Jupiter (1973) Page 2
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