast forces of her gravity, Kennedy would have to go in very, very hot. Power would be constant to counteract the gravity. When last-minute drills had been performed there was no formal order. The computer picked the time and Neil’s hands did not touch the controls as the ship began to spiral down.

  She was dwarfed by the mass of the planet, a mass which measured two and a half times as heavy as all the other planets of the solar system combined. Slowly, slowly, she went down toward that roiling surface, speed and power and rate of fall regulated by Doris’ computer. Those inside her had the feeling of falling into a hell of bright yellow fire as they orbited on the sunside and began to see with the naked eye the giant hurricane in the southern tropical zone, the Giant Red Spot, blowing for centuries at a force of hundreds of miles per hour.

  The bands of atmosphere showed tremendous wind shears as atmospheric movement tossed and buffeted the insignificant mass of the ship. Each of them was aware, as the ship went down and down, that should their power fail, the ship would be seized by the massive gravitational force, yanked through the thin layer of outer clouds to drop, pulled by a force of three Earth gravities, the pressure outside building as they fell through a zone of frozen ammonia crystals, then into liquid ammonia and the zone of colored compounds which gave the atmosphere its distinctive yellow covering. They would, as they were being pulled inexorably downward, pass frozen crystals of ice and then a zone of water vapor, and they would all be dead before the crushed remains of the ship fell into the zone of liquid molecular hydrogen and continued to be compressed as pressures mounted to three million atmospheres at the transition zone between liquid molecular hydrogen and liquid metallic hydrogen, and the temperature would be rising to melt the remains of the tiny Earth ship and the even smaller, more thoroughly crushed Earth people.

  On a model of the planet the size of an apple, the zone of operation of the Kennedy could be represented by the thickness of the apple’s skin. Below that very thin layer of operations lay instant death as the hull imploded.

  The size of the monster! It was psychologically suffocating. It swallowed the whole of space from the viewports. It had the weight of a sun which failed. It was of incredible mass. It loomed above them as down became up and they felt dizzied. Ellen hid her eyes in her hands as the giant reached out for them with pressure and gravity and electromagnetic discharges registered by the sensors. The Kennedy went down near the orbit of the innermost moon, Amalthea. The moon was above them now, and slightly ahead, the ship between the moon’s orbit and the uppermost layer of cloud. A vast discharge of electricity came, lighting the area between the small moon and the planet, soundless in vacuum, but bright, sudden, startling, and, had the ship been struck, deadly. Again, as Dom held his breath, the tremendous bolt leaped from planet to moon.

  “I think it’s trying to tell us something,” Neil said, in an awed voice.

  “Old Jove, the god of lightning,” J.J. said. “He’s saying, ‘Look on my majesty, you puny mortals, and despair.’ ”

  “I didn’t know you had a poetic soul,” Dom said.

  Dom was moved by the vastness of the Jovian mass. It was heavy over him, seemingly over his head, and the Kennedy went down, measuring herself in a thousand ways as she lowered. Hull sensors sent the first recognition of faint traces of atmosphere. Slowly, slowly. She was doing well. Instruments worked and measured and gave their readings and the computer hummed and now scattered molecules of frozen ammonia made for a gradual lessening of vision. The Kennedy continued to fall into a murky sea of crystals. Her hull melted crystals. Temperature was going up, but it was well within operational levels.

  “Level her off,” Dom ordered, when the outside pressure was one Earth atmosphere.

  Neil took over from the automatics, to get the feel of the ship in case of systems failure. The ship was in a stationary orbit, moving with the surface rotation. Pressure was as predicted.

  It was time to test one of the ship’s most crucial weapons for doing battle with the gas giant. Dom ordered two atmospheres in the living compartments. He felt his ears pop as the pressure built. Huge pumps moved clean air from the hold, and to take its place in the hold compartments, the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter was let in.

  Satisfied that the internal pressure system was working properly, Dom ordered a descent until pressure equalized. And then, time after time, the process was repeated. In the murky atmosphere the ship saw only by her instruments, keeping position directly above the alien ship, guided by the continuing signal. That signal, that ship down there, that was the purpose of it all. It had drawn them onward, had inspired a last-ditch crucial effort on the part of the space industry. Only that signal and what was sending it justified the cost of the Kennedy, the risk involved, the use of scarce materials.

  And the signal stopped when the Kennedy was only six atmospheres deep into the clouds.

  The Kennedy became, in that sudden silence, a dinosaur. She had no purpose.

  “Check equipment,” Dom ordered.

  “All check,” Doris said.

  “Check manual,” Dom said. “Hold this position.�
��

  He himself ran a manual check on the receiver. It was operational. A radio check with the picket ship confirmed that the signal from the alien had suddenly ceased.

  “Damn,” Dom said. “We were halfway there.” That was in distance, not in pressure. “Well hold here for a few hours. Maybe it will start up again.”

  Four hours passed, during which the ship functioned perfectly. There was no break of the radio silence from the alien ship.

  “Maybe he heard us coming and doesn’t want company?” Doris asked.

  “No, it just went dead,” J.J. said. “It’s a damned miracle it has lasted so long. The ship’s still there.”

  “For all the good it does,” Dom said.

  “We have its position,” I.J. said. “We can lower down right on top of it.”

  “Not likely,” Neil said. “Even under power these winds move us around. Without the signal it would be only a guess to put us within a hundred miles of her.”

  “The descent is predicted on the computer,” J.J. said. “We can estimate corrections. We can get within a few miles and do a search.”

  “We might find her if we had a hundred years to look,” Dom said.

  “All we have is time,” J.J. said. “We have the power. We have air and supplies.”

  “J.J., we built this ship for staying a limited time in three thousand atmospheres,” Dom said. “After ten days I wouldn’t want to bet against metal fatigue in the mush bondings.”

  “All right, we have ten days,” J.J. said. “We can at least use it.”

  “We can at least gather some interesting data,” Art said.

  “I want to point out that we will be exposing this ship and her crew to unnecessary danger,” Neil said. “It is my opinion that going deeper into the atmosphere is now useless. If I were in her alone I’d take her down to three thousand atmospheres just to test the design, but I’m not alone. It’s one thing to risk the life of a professional test pilot in experimentation, another to risk the lives of a crew.”

  “We hold for one more hour,” Dom said.

  It was a tense hour, and when it was over J.J. paced the control room fretfully. Dom had spent the hour with Doris, directing her through some calculations.

  “J.J.,” he said, “if we had one chance in a thousand of finding the ship I’d take her down, but I’ve run it through and the odds are a billion to one against finding her. I’ve also done some calculations on the length of stay at three thousand atmospheres. After eight days, the chances of failure increase to a point of risk. I think we’re worth more alive, and the ship is worth something for the Mars run. In short, I’m giving the order to take her up and out.”

  “Then I am forced to ask you to relinquish your command,” J.J. said.

  “No,” Dom said quietly. “I am in command. I built her and I know her limitations.”

  “You have no choice,” J.J. said. “As your superior officer, I hereby inform you that I am taking command. Mr. Walters, make preparations to take her down to three thousand atmospheres.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I decline,” Neil said. “I don’t agree that Captain Gordon should be removed from command.”

  J.J. was facing them, his hands behind his back. He looked down at his feet, turned slowly, hands still clasped behind his back. He stood there, his back to them, for a long time, and then he turned quickly, his hand moving to point a small but deadly splatter gun at them. The weapon was designed for close-in killing in delicate areas. The blast of multiple projectiles could be fatal to anyone within a few feet, but there was not enough force behind the projectiles to, for example, hole the hull of a ship.

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” J.J. said. “But we’re going to do the job we came out here to do.”

  “Not this way,” Dom said.

  “You leave me no choice.”

  “You’re one against six,” Neil said. “You can’t stay awake forever.”

  “J.J.,” Dom said, “put that thing away. If you’re so convinced that we should go down, we’ll go down. We came out here together. Well go down together.”

  “You have my sincere thanks,” J.J. said.

  “Gun or no gun, we’ll stay down no longer than seven days. Is that clear?” Dom asked.

  “I agree,” J.J. said.

  “Is everyone in agreement?” Dom asked. “We take the ship down to do what she was designed to do instead of risking someone’s getting killed if we try to overpower J.J.?”

  “I am shocked,” Doris said, “but I’m for going down.”

  The others agreed.

  “Stations,” Dom said. “We’re going down. We won’t come up with anything but a few million cubic feet of Jovian atmosphere in the hold, but I intend to see that we do come up.”

  They did it slowly and carefully. The crew worked smoothly, the incident with J.J. seemingly forgotten. Dom had to admit to himself that he’d wanted to go down all along. Fully alive, moving into an area where man had never been, he could almost feel the pressure on the hull as he rode herd on his instruments and the ship sank, buffeted by winds of hundreds of miles per hour, only the brute power of the drive holding the Kennedy against them. Only once did the ship drop down a wind sheer before the automatics compensated.

  The hull sensors told of the changing atmosphere. Frozen ammonia became liquid ammonia, and then they were in the zone of the yellow compounds. Always, inexorably, the pressure built. At two thousand atmospheres the air inside the ship seemed to be sticky, heavy, oppressive. But the ship reacted sweetly to the incredible forces, the mush-bonded seams compressing, folding, the instruments recording within the limits of safety on all hull areas.

  Signals went out from the ship, seeking, searching. They found nothing but increasing density of atmosphere. The danger below was beyond imagination. The distance traveled, as the ship orbited, matching the speed of rapid rotation, was not a factor. The winds of Jupiter blew against them with a solid force. And her gravity tugged on them, always ready to seize them, should the power fail, and pull them toward the core of the planet.

  The living compartments of the ship were now between two pressures, the outside weight of atmosphere and the compressed bulk of Jovian atmosphere inside the hold. Kennedy had multiplied her weight by taking in the Jovian gases, but the power plant was not even strained.

  At three thousand atmospheres Neil began a search, swinging the ship back and forth at the same altitude.

  Preliminary analysis of the atmosphere at three thousand atmospheres showed an interesting array of hydrogen and carbon compounds, confirming advance theory that such matter made up the bulk of the yellow layers of Jupiter. In order to obtain pure samples of the yellow layer, the hold was bled and cleaned of the noxious ammonia taken in at the upper levels.

  The search continued without success. J.J. took a personal interest in venting the poisonous gases and liquids from the hull, leaving only material collected under maximum pressure in the yellow zone. He seemed to be much too cheerful for conditions, for the search for the alien had produced nothing. When he was satisfied that the huge hold contained only yellow-layer material he came into the control room with a pleased grin on his face.

  “Flash, you can take her home anytime you’re ready,” he said.

  It had taken three Earth days to vent and fill the hold. “We’ve got a few days left,” Dom said.

  “We’ve got what we came for,” J. J. said.

  Dom wondered if the strain had blown his mind. “I don’t see signs of an alien ship in the hold,” he said.

  “There is no alien,” J.J. said.

  “Want to repeat that?” Dom asked.

  “There never was an alien,” J.J. said. “The signal came from an Explorer class ship, a drone.”

  “At three thousand atmospheres?” Dom asked, examining J.J. closely.

  “At a mere ten atmospheres,” J.J. said.

  “But the picket ships measured—” Dom began.

  “What their instruments were
rigged to measure,” J.J. said. “And the transmissions were halted on my orders.”

  “I’m trying to understand some of this,” Dom said grimly. Neil was listening with a frown on his face. “You’re telling me we built this ship just to come out here and get a load of Jovian muck?”

  “We came out here to win a war,” J.J. said. “Now as I read your specifications, we can vent the load in the hold down to an interior pressure of two thousand atmospheres and go home.”

  “I’m waiting for an explanation,” Dom said.

  “Did you ever read the Bible?” J.J. asked, grinning.

  “Some.”

  “Remember the part about manna, my boy? Manna from heaven?”

  Well, he was obviously mad. Dom felt a heavy weight of sadness. It was all for nothing. All the work, the brushes with death, the death of Larry, those terrible moments when he felt sure the Firster bomb would go off in his hands before he could jettison it into space, all of it had been done for the sake of a man who was obviously mad.

  Manna from heaven. Venus torn full-grown from Jove’s brow.

  “Neil,” Dom said, suddenly feeling very tired, “let’s take her home.”

  “Roger,” Neil said, looking at J.J. with a mixture of puzzlement and anger.

  Chapter Twelve

  The ship faced one final test. She had passed many tests to bring them millions of miles on a madman’s quest. She had lifted thousands of tons of water out of the moon’s gravity well. She had brought them through space, and she had resisted the force of pressure. The last test was as crucial as any. If she failed to fight her way upward and beyond the gravity of the gas giant, all the others didn’t count.

  Until now her power had been used only to neutralize gravitational attraction in orbit. Now she was called upon to overcome the pull and apply enough force to the hull to move upward and then to attain escape velocity, at more than twice the speed it would have taken her to leave Earth. Most important, she had to stay in one piece, and, if the madman was to be humored, she had to do it with thousands of tons of Jovian atmosphere in her hold.