Jupiter

by Carol

  It was a disconcerting sight; then Falcon again reminded himself that nothing really solid could possibly hover in this atmosphere. Perhaps it was some strange meteorological phenomenon—and, in any case, the nearest echo was over two hundred kilometers away.

  He reported to Mission Control, which could provide no explantion. But it gave the welcome news that he would be clear of the blizzard in another thirty minutes.

  It did not warn him, however, of the violent cross wind that abruptly grabbed Kon-Tiki and swept it almost at right angles to its previous track. Falcon needed all his skill and the maximum use of what little control he had over his ungainly vehicle to prevent it from being capsized. Within minutes, he was racing northward at five hundred kilometers an hour; then, as suddenly as it had started, the turbulence ceased; he was still moving at high speed but in smooth air. He wondered if he had been caught in the Jovian equivalent of a jet stream.

  Then the snowstorm suddenly dissolved and he saw what Jupiter had been preparing for him.

  Kon-Tiki had entered the funnel of a gigantic whirlpool, at least three hundred kilometers across. The balloon was being swept along a curving wall of cloud; overhead, the Sun was shining in a clear sky, but far beneath, this great hole in the atmosphere drilled down to unknown depths, until it reached a misty floor where lightning flickered almost continuously.

  Though the vessel was being dragged downward so slowly that it was in no immediate danger, Falcon increased the flow of heat into the envelope, until Kon-Tiki hovered at a constant altitude. Not until then did he abandon the fantastic spectacle outside and consider again the problem of the radar.

  The nearest echo was now only forty kilometers away—and all of them, he quickly realized, were distributed along the wall of the vortex; they were moving with it, apparently caught in the whirlpool like Kon-Tiki itself. He aimed the telescope along the radar bearing and found himself looking at a curious mottled cloud that almost filled the field of view.

  It was not easy to see, being only little darker than the whirling wall of mist that formed its background. Not until he had been staring for several minutes did Falcon realize that he had met it once before.

  The first time, it had been crawling across the drifting mountains of foam and he had mistaken it for a giant, many-trunked tree. Now at last he could appreciate its real size and complexity and he could give it a better name to fix its image in his mind. It did not resemble a tree at all but a jellyfish—a medusa, such as might be met trailing its tentacles as it drifted along the warm eddies of the Gulf Stream.

  This medusa was two kilometers across and its scores of dangling tentacles were hundreds of meters long. They swayed slowly back and forth in perfect unison, taking more than a minute for each complete undulation—almost as if the creature were clumsily rowing itself through the sky.

  The other echoes were more distant medusae; Falcon turned the telescope on half a dozen and could see no variations in shape or size. They all seemed to be of the same species and he wondered just why they were drifting lazily around in this thousand-kilometer orbit. Perhaps they were feeding upon the aerial plankton sucked in by the whirlpool—as Kon-Tiki itself had been.

  “Do you realize, Howard,” said Dr. Brenner when he had recovered from his initial astonishment, “that this thing is about a hundred thousand times as large as the biggest whale? And even if it’s only a gasbag, it must still weigh a million tons! I can’t even guess at its metabolism; it must generate megawatts of heat to maintain its buoyancy.”

  “But if it’s just a gasbag, why is it such a damn good radar reflector?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Can you get any closer?”

  Brenner’s question was not an idle one; if Falcon changed altitude to take advantage of the differing wind velocities, he could approach the medusa as closely as he wished. At the moment, he preferred his present forty kilometers and said so, firmly.

  “I see what you mean,” Brenner answered a little reluctantly. “Let’s stay where we are for the present.” That “we” gave Falcon a certain wry amusement; an extra hundred thousand kilometers made a considerable difference to one’s point of view.

  For the next two hours, Kon-Tiki drifted uneventfully in the gyre of the great whirlpool, while Falcon experimented with filters and camera contrast, trying to get a clear view of the medusa. He began to wonder if its elusive coloration were some kind of camouflage; perhaps, like many animals of Earth, it was trying to lose itself against its background. That was a trick used both by hunters and by the hunted.

  In which category was the medusa? That was a question he could hardly expect to have answered in the short time that was left to him. Yet just before noon, without the slightest warning, the answer came.

  Like a squadron of antique jet fighters, five mantas came sweeping through the wall of mist that formed the funnel of the vortex. They were flying in a V formation, directly toward the pallid gray cloud of the medusa—and there was no doubt, in Falcon’s mind, that they were on the attack. He had been quite wrong to assume that they were harmless vegetarians.

  Yet everything happened at such a leisurely pace that it was like watching a slow-motion film. The mantas undulated along at perhaps fifty kilometers an hour; it seemed ages before they reached the medusa, which continued to paddle imperturbably along at an even slower speed. Huge though they were, the mantas looked tiny beside the monster they were approaching; when they flapped down onto its back, they appeared about as large as birds landing on a whale.

  Could the medusa defend itself? Falcon wondered. As long as they avoided those huge, clumsy tentacles, he did not see how the attacking mantas could be in any danger. And perhaps their host was not even aware of them; they could be insignificant parasites, as tolerated as fleas upon a dog.

  But now it was obvious that the medusa was in distress. With agonizing slowness, it began to tip over, like a capsizing ship. After ten minutes, it had tilted forty-five degrees; it was also rapidly losing altitude. It was impossible not to feel a sense of pity for the beleaguered monster, and to Howard Falcon the sight brought bitter memories. In a grotesque way, the fall of the medusa was almost a parody of the dying Queen’s last moments.

  Yet he knew that his sympathies were on the wrong side. High intelligence could only develop among predators—not among the drifting browsers of either sea or air. The mantas were far closer to him than was this monstrous bag of gas; and anyway, who could really sympathize with a creature a hundred thousand times larger than a whale?

  Then he noticed that the medusa’s tactics seemed to be having some effect. The mantas had been disturbed by its slow roll and were flapping heavily away from its back—like gorged vultures interrupted at mealtime. But they did not move very far, continuing to hover a few meters from the still capsizing monster.

  There was a sudden, blinding flash of light, synchronized with a crash of static over the radio. One of the mantas, slowly twisting end over end, was plummeting straight downward. As it fell, it trailed behind it a smoky black plume. Though there could be no fire, the resemblance to an aircraft going down in flames was quiet uncanny.

  In unison, the remaining mantas dived steeply away from the medusa, gaining speed by losing altitude. Within minutes, they had vanished back into the wall of cloud from which they had emerged. And the medusa, no longer falling, began to roll back toward the horizontal. Soon it was sailing along once more on an even keel, as if nothing had happened.

  “Beautiful!” said Dr. Brenner after a moment of stunned silence. “It’s developed electric defenses—like some of our eels and rays. But that must have been about a million volts! Can you see any organs that might produce the discharge? Anything looking like electrodes?”

  “No,” Falcon answered, after switching to the highest power of the telescope. “But here’s something odd. Do you see this pattern? Check back on the earlier images—I’m sure it wasn’t there before.”

  A broad, mottled band had appeared along the
side of the medusa. It formed a startlingly regular checkerboard, each square of which was itself speckled in a complex subpattern of short horizontal lines. They were spaced equal distances apart, in a geometrically perfect array of rows and columns.

  “You’re right,” said Dr. Brenner, and now there was something very much like awe in his voice. “That’s just appeared. And I’m afraid to tell you what I think it is.”

  “Well, I have no reputation to lose—at least as a biologist. Shall I give my guess?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That’s a large meter-band radio array. The sort of thing they used back at the beginning of the twentieth century.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that. Now we know why it gave such a massive echo.”

  “But why has it just appeared?”

  “Probably an after effect of the discharge.”

  “I’ve just had another thought,” said Falcon rather slowly. “Do you suppose it’s listening to us?”

  “On this frequency? I doubt it. Those are meter—no, decameter antennas, judging by their size. Hmm…that’s an idea!”

  Dr. Brenner fell silent, obviously contemplating some new line of thought. Presently, he continued: “I bet they’re tuned to the radio outbursts! That’s something nature never got around to doing on Earth. We have animals with sonar and even electric senses, but nothing ever developed a radio sense. Why bother, where there was so much light?

  “But it’s different here. Jupiter is drenched with radio energy. It’s worth while using it—maybe even tapping it. That thing could be a floating power plant!”

  A new voice cut into the conversation.

  “Mission Commander here. This is all very interesting—but there’s a much more important matter to settle. Is it intelligent? If so, we’ve got to consider the First Contact directives.”

  “Until I came here,” said Dr. Brenner somewhat ruefully, “I would have sworn that anything that can make a shortwave antenna system must be intelligent. Now I’m not sure. This could have evolved naturally. I suppose it’s no more fantastic than the human eye.”

  “Then we have to play safe and assume intelligence. For the present, therefore, this expedition comes under all the clauses of the Prime Directive.”

  There was a long silence while everyone on the radio circuit absorbed the implications of this. For the first time in the history of space flight, the rules that had been established through more than a century of argument might have to be applied. Man had—it was hoped—profited from his mistakes on Earth. Not only moral considerations but his own self-interest demanded that he should not repeat them among the planets. It could be disastrous to treat a superior intelligence as the American settlers had treated the red Indians or as almost everyone had treated the Africans.

  The first rule was: Keep your distance—make no attempt to approach nor even to communicate until “they” have had plenty of time to study you. Exactly what was meant by plenty of time no one had ever been able to decide; it was left to the discretion of the man on the spot.

  A responsibility of which he had never dreamed had descended upon Howard Falcon. In the few hours that remained to him on Jupiter, he might become the first ambassador of the human race.

  And that was an irony so delicious that he almost wished the surgeons had restored to him the power of laughter.

  PRIME DIRECTIVE

  It was growing darker, but Falcon scarcely noticed as he strained his eyes toward that living cloud in the field of the telescope. The wind that was still sweeping Kon-Tiki steadily around the funnel of the great whirlpool had now brought him within twenty kilometers of the creature; if he got much closer than ten, he would take evasive action. Though he felt certain that the medusa’s electric weapons were short-ranged, he did not wish to put the matter to the test. That would be a problem for future explorers, and he wished them luck.

  Now it was quite dark in the capsule—and that was strange, because sunset was still hours away. Automatically, he glanced at the horizontally scanning radar, as he had done every few minutes. Apart from the medusa he was studying, there was no other object within a hundred kilometers of him.

  Suddenly, with startling power, he heard the sound that had come booming out of the Jovian night—the throbbing beat that grew more and more rapid, then stopped mid-crescendo. The whole capsule vibrated with it, like a pea in a kettledrum.

  Howard Falcon realized two things almost simultaneously, during the sudden, aching silence. This time, the sound was not coming from thousands of kilometers away, over a radio circuit. It was in the very atmosphere around him.

  The second thought was even more disturbing. He had quite forgotten—it was inexcusable, but there had been other apparently more important things on his mind—that most of the sky above him was completely blanked out by Kon-Tiki’s gasbag. Being lightly silvered to conserve its heat, the great balloon was an effective shield both to radar and to vision.

  He had known this, of course; it had been a minor defect of the design, tolerated because it did not appear important. It seemed very important to Howard Falcon now—as he saw that fence of gigantic tentacles, thicker than the trunks of any tree, descending all around the capsule.

  He heard Brenner yelling: “Remember the Prime Directive! Don’t alarm it!” Before he could make an appropriate answer, that overwhelming drumbeat started again and drowned all other sounds.

  The sign of a really skilled test pilot is how he reacts not to foreseeable emergencies but to ones that nobody could have anticipated. Falcon did not hesitate for more than a second to analyze the situation; then, in a lightning-swift movement, he pulled the rip cord.

  That word was an archaic survival from the days of the first hydrogen balloons; on Kon-Tiki, the rip cord did not tear open the gasbag but merely operated a set of louvers round the upper curve of the envelope. At once, the hot gas started to rush out; Kon-Tiki, deprived of her lift, began to fall swiftly in this gravity field two and a half times as strong at Earth’s.

  Falcon had a momentary glimpse of great tentacles whipping upward and away; he had just time to note that they were studded with large bladders or sacs, presumably to give them buoyancy, and that they ended in multitudes of thin feelers like the roots of a plant. He half expected a bolt of lightning, but nothing happened.

  His precipitous rate of descent was slackening as the atmosphere thickened and the deflated envelope acted as a parachute. Kon-Tiki had dropped more than three kilometers; it should be safe to close the louvers again. By the time he had restored buoyancy and was in equilibrium once more, he had lost another two kilometers of altitude and was getting dangerously near his safety limit.

  He peered anxiously through the overhead windows, though he did not expect to see anything except the obscuring bulk of the balloon. But he had side-slipped during his descent and part of the medusa was just visible a couple of kilometers above him. It was much closer than he expected—and it was still coming down, faster than he would have believed possible.

  Mission Control was calling anxiously; he shouted, “I’m OK—but it’s still coming after me. I can’t go any deeper.”

  That was not quite true. He could go a lot deeper—about 300 kilometers. But it would be a one-way trip and most of the journey would be of little interest to him.

  Then, to his great relief, he saw that the medusa was leveling off about a kilometer above him. Perhaps it had decided to approach this strange intruder with caution—or perhaps it, too, found this deeper layer uncomfortably hot. The temperature was over fifty degrees and Falcon wondered how much longer his life-support system could handle matters.

  Dr. Brenner was back on the circuit, still worrying about the Prime Directive.

  “Remember—it may only be inquisitive!” he cried without much conviction. “Try not to frighten it!”

  Falcon was getting rather tired of this advice and recalled a TV discussion he had once seen between a space lawyer and an astronaut. After the full implications
of the Prime Directive had been carefully spelled out, the incredulous spacer had exclaimed: “So if there were no alternative, I must sit still and let myself be eaten?” The lawyer had not even cracked a smile when he answered: “That’s an excellent summing up.”

  It had seemed funny at the time; it was not at all amusing now.

  And then Falcon saw something that made him even more unhappy. The medusa was still hovering a kilometer above him—but one of its tentacles was becoming incredibly elongated and was stretching down toward Kon-Tiki, thinning out at the same time. As a boy, he had once seen the funnel of a tornado descending from a storm cloud over the Kansas plains; the thing coming toward him now evoked vivid memories of that black, twisting snake in the sky.

  “I’m rapidly running out of options,” he reported to Mission Control. “I now have only a choice between frightening it and giving it a bad stomach-ache. I don’t think it will find Kon-Tiki very digestible, if that’s what it has in mind.”

  He waited for comments from Brenner, but the biologist remained silent “Very well—it’s twenty-seven minutes ahead of time, but I’m starting the ignition sequencer. I hope I’ll have enough reserve to correct my orbit later.”

  He could no longer see the medusa; it was directly overhead once more. But he knew that the descending tentacle must now be very close to the balloon. It would take almost five minutes to bring the reactor up to full thrust.

  The fusor was primed. The orbit computer had not rejected the situation as wholly impossible. The air scoops were open, ready to gulp in tons of the surrounding hydrohelium on demand. Even under optimum conditions, this would have been the moment of truth—for there had been no way of testing how a nuclear ram jet would really work in the strange atmosphere of Jupiter.

  Very gently, something rocked Kon-Tiki. Falcon tried to ignore it.

  Ignition had been planned ten kilometers higher than this, in an atmosphere of less than a quarter of the density—and 30 degrees cooler. Too bad.