a jovian compromise:
penal world
by
thornton ayre [= john russell fearn]
TEXT AND DISCUSSION

JAMES CARDEW, former American citizen, was on Jupiter through no fault of his own. He was in no way to blame for the fact that he now stood inside his enormously reinforced space suit gazing out on a landscape incredibly vast and rugged, stretching to a colossal distance, bounded at remoteness by the boiling horror of the seven-thousand-mile-wide Great Red Spot.

Jupiter was the penal world of the system, last working place of the criminals of Earth, Mars and Venus. And for a very good reason! Once a space machine landed on Jupiter- it was common knowledge that, in the case of the huge convict machines at least, it could never leave. The titanic gravity of the planet claimed large-sized ships absolutely.

James Cardew had been framed by certain jealous officials of the space ways — shipped to Jupiter because he knew too much of graft and corruption in high places. For two years he had worked among the bitter-hearted men at the settlement — a vast underground abode of itanium metal. Periodic No. 187, vastly heavy, and the only known metal capable of withstanding, for six continuous months, the unbelievable pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere and down-drag. By the time the six months were up this highly radioactive metal began to collapse -

The convicts’ entire life, therefore, consisted of building up the very walls that hemmed them in. And twenty miles away, where the walls were likewise always being repaired by good-behavior men, was the underground residence of Governor Mason and his family, voluntarily marooned on this colossal world.

Despite the fact that within the governor’s abode and the settlement there were machines which nullified the crushing gravitation, men did go berserk at times — warders and prisoners alike. Some went to the exterior — a freely permitted act — quite unprotected, to die instantly in an atmosphere of pure ammoniated hydrogen at a frigid temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below zero centigrade.

Others were smarter. They frisked itanium space suits and furtively escaped in them — but they were never heard of again. Either way it was suicide.

James Cardew had done pretty much the same thing. Suicide had been in his mind for months; he’d been on the verge of walking unprotected to the exterior. Then, from the external reflectors in the main machine room, he had seen a space ship of the private variety — small and easy to handle — fall like a brilliant comet in the dense atmosphere, dropping finally about two hundred miles due east. If he could reach that ship he might, by very reason of its smallness, break the effect of Jupiter’s drag and get back to Earth, square his wrongful conviction.

It was pretty obvious that the vessel had been accidentally caught in the giant world’s enormous attractive field; maybe the pilot had been an amateur, unauthorized by the space flying committees. Whatever it was, James Cardew realized that he had to reach that ship within three weeks before the violent atmosphere and pressure made an end of it.

Three weeks — two hundred miles across Jupiter’s terrible terrain. To escape the prison had not been difficult. It was now that the difficulties began.

CARDEW’S gray eyes were grim behind the six-inch, unbreakable glass of his helmet; his lean, powerful face was set in grimly determined lines, the lines of a man accustomed, by now, to bearing inexorable strain. For every step he took he was forced to raise a weight about three times in excess of normal, including his densely heavy space suit, so designed as to exclude external and maintain internal pressures.

Even so, being a one-bundred-and-sixty-eight-pound man, he weighed four hundred and forty-eight pounds on Jupiter, with his space suit and heavy equipment added to it. It made of his body a vastly heavy, aching machine.

He took stock of his position from behind the protection of two upjutting rocks of tremendously dense material. They afforded him a little shelter from the tycane — technical name for the vast two-hundred-and-fifty-mile- per-hour wind forever raging from pole to pole of the giant world. Yet by reason of the enormous gravity the effect of the wind on a human being was about equal to a gale of one hundred miles per hour. Around the Great Red Spot, the one remaining portion of Jupiter still unsolidified, despite the frigid cold of the rest of the surface, the tycane had been known to reach the incredible velocity of over four hundred miles per hour — but then the Spot was recognized by all experts as the fester spot of Jove, seven thousand miles of bubbling, densely heavy materials -

Cardew, moving his arms with enormous effort, studied his compass inside its protective itanium case and took stock of his direction. His route would lead him to the Fishnet Jungle, through a cleft of the Seven Peak Mountains, and after that along the shores of the Turquoise Ocean. The points were fairly familiar in his mind, but the jungle was the main thing that worried him — how he was going to pick his way through its weird mass.

Finally he pushed his compass back in place on his back and swiftly checked over his heavily shielded equipment — first-aid pack, down to a common container of smelling salts, tabloid provisions, and an oxygen- jet pistol, the only practicable weapon of destruction in an atmosphere containing vast preponderances of hydrogen and ammonia. Not much equipment, but enough in a world where every scrap of weight added to an already crushing burden.

Cardew braced himself and emerged from his protection into the full blast of the eternal wind. Since dawn had arrived about an hour ago, he had about eight clear hours in which to make further progress; with a bit of luck he might reach the Fishnet Jungle in that time. That it was already quite visible to him in the weak daylight filtering through the writhing clouds signified nothing. There were always the tycane and the constant down-drag to be reckoned with. He moved with labored effort, the strain bathing him in perspiration inside his hot, heavy suit.

To the rear, now far distant, gleamed the sunken dome of the penal settlement, and farther away still the governor’s habitation. To left and right there was naught but hard red ground. Once it had all been like the Red Spot; now it had cooled to produce an effect as dreary as anything that could be imagined.

Only the Fishnet Jungle, with its blunted trees and weird tracery branches — from which the fanciful name was derived — provided any relief in the otherwise crushed monotony. Even the highest summit of the distant Seven Peak Mountains only reached a thousand feet in height, held down by the mighty gravitation.

Cardew struggled on, forcing his weight-anguished body into the teeth of the tycane. He found it hard to believe that the wind outside his helmet was absolute poison, that the trees of the distant jungle were basically ammonium carbonate, living in a temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below centigrade zero. . . .

Mad, idiotic world ! It was populated, too, by creatures as mad as their environment. Cardew had heard of them — mighty strong things with a fairly high scientific intelligence — known as the joherc, derived from Jovian Hercules. Where they abided, however, was something of a mystery, since they were rarely seen on the surface.

GRUNTING WITH EFFORT, Cardew went on slowly, slipping and sliding on ground of enormous hardness, one wary eye fixed on the distant, quivering upspoutings of molten matter from the Great Red Spot. No telling when it might decide to erupt. It had a nasty habit now and again of covering thousands of square miles of Jupiter with molten chemicals. That, in a landscape normally bitterly cold, produced effects almost too cataclysmic for imagination — certainly death for a lone traveler.

Occasionally the fitful gleams of sunlight through the dense scurrying clouds made the scene even more desolate, painted it with weak, washy colors, like some redstone plain of Earth at twilight. Gloom, depression and barrenness — mighty Jove had all these attributes.

Cardew stopped only once, to nourish himself, on his journey toward the jungle. He moved a switch on his helmet and a spring, releasing itself, dropped into his open mouth a vitamin pellet, following it with a rejuvenating drink-essence tablet. Neither of them were more than quarter of a centimeter in size, but so potent in effect that he felt renewed strength surge into his aching limbs.

He rose up again from the rock against which he had been lounging and staggered on — onward all through the drab afternoon, battling the eternal wind, muttering threats, in good American, upon Jupiter and all it contained.

As he had calculated, he reached the outskirts of the Fishnet at dusk. The twilight was brief, dimmed from murky drabness into night, relieved only slightly by the clouded glow of the attendant moons.

With lackluster eyes he peered into the shadows beneath the Fishnet trees. In every direction about their boles sprouted the weird below-zero forms of Jovian plants, bearing not the vaguest relation to Earthly vegetation, but patterned in some incomprehensible surrealist style, full of bars, cubes, oblongs and angles, more crystal then vegetational in form. Flowers there were none. Jovian vegetation, in the main, reproduced itself by fission and lived in the slow, creeping style of the unicell. There was something almost disgusting about the way the growths occasionally popped noisily and became two, growing with extreme slowness thereafter toward maturity and further reproduction. Cardew heard them bisect quite distinctly through his sensitive external helmet detector as he plodded onward —

Until he gained a Fishnet tree with branches lower than the rest —   To scramble into them, though they were only six feet from the ground, demanded enormous effort — took thirty minutes of muscle-wrenching strain. But once he was in their firmly spread, bedlike mass he relaxed with a sigh, satisfied that he was safe from the weird ammoniacal crawlers.

Beyond a wish that he could get out of his space suit and have a real breath of honest fresh air, he had no regrets. So far, so good. His eyes closed with leaden weariness; the tree branch moved up and down in the grip of the tycane slowly, ceaselessly —

As he half dozed, the detector phones brought in a medley of vaguely familiar noises above the wind’s whine, chief amongst which were the weird, half-human twitterings of the ostriloath — strange birdlike creature crossed vaguely between ostrich and sloth — and the deep bass grunting of the feather-sphere, the porcupine of Jove, rolling everywhere at terrific speed like a heavily flaked cannon ball. Familiar sounds all —

THEN, suddenly, Cardew jolted violently upright, wide awake, his heart slamming painfully with the sudden intensity of his effort, his ears still ringing with what had definitely been a human shout of fear!

“Damned delusions !” he breathed quickly, staring round and below at the crazy jungle. “Couldn’t have been — ”

He frowned in bewilderment. A scream from inside a helmet would be carried to the amplifier on the helmet exterior; even the slightest cry from anybody would be instantly enormously amplified by the dense atmosphere. But nobody else could be in such a cockeyed spot, surely —

Cardew broke off in his quick reflections and stared with amazed eyes through the clear patch between the nearest Fishnet trees. The light of Europa shone down through cloud breaks upon a space-suited figure lying flat on the ground, struggling against the gravity to tug out an oxygen pistol. A little distance away a hideous little-headed sican, violently strong, sheathed in an armor plating of frozen scales, fixed his intended prey with enormous glassy eyes. It was the largest of all Jovian animals, measuring five feet in length and nearly the same in width. Then it began to advance slowly on its six immensely powerful legs.

Almost as quickly as the danger registered in Cardew’s mind, he had dropped violently to the ground and tugged out his own oxygen pistol. With ponderously dragging feet, the ghastly pull of a nightmare’s dragging chains, he tried to run forward — fired his gun as he went.

Immediately a vicious stream of devastating flame spouted through the moonlight, momentarily lighted the mad glade with bluish-yellow fire. The force of the jet struck the sican clean in the center of its body, sent it rearing upward in a sudden paroxysm of searing pain.

Maddened, it twirled round and jumped dangerously near the sprawling, motionless figure. Then, at another vicious cut across its hideous face, it twisted round and traveled at high speed on its enormously strong legs into the jungle fastness.

Cardew felt the sweat of relief suddenly start to pour down his face. He replaced his gun and clumped slowly forward against the raging wind, turned over the prostrate figure with considerable effort. Jerking out his torch, he flashed the beam through the dense face glass, then started back in astonishment at beholding the perspiration-dewed face of a girl, eyes closed, hair raven-dark, lips pale with unconsciousness.

“Where in Heaven’s name did you drop from?” he said in bewilderment. Then he turned industriously to his first-aid kit and set to work with her helmet trappings. Swiftly he uncapped the triple valve socket connected to her respirator, screwed the heavy metal tube to the top of his smelling-salt container.

IMMEDIATELY the powerful aromatic ammonia fumes surged into her helmet, set her lips moving with sudden revulsion, forced her clear, dark eyes to open in sudden alarm.

“Better?” Cardew whispered into her external receiver, as he recapped her respirator and laid the salts container beside him.

She nodded weakly. “Yes — I think so. I — I don’t know where you’ve come from, but it certainly was opportune.” She spoke rather shakily in a voice that was pleasantly mellow. “I thought I was going to make a perfect target for the sican!"

“Not with my oxygen pistol in good order.” He smiled. Then, locking his arms round her metal-clad waist he heaved her to her feet.  Her face was clearly relieved and grateful in Europa’s murky light.

“I guess that was good of you,” she said warmly. “You risked your life. Probably you’re thinking I’m an awful fool to pass out like that? Suppose we call it plain fright?”

He ignored her apologies. “American?” he questioned eagerly.

She nodded. "By inheritance, yes — but born on this ghastly planet through no fault of my own. I’m Claire Mason, daughter of Hubert Mason, the settlement governor.”

He stared at her in amazement; her gaze, too, was one of polite inquiry.

“I’ve heard of you, of course.” He hesitated. “Like the rest of the people on this ghastly world, you’re its prisoner. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here all the same.”

She laughed shortly. “That’s easy ! If you’d been born here because your father and mother’s social position demanded that they give up all thought of Earthly life and devote their lives to this planet, what would you do on seeing a private, small-sized space machine fall two hundred miles to the east? You’d head for it, of course! Well, that’s what I’m doing. I reckon about three weeks before pressure wipes it out. Naturally, there are no small ships at the settlement — only the useless, heavy prison machines, and they’re about crushed to powder.”

She paused and regarded him rather naively. “I know you can’t be Dr. Livingstone,” she said demurely. “But just the same, I suppose you have a name ?”

“I did have a number,” he growled; then, more sociably, “James Cardew’s my name — escaped prisoner trying to get back to Earth to prove my innocence. I’m heading the same way as you are.”

“Really?” Her voice seemed a little cool. She seemed to sense there was something not quite right about hobnobbing with an escaped prisoner.

"I suppose, since the governor’s place is twenty miles from the settlement, you took a wider route to this jungle?” he asked.

"Obviously,” she said calmly. Then, tossing aside her uncertain manner, she went on earnestly, "I want to see the world I belong to, feel natural instead of artificial gravity, breathe fresh air, see fields and great cities — New York in particular. It must be wonderful!”

“Not bad,” he admitted reflectively.

"To get back to Earth — or, rather, to visit it for the first time — I’m prepared to risk Jupiter drag in the space ship. That is, if it’s still space-worthy.”

"It’ll probably mean death,” he said.

But she only shrugged inside her huge suit. “Supposing it does? Better than Jupiter. In fact, I — ”

She stopped short and gave a little cry, made a clumsy movement backward into Cardew’s protecting right arm.

“What — what is it?” she gasped in alarm, pointing. “Look!”

He tugged out his gun again. “Take it easy,” he murmured. "A joherc, or I miss my guess!”

THEY STOOD motionless, watching the fantastic creature that had suddenly appeared in the clearing, plainly visible in the now combined lights of unclouded Europa and Ganymede. It moved cautiously, with a certain oddly childlike nervousness quite incongruous for such a tremendously powerful body.

“A joherc, all right,” Cardew affirmed. “Heard of ’em many a time, and heard their description, but never saw one. They’re pretty good scientists in their way — maybe a bit dangerous, though.”

Still they watched as the joherc came into complete view — a biped, only two feet tall, with two legs nearly as thick as a man’s body and almost fantastically muscled. Further support was provided by the broad, kangaroolike tail on which it sat ever and again. Its remaining anatomy was made up of a pear-shaped body, stumpy arms, enormous pectoral muscles and chest — in which, according to description and reconstruction at the settlement bureau, there beat three powerful hearts to create a normal circulation in the eternal drag. On the mighty shoulders was the strange, triple-jointed neck, semihuman face with wide, half-grinning mouth and scaly head.

A pure product of anunonia, living in a climate ideally suited to it — a living, thinking creature of superhuman strength and swiftness, mentally active, yet humanly childlike in manner — a veritable cosmic paradox.

The two remained motionless as the creature advanced. His broad nostrils were quivering oddly, scenting something. The deeply-set, many-layered eyes stared penetratingly round the coldly lighted clearing — then suddenly espied Cardew’s smelling-salt container! That was enough! The joherc dived like a flash of gray and seized the container in a powerful hand, picking out the already half-pressure-crushed crystals with the blunt fingers of the other, tossing them into his huge mouth.

Cardew came to life at that and let out a yell. “Hey, you! That belongs to my kit! Get out of it! Get going!”

He flung himself forward strainedly and snatched up the container with a gloved hand, slammed the cap back on top of it. The joherc sat on its broad tail, licking its lips complacently. Obviously, with its usual phenomenal sense of smell, it had detected the crystals from a distance. Such a treasure trove, though sheer poison to an Earthling, was evidently too much to resist.

“On your way, joherc!” Cardew snapped, returning the container to the hook on his belt. “No crystals going free!”

The joherc made no move, but his keen eyes followed Cardew’s every move as he returned to the relieved girl, replacing his pistol in its holster.

“Obviously not hostile,” was her comment.

He grinned behind his face glass, “Not while I have these crystals, anyhow.” He chuckled. “Try to imagine a guy wandering around with a bag of priceless gems, not caring much whether he had them or not. If you were naturally decent, would you be hostile? No, sir! You’d just stick around on the chance of getting some — ”

He stopped and looked about him. “What do we do?” he asked. “Stop for the night or carry on?”

She surveyed the jungle’s menacing depths. “Might as well carry on, since every moment counts. We’ve got to find our way through this tangle somehow and reach the Seven Peaks. Let’s be going.”

“Suits me !” He fell into clumsy step beside her as they began their laborious struggle forward into the Europa- and Ganymede-lighted madness of the Jovian forest —

And behind them, sniffing the ammoniated breeze, shooting against the enormous gravity with the ease of an Earthly kangaroo, came the joherc, odd face almost like that of an anxious child, as its unmoving gaze watched the bobbing smelling-salt container on Cardew’s waist belt —

THE FOREST became sparser as the two progressed, but its life teemed as furiously as of yore. Here and there a deadly lance-stem, fastest growing thing in the wilderness, stabbed outward with an unbearably cold, daggerlike frond, able at close quarters to penetrate the thick armor of the space suits.

Somehow the two avoided the horrors, only to find themselves constantly dodging whizzing feather-spheres and jabbering ostriloaths. Ever and again they found themselves hurled to the ground as the cannon-ball hardness and speed of the feather-spheres knocked their legs from under them. Nor were their feelings improved at finding the joherc not far behind in the moonlight.

“I wish you’d go away, Jo!” Cardew snorted in discomfiture, and his voice boomed through his microphone on the creature’s tiny ears. “Go play tag with the cannon balls! In plain words, scram!”

Jo sat on his tail and waited, cast a thoughtful pair of eyes toward the now vaguely dawn-lighted sky.

“No go,” Cardew growled to the girl, shrugging. “I guess he’ll follow until we reach the space ship.”

They struggled on again. Then, in the increasing light, they suddenly saw ahead that lance-stems and Fishnets were smashing and splintering violently under the force of enormous feet. Exactly as they had expected, a huge specimen of the sican genus came blundering into view.

Cardew’s fingers tensed on his oxygen pistol; but long before he could take aim, something shot past him in a blur of motion, stumpy arms and hands flung wide, blocklike legs tensing into bulgings of muscle at each terrific spring.

“Jo!” the girl cried in amazement. “Of all the foolhardy things — ”

“Don’t be too sure!” Cardew interrupted her tensely. “These Jovian blighters, especially the bipeds, have got strength beyond imagination. Look!”

He pointed quickly. The joherc had already seized the powerful sican by the throat, was crushing, with every scrap of his enormous, concentrated, tight-packed strength, into that leathery neck, performing his actions at such a terrific rate it was hardly possible to follow him. Working against a gravity two and a half times more powerful than Earth’s, his actions correspondingly increased in like ratio.

He was obviously lighter than his antagonist, and by far the more intelligent. The sican finally retreated, thin, aqueous humor freezing solid on its thick neck as fast as it appeared.

“Bet the air smells even more pungent than usual outside,” Claire said reflectively as she watched the brute retreat in the now full daylight. “Imagine bursting a bladder of pure ammonia in an atmosphere already thick with it!”

“I can imagine!” Cardew murmured. Then he turned quickly as Jo came springing back, grinning hugely. “Nice going, Jo!” he exclaimed in gratitude, swinging round his smelling-salt container. “Here are some crystals for services rendered!”

THE Jovian’s powerful tail sent him thumping to Cardew’s side. The greedy, scaled fingers scooped out a dozen of the crystals before the pressure had a chance to crush them, transferring them to his wide mouth with astonishing avidity.

“Ammonia, so you say,” he said suddenly in a hoarse voice — and the two stared at him blankly. “Your poison. Good to me. Block salt extra good. Cliffs of it — way there!” He swung his blocky arm vaguely.

“That covers a lot of territory,” Claire murmured.

“Yeah, about two hundred and sixty-five thousand miles of it,” Cardew agreed dryly. Then he looked at the Jovian in puzzlement. “So you talk, eh?”

“Read mind,” Jo explained briefly. “Not very clear — only damn smatterings. Not sure of position of words but meaning get. Read minds easily.”

“You’re ammonia, aren’t you? Formed by pressure and below zero temperature ?”

“For years numbering hundreds,” Jo agreed affably. “Eat white salt. Water, you call it. Peroxides, too. Plenty of those. And crystals — like I saved your life for. You got them.”

“Hm-m-m,” Cardew murmured, frowning. “Strikes me as queer to find a fellow like you hopping about on a mad world like this, and yet you can read thoughts. High mental development, eh?”

“Very high,” Jo agreed modestly. “I am clever. I have oriental, too. No, not oriental — orientation !”

“What’s that?” Claire asked in puzzlement.

“Sort — sort of homing instinct common in pigeons,” Cardew explained. “And you’ve got it, Jo?”

“You’re right I have! And I smell, too !”

Cardew grinned. “You’re telling us! But I suppose you mean you have a strong sense of smell ? Well, thanks for the help, anyway. We’ve got to be getting along.”

“You can’t do without my clever ideas,” Jo remarked flatly. “I’m coming like hell with you.”

Cardew winced as he caught sight of the girl coolly smiling at him.

“Seems to be reading your language quite well, doesn’t he?’’ she asked sweetly.

He looked anxiously. “Just what I’m afraid of! If he happens on the language I used at the settlement, he’ll set the atmosphere on fire.’’

He caught her by the arm, and they pushed on again, followed constantly by the tireless Jo, occasionally directing their path. He stopped only now and again to break off pieces of unclassifiable crystallized bark and jam it in his mouth. Then, with that same look of asinine foolishness on his face, he sprang on behind them.

By another nightfall they had cleared the jungle — but away to the west, under the lowering sky, there beat scarlet tremblings and pulsings.

“Guess we ought to rest, but I don’t like risking it with that going on,” Cardew muttered wearily.

“The Great Red Spot, eh?” Claire mused.

“Correct. And from the look of things, it’s in a state of eruption. It may mean a thousand-mile flood of destruction. Coming our way, too! Eh, Jo?”

THE JOHERC fixed his odd eyes on the disturbance. “Better step on hurry,” he suggested anxiously. “Give yourselves gas, I imagine. The way is straight; I know it.”

“What way?” Cardew demanded irritably. “For Heaven’s sake, pick your words straight, Jo! Can we rest, or is the danger too great?”

“I’ll say!” Jo responded surprisingly. “Straight is the way to Seven Peaks, and then to Turquoise Sea and oxygen block cliffs — out to space ship. That’s where you head?”

“Sure, but how did you know?” Cardew shrugged wearily. “Oh, I’d forgotten your thought reading for the moment. If you know the way, why didn’t you say so in the first
place ?”

Jo didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said slyly, “Way guided for crystals only. Like hell I want them now. Step on it !”

Cardew grimaced and handed him some more from the container.

“There you are. Now lead on.”

Jo needed no second bidding. He leaped forward with astounding energy, leading the way across the barren red plain in the direction of the main giant cleft in the Seven Peak range. Weary, unutterably leaden, the two jogged after him. Then, suddenly, Claire, exhausted beyond measure, could stand it no longer. She sank weakly to the ground. “It’s no good; I can’t make it!” she panted, her face pale and strained in the Europa light.

Cardew braced himself against the screaming wind and looked down at her in perplexity. Certainly he could not carry her; his own weight was severe enough. He glanced anxiously to the rear and beheld visible streams of redness crawling through the night — searing overflows from the erupting Spot. Once through the cleft there would be safety, but here to wait until dawn meant certain death.

“Only another few miles, Claire!” he implored desperately. “We’ve got to make it ! It’s the difference between life and death — ”

She did not answer — only lay fiat and relaxed.

Then Jo descended from the gloom. “No dice?” he questioned anxiously. “Claire lie down?”

“It’s the damned gravity,” Cardew growled. “We’re not used to it.”

Jo did not respond. Without a moment’s hesitation he bent down and hauled the girl, space suit and ail, onto his broad left shoulder ; then, before Cardew could grasp the situation, he was treated likewise on the other shoulder. The next thing he knew he was flying through the air with dizzying speed, heart and lungs strained to the uttermost by the upward pulls against the gravity.

“Trifles mere!” Jo tossed out enthusiastically, vaulting mightily with legs and tail. “I have clever brain and big legs. Strength in large size. Get you safe, or else — ”

Cardew couldn’t reply; he was too strained for that. But the apparent marvel of Jo’s activity soon vanished from his mind. The odd creature, gifted by Nature with a complex brain in which there ran a decided streak of generosity, was deliberately risking his own life to save two people of another world — unless it was for love of the smelling salts. The extraordinary nature of his giant strength became more and more evident as time passed. He seemed to regard the weight on his shoulders with no more concern than a man would trouble over a couple of canaries.

And he kept it up, mixing American slang with observations of considerable scientific significance ever and again — until at last the mountain cleft was readied and all possible danger from the overflowing Red Spot was far behind.

AHEAD, in the light of the moons, lay the amazing Turquoise Ocean, greeny blue in the pale light — enormous in extent, pure ammonia, its heavy, turgid waves thundering ear-splittingly on a beach that was red rock, backed to the rear with crawling cliffs of white, frozen oxygen.

Here Jo stopped and dropped his burdens rather violently on the shore. Like a gray streak, he headed toward the cliffs and began tearing at their frozen hardness, until, at last, he wrested free a jagged, splintering square.

By the time Cardew and the girl had sat up, he was eating the stuff hungrily. When at last he finished, he came forward rather sheepishly.

“The eats,” he explained.

Cardew nodded as he and Claire allowed tabloids to drop into their own mouths. “Not surprised, old man. Guess I’d never get used to your diet any more than you’d get used to mine. Incidentally, how much further shall we have to go after staying the night?”

“No further. Space ship right here.”

“Here!” Cardew looked round in puzzlement. He only saw the bleak desolation of that ammoniated shore. “Think again, Jo!” he said. “I reckon we’ve another hundred and fifty miles to cover at least.”

“Get wise to yourself!” Jo suggested calmly. Then he motioned, with his thick arm, toward the cliffs.

Fatigued though they were, the two got to their feet and followed him, stopping finally before the argent masses. Jo pointed to the red ground and grinned gleefully.

Cardew started and the girl gave a little cry as they beheld a mighty circle of metal, apparently similar to itanium, sunken into the redness — a colossal manhole cover.

“We live below,” Jo explained calmly. “Rarely come up except for special reason. Two reasons this time. We have many instruments. They showed us space ship fall and two people leaving prison settlement. I was told to get the lot — you and space ship.”

CARDEW felt something clutch at his heart. “You — you damned traitorous little horror!” he burst out. “You mean you’ve kept up with us all this time so you could turn us into your rotten underworld? Why, you — ”

“Keep on shirt!” Jo interrupted quickly. “No captives. I could easily lose you. Our leader wants you, sure — but I don’t. Prefer to help. Very clever and generous; that’s me.”

“You mean you’ll let us go?” Claire asked anxiously.

“You betcha!”

“But how can we — without a space ship?” Cardew yelped. "You say you were told to capture it — ”

“I did; it’s down below — but only in the first gallery. I can get it. Now you know how came I on the surface to meet you. Obeying orders.”

“That’s clear enough.” Cardew nodded tensely. “But about the ship. You say it’s below. Did you drive it here?”

“I can do anything. I carried it.”

"Carried it?” Cardew’s voice was faint with amazement.

"Sure. Damned easy! I’ll show you.”

The two stood aside and watched, in bewilderment, as he locked his hand in the manhole’s ring and pulled with all his power. By degrees the great valve rose upward under his enormous strength until it was vertical. Then he jumped down into a cavernous pit.

For nearly five minutes the two waited; then they both gasped in surprise as the familiar, blunted nose of a small private space flier began to appear. Little by little the whole ship began to emerge, thrust up the long pit incline by Jo’s tremendous muscles. When at last it was on the flat ground he looked at them anxiously.

“Down below it was safe from pressure for much longer time than up,” he explained. “Better go quick, scram. Very light to me — almost vacuum.”

Cardew quickly looked the ship over. It was only dented from its earlier fall. He turned to Jo. “Did you manage to find out who it belonged to?”

“Sure. Two people like you — Pluto travelers. Caught in drag and crashed — necks broken. I read their brains before I threw them outside. Darned smart of me, and then some!”

Cardew looked at him gratefully. "You’re a great scout, Jo,” he said warmly. “I only wish I could repay your generosity. Your orientation was right, by the way. How the devil you knew your way to these cliffs from the Fishnet is more than I can figure.”

Jo’s huge mouth grinned expansively. "Oriental sense first class,” he agreed modestly. “You carbohydrates — me ammonia, but we think regular. Darned good race mine. Wish I could come with you, but your world would let my compressed body blow apart. No dice and deep regrets offered right now.”

“There must be something we can do !” the girl insisted, turning toward the space ship’s air lock.

“Perhaps — crystals?” Jo said almost shyly.

Laughing, Cardew unhooked the container from his belt and tossed it over. Then, with a final farewell, he and the girl passed inside the vessel and screwed up the air lock.

Once their stifling suits were removed, Cardew fired the rocket tubes. With a grinding roar, the ship tore furiously against the gravity; the terrific drag of Jupiter made itself evident instantly, a drag mounting with every second that the ship boomed and exploded upward from that titanic world.

In eight minutes both Claire and Cardew were unconscious, robot machinery alone firing the tubes. Then, little by little, as the distance increased and the gravity correspondingly lessened, they came out of insensibility, to find Jupiter a vast, banded disk behind them. Ahead was the void with the single green star of Earth plainly visible in the firmament.

“We made it!” Cardew breathed thankfully. “We actually made it!”

"Thanks to Jo,” the girl put in quietly. “I shall never see smelling salts again but what I’ll think of him.”

Cardew did not answer, but he was smiling.

THE END

                                                     Just a "reinforced" suit; not power-armour, it seems.  So how does he have the muscle to get around in jovian gravity?  Quick, reader, switch your disbelief-suspension to a higher notch, and carry on... you'll be all right.

   Here's some proper respect for Jovian gravity.  This is more like it!                                                       

Not a brilliant name for an invented element; just the word "titanium" without the "t".

Fearn knows about heavy elements' radioactive decay.  Not bad for 1937, I'd say.

Governor Mason sounds like an idealist.  A possible by-way of interest here.

Stid:  Machines using itanium, presumably - but why couldn't the reinforced suits for outside work be made to benefit from this technology?  It would make the tale vastly more plausible.   
Zendexor:  Agreed - but so long as the implausibility is shouted down by counter-incantations such as the stuff here about the temperature and atmosphere, I'd say the mood remains authentic enough...

A recent event.  A sign that we're nearing the end of the introductory background explanations.

A nicely-judged plot-element.  A goal to pursue, with a deadline.

"To escape the prison had not been difficult" - plausible enough.  Many a fictional prison has effectively used a hostile environment as the means to confine its inmates. 

Stid:  All very well, but how does Cardew reasonably hope to survive?

Zendexor:  He's desperate, isn't he?  It says he'd been contemplating suicide.

Stid:  But - to walk in armour under Jovian gravity for hundreds of miles?  Nope!  A few yards, maybe!  Facts are facts. 

Zendexor:  I know it's hard to swallow, but it seems that we OSS fans are able to access the impossible by a mental technique metaphorically akin to quantum tunnelling.  Admittedly, facts are facts, but also, mood is mood, and if it can reign supreme... if the author pulls off the stunt... you may experience something remarkable.  So be patient, Stid.

Stid: A gale... just in case things weren't already difficult enough for our hero.  But maybe it could help if it's at his back?

Zendexor:  Such "help" would be outweighed by the risk of falling over, in a situation where even Conan would find it hard to get up again.

The author both eats his cake and has it.  "Moving his arms with enormous effort", the hero nevertheless envisages a vast trek, promising the reader some real Jovian exploration of places with interesting names.  Treating the impossible as merely difficult - that's the game.  And for me, it works.

Practicalities, listed thus, amount to an authorial incantation, to summon up reader credulity.  The good reader will play along.  The special pistol is a nice touch, showing respect for the Jovian atmosphere.

A mere eight hours of trudging through two-and-a-half gravities.

I don't understand the point of this sentence.  Why should the dawn signify anything anyway?

Again we have the emphasis on how hard it is to move along, an emphasis intended as a substitute for dismissal of the whole idea as quite impossible.  Obviously the key issue is, do we, can we play along?  All I can report is, I do play along.  My credulity labours in co-operation with Cardew's labouring muscles.  A team effort.

A paragraph bearing two choice gifts: the description of the jungle and the nice realistic touch of the held-low mountains.  This sort of thing in my view makes the disbelief-suspension worth the effort.

Given the authorial decision to substitute "difficult" for "impossible", the writing is effective.  To say what Cardew finds "hard to believe" is a good touch, emphasizing a certain superficial parallelism of environments which grabs our attention in two opposite ways: via similarity of appearance combined with material difference.

Here's a promise to the reader: intelligent jovians!  Let's hope they do come up to the surface as much as possible...

Stid: Strange that the Terran prison was built so close to the especially dangerous Spot, seeing as they had all of Jupiter to choose from.

Zendexor:  Well, we must simply trust that they had some valid reason, and weren't completely daft.  A loyal reader could invent some excuse for the siting.  In fact you won't get far with appreciating OSS literature if you lack talent for excuse-production.

I've corrected the magazine's "plane" to "plain".

Gloomy description just part of the mood music; actually the landscape is fascinating, and this is evinced in other passages.

Practicalities like this helmet-switch stuff help the credibility...

Stid:  It sure needs help!

Zendexor: The author treads a tightrope - but with help from a well-disposed reader he treads it successfully.

Now before you say it, Stid, I know how implausible it is that on such a version of the Jovian surface one might still see the "attendant moons".  But be it noted that Poul Anderson boobs in this way too, in "Call Me Joe", if I remember correctly.  And if a hard science chap like Anderson can do it...

Great stuff.

Such description lifts the tale out of the category of perfunctory scene-setting.  The ideal in OSS tales is for a planetary setting to be sufficiently stereotypical to adhere to the literary archetype for that planet, but at the same time, within that category, to range inventively; and this story fits that bill. 

Stid: This guy makes Tarzan and Conan look like weaklings.

Zendexor:  Well, this is the future, after all.  Who knows what standards of physical fitness may have been achieved by then?

Just the place for more inventive description.  The author seizes his opportunities well.

...a sort of zoological tumble-weed, well suited to the environment

Aha - extra human interest on the way...

Credit for remembering that sound is amplified by a dense medium.  Given the hard-to-swallow aspects of the tale, it's helpful to pay compensation of this kind to realism.

Stid: Oh boy - just when you were complimenting Fearn on bestowing the occasional crumb of realism, we get the light of a Jovian moon again, miraculously shining "through cloud-breaks".

Zendexor:  But to make up for it, the sican, "largest of all Jovian animals", is just five feet long, and to my mind this is creditable and important, as it strikes the reader's mind's ear with a link to all the more realistic tunes in the tale's mood-music. 

Accept "moonlight" and be glad of the effectiveness of the flame-light description.  It's "contextual realism", one might say.  Fidelity to the parameters as set out by the author.  Consistency in exploiting its dramatic possibilities.

"clumped" - you've got to hand it to Fearn - excellent choice of verb

This works nicely: brief shocked exclamation and then to work with the emergency kit...  Dramatic credibility can exist without full marks being awarded for other sorts!

The stilted word "Opportune" nicely illustrates the way this lady is trying to keep her nerve and not gush.

There was no need for all these improbable references to seeing the moons.  The author could have provided enough light from the glow of the Red Spot or from volcanoes, surely.

A little bit of uneasiness between these two people.  That's good dramatic technique provided that it grows naturally out of the situation - and it does, here.  One way the story could have progressed is to base all of the rest of it round the process of gaining mutual trust and respect - with the dangers of the Jovian environment providing the need to band together.  That could have made a good enough story.  But the author chooses a more interesting way... as we shall see when this dialogue is interrupted by the appearance of a third party.

Here it is!

"according to description and reconstruction" - this reassures the reader that it wasn't knowledge gained by vivisection!  For we're going to get to like the semi-rascally joherc...

By this time the author has established a modus vivendi of categories: "joherc" as a thing somewhat known to one of the characters, not so well known to the other -

Stid:  Is this likely?  The girl has lived on Jupiter for longer than the man; shouldn't she know more than he?

Zendexor:  A fair point, but I reckon there is enough margin of possibility - enough credibility in the bank - for us to invent possible reasons why in the case of johercs he might know more than she.  He's had to rough it more, after all.

The theme of speed of growth matches the speed of other actions in the Jovian environment as we'll see a bit further on.

The blur of motion - consistent with the speed-theme - linked soon with metabolism.

Here's the explicit reference to metabolic/muscular speed, linked to the theme of gravity.

A perhaps not too probable comment from Claire, rather too reflective for the situation, but it helps to remind the reader of the parameters...

"stared at him blankly" - this is the most we get to describe the astonishment at being thus addressed in English.  But it's just - only just - enough.

This mind-reading by the joherc is essential to the plot.  All the pieces of the plot are now in place and what remains is their working-out.

Contemporary readers may be puzzled here - the idea that "hell" might be an embarrassing swear-word is probably alien to most readers nowadays.

scarlet tremblings and pulsings - a superior phrase

Magnificent description of the Turquoise Ocean - one of the plusses, to be put in the credit column of the critique's ledger...

"Get wise to yourself" is just one of many humorous touches showing the joherc's semi-skilled use of telepathically-obtained American slang.  And it makes sense in terms of the plot; it's not an artificial add-on.