The Collected Stories

by Earl

  IN ITS own way, Ganymedian climate is as varied as Earth’s. To humans, anything below zero is just plain cold. Ten below is as cold as seventy below, because we’re insensitive to that particular range of temperature. But obviously to the Ganymedian creatures, ten below is “hot” and seventy below is “cold.” Somewhere in between, probably at minus forty, the climate is “temperate.”

  Try to understand that, as otherwise you won’t get what follows.

  Ganymede’s winter and summer are really its day and night. For the variations swing back and forth with every rising and setting of the sun. Thus its seasonal “year” is just one Earth week long!

  I’ll let that stand for the time being, and tell of other things.

  Jupiter and its moon system are a celestial wonderland. The daily eclipses, for one thing. With fourteen moons circling around the primary, they eclipse each other steadily. Or they eclipse the sun. Or Jupiter eclipses them, as they ride into its huge shadow. Or they transit across Jupiter’s face.

  Markers nearly went wild one day, trying to record every phase of these jumbled motions.

  First, Callisto, the next nearest moon outward from Jupiter, eclipsed the sun at sunrise. Or rather, it just blotted the sun out, being much larger.

  Then, Jupiter eclipsed the sun, as it does daily for us. Like a bright diamond, the tiny sun slipped behind one edge of the colossal bulk of Jupiter, reappearing at the other edge hours later. Jupiter is so big that the sun never gets by without being eclipsed.

  While this was going on, Europa passed between us and Jupiter, transsiting across its luminous face as a small black circle. Or, as Von Zell put it jocularly:

  “Look at Europa eclipsing Jupiter! It’s like a fly trying to block out the form of an elephant!”

  Soon after, Io swung in its orbit behind Jupiter, which is most properly called an occultation, rather than eclipse This was exceptionally interesting, in that Jupiter’s mighty conershaped shadow was oblique from us, the sun being to the side. Thus the orb of Io, while it was yet far from Jupiter’s edge, fell into its penumbra, fading to a dull copper.

  Then it plunged into the true shadow, barely visible. Finally it seemed to crawl behind Jupiter’s actual bulk, resignedly. It popped out in full radiance from the other side, hours later, like a scampering mouse.

  How’s that for a day’s sightseeing, up in our sky? But there’s more!

  Two of the small outer moons occulted each other, looking to us as though they collided, or passed through each other. Then the ninth outer moon, a retrograde one, darted backward across the sky and eclipsed the sun in passing.

  The eighth moon, also retrograde, had two phases. One was half-phase, from Jupiter’s light at the side. The other was crescent, from the sun’s light in the other direction. Both phases were clearly distinguishable in our telescope. Earth’s Moon, of course, has Earth-phases too, but too weak to vie with the strong phases of the sun. Here, Jupiter-shine is strong enough to compete with a weaker, more distant sun.

  FINALLY, Ganymede’s own shadow, as the sun set, arched across Jupiter’s face as a black patch. This has been seen from Earth through telescopes. But you can’t imagine the sheer wonder of it as you see it from up close—the shadow-blot rippling and dancing along over Jupiter’s varicolored bands of atmosphere.

  The whole thing was like a planetarium show, but with the added magnificence of reality.

  That was an exceptional day for celestial antics among Jupiter’s fourteen moons. But still, we have daily at least one eclipse, or occultation, or transit, or something. By now, we hardly notice. So quickly does familiarity dull things!

  Here’s a curious fact. Jupiter’s fourteenth and outermost moon is twenty-nine million miles away, so far that it is invisible to the naked eye from here! Markers discovered it with the telescope. Without that instrument, that moon is only an eighth magnitude star.

  Hello, Mars Expedition Three! You’ll probably think your view of two moons is nothing, after hearing of our fourteen. But think of all the people on Earth who will never be privileged to see more than one!

  CHAPTER VI

  Super-evolution

  ONE-HUNDRED-SIXTY-FIFTH day.

  The periodic tidal monsoon, from Jupiter’s frightful gravity-drag, this morning stove in part of our icehouse’s east wall. No one hurt, although a block of jagged ice crunched within an inch of Ling. Atwell set us to work repairing as soon as the storm died. In this light gravity, we can work all day without tiring. We’ll finish repairs tomorrow.

  To tell something of what the men have been doing, in the past two months, Halloway has been biting his nails over not finding a pyramid in the vicinity. He has trekked as far as three hundred miles in four directions without success. He says he will positively solve the Martian pyramid mystery if he finds one. He examines Parletti’s photos of Callisto at times, which shows a pyramid there as a dot, but it doesn’t help much.

  Tarnay and Ling, in collaboration, have taken some of the thermoss that grows universally, and produced steam with it. The thermoss is pressed into a cylinder with a water valve. The heat released by these remarkable growths raises a head of steam. More practically, they have diverted the steam into a small electric generator, and wired the ice-house for electricity. All the comforts of home here!

  Von Zell is listing, as he did on Mercury, all the metal ores hereabouts. He found a deposit of beryllium ore, as a sulfide, that if exploited would make any Earth concern rich. We sometimes wonder how Earth will handle the problem of ore concessions on other planets, when this exploration phase passes into the commercial.

  Parletti and Markers have much to report about Jupiter itself. I’ll get at that soon.

  And, most important, Swinerton and his super-evolution. That’s the term he’s applied to life here on Ganymede. His theory is that in this rigorous, harsh environment, Nature has had to step up evolution in order to permit any survival at all.

  Karsen, by the way, has turned out to be not only an excellent cook and housekeeper, but a skilful candid-camera operator. She brought along one of those new depth-and-color gadgets, with which she is taking a faithful human record of our activities. She develops the film herself, and is displaying many prize shots. One shows all of us staring in the sky open-mouthed as two eclipses occurred at once. It demonstrates better than anything how astounding these sights are, in a multiple-moon system.

  Also she happened to snap a laughable view of Von Zell skidding on his haunches on ice, with his dignity completely absent. Von Zell wants to destroy the negative, but Karsen has hidden it. Von Zell even offered to wash dishes a week straight!

  But it’s hard to be light-hearted, with what hangs over us. Swinerton’s super-evolution may mean doom to us—

  Thanks for your musical broadcasts, Earth, which help to make Earth seem nearer, instead of an appalling 500 million miles away.

  But to get back to cases.

  Swinerton, in the past two months, studied his mystery closely. After prolonged observations of animal life, he came to the conclusion that no species lasted more than one generation. It mutated to another form, or several forms, most of which instantly died out. The few survivors, one jump ahead of extinction, mutated again.

  IN OTHER words, Nature is desperately trying to come up with species that will thrive—and hasn’t succeeded. We can’t think of any Earth species that would survive here, let alone thrive; not even the penguin or arctic fox. We man-animals survive only because we brought our own food and warmth. Thrust out barehanded, we wouldn’t last a week.

  Swinerton seems to be logical, though we find it hard to follow all his reasoning. On Earth, taking a comprehensive viewpoint, evolution is slow because it has no need to hurry. Life is easy on Earth—except for the bitter struggle between species. On Ganymede, the struggle is against the greatest enemy of all—environment.

  So, up here, evolution is incredibly accelerated. Thick fur becomes thicker, against the cold. Horns become lighter to balance the
added weight. Hooves become harder to scratch out food from under the snow.

  But then—bingo! something goes wrong. The teeth are too soft, because all the calcium goes into heavier bones, and the species starves to extinction. Its child has stronger teeth, but softer hooves. The grandchild has strong teeth and good bones—but an overtaxed heart. And so it goes, always short of the rigid perfection needed in this elemental, raw world.

  It’s tragic, Swinerton says. Life got a toehold out in this bleak, bitter outpost, but still after untold ages has no more than that. And evolution, discarding species right and left, strives madly to find life-forms that will defy all the elements.

  It’s saddening. Swinerton once found a whole herd of the deer-creatures frozen stiff. A slight drop in temperature had chilled their moss-food to inedibility, for miles around. They starved and froze on their feet, in a few hours. Such is the grim tempo of life in the strange, swift winter and summer-below-zero in which these animals must exist.

  We feel like misplaced beings here. Like silicon-men visiting Earth from a hot planet, who would think liquid water was a phenomenon of cold. To them, all temperatures below the boiling point would seem frigidity. They would not understand that because we had a bad summer, food would be scarce; for to them it would amount to a few more degrees of cold, down where it didn’t matter anyway.

  We wish Swinerton hadn’t found that frozen herd. For he brought some back, and we ate them, having a desire for fresh meat. Von Zell reported no dangerous elements in the meat—but there must have been at least one. The hormone that promoted the super-evolution!

  Greetings, Venus Expedition Two! We understand you’re in trouble too—losing a man to the mold-death, and most of you sick. But we’ll win out, both of us. Can’t keep a good expedition down!

  One-hundred-sixty-seventh day.

  Things are not going so well. To clarify our predicament—the hormone of speedup evolution is working in us!

  Swinerton brought back his deer-meat a month ago. Karsen prepared it as sizzling steaks, and we all ate heartily. It was tangy, soft and altogether delicious.

  “Fine,” Captain Atwell said, as I recall. “There’s nothing like fresh, hot food in a cold climate. It will keep us pepped up.”

  WITHIN a week, the first signs appeared. Markers fumbled with the opinions of his telescope, and complained of his fingers “feeling thicker.” Tarnay, our barber, commented that we all seemed to need haircuts sooner this time. When he cut our hair, it was coarser, dulling his shears.

  Small signs, but they began to add up to an ominous denouement.

  We didn’t really suspect the worst till our fingernails and toenails began to bulge and harden. Atwell worriedly asked Parletti, our doctor, for an explanation.

  “Acromegaly,” Parletti hazarded. “Thickening of features and joints. But why should it hit all of us at once? It’s a glandular disturbance.”

  “Our food,” Ling put in. “We all eat the same thing.”

  “Food!”

  It was at this point that it struck Swinerton.

  He went on excitedly.

  “Inhibition of our glands, by a hormone from the deer-meat. This is amazing! There is a hormone in Ganydmedian flesh that speeds up metabolism, adapting the organism to coldness. It attempts to adapt dermal organs to the environment. Amazing!”

  “Talk sense,” Atwell demanded. “What’s happening to us?”

  “Our hair is thickening, to protect us from the cold,” Swinerton went on. “Our nails are attempting to become—well, hooves!”

  We all gasped.

  “Don’t be worried,” Swinerton admonished. “The hormone will lose its potency. We won’t eat any more Ganymedian meat, though, or it would keep on. We’ve temporarily been guinea-pigs for a new and startling hormone I never dreamed could exist!”

  But Swinerton was worried himself, a week later. We threw out the deer-meat, but still the process went on. Our lips now began to thicken, and our eyelids puffed with fatty tissue. Daily we had to cut our nails and hair. The hair on our arms and legs, too, began to come out like light fur.

  “It’s not a hormone, Swinerton,” Von Zell said one day, with his chemical knowledge. “It’s an enzyme. And an enzyme renews itself in the bloodstream, where a hormone would be eliminated!”

  Swinerton agreed, with a grave nod. The rest of us didn’t understand, so Swinerton explained.

  “Our normal glands project hormones into the bloodstream. They have to be constantly renewed, to regulate metabolism. But Ganymedian life works on the enzyme principle. The enzyme is manufactured in the bloodstream itself. Once started, it renews itself. It’s something like the germs of a disease getting a foothold, and then gaining strength. Ganymedian life is saturated with the ‘disease’ of super-evolution!”

  He went on solemnly. “This enzyme’s function is to adapt metabolism to Ganymedian conditions. Not to any conditions, but just Ganymedian environment. Thus, even though we really live mostly under Earth conditions in our heated rooms, the enzyme goes on adapting us to Ganymede.

  “Once it gets in, it’s like a poison or disease that works its course adamantly, inexorably!”

  I HARDLY know how to resume.

  A month ago the affliction struck us. Today, if you saw us, you would probably turn in horror. The hair on our heads is a coarse, thick matting that persists in dangling before our eyes.

  Our eyes are mere slits between puffy lids. Our lips are thick and impede speech. Our fingers are so thick we can hardly wiggle them. Horn toenails are spreading around our toes. A fine fur covers our body and is thickening.

  Yes, it’s nightmarish. And, I suppose, unbelievable. But there have been people on Earth suddenly gaining weight and changing form, in a month’s time. Our tissue is redistributing.

  It’s simply a matter of metabolism, induced by the hellish enzyme of super-evolution.

  What will we become?

  As Swinerton puts it, our bodies are adapting themselves to the environment, willy-nilly. Our outer skin is thickening, adding fur, making ready to defy the elements. If it keeps on, we’ll be wilder in appearance than any sub-men of Earth’s past. Karsen doesn’t take pictures of us any more—nor does she look in her hand-mirror.

  Perhaps you wonder when the first signs of the horrible business appeared, why we didn’t leave instantly for Earth. Swinerton and Von Zell both said “no.” We’d keep on changing all through the three-month space journey, and end up as terrible monstrosities.

  INSTEAD of “changing,” Swinerton used the word “mutating.” He bit his lip over the slip, but we forced him to explain.

  “We’re actually mutating,” he said. “Evolving into something else. All these creatures on Ganymede change a little daily. Human beings change from generation to generation, too, imperceptibly. Here on Ganymede, evolution is working all the time—every hour and second!”

  “Maybe Earth doctors can help us,” Parletti suggested. “Perhaps they have a remedy for our predicament.”

  “For every poison,” Swinerton said, “there is an antidote. The antidote will be here on Ganymede, not Earth. It’s our only hope.”

  In short—we’re marooned on Ganymede!

  If the evolutionary process isn’t stopped, we’ll end up as Ganymedian life-forms, unable ever to return to Earth!

  Well, that’s the situation at this time.

  Hello, Mercury Expedition Two! Sorry to hear of your trouble—a metal hailstorm laying up three men with bad bruises.

  Seems the planets are being ornery to all Earth expeditions at this particular time.

  CHAPTER VII

  Race Against Mutation

  ONE-HUNDRED-SIXTY-NINTH day.

  We’ve been searching for the antidote for three weeks. Swinerton and a staff of helpers set traps and captured a dozen kinds of small animals alive. Swinerton is using his microscope on their blood, seeking a clue to the enzyme and possible antidote.

  One of the creatures, paradoxically, has helped to
raise our spirits. It is a sort of monkey-thing with horns and hind hooves, but quite monkeylike hands. A clever, noisy, active little thing that jumps around and amuses us. We’ve adopted it as a pet. Karsen named it Impy, because of its horns.

  No results so far, though Swinerton, Von Zell and Parletti work long hours over their cultures and solutions. The rest of us, unskilled in the test-tube line, can do nothing except stand around helplessly and wait.

  Still, despite our predicament, it thrills us to realize what hallowed ground—or space—the Jupiter system is. It lifts us above our personal problem.

  Galileo, first. In 1610, by first turning a telescope on Jupiter and seeing its four largest moons, Galileo proved unshakably the Copernican theory of orbits, and thus launched modern astronomy upon its course.

  Point Two. Roemer was inspired, in 1675, into first measuring the speed of light, by observing that the eclipses of Jupiter’s moons were One thousand seconds late when viewed from opposite sides of Earth’s orbit. He took observations six months apart, in other words.

  Thus, since the diameter of Earth’s orbit was approximately 186,000,000 miles, light took one thousand seconds to traverse that distance. Therefore, by simple division, the speed of light was computed to be 186,000 miles per second.

  Point Three. Jupiter is the largest planet, larger than all the others lumped together.

  Point Four. Jupiter has the most moons, several ahead of its nearest rival, Saturn.

  Point Five. Jupiter carries with it the largest satellite in the solar system, larger than the planet Mercury. Namely, Ganymede.

  Point Six. Jupiter’s innermost moon is the fastest known, revolving in twelve hours, with an orbital speed of one thousand miles per minute.

  Point Seven. Jupiter rotates faster than any other planet, and therefore has the shortest day, ten hours, and the highest equatorial speed, 28,000 miles per hour. (Compare Earth—one thousand miles an hour.)