Jupiter (1973) Read online

  that never goes away. Its color darkens and fades; and

  since it seems reddish when it is dark, it is called the

  Great Red Spot. The Great Red Spot is about thirty

  thousand miles wide in its long diameter, eight thousand

  miles wide in the other, and has a surface area just

  about equal to that of the Earth.

  Introduction

  xiii

  Nor is it fixed to the surface. It doesn’t move north

  or south, but it does move east or west. It sometimes

  gains or loses a whole lap on the rest of the planet.

  Well, what is the Great Red Spot? Why is it red?

  Why does the color grow darker and lighter? Why does

  it move about relative to other parts of the planet?

  Why does it move east and west but not north and

  south?

  No one knows.

  For that matter, why are there colors in the rest

  of the atmosphere? Why do the colors concentrate in

  certain dark bands with lighter areas between? What

  are the various light spots that form, and why do they

  come and go whereas the Great Red Spot is apparently

  permanent?

  No one knows.

  For that matter, how deep is the atmosphere of

  Jupiter? Does its composition remain the same as one

  penetrates deeper? If it changes, how does it change?

  Is there a solid surface under the atmosphere? If so,

  how far under, and what is it made of? What is it like

  at Jupiter’s core?

  And how strong are the winds? What kind of storms

  are there? Is there lightning? What is the temperature

  in the depths of the atmosphere? Does the atmosphere

  trap enough solar radiation to make the temperature

  fairly mild in the depths? Warm enough to allow an

  ocean of water and ammonia? And if so, can life

  develop in such an ocean?

  No one knows.

  Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field. How does

  that affect the space around it? How did it originate?

  Why do the radio waves issue in bursts that seem to

  have a timing related to the position of lo in its orbit?

  No one knows.

  And no one will ever know if all our data is derived

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  Jupiter

  only from our knowledge of Earth, Moon, Mars, and

  other members of our species of world.

  Jupiter is of a different species and probably one

  that is quite common in the Universe. Delicate wob-

  blings of six small nearby stars seem to be the result

  of an asymmetric center of gravity imposed on those

  stars by planets circling them that are as large or even

  larger than Jupiter. Perhaps any star with a planetary

  system has one or more Jupiters. Perhaps there are

  more Jupiters than Earths in the Universe.

  Of course, as in almost everything else that calls for

  speculation, science-fiction writers have been there first.

  The strange and utterly alien world of Jupiter is a

  challenge to be met and writers willing to respond are

  not lacking. The challenge has been met in a variety

  of ways and in this book a broad sampling is spread

  out for your delectation.

  And if you should want to compare the pictures

  you see drawn here with what is actually known of

  Jupiter, I refer you (if I may be permitted an unabashed plug) to my book Jupiter, the Largest Planet, published by Lothrop in 1973.

  And let me add a personal note about the man-and-

  wife team (or woman-and-husband, in view of the

  times) that is editing this anthology. I have known

  and loved Fred and Carol Pohl for many years and

  I must tell you that, on the average, they are an extraordinarily good-looking couple. This is true despite the fact that Fred himself drags down that average

  about two miles.

  ■Isaac A simov

  JUPITER AT LAST

  Preface

  Ql

  In December, 1972, we were part of a strange and

  delightful odyssey aboard the S.S. Statendam, cruising

  off the shores of Florida to watch the Apollo 17 launch,

  going on to visit the sin spots of the (how can they

  say it?) Virgin Islands and the big radio telescope in

  Puerto Rico. Among the crew were Carl Sagan and his

  pretty artist-wife Linda. They were only two of a

  marvelous ship’s company—Ted Sturgeon, Bob Hein-

  lein, Marvin Minsky the robot man, Hugh Downs the

  TV man, Norman Mailer the man’s man, and so many

  others that to list them would be plain name-dropping.

  But the Sagans were a very special two. Carl is a remarkable person, sort of a volunteering encyclopedia with charm. (I had given a paper on population limits

  to the nonstop scientific symposium that was part of

  the cruise’s entertainment, and in it quoted some energy-

  consumption estimates. Carl called me on them after I

  was through. With some disdain I quoted my source,

  and Carl said, “I know, he got those figures from me

  and didn’t quite understand them.” ) In a ship’s company that included at least a dozen certifiable geniuses, Carl Sagan was the one to whom difficult questions were

  referred for final decision.

  Carl and Linda had been part of one of the most

  charming scientific projects I know of: the engraving,

  on the outer shell of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, of a

  message designed to be read and understood by alien

  xv

  xvi

  Jupiter

  creatures native to the planet of some other sun. Pioneer

  10 was then only well launched, had not yet reached

  even the orbit of Mars; it was planned to visit the

  Jupiter system, take pictures and send back reports,

  and then go on forever, out of the solar system entirely.

  In a few million years it may approach another star, or

  be intercepted en route by some alien interstellar

  spaceship. If it is, and if the beings who collect it are

  half as bright as space-faring creatures should be, they

  will read a message from Earth, put there by Carl and

  Linda Sagan.

  However, the central wonder of Pioneer 10 to me

  was that, at last, some human eye would get a look at

  the planet Jupiter and its moons. Maybe only through

  a TV camera, and even that picture run through a computer to make it make sense— but still, a look from near at hand.

  Jupiter was always the great puzzle of the solar system in the science-fiction magazines that formed such a large part of my youthful reading. In those days we

  had one great hope. We knew one planet very well— the

  Earth— and as the Earth had breathable air and drinkable lakes and survivable climate ranges, we hoped that all the other planets, or anyway some of them, would

  be obligingly similar.

  Now we know more, and most of what we know

  about the living conditions elsewhere in our solar system

  is disappointing: too cold, too hot, too airless, too

  poisonous, whatever. The early sf writers, who had a

  tendency to write about Jupiter as though it were a

  fatter Earth, seem to have been so badly wrong that

  their stories don’t make sense any more.

  But there were also a lot of stories, written later and

  more car
efully constructed in line with better astronomical observations.

  We wondered how well those other stories would

  square with what Pioneer 10 would find . . . and so we

  Preface

  xvii

  came off the cruise and began to plunge into blizzards

  of old magazines. And this book is the result. Betty

  Ballantine gave us the go-ahead, the authors gave us

  their blessing— and we give you the book.

  To make it complete, we insisted on an introduction

  from Isaac Asimov (another shipmate on that memorable cruise). You have already read it, no doubt. You may wonder why I, the male member of this team,

  should encourage an introduction from a person who

  slanders my good looks. I can explain that— it is simply

  for old friendship’s sake. Isaac and I go back a long way

  — to when we were both seventeen or so, and the world

  was new. That is well over a third of a century ago, and

  we have been friends all that time. In that time, I think,

  we have gained a good deal in wisdom, charm, maturity,

  and personality . . . on the average, of course.

  Frederik Pohl

  Carol Pohl

  Red Bank, April 1973

  JUPITER

  BRIDGE

  James Blish

  Ql

  Tames Blish liv e s w ith his a rtis t w ife in a h a n d s o m e old

  h o u se n e a r O xford, E n g la n d , w h e re h e s p e n d s his tim e

  w ritin g first-class sc ie n c e fiction. "B rid g e " w a s o n e of the

  first sc ie n tific a lly a c c u r a te sf sto ries e v e r w ritte n a b o u t th e

  " g a s g ia n ts " —th e p la n e ts Jupiter, S atu rn , U ra n u s, a n d

  N e p tu n e — a n d a s a m a tte r of fact Blish m a y h a v e b e e n

  r e sp o n s ib le for b rin g in g th a t term into th e la n g u a g e of

  a stro n o m y ; h e w a s th e first to u s e it, in a s e rie s of

  scien tific a rtic le s for a n sf m a g a z in e , a q u a r te r of a

  c e n tu ry o r so a g o .

  I

  A screeching tornado was rocking the Bridge when

  the alarm sounded; it was making the whole structure

  shudder and sway. This was normal and Robert Hel-

  muth barely noticed it. There was always a tornado

  shaking the Bridge. The whole planet was enswathed

  in tornadoes, and worse.

  The scanner on the foreman’s board had given 114

  as the sector of the trouble. That was at the northwestern end of the Bridge, where it broke off, leaving nothing but the raging clouds of ammonia crystals and methane, and a sheer drop thirty miles to the invisible

  surface. There were no ultraphone “eyes” at that end

  which gave a general view of the area— in so far as any

  1

  2

  Jupiter

  general view was possible— because both ends of the

  Bridge were incomplete.

  With a sigh Helmuth put the beetle into motion.

  The little car, as flat-bottomed and thin through as a

  bedbug, got slowly under way on ball-bearing races,

  guided and held firmly to the surface of the Bridge by

  ten close-set flanged rails. Even so, the hydrogen gales

  made a terrific siren-like shrieking between the edge of

  the vehicle and the deck, and the impact of the falling

  drops of ammonia upon the curved roof was as heavy

  and deafening as a rain of cannon balls. As a matter of

  fact, they weighed almost as much as cannon balls here,

  though they were not much bigger than ordinary raindrops. Every so often, too, there was a blast, accompanied by a dull orange glare, which made the car, the deck, and the Bridge itself buck savagely.

  These blasts were below, however, on the surface.

  While they shook the structure of the Bridge heavily,

  they almost never interfered with its functioning, and

  could not, in the very nature of things, do Helmuth any

  harm.

  Had any real damage ever been done, it would never

  have been repaired. There was no one on Jupiter to

  repair it.

  The Bridge, actually, was building itself. Massive,

  alone, and lifeless, it grew in the black deeps of Jupiter.

  The Bridge had been well-planned. From Helmuth’s

  point of view almost nothing could be seen of it, for

  the beetle tracks ran down the center of the deck, and

  in the darkness and perpetual storm even ultrawave-

  assisted vision could not penetrate more than a few

  hundred yards at the most. The width of the Bridge was

  eleven miles; its height, thirty miles; its length, deliberately unspecified in the plans, fifty-four miles at the moment—-a squat, colossal structure, built with engineering principles, methods, materials, and tools never touched before—-

  Bridge

  3

  For the very good reason that they would have been

  impossible anywhere else. Most of the Bridge, for instance, was made of ice: a marvelous structural material under a pressure of a million atmospheres, at a temperature of —94°C. Under such conditions, the best structural steel is a friable, talc-like powder, and aluminum becomes a peculiar, transparent substance that splits

  at a tap.

  Back home, Helmuth remembered, there had been

  talk of starting another Bridge on Saturn, and perhaps

  still later, on Uranus, too. But that had been politicians’

  talk. The Bridge was almost five thousand miles below

  the visible surface of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and its

  mechanisms were just barely manageable. The bottom

  of Saturn’s atmosphere had been sounded at sixteen

  thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight miles, and

  the temperature there was below —150°C. There even

  pressure-ice would be immovable, and could not be

  worked with anything except itself. And as for

  Uranus . . .

  As far as Helmuth was concerned, Jupiter was quite

  bad enough.

  The beetle crept within sight of the end of the Bridge

  and stopped automatically. Helmuth set the vehicle’s

  eyes for highest penetration, and examined the nearby

  beams.

  The great bars were as close-set as screening. They

  had to be, in order to support even their own weight,

  let alone the weight of the components of the Bridge,

  the whole webwork was flexing and fluctuating to the

  harpist-fingered gale, but it had been designed to do

  that. Helmuth could never help being alarmed by the

  movement, but habit assured him that he had nothing

  to fear from it.

  He took the automatics out of the circuit and inched

  4

  Jupiter

  the beetle forward manually. This was only Sector 113,

  and the Bridge’s own Wheatstone-bridge scanning system— there was no electronic device anywhere on the Bridge, since it was impossible to maintain a vacuum

  on Jupiter— said that the trouble was in Sector 114.

  The boundary of Sector 114 was still fully fifty feet

  away.

  It was a bad sign. Helmuth scratched nervously in

  his red beard. Evidently there was really cause for

  alarm— real alarm, not just the deep, grinding depression which he always felt while working on the Bridge.

  Any damage serious enough to halt the beetle a full

  sector short of the trouble area was bound to be major.

&nb
sp; It might even turn out to be the disaster which he had

  felt lurking ahead of him ever since he had been made

  foreman of the Bridge— that disaster which the Bridge

  itself could not repair, sending man reeling home from

  Jupiter in defeat.

  The secondaries cut in and the beetle stopped again.

  Grimly, Helmuth opened the switch and sent the beetle

  creeping across the invisible danger line. Almost at

  once, the car tilted just perceptibly to the left, and the

  screaming of the winds between its edges and the deck

  shot up the scale, sirening in and out of the soundless-

  dogwhistle range with an eeriness that set Helmuth’s

  teeth on edge. The beetle itself fluttered and chattered

  like an alarm-clock hammer betweeen the surface of

  the deck and the flanges of the tracks.

  Ahead there was still nothing to be seen but the

  horizontal driving of the clouds and the hail, roaring

  along the length of the Bridge, out of the blackness into

  the beetle’s fanlights, and onward into blackness again

  towards the horizon no eye would ever see.

  Thirty miles below, the fusillade of hydrogen explosions continued. Evidently something really wild was going on on the surface. Helmuth could not remember

  having heard so much activity in years.

  Bridge

  5

  There was a flat, esecially heavy crash, and a long

  line of fuming orange fire came pouring down the

  seething atmosphere into the depths, feathering horizontally like the mane of a Lipizzan horse, directly in front of Helmuth. Instinctively, he winced and drew

  back from the board, although that stream of flame

  actually was only a little less cold than the rest of the

  streaming gases, far too cold to injure the Bridge.

  In the momentary glare, however, he saw something

  — an upward twisting of shadows, patterned but obviously unfinished, fluttering in silhouette against the hydrogen cataract’s lurid light.

  The end of the Bridge.

  Wrecked.

  Helmuth grunted involuntarily and backed the beetle

  away. The flare dimmed; the light poured down the sky

  and fell away into the raging sea below. The scanner