Jupiter (1973)
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ORIGINAL $1.25
266
23sk JUPITER
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SPECULATIVE FICTION
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BY SCIENCE FICTION’S
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MASTER PROGNOSTICATORS.
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EDITED BY CAROL AND FREDERIK POHL
INTRODUCTION BY ISAAC ASIMOV
“When / was a little boy I read astronomy books. I also
read science fiction. Astronomy books told me a jew
facts about Jupiter, but not many of the intimate details. Few intimate details were known in the prehistoric times in which l was a boy. Besides l preferred what
the science-fiction tales said concerning Jupiter . .
— Isaac Asimov
(from his Introduction)
What with all the P io n eer probes headed for that giant
and mysterious planet, it won’t be long before we find
out everything we ever wanted to know about Jupiter
— well, almost everything! Meanwhile, let’s see how
nine of our own pioneers in science fiction imagined the
planet.
Titles by
FREDERIK POHL
Short Stories
Novels
THE GOLD AT THE
SLAVE SHIP
STARBOW’S END
EDGE OF THE CITY
ALTERNATING
DRUNKARD’S WALK
CURRENTS
A PLAGUE OF PYTHONS
THE CASE AGAINST
THE AGE OF THE
TOMORROW
PUSSYFOOT
TOMORROW TIMES
SEVEN
THE MAN WHO ATE
THE WORLD
TURN LEFT AT
THURSDAY
THE ABOMINABLE
EARTHMAN
DIGITS AND DASTARDS
DAY MILLION
In collaboration with
In collaboration with
C. M. KORNBLUTH
JACK WILLIAMSON
THE SPACE MERCHANTS
THE REEFS OF SPACE
SEARCH THE SKY
STARCHILD
GLADIATOR-AT-LAW
ROGUE STAR
WOLFBANE
UNDERSEA CITY
THE WONDER EFFECT
UNDERSEA FLEET
UNDERSEA QUEST
Anthologies
THE STAR SERIES (No. 1 through No. 6)
STAR OF STARS
NIGHTMARE AGE
All published by Ballantine Books
JUPITER
Edited, by Carol and Frederik Pohl
Introduction by Isaac Asimov
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
Bridge, by James Blish, copyright © 1952 by Street & Smith
Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent,
Robert P. Mills, Ltd.
Victory Unintentional, by Isaac Asimov, copyright © 1942 by
Fictioneers, Inc., copyright renewed 1969 by Isaac Asimov.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Desertion, by Clifford D. Simak, copyright © 1944 by Street
& Smith Publications, Inc., copyright renewed 1972 by Clifford
D. Simak. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent, Robert
P. Mills, Ltd.
The Mad Moon, by Stanley G. Weinbaum, copyright © 1934
by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
the author’s agent, Forrest J. Ackerman.
Heavyplanet, by Milton A. Rothman, copyright © 1939, by
Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
the author.
The Lotus-Engine, by Raymond Z. Gallun, copyright © 1940
by Fictioneers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s
agent, Forrest J. Ackerman.
Call Me Joe, by Poul Anderson, copyright © 1957 by Street
& Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
Habit, by Lester del Rey, copyright © 1939 by Street & Smith
Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent,
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
A Meeting with Medusa, by Arthur C. Clarke, copyright ©
1971 by Playboy. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent,
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
Copyright © 1973 by Carol and Frederik Pohl
Introduction Copyright © 1973 by Isaac Asimov
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions.
SBN 345-23662-9-125
First Printing: December 1973
Printed in Canada
Cover art by John Berkey
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
201 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
Contents
Introduction: Jupiter the Giant
vii
Isaac Asimov
Preface: Jupiter at Last
xv
Frederik and Carol Pohl
Bridge
1
James Blish
Victory Unintentional
39
Isaac Asimov
Desertion
65
Clifford D. Simak
The Mad Moon
81
Stanley G. Weinbaum
Heavyplanet
111
Milton A. Rothman
The Lotus-Engine
125
Raymond Z. Gallun
Call Me Joe
149
Poul Anderson
Habit
193
Lester del Rey
A Meeting with Medusa
211
Arthur C. Clarke
JUPITER THE GIANT
Introduction
01
When I was a little boy I read astronomy books.
I also read science fiction. Astronomy books told me
a few facts about Jupiter, but not many of the intimate
details. Few intimate details were known in the prehistoric times in which I was a boy. Besides, I preferred what the science-fiction tales said concerning Jupiter, and in many of them Jupiter was an inhabited
world not terribly different from Earth, except that
it might be the haunt of space pirates or intelligent
insects.
The truth dawned on me not through more careful
reading of more up-to-date astronomy books, but
through that remarkable phenomenon, John W. Campbell, Jr. Even before he became an editor and singlehandedly turned science fiction into a mature and rational branch of literature, he was educating us with a series of astronomical articles for Astounding Stories.
These taught me, for the first time, that science could
be as fascinating as science fiction.
The best article in the series was “Other Eyes
Watching” in the February 1937 issue. It was about
Jupiter and never again did I think of Jupiter as anything but what it more or less was.
In fact, the second story I wrote (in 1938) dealt
with Jupiter’s satellite system, and in writing it I used
some of the views I had read in Campbell’s article
a year and a half earlier. I sold that second story to
vii
viii
Jupiter
none other than Fred Pohl, the male half of the editorial
team of this anthology. He published it under the title
of “The Callistan Menace” in the April 1940 issue
of Astonishing Stories.
I doubt that any self-respecting science-fiction writer
would nowadays write any story about Jupiter that
didn’t take into account what we know (or think we
know) about the planet— as this anthology demonstrates. Naturally, then, we are all fascinated by the new knowledge that the space age may be on the point
of bringing us.
As I write this, the space-probe Pioneer 11 has taken
off from Cape Kennedy in a long-drawn-out flash of
blazing orange light. Beyond the atmosphere it reached
a speed of nine miles a second, and it passed the Moon
after eleven hours of flight. Some time in February
1975, it will pass near Jupiter.
But it will be only the second probe to pass that
planet. Ahead of it is Pioneer 10, which took off on
March 2, 1972, and has passed safely through the
asteroid belt (as I write this) and is still transmitting.
It will reach Jupiter on December 3, 1973 (about the
time this book is published), and will pass only 85,000
miles from the planet’s surface— still transmitting, if
all goes well.
Whipping about the giant planet, Pioneer 10 will
gain enough speed to break out of the Sun’s gravitational grip and go skittering past the orbits of all the outer planets. In 1984 it will pass beyond Pluto, and
will continue farther still.
Pioneer 10 will be the first man-made object ever
to leave the solar system. It will be moving in the
direction of the star Aldebaran and will reach the
neighborhood of that star (or the neighborhood where
 
; it now is) in about 1,700,000 years.
On Pioneer 10 is a message from Earth, etched into
Introduction
ix
a 6-by-9-inch gold-covered aluminum slab. It is not
an ordinary message, but a mixture of figures and
symbols that could be properly interpreted only by
sophisticated astronomers of the type we would expect
in any society advanced enough to detect the small
probe in space and to pluck it out of emptiness—
millions of years from now, if ever.
But Pioneer 10 (and Pioneer 11, too if it follows in
the tracks of the earlier probe) will have ceased transmitting long before it leaves the solar system. What will happen to it after it passes Jupiter we will never
know. But that doesn’t matter. All we ask of it is to
tell us something of the environment it encounters as
it speeds by Jupiter and its twelve satellites.
How strong are the radiation belts around Jupiter?
What is the strength of its magnetic field? How many
particles does it encounter? How strong are the pulls
of Jupiter’s satellites? What is the appearance of the
satellites’ surfaces? What is the appearance of Jupiter’s
cloud cover at close range? Its colors? Its movement?
Its chemistry? Its temperature?
Question mark, question mark, question mark . . .
And why do we want to know?
Because Jupiter is different, enormously different,
and we don’t know what to make of it.
We live on a planet, and we know its characteristics.
There are other planets in the solar system that are
essentially like E arth-different in detail, but Earthlike overall. And since we know about the Earth, we automatically know something about them.
We have landed on our sister-world, the Moon. It
is smaller than Earth and has neither air nor water,
but its soil and rocks are not very different from those
of Earth. And the scenery of the Moon could be similar
to that in some areas of the Earth if you allow for
the lack of air and water.
We have seen Mars close up, and it is different in
*
Jupiter
detail from the Moon and Earth, but there is a broad
similarity, too. We have touched the surface of Venus
with several Soviet orobes and with radar waves, and
it, too, is rough and hard and mountainous.
And Mercury, no doubt, and the asteroids, and the
satellites of the various planets— All different in detail,
but all members of the same species. That Earth is
sufficiently different to support life is the result of the
accident that it is the largest of all these bodies and
is at a distance from the Sun that allows water to
remain liquid.
Among all the bodies circling the Sun, there are only
four that do not belong to Earth’s species, but to a
different species altogether. These four are Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and the reason they are
of a different species is that they are much larger than
Earth— so much larger that they form in a different
wav and end with a different composition and nature.
Of them all, Juoiter is the largest and therefore the
most extreme in its differences. It is the one closest to
the Sun, so that it receives more energy from solar
radiation and is more violently stormy than the rest,
and also the one closest to us, so that it is most easily
examined.
To study this other species of planet, we must study
Jupiter.
Of course, though it is closest to us of any of its kind,
it is still not very close. At its closest, Jupiter is nearly
400.000,000 miles from us— sixteen hundred times as
far away as the Moon, four times as far away as the
Sun. Is it any wonder the probes take nearly two years
to reach it?
And it really is a giant.
It has a diameter a little over eleven times that of
the Earth. In other words, if you place eleven bodies
like the Earth side by side, they won’t quite stretch
across the width of Jupiter. That’s the usual way of
Introduction
xi
comparing planetary sizes, but it doesn’t begin to show
the difference.
Jupiter’s surface area is 125 times that of the Earth.
If you imagine the surface of the Earth peeled off and
flattened out and pasted on the surface of Jupiter, it
would cover about half as much of that planet as the
United States does of the Earth.
And if you consider volumes, Jupiter is fourteen
hundred times as large as the Earth.
Of course, Jupiter isn’t as well packed as Earth is.
Although it has fourteen hundred times as much room
as Earth has in which to pack away matter, it has only
318 times the mass of Earth. That’s enough, to be sure,
since it means that Earth is to Jupiter as your weight
is to that of two African elephants, of the largest size,
put together.
Jupiter’s mass is enough to hold a far-flung system
of satellites to itself. One of those satellites, Jupiter-
VIII, can recede to a distance of 20 million miles from
Jupiter— eighty times as far as the Moon is from
Earth— without breaking away. Four of the satellites
are Moon-sized or larger. The largest, Ganymede, is
larger than the planet Mercury.
The nearest of the four large satellites, Io, is exactly
as far from the center of Jupiter as the Moon is from
the center of Earth (and it is almost exactly the size
of the Moon, too). Earth’s relatively feeble gravity,
however, can only drive the Moon into a motion of
five-eighths of a mile per second, so that it does not
complete its circle about the Earth for over twenty-
seven days. Io, driven by Jupiter’s colossal gravity,
moves at nearly eleven miles per second and circles
Jupiter in less than two days.
Everything about Jupiter is big and lavish.
Well, not everything. Its density is small because,
as aforesaid, there is only three hundred times Earth’s
mass spread out through fourteen hundred times Earth’s
xu
Jupiter
volume. Jupiter’s density is only one-quarter that of
Earth.
That alone should tell us that Jupiter does not belong
to the same species as Earth. If Jupiter had anything
like the chemical composition of Earth, its gigantic
gravitational field would pull it together so as to make
it considerably denser than Earth.
To be less dense than Earth despite the pull of its
gravity, Jupiter must be made up largely of materials
less dense than those that make up Earth, materials
common enough in the Universe to be found in quantities sufficient to build a giant planet.
This leaves us with one possibility only—hydrogen,
together with a few minor impurities such as helium,
neon, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Helium and neon
don’t react with any other substances but exist only
as single, standoffish atoms. Anything else must combine
with the overwhelming quantities of hydrogen. Carbon,
nitrogen, and oxygen must exist as methane (CH4),
ammonia (NH3), and water (H aO ).
And that’s what we find. In the last half century,
astronomers have slowly gathered evidence to show
that Jupiter’s atmosphere is largely hydrogen, with
admixtures of helium and probably neon, plus some
methane and ammonia. (Water is undoubtedly present
also, but is frozen solid somewhere below.)
Yet it is an odd atmosphere, filled with cloud banks
through which we cannot see. And the clouds have
colors, even though none of the constituents we can
detect are colored.
There is a great elliptical spot in Jupiter’s atmosphere