“I think it’s trying to tell us something,” Neil said, in an awed voice.
“Old Jove, the god of lightning,” J.J. said. “He’s saying, ‘Look on my majesty, you puny mortals, and despair.’ ”
“I didn’t know you had a poetic soul,” Dom said.
Dom was moved by the vastness of the Jovian mass. It was heavy over him, seemingly over his head, and the Kennedy went down, measuring herself in a thousand ways as she lowered. Hull sensors sent the first recognition of faint traces of atmosphere. Slowly, slowly. She was doing well. Instruments worked and measured and gave their readings and the computer hummed and now scattered molecules of frozen ammonia made for a gradual lessening of vision. The Kennedy continued to fall into a murky sea of crystals. Her hull melted crystals. Temperature was going up, but it was well within operational levels.
“Level her off,” Dom ordered, when the outside pressure was one Earth atmosphere.
Neil took over from the automatics, to get the feel of the ship in case of systems failure. The ship was in a stationary orbit, moving with the surface rotation. Pressure was as predicted.
It was time to test one of the ship’s most crucial weapons for doing battle with the gas giant. Dom ordered two atmospheres in the living compartments. He felt his ears pop as the pressure built. Huge pumps moved clean air from the hold, and to take its place in the hold compartments, the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter was let in.
Satisfied that the internal pressure system was working properly, Dom ordered a descent until pressure equalized. And then, time after time, the process was repeated. In the murky atmosphere the ship saw only by her instruments, keeping position directly above the alien ship, guided by the continuing signal. That signal, that ship down there, that was the purpose of it all. It had drawn them onward, had inspired a last-ditch crucial effort on the part of the space industry. Only that signal and what was sending it justified the cost of the Kennedy, the risk involved, the use of scarce materials.
And the signal stopped when the Kennedy was only six atmospheres deep into the clouds.
The Kennedy became, in that sudden silence, a dinosaur. She had no purpose.
“Check equipment,” Dom ordered.
“All check,” Doris said.
“Check manual,” Dom said. “Hold this position.”
He himself ran a manual check on the receiver. It was operational. A radio check with the picket ship confirmed that the signal from the alien had suddenly ceased.
“Damn,” Dom said. “We were halfway there.” That was in distance, not in pressure. “Well hold here for a few hours. Maybe it will start up again.”
Four hours passed, during which the ship functioned perfectly. There was no break of the radio silence from the alien ship.
“Maybe he heard us coming and doesn’t want company?” Doris asked.
“No, it just went dead,” J.J. said. “It’s a damned miracle it has lasted so long. The ship’s still there.”
“For all the good it does,” Dom said.
“We have its position,” I.J. said. “We can lower down right on top of it.”
“Not likely,” Neil said. “Even under power these winds move us around. Without the signal it would be only a guess to put us within a hundred miles of her.”
“The descent is predicted on the computer,” J.J. said. “We can estimate corrections. We can get within a few miles and do a search.”
“We might find her if we had a hundred years to look,” Dom said.
“All we have is time,” J.J. said. “We have the power. We have air and supplies.”
“J.J., we built this ship for staying a limited time in three thousand atmospheres,” Dom said. “After ten days I wouldn’t want to bet against metal fatigue in the mush bondings.”
“All right, we have ten days,” J.J. said. “We can at least use it.”
“We can at least gather some interesting data,” Art said.
“I want to point out that we will be exposing this ship and her crew to unnecessary danger,” Neil said. “It is my opinion that going deeper into the atmosphere is now useless. If I were in her alone I’d take her down to three thousand atmospheres just to test the design, but I’m not alone. It’s one thing to risk the life of a professional test pilot in experimentation, another to risk the lives of a crew.”
“We hold for one more hour,” Dom said.
It was a tense hour, and when it was over J.J. paced the control room fretfully. Dom had spent the hour with Doris, directing her through some calculations.
“J.J.,” he said, “if we had one chance in a thousand of finding the ship I’d take her down, but I’ve run it through and the odds are a billion to one against finding her. I’ve also done some calculations on the length of stay at three thousand atmospheres. After eight days, the chances of failure increase to a point of risk. I think we’re worth more alive, and the ship is worth something for the Mars run. In short, I’m giving the order to take her up and out.”
“Then I am forced to ask you to relinquish your command,” J.J. said.
“No,” Dom said quietly. “I am in command. I built her and I know her limitations.”
“You have no choice,” J.J. said. “As your superior officer, I hereby inform you that I am taking command. Mr. Walters, make preparations to take her down to three thousand atmospheres.”
“With all due respect, sir, I decline,” Neil said. “I don’t agree that Captain Gordon should be removed from command.”
J.J. was facing them, his hands behind his back. He looked down at his feet, turned slowly, hands still clasped behind his back. He stood there, his back to them, for a long time, and then he turned quickly, his hand moving to point a small but deadly splatter gun at them. The weapon was designed for close-in killing in delicate areas. The blast of multiple projectiles could be fatal to anyone within a few feet, but there was not enough force behind the projectiles to, for example, hole the hull of a ship.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” J.J. said. “But we’re going to do the job we came out here to do.”
“Not this way,” Dom said.
“You leave me no choice.”
“You’re one against six,” Neil said. “You can’t stay awake forever.”
“J.J.,” Dom said, “put that thing away. If you’re so convinced that we should go down, we’ll go down. We came out here together. Well go down together.”
“You have my sincere thanks,” J.J. said.
“Gun or no gun, we’ll stay down no longer than seven days. Is that clear?” Dom asked.
“I agree,” J.J. said.
“Is everyone in agreement?” Dom asked. “We take the ship down to do what she was designed to do instead of risking someone’s getting killed if we try to overpower J.J.?”
“I am shocked,” Doris said, “but I’m for going down.”
The others agreed.
“Stations,” Dom said. “We’re going down. We won’t come up with anything but a few million cubic feet of Jovian atmosphere in the hold, but I intend to see that we do come up.”
They did it slowly and carefully. The crew worked smoothly, the incident with J.J. seemingly forgotten. Dom had to admit to himself that he’d wanted to go down all along. Fully alive, moving into an area where man had never been, he could almost feel the pressure on the hull as he rode herd on his instruments and the ship sank, buffeted by winds of hundreds of miles per hour, only the brute power of the drive holding the Kennedy against them. Only once did the ship drop down a wind sheer before the automatics compensated.