what to see on
io

For a scenic browse, and an answer-page for Guess The World...

mysterious mirage on io

...For hours and hours I walked down bas-relief-flanked passages, and through gloomy halls, searching for some sign of where that electric current was disappearing to; but long search by the light of my ato-flash revealed no trace of an answer.

It was there, in that dust and silence, and wreckage of quaint household fittings, that a definite wave of intense mental discomfort came over me.  It was as sudden as a hammer blow.  I hurried back to the surface, a vague suspicion in me becoming half conviction.  It was already late afternoon...

I expected to see, in the harsh, bluish twilight, only those dry irrigation trenches, and the twisted iron pillars that had supported the glass roofs of those hothouse fields, slashed long ago by infrequent meteor showers...

But - there was something else - collecting and forming against the picture of that dreary scene...

Raymond Z Gallun, The Lotus Engine (Super Science Stories, March 1940)

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cunning ionian slinkers

...Grant brushed his hand across his forehead and turned wearily towards his stone-bark log shack.  A pair of tiny, glittering red eyes caught his attention, and a slinker - Mus Sapiens - slipped his six-inch form across the threshold, bearing under his tiny, skinny arm what looked very much like Grant's clinical thermometer. 

Grant yelled angrily at the creature, seized a stone, and flung it vainly.  At the edge of the brush, the slinker turned its ratlike, semihuman face toward him, squeaked its thin gibberish, shook a microscopic fist in manlike wrath, and vanished, its batlike cowl of skin fluttering like a cloak.  It looked, indeed, very much like a black rat wearing a cape...

Stanley G Weinbaum, The Mad Moon (Astounding Stories, December 1935)

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a quietly sinister scene on io

"Well, here we are...  The first Earthmen to set foot alive on the Enchanted World!  I guess I got part of what I wanted anyway, didn't I?  But with what equipment we've got to keep alive with, we might just as well be buried with the RQ257!  Funny I'm not scared.  I guess I don't realize..."

His bitterly humorous tone faded away in vague awe.

Still lying prone the two men looked around them, at the hellish, utterly desolate scene.  The hills brooded there under the blue-black sky and tenuous, heatless sunshine.  A rock loomed up from a heap of sand.  It was a weathered monolith with weird carvings on it...  A curious pulpy shrub, ugly and weird, grew beside the monolith.  A scanty breath of breeze stirred up a little ripple of dust.

That and the stillness.  The stillness of a tomb.  Harwich could hear the muted rustle of the pulses in his head.  Everything here seemed to emphasize the plain facts.  The Forbidden Moon was a trap to them now.  A pit from which they could expect no rescue...

Raymond Z Gallun, Invaders of the Forbidden Moon (Planet Stories, Summer 1941)

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beneath  io's  metal  roof

They had progressed not more than twenty paces into the dense undergrowth when the gleaming wall of the Tritu Anu was entirely hidden from view.  The artificial sunlight seeped through the mass of vegetation overhead, a ghostly green twilight that made death masks of their faces.  But of the lights themselves, of the great latticed columns, of the enormous sponge-like blossoms of the upper surface of the jungle sea, nothing could be seen.  They were deep in a tangled maze of translucent flora that was like nothing so much as a forest of giant seaweed transplanted from its natural element.  The moss-like carpet beneath their feet was slushy wet and condensed moisture rained steadily from the matted fronds and tendrils above.  The air they breathed was hot and stifling; laden with rank odors and curling mists that assailed throat and head passages with choking effect.

Weird whisperings there were from above and all about them.  It seemed almost that the uncanny, weaving green things were alive and voicing indignant protest over the intrusion of the three humans.

Ankle deep in the rain-soaked moss, their clothing drenched and steaming, they pressed ever deeper into the tangle.  All sense of direction was lost.

"Guess we'd better rest now," said Blaine, seeing that Ulana was gasping from her exertions.  "They'll never trail us here."

"How about this crystal thing - the searching ray?" Tommy ventured.

"It cannot follow us," the girl explained.  "Certain juices of the plants provide an insulator against the ray.  In fact, it was an extract of these that was used in protecting the underground laboratory we just left.  We are safe now and I am very tired."

Harl Vincent, The Copper-Clad World (Astounding Stories, September 1931)

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uppity natives on io

Now there was this uprising on the first satellite of Jupiter: Io.   A charming little world.  A pleasant Earth-like orb, spinning quietly about its gigantic parent.  Up to this time, its natives had never been troublesome.  Squat, muscular creatures, more or less anthropoid, except for the fact that their complexions had a pale, greenish cast and their eyes were double-lidded like those of snakes.  They had an intelligence of .63 on the Solar Constant scale.  Within a century or two the Control Board meant to award them autonomy; toward this end educators had been working ever since Io had been removed from the British Imperial Protectorate in 2221.

Trouble had sprung, both literally and figuratively, like a bolt from the blue…

Nelson S Bond, Revolt on Io (Planet Stories, Spring 1941)

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purple spiders and glistening fungi on io

Stark, abysmal menace hovered over the desolate landscape like a vast, intangible shroud. Reed felt it the moment he left the tender. It increased with every step he took across the nightmarish terrain.

The flocks of giant, green-winged bat-things wheeled silently lower, as though in anticipation. The plain itself was utterly devoid of the larger fauna that the first I. G. C. expedition had reported. The only living things visible were small purple spiders. They crawled sluggishly over the greasily glistening fungi that grew everywhere between the countless depressions that dotted the black soil.

Reed carefully avoided stepping upon any of the circular holes. The first expedition had called them shallow craters. To Reed, they looked more like lids of some closely woven silk material. Each of the sunken discs was approximately three feet across. Reed estimated that there must be literally millions of them on the entire surface of the vast mountain-ringed plain.

SKIRTING A CLUMP of dripping fungi that towered a yard above his head, he climbed a ten-foot whale-back of gray rock. He found himself facing Dorene across a fifty-foot space. The soil between the gray silk discs shone like semi-liquid swamp-land... 

Hal K Wells, The White Brood (Thrilling Wonder Stories, November 1940)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:

May be not a particularly noticeable story by an author I've never heard of before, but interestingly enough, here Io again is called "the Forbidden Moon" like in the later story of Raymond Z. Gallun  [see above, A quietly sinister scene on Io] although not because of a lost civilization, but of some weird monsters, which have killed the members of the previous expeditions. It seems to be one of those stories, bordering the horror genre, in which the main point of the plot consists of some creepy alien creatures, but still there are also a lot of CLUFFs in it like for instance these:

"Concar, made from the bark of the towering Jovian concar tree, attacked crimson fever as Earth’s quinine battled malaria."

"She had crossed the fabulous Purple Ice Mountains of Mercury’s Dark Side on the furry back of a three-ton landohr bear. She had swum the deadly Rainbow Rapids of Mars’ Gorge of the Giants. She had lived for a month with the savage tortoise people of Luna’s inner caverns."

"...a full kandar of Martian green gold..."

"Somnolian, the powerful soporific powder found in the White Caves of Titan..."

io as a jungle moon, weinbaum-style

GRIM-lipped, Lon forced his way bodily through clinging vines and snake-like lianas. The slovenly natives made no attempt to keep their trails clear. Around stretched the limitless floral jungle that covered most of Io’s surface.

Lon barely glanced at strange lifeforms that people on Earth paid good money to see in museums. There was the talking-lily whose shrill gibberish sounded so much like human utterance. The harpoon-cactus whose prehensile vine could fling its barbed end a full ten feet, to snare some unwary small mammal and later digest it within a sac-like appendage. The python-vine which deliberately wound itself around its victim and crushed out its life.

Most of the Ioan plants were carnivorous and took an appreciable toll of the natives, as well as of the hordes of small animals that browsed in the jungle. But Lon was in no danger of his life. Io had never known large animals and consequently the preying plants were not capable of killing so large and strong a creature as an Earthman. At times cordlike vines whipped about his ankles, but he simply kicked himself free, tearing them apart. Yet he was annoyed at the delay.

Suddenly he was startled to hear a sharp scream behind him. He whirled to see Oyloy being dragged several feet off the trail toward a huge, bulbous, quivering plant. The Ioan was struggling desperately but could not worm his feet out of the twisting liana. When the opening of the great pitcher-plant turned his way, ready to engulf its victim, Lon flung himself forward, grasped the vine in his gloved hand and ripped it apart. The plant shuddered and twisted convulsively with its semi-sentient life.

Lon jerked the Ioan to his feet and shook him angrily. “I thought I told you to stay away, you poor excuse for a scarecrow. Now go back!”

“Oyloy afraid!” entreated the native, rolling his big eyes. “Come along?”

Lon growled and seriously contemplated kicking a native for the first time, but thought better of it and once more took up the trail. The Ioan scampered along behind, like his shadow, motivated by some strange psychology which Lon gave up trying to fathom, or change.

Eando Binder, Moon of Intoxication (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
A curious short story I came across by accident. It seemed somehow familiar and then I realized that the description of the funny underdeveloped natives of Io and their trade with the Earthmen for a specific kind of valuable leaves is very similar to that in The Mad Moon of Stanley Weinbaum. Io is described as a jungle moon and even the titles of the stories are similar! They are not completely the same - for instance there the native "loonies" exchange "ferva" leaves for candies while here the "Ioans" exchange "xipho" leaves for sulphur, etc, but both they are skinny and big-headed, and there are many other points of resemblance, which I cannot explain...
Comment from Zendexor: 
The resemblance is so strong, it seems a case of direct influence - unless some transdimensional inspiration from OSS Io itself is at work!  One minor point: it's a pity Binder didn't know that the adjective for "Io" is "Ionian", not "Ioan" (the latter sounds too much like "Iowan").

an ammonia river on io

Lucky jumped recklessly into the exposed river, drifting gently downward under the pull of Io’s weak gravity.  He was angry at the slowness of his fall, at Bigman for the childish enthusiasms that seized him so suddenly, and – unpredictably – at himself for not having stopped Bigman when he might.

Lucky hit the stream, and ammonia sprayed high in the air, then fell back with surprising quickness.  Io’s thin atmosphere could not support the small droplets even at low gravity.

There was no sense of buoyancy to the ammonia river.  Lucky had not expected any to speak of.  Liquid ammonia was less dense than water and had less lifting power.  Nor was the force of the current great under Io’s weak pull.  Had Bigman not damaged his air hose, it would have been only a matter of walking out of the river and through any of the drifts that might have packed it around.

As it was…

Lucky splashed downstream furiously.  Somewhere ahead the small Martian must be struggling feebly against the poisonous ammonia…

Isaac Asimov, Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)

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Note from Zendexor:  this excerpt from the Lucky Starr saga shows how the OSS could sometimes be just as unfriendly to human habitation as the real Solar System! 

carnivorous plants on io

Peter seized the oars and rowed swiftly toward the spot from whence the bullets had come. He did not know who had fired the shots, but he was certain that the man he sought was up there behind the jungle bush. With swift strong strokes, the boat shot shoreward, toward a slight indention in the river’s bank, over which hung a jungle giant bearing huge crimson flowers. Peter, intent upon grounding the light craft, paid no heed to the huge tree. Then suddenly he discerned a swift movement above. He saw a huge crimson belllike flower turning rapidly. A coiled liana within the gorgeous golden mouth darted downward. Other huge flowers also were turning down their gaping maws.

An agonized instant — for Peter. His eyes, for a horrible second, had turned to something else, swinging in the twining lianas above. It was a skeleton, bleached and white, hanging high on a limb like a scarecrow.

It was a trap ! These were carnivorous plants ! Above him, doubtlessly, hung the remains of one of the three who had preceded him, and perhaps somewhere along the river were the bones of the other two. Lured by a shot from the shore they had turned their craft into the gaping jaws of death.

Peter’s vocal chords were trying to scream, but he was paralyzed with sheer terror...

J Harvey Haggard, An Episode on Io (Wonder Stories, February 1934)

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[Comments from Z:]

Readers of the story may note the usage of the word "alive" in the following: 

…Those magnificent flower blossoms hanging from the dense jungle like jack-o-lanterns, some of them yards across, seemed almost alive. They possessed, or seemed to possess, that queerly alive personality which a carnivorous flower usually has…

- thus the author employs the word “alive” to mean “sentient” (a usage I’ve noticed in Burroughs' The Moon Maid).  The teacher in me wants to object: look, chum, all plants are alive!

Another (minor) point about the story: the author mentions the day on Io being “only eight hours long” – the sort of basic geophysical error which is rightly avoided even in most OSS fiction as it could be determined telescopically .  Or so I thought at first.  On second thought I realized that back in 1943 it may not have been understood that all Solar System moons (except, as it turned out, Saturn's Hyperion) are tidally locked to their primaries for gravitational reasons.  Hence it may have seemed reasonable to invent rotation periods for those satellites.  Otherwise, I'd say the rule should be: invent conditions of habitability to your heart’s content but don’t monkey with orbits or rotation periods.

prospecting in scrubland on io

Twisted, tumbled, tom and shattered rocks met his eye. Mosses, lichens, a few tough, low-growing plants. It looked like a picture of hell, but it was a prospector’s paradise, for the rocks of Io were shot through with veins of gold, silver, platinum, iridium, not to mention the more common iron and copper, which were not sought for because transportation back to earth was too expensive to pay profits.

“Off to the right,” Oscar whispered.

The glint of Jove-glow on a polished sight up the ravine gave Andy an aiming point and he snapped the blaster in that direction. He over-estimated the weak gravity of Io and the pellet hit on top of a high ridge beyond. A most satisfactory explosion took place there. Rocks split and tumbled in every direction. Andy lowered his sights and blasted again. Another brilliant explosion illuminated the landscape, far to the left this time…

Robert Moore Williams, Quest on Io (Planet Stories, Fall 1940)

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Comment from Zendexor:

Here we have another tale in which an extinct Ionian intelligence is mentioned; for later in the story we read:

His eyes caught the heavy outlines in the dust on the floor. He stirred it with his toe.

“Intelligence,” he muttered. “Intelligence was here, in this cavern perhaps a hundred centuries ago. The crucible is lead, incredibly old. Perhaps part of it was once radium. It was the heart of some kind of an engine, some method of releasing energy, possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago. Look ! You can see in the dust where other metals, which formed a framework, have oxidized. ...

“…Once there was intelligent life on Io. It built this, and left it for some reason that we can’t even guess at.”

They were silent. The mighty cavern was silent. Dim ghosts seemed to move in it, the shadows of a mighty people that had once been here, and had gone. . . .

Not bad for dramatic narrative purposes; only, in my view it's regrettable how much easier it is to evoke this sort of thing than to portray a living civilization in the story – a sort of Ionian Barsoom-equivalent would be great!

dangerous fauna on both hemispheres of io

He turned to advance, but Cynthia stopped suddenly and looked up in surprise. “What’s that?” she whispered.

The others looked above. Brig stared in wonderment at something quivering in the tree branch just over their heads — then suddenly Betts hurtled forward, clutched the girl around the waist in a flying tackle, and bore her to the ground.

Instantly the others fell back, stared in frozen horror at a snakelike object that had abruptly hurtled forward with bullet swiftness and imbedded itself in the tree beside them. It quivered spasmodically, died from the sheer impact of collision.

Brig stared at it in horror. It was a pure ropy organism, bounded with incredibly powerful muscles.

Betts floundered to his feet and dragged the gasping Cynthia up beside him.

“Pardon my roughness, miss,” he apologized. “That object is an Ionian impaler, or more technically, impalia diaboli. It usually kills its prey by behaving like a living javelin — buries its head inside its prey and kills it, absorbing nourishment at the same time. A flesh eater, obviously. If it misses. . . .’’ He glanced significantly at the dead organism.

"Thank God you recognized it in time,” Brig whispered. “How’d you ever come to know about it?”

"Quite simple, sir. I have read the copious notes of Murchinson and Snedley, wherein it is mentioned. There are other things. . . . Really, sir, Io interests me immensely. Shall we proceed?”

[Later, elsewhere on that world:]

...He broke off in surprise as Cynthia suddenly gave a violent jerk, a vigorous movement, and waved her arms wildly. She began to kick desperately.

“Call them off!” she screamed frantically. “Call them off!”

It was immediately apparent what was the matter. . . . So absorbed had they all been in their collecting efforts, they had failed to notice a small army of curious, dull gray objects, not unlike fast moving tortoises, gathered around them. Now, governed by sheer curiosity, they were crawling over the boots of the party. It needed no imagination to realize they had come from the depths of the carbon cave.

“Life, here! In a vacuum!” cried Brig, threshing his boots wildly. “How the devil —” 

“Not — not so improbable. . . . Carbon is the element on which all life is built..,. Remember, sir, that the carbon atom forms the basis of an unlimited number of compounds. Its atoms can form long chains, but these are the skeletons to which other life, of infinite complication, attaches itself. . . . Here, apparently, carbon has taken a form rare to our knowledge, but by no means outside probability. Maybe a formation of pure carbon, unconnected with any higher form. Carbon life, eating pure carbon, naturally — Damn! Pardon me, sir. I thought my spacesuit was nearly through.”

“Carbon life, sir,” Betts said, struggling hard to keep the things from puncturing his space-suit...

Dom Passante (=John Russell Fearn), Moon Heaven (Science Fiction, June 1939)

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Note from contributor Lone Wolf:
Here the same idea like that about the Moon's atmosphere (see Life in a deep vale on the far side of the Moon) is used about Io - life exist only in a deep depression on the farther side, but at the same time there are curious creatures, living in the vacuum on the surface of the satellite. I couldn't decide which excerpt to choose, because they are both interesting and describe two very different sides of the same world [note from Zendexor: since this is so, I chose both].

a jungle vista with "rocket-birds" on io

Once our first meal was over Reid strolled some little distance from the camp with old man Brook and they stood talking and looking down the swift river as it coursed into the fantastic jungle. I made it the opportunity to take a walk with Ada and show her the wonders of the Ionian sky and landscape.

To me, the sight from a near-by kopje was not new, but it brought a cry of amazed awe from Ada’s lips as we came to the top of the rise. On every side of us stretched that wild jungle with its dominating shaving-brush trees. Here and there the queer rocket-birds were in view, hurtling up like bullets against the light gravitation. Then when they reached the shallow air 800 feet above ground they opened a membranous umbrella and dropped softly down again. Their prey, in the main, consists of hurtling insects.

In various other directions were the treacherous calcium areas — some of them inert, but others bathed in lambent, flickering fires as the calcium united with ammonia gas from rifts in the ground and produced the swift light of calcium ammonium. Io is particularly rich in calcium.

The sky, though, was the main thing that held our attention. Jupiter hung directly above us — huge, yellow, overpowering, with the oval of his Red Spot moving slowly as his enormous bulk turned. Close to him gleamed brilliant little Ganymede and Europa. Farther away still — disclike and absurd— moved the Sun. Added to this were the hosts upon hosts of stars spewed in a myriad glittering dusts across the dark-purple heaven. It was superb — engrossing.

Polton Cross (= John Russell Fearn), The Degenerates
(Astounding Stories, February 1938)

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Comment from contributor Lone Wolf:
Another story of Fearn's about Io written under different pseudonym. And this version of the satellite is also different - it's a typical jungle moon with its own rotation and atmosphere. There are semi-intelligent natives, which are more or less humanoid and not the thinking trees from the other story [Moon Heaven - see supra, Dangerous fauna on both hemispheres of Io], and there are also the degenerate descendants of spider-like Martians, who give the title of the story. Thus it seems that not all Fearn's OSS stories are set in the same universe.