Jupiter Five

Arthur C. Clarke 1953

PROFESSOR FORSTER IS SUCH A SMALL MAN THAT A SPECIAL spacesuit had to be made for him. But what he lacked in physical size he more than made up-as is so often the case-in sheer drive and determination. When I met him, he’d spent twenty years pursuing a dream. What is more to the point, he had persuaded a whole succession of hard-headed business men, World Council Delegates and administrators of scientific trusts to underwrite his expenses and to fit out a ship for him. Despite everything that happened later, I still think that was his most remarkable achievement… .

The “Arnold Toynbee” had a crew of six aboard when we left Earth. Besides the Professor and Charles Ashton, his chief assistant, there was the usual pilot-navigator-engineer triumvirate and two graduate students-Bill Hawkins and myself. Neither of us had ever gone into space before, and we were still so excited over the whole thing that we didn’t care in the least whether we got back to Earth before the next term started. We had a strong suspicion that our tutor had very similar views. The reference he had produced for us was a masterpiece of ambiguity, but as the number of people who could even begin to read Martian script could be counted, if I may coin a phrase, on the fingers of one hand, we’d got the job.

As we were going to Jupiter, and not to Mars, the purpose of this particular qualification seemed a little obscure, though knowing something about the Professor’s theories we had some pretty shrewd suspicions. They were partly confirmed when we were ten days out from Earth.

The Professor looked at us very thoughtfully when we answered his summons. Even under zero g he always managed to preserve his dignity, while the best we could do was to cling to the nearest handhold and float around like drifting seaweed. I got the impression-though I may of course be wrong-that he was thinking: What have I done to deserve this? as he looked from Bill to me and back again. Then he gave a sort of “It’s too late to do anything about it now” sigh and began to speak in that slow, patient way he always does when he has something to explain. At least, he always uses it when he’s speaking to us, but it’s just occurred to me-oh, never mind.

“Since we left Earth,” he said, “I’ve not had much chance of telling you the purpose of this expedition. Perhaps you’ve guessed it already.”

“I think I have,” said Bill.

“Well, go on,” replied the Professor, a peculiar gleam in his eye. I did my best to stop Bill, but have you ever tried to kick anyone when you’re in free fall?

“You want to find some proof-I mean, some more proof-of your diffusion theory of extraterrestrial culture.”

“And have you any idea why I’m going to Jupiter to look for it?”

“Well, not exactly. I suppose you hope to find something on one of the moons.”

“Brilliant, Bill, brilliant. There are fifteen known satellites, and their total area is about half that of Earth. Where would you start looking if you had a couple of weeks to spare? I’d rather like to know.”

Bill glanced doubtfully at the Professor, as if he almost suspected him of sarcasm.

“I don’t know much about astronomy,” he said. “But there are four big moons, aren’t there? I’d start on those.”

“For your information, lo, Europa, Ganymede and Cal-listo are each about as big as Africa. Would you work through them in alphabetical order?”

“No,” Bill replied promptly. “I’d start on the one nearest Jupiter and go outward.”

“I don’t think we’ll waste any more time pursuing your logical processes,” sighed the Professor. He was obviously impatient to begin his set speech. “Anyway, you’re quite wrong. We’re not going to the big moons at all. They’ve been photographically surveyed from space and large areas have been explored on the surface. They’ve got nothing of archaeological interest. We ‘re going to a place that’s never been visited before.”

“Not to Jupiter!” I gasped.

“Heavens no, nothing as drastic as that! But we’re going nearer to him than anyone else has ever been.”

He paused thoughtfully.

“It’s a curious thing, you know-or you probably don’t -that it’s nearly as difficult to travel between Jupiter’s satellites as it is to go between the planets, although the distances are so much smaller. This is because Jupiter’s got such a terrific gravitational field and his moons are traveling so quickly. The innermost moon’s moving almost as fast as Earth, and the journey to it from Ganymede costs almost as much fuel as the trip from Earth to Venus, even though it takes only a day and a half.

“And it’s that journey which we’re going to make. No one’s ever done it before because nobody could think of any good reason for the expense. Jupiter Five is only thirty kilometers in diameter, so it couldn’t possibly be of much interest. Even some of the outer satellites, which are far easier to reach, haven’t been visited because it hardly seemed worth while to waste the rocket fuel.”

“Then why are we going to waste it?” I asked impatiently. The whole thing sounded like a complete wild-goose chase, though as long as it proved interesting, and involved no actual danger, I didn’t greatly mind.

Perhaps I ought to confess-though I’m tempted to say nothing, as a good many others have done-that at this time I didn’t believe a word of Professor Forster’s theories. Of course I realized that he was a very brilliant man in his field, but I did draw the line at some of his more fantastic ideas. After all, the evidence was so slight and the conclusions so revolutionary that one could hardly help being skeptical.

Perhaps you can still remember the astonishment when the first Martian expedition found the remains not of one ancient civilization, but of two. Both had been highly advanced, but both had perished more than five million years ago. The reason was unknown (and still is). It did not seem to be warfare, as the two cultures appear to have lived amicably together. One of the races had been insect-like, the other vaguely reptilian. The insects seem to have been the genuine, original Martians. The reptile-people-usually referred to as “Culture X”-had arrived on the scene later.

So, at least, Professor Forster maintained. They had certainly possessed the secret of space travel, because the ruins of their peculiar cruciform cities had been found on -of all. places-Mercury. Forster believed that they had tried to colonize all the smaller planets-Earth and Venus having been ruled out because of their excessive gravity. It was a source of some disappointment to the Professor that no traces of Culture X had ever been found on the Moon, though he was certain that such a discovery was only a matter of time.

The “conventional” theory of Culture X was that it had originally come from one of the smaller planets or satellites, had made peaceful contact with the Martians-the only other intelligent race in the known history of the System-and had died out at the same time as the Martian civilization. But Professor Forster had more ambitious ideas: he was convinced that Culture X had entered the Solar System from interstellar space. The fact that no one else believed this annoyed him, though not very much, for he is one of those people who are happy only when in a minority.

From where I was sitting, I could see Jupiter through the cabin porthole as Professor Forster unfolded his plan. It was a beautiful sight: I could just make out the equatorial cloud belts, and three of the satellites were visible as little stars close to the planet. I wondered which was Ganymede, our first port of call.

“If Jack will condescend to pay attention,” the Professor continued, “I’ll tell you why we’re going such a long way from home. You know that last year I spent a good deal of time poking among the ruins in the twilight belt of Mercury. Perhaps you read the paper I gave on the subject at the London School of Economics. You may even have been there-I do remember a disturbance at the back of the hall.

“What I didn’t tell anyone then was that while I was on Mercury I discovered an important clue to the origin of Culture X. I’ve kept quiet about it, although I’ve been sorely tempted when fools like Dr. Haughton have tried to be funny at my expense. But I wasn’t going to risk letting someone else get here before I could organize this expedition.

“One of the things I found on Mercury was a rather well preserved bas-relief of the Solar System. It’s not the first that’s been discovered-as you know, astronomical motifs are common in true Martian and Culture X art. But there were certain peculiar symbols against various planets, including Mars and Mercury. I think the pattern had some historic significance, and the most curious thing about it is that little Jupiter Five-one of the least important of all the satellites-seemed to have the most attention drawn to it. I’m convinced that there’s something on Five which is the key to the whole problem of Culture X, and I’m going there to discover what it is.”

As far as I can remember now, neither Bill nor I was particularly impressed by the Professor’s story. Maybe the people of Culture X had left some artifacts on Five for obscure reasons of their own. It would be interesting to unearth them, but hardly likely that they would be as important as the Professor thought. I guess he was rather disappointed at our lack of enthusiasm. If so it was his fault since, as we discovered later, he was still holding out on us.

We landed on Ganymede, the largest moon, about a week later. Ganymede is the only one of the satellites with a permanent base on it; there’s an observatory and a geophysical station with a staff of about fifty scientists. They were rather glad to see visitors, but we didn’t stay long as the Professor was anxious to refuel and set off again. The fact that we were heading for Five naturally aroused a good deal of interest, but the Professor wouldn’t talk and we couldn’t; he kept too close an eye on us.

Ganymede, by the way, is quite an interesting place and we managed to see rather more of it on the return journey. But as I’ve promised to write an article for another magazine about that, I’d better not say anything else here. (You might like to keep your eyes on the National Astrographic Magazine next Spring.)

The hop from Ganymede to Five took just over a day and a half, and it gave us an uncomfortable feeling to see Jupiter expanding hour by hour until it seemed as if he was going to fill the sky. I don’t know much about astronomy, but I couldn’t help thinking of the tremendous gravity field into which we were falling. All sorts of things could go wrong so easily. If we ran out of fuel we’d never be able to get back to Ganymede, and we might even drop into Jupiter himself.

I wish I could describe what it was like seeing that colossal globe, with its raging storm belts spinning in the sky ahead of us. As a matter of fact I did make the attempt, but some literary friends who have read this MS advised me to cut out the result. (They also gave me a lot of other advice which I don’t think they could have meant seriously, because if I’d followed it there would have been no story at all.)

Luckily there have been so many color close-ups of Jupiter published by now that you’re bound to have seen some of them. You may even have seen the one which, as I’ll explain later, was the cause of all our trouble.

At last Jupiter stopped growing: we’d swung into the orbit of Five and would soon catch up with the tiny moon as it raced around the planet. We were all squeezed in the control room waiting for our first glimpse of our target. At least, all of us who could get in were doing so. Bill and I were crowded out into the corridor and could only crane over other people’s shoulders. Kingsley Searle, our pilot, was in the control seat looking as unruffled as ever: Eric Fulton, the engineer, was thoughtfully chewing his mustache and watching the fuel gauges, and Tony Groves was doing complicated things with his navigation tables.

And the Professor appeared to be rigidly attached to the eyepiece of the teleperiscope. Suddenly he gave a start and we heard a whistle of indrawn breath. After a minute, without a word, he beckoned to Searle, who took his place at the eyepiece. Exactly the same thing happened, and then Searle handed over to Fulton. It got a bit monotonous by the time Groves had reacted identically, so we wormed our way in and took over after a bit of opposition.

I don’t know quite what I’d expected to see, so that’s probably why I was disappointed. Hanging there in space was a tiny gibbous moon, its “night” sector lit up faintly by the reflected glory of Jupiter. And that seemed to be all.

Then I began to make out additional markings, in the way that you do if you look through a telescope for long enough. There were faint crisscrossing lines on the surface of the satellite, and suddenly my eye grasped their full pattern. For it was a pattern: those lines covered Five with the same geometrical accuracy as the lines of latitude and longitude divide up a globe of the Earth. I suppose I gave my whistle of amazement, for then Bill pushed me out of the way and had his turn to look.

The next thing I remember is Professor Forster looking very smug while we bombarded him with questions.

“Of course,” he explained, “this isn’t as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Besides the evidence I’d found on Mercury, there were other clues. I’ve a friend at the Ganymede Observatory whom I’ve sworn to secrecy and who’s been under quite a strain this last few weeks. It’s rather surprising to anyone who’s not an astronomer that the Observatory has never bothered much about the satellites. The big instruments are all used on extra-galactic nebulae, and the little ones spend all their time looking at Jupiter.

“The only thing the Observatory had ever done to Five was to measure its diameter and take a few photographs. They weren’t quite good enough to show the markings we’ve just observed, otherwise there would have been an investigation before. But my friend Lawton detected them through the hundred-centimeter reflector when I asked him to look, and he also noticed something else that should have been spotted before. Five is only thirty kilometers in diameter, but it’s much brighter than it should be for its size. When you compare its reflecting power-its aldeb-

“Its albedo.”

“Thanks, Tony-its albedo with that of the other Moons, you find that it’s a much better reflector than it should be. In fact, it behaves more like polished metal than rock.”

“So that explains it!” I said. “The people of Culture X must have covered Five with an outer shell-like the domes they built on Mercury, but on a bigger scale.”

The Professor looked at me rather pityingly.

“So you still haven’t guessed!” he said.

I don’t think this was quite fair. Frankly, would you have done any better in the same circumstances?

We landed three hours later on an enormous metal plain. As I looked through the portholes, I felt completely dwarfed by my surroundings. An ant crawling on the top of an oil-storage tank might have had much the same feelings-and the looming bulk of Jupiter up there in the sky didn’t help. Even the Professor’s usual cockiness now seemed to be overlaid by a kind of reverent awe.

The plain wasn’t quite devoid of features. Running across it in various directions were broad bands where the stupendous metal plates had been joined together. These bands, or the crisscross pattern they formed, were what we had seen from space.

About a quarter of a kilometer away was a low hill-at least, what would have been a hill on a natural world. We had spotted it on our way in after making a careful survey of the little satellite from space. It was one of six such projections, four arranged equidistantly around the equator and the other two at the Poles. The assumption was pretty obvious that they would be entrances to the world below the metal shell.

I know that some people think it must be very entertaining to walk around on an airless, low-gravity planet in spacesuits. Well, it isn’t. There are so many points to think about, so many checks to make and precautions to observe, that the mental strain outweighs the glamor-at least as far as I’m concerned. But I must admit that this time, as we climbed out of the airlock, I was so excited that for once these things didn’t worry me.

The gravity of Five was so microscopic that walking was completely out of the question. We were all roped together like mountaineers and blew ourselves across the metal plain with gentle bursts from our recoil pistols. The experienced astronauts, Fulton and Groves, were at the two ends of the chain so that any unwise eagerness on the part of the people in the middle was restrained.

It took us only a few minutes to reach our objective, which we discovered to be a broad, low dome at least a kilometer in circumference. I wondered if it was a gigantic airlock, large enough to permit the entrance of whole spaceships. Unless we were very lucky, we might be unable to find a way in, since the controlling mechanisms would no longer be functioning, and even if they were, we would not know how to operate them. It would be difficult to imagine anything more tantalizing than being locked out, unable to get at the greatest archaeological find in all history.

We had made a quarter circuit of the dome when we found an opening in the metal shell. It was quite small-only about two meters across-and it was so nearly circular that for a moment we did not realize what it was. Then Tony’s voice came over the radio:

“That’s not artificial. We’ve got a meteor to thank for it.”

“Impossible!” protested Professor Forster. “It’s much too regular.”

Tony was stubborn.

“Big meteors always produce circular holes, unless they strike very glancing blows. And look at the edges; you can see there’s been an explosion of some kind. Probably the meteor and the shell were vaporized; we won’t find any fragments.”

“You’d expect this sort of thing to happen,” put in Kingsley. “How long has this been here? Five million years? I’m surprised we haven’t found any other craters.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said the Professor, too pleased to argue. “Anyway, I’m going in first.”

“Right,” said Kingsley, who as captain has the last say in all such matters. “I’ll give you twenty meters of rope and will sit in the hole so that we can keep radio contact. Otherwise this shell will blanket your signals.”

So Professor Forster was the first man to enter Five, as he deserved to be. We crowded close to Kingsley so that he could relay news of the Professor’s progress.

He didn’t get very far. There was another shell just inside the outer one, as we might have expected. The Professor had room to stand upright between them, and as far as his torch could throw its beam he could see avenues of supporting struts and girders, but that was about all.

It took us about twenty-four exasperating hours before we got any further. Near the end of that time I remember asking the Professor why he hadn’t thought of bringing any explosives. He gave me a very hurt look.

“There’s enough aboard the ship to blow us all to glory,” he said. “But I’m not going to risk doing any damage if I can find another way.”

That’s what I call patience, but I could see his point of view. After all, what was another few days in a search that had already taken him twenty years?

It was Bill Hawkins, of all people, who found the way in when we had abandoned our first line of approach. Near the North Pole of the little world he discovered a really giant meteor hole-about a hundred meters across and cutting through both the outer shells surrounding Five. It had revealed still another shell below those, and by one of those chances that must happen if one waits enough eons, a second, smaller, meteor had come down inside the crater and penetrated the innermost skin. The hole was just big enough to allow entrance for a man in a spacesuit. We went through head first, one at a time.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever have a weirder experience than hanging from that tremendous vault, like a spider suspended beneath the dome of St. Peter’s. We only knew that the space in which we floated was vast. Just how big it was we could not tell, for our torches gave us no sense of distance. In this airless, dustless cavern the beams were, of course, totally invisible and when we shone them on the roof above, we could see the ovals of light dancing away into the distance until they were too diffuse to be visible. If we pointed them “downward” we could see a pale smudge of illumination so far below that it revealed nothing.

Very slowly, under the minute gravity of this tiny world, we fell downward until checked by our safety ropes. Overhead I could see the tiny glimmering patch through which we had entered; it was remote but reassuring.

And then, while I was swinging with an infinitely sluggish pendulum motion at the end of my cable, with the lights of my companions glimmering like fitful stars in the darkness around me, the truth suddenly crashed into my brain. Forgetting that we were all on open circuit, I cried out involuntarily:

“Professor-I don’t believe this is a planet at all! It’s a spaceship!”

Then I stopped, feeling that I had made a fool of myself. There was a brief, tense silence, then a babble of noise as everyone else started arguing at once. Professor Forster’s voice cut across the confusion and I could tell that he was both pleased and surprised.

“You’re quite right, Jack. This is the ship that brought Culture X to the Solar System.”

I heard someone-it sounded like Eric Fulton-give a gasp of incredulity.

“It’s fantastic! A ship thirty kilometers across!”

“You ought to know better than that,” replied the Professor with surprising mildness. “Suppose a civilization wanted to cross interstellar space-how else would it attack the problem? It would build a mobile planetoid out in space, taking perhaps centuries over the task. Since the ship would have to be a self-contained world, which could support its inhabitants for generations, it would need to be as large as this. I wonder how many suns they visited before they found ours and knew that their search was ended? They must have had smaller ships that could take them down to the planets, and of course they had to leave the parent vessel somewhere in space. So they parked it here, in a close orbit near the largest planet, where it would remain safely forever-or until they needed it again. It was the logical place: if they had set it circling the Sun, in time the pulls of the planets would have disturbed its orbit so much that it might have been lost. That could never happen to it here.”

“Tell me, Professor,” someone asked, “did you guess all this before we started?”

“I hoped it. All the evidence pointed to this answer. There’s always been something anomalous about Satellite Five, though no one seems to have noticed it. Why this single tiny moon so close to Jupiter, when all the other small satellites are seventy times further away? Astronomically speaking, it didn’t make sense. But enough of this chattering. We’ve got work to do.”

That, I think, must count as the understatement of the century. There were seven of us faced with the greatest archaeological discovery of all time. Almost a whole world -a small world, an artificial one, but still a world-was waiting for us to explore. All we could perform was a swift and superficial reconnaissance: there might be material here for generations of research workers.

The first step was to lower a powerful floodlight on a power line running from the ship. This would act as a beacon and prevent us getting lost, as well as giving local illumination on the inner surface of the satellite. (Even now, I still find it hard to call Five a ship.) Then we dropped down the line to the surface below. It was a fall of about a kilometer, and in this low gravity it was quite safe to make the drop unretarded. The gentle shock of the impact could be absorbed easily enough by the spring-loaded staffs we carried for that purpose.

I don’t want to take up any space here with yet another description of all the wonders of Satellite Five; there have already been enough pictures, maps and books on the subject. (My own, by the way is being published by Sidgwick and Jackson next Summer.) What I would like to give you instead is some impression of what it was actually like to be the first men ever to enter that strange metal world. Yet I’m sorry to say-I know this sounds hard to believe-I simply can’t remember what I was feeling when we came across the first of the great mushroom-capped entrance shafts. I suppose I was so excited and so overwhelmed by the wonder of it all that I’ve forgotten everything else. But I can recall the impression of sheer size, something which mere photographs can never give. The builders of this world, coming as they did from a planet of low gravity, were giants-about four times as tall as men. We were pigmies crawling among their works.

We never got below the outer levels on our first visit, so we met few of the scientific marvels which later expeditions discovered. That was just as well; the residential areas provided enough to keep us busy for several lifetimes. The globe we were exploring must once have been lit by artificial sunlight pouring down from the triple shell that surrounded it and kept its atmosphere from leaking into space. Here on the surface the Jovians (I suppose I cannot avoid adopting the popular name for the people of Culture X) had reproduced, as accurately as they could, conditions on the world they had left unknown ages ago. Perhaps they still had day and night, changing seasons, rain and mist. They had even taken a tiny sea with them into exile. The water was still there, forming a frozen lake three kilometers across. I hear that there is a plan afoot to electrolize it and provide Five with a breathable atmosphere again, as soon as the meteor holes in the outer shell have been plugged.

The more we saw of their work, the more we grew to like the race whose possessions we were disturbing for the first time in five million years. Even if they were giants from another sun, they had much in common with man, and it is a great tragedy that our races missed each other by what is, on the cosmic scale, such a narrow margin.

We were, I suppose, more fortunate than any archaeologists in history. The vacuum of space had preserved everything from decay and-this was something which could not have been expected-the Jovians had not emptied their mighty ship of all its treasures when they had set out to colonize the Solar System. Here on the inner surface of Five everything still seemed intact, as it had been at the end of the ship’s long journey. Perhaps the travelers had preserved it as a shrine in memory of their lost home, or perhaps they had thought that one day they might have to use these things again.

Whatever the reason, everything was here as its makers had left it. Sometimes it frightened me. I might be photographing, with Bill’s help, some great wall carving when the sheer timelessness of the place would strike into my heart. I would look round nervously, half expecting to see giant shapes come stalking in through the pointed doorways, to continue the tasks that had been momentarily interrupted.

We discovered the art gallery on the fourth day. That was the only name for it; there was no mistaking its purpose. When Groves and Searle, who had been doing rapid sweeps over the southern hemisphere, reported the discovery we decided to concentrate all our forces there. For, as somebody or other has said, the art of a people reveals its soul, and here we might find the key to Culture X.

The building was huge, even by the standards of this giant race. Like all the other structures on Five, it was made of metal, yet there was nothing cold or mechanical about it. The topmost peak climbed half way to the remote roof of the world, and from a distance-before the details were visible-the building looked not unlike a Gothic cathedral. Misled by this chance resemblance, some later writers have called it a temple; but we have never found any trace of what might be called a religion among the Jovians. Yet there seems something appropriate about the name “The Temple of Art,” and it’s stuck so thoroughly that no one can change it now.

It has been estimated that there are between ten and twenty million individual exhibits in this single building-the harvest garnered during the whole history of a race that may have been much older than Man. And it was here that I found a small, circular room which at first sight seemed to be no more than the meeting place of six radiating corridors. I was by myself (and thus, I’m afraid, disobeying the Professor’s orders) and taking what I thought would be a short-cut back to my companions. The dark walls were drifting silently past me as I glided along, the light of my torch dancing over the ceiling ahead. It was covered with deeply cut lettering, and I was so busy looking for familiar character groupings that for some time I paid no attention to the chamber’s floor. Then I saw the statue and focused my beam upon it.

The moment when one first meets a great work of art has an impact that can never again be recaptured. In this case the subject matter made the effect all the more overwhelming. I was the first man ever to know what the Jovians had looked like, for here, carved with superb skill and authority, was one obviously modeled from life.

The slender, reptilian head was looking straight toward me, the sightless eyes staring into mine. Two of the hands were clasped upon the breast as if in resignation; the other two were holding an instrument whose purpose is still unknown. The long, powerful tail-which, like a kangaroo’s, probably balanced the rest of the body-was stretched out along the ground, adding to the impression of rest or repose.

There was nothing human about the face or the body. There were, for example, no nostrils-only gill-like openings in the neck. Yet the figure moved me profoundly; the artist had spanned the barriers of time and culture in a way I should never have believed possible. “Not human-but humane” was the verdict Professor Forster gave. There were many things we could not have shared with the builders of this world, but all that was really important we would have felt in common.

Just as one can read emotions in the alien but familiar face of a dog or a horse, so it seemed that I knew the feelings of the being confronting me. Here was wisdom and authority-the calm, confident power that is shown, for example, in Bellini’s famous portrait of the Doge Loredano. Yet there was sadness also-the sadness of a race which had made some stupendous effort, and made it in vain.

We still do not know why this single statue is the only representation the Jovians have ever made of themselves in their art. One would hardly expect to find taboos of this nature among such an advanced race; perhaps we will know the answer when we have deciphered the writing carved on the chamber walls.

Yet I am already certain of the statue’s purpose. It was set here to bridge time and to greet whatever beings might one day stand in the footsteps of its makers. That, perhaps, is why they shaped it so much smaller than life. Even then they must have guessed that the future belonged to Earth or Venus, and hence to beings whom they would have dwarfed. They knew that size could be a barrier as well as time.

A few minutes later I was on my way back to the ship with my companions, eager to tell the Professor about the discovery. He had been reluctantly snatching some rest, though I don’t believe he averaged more than four hours sleep a day all the time we were on Five. The golden light of Jupiter was flooding the great metal plain as we emerged through the shell and stood beneath the stars once more.

“Hello!” I heard Bill say over the radio, “the Prof’s moved the ship.”

“Nonsense,” I retorted. “It’s exactly where we left it.”

Then I turned my head and saw the reason for Bill’s mistake. We had visitors.

The second ship had come down a couple of kilometers away, and as far as my non-expert eyes could tell it might have been a duplicate of ours. When we hurried through the airlock, we found that the Professor, a little bleary-eyed, was already entertaining. To our surprise, though not exactly to our displeasure, one of the three visitors was an extremely attractive brunette.

“This,” said Professor Forster, a little wearily, “is Mr. Randolph Mays, the science writer. I imagine you’ve heard of him. And this is—” He turned to Mays. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch the names.”

“My pilot, Donald Hopkins-my secretary, Marianne Mitchell.”

There was just the slightest pause before the word “secretary,” but it was long enough to set a little signal light flashing in my brain. I kept my eyebrows from going up, but I caught a glance from Bill that said, without any need for words: If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, I’m ashamed of you.

Mays was a tall, rather cadaverous man with thinning hair and an attitude of bonhomie which one felt was only skin-deep-the protective coloration of a man who has to be friendly with too many people.

“I expect this is as big a surprise to you as it is to me,” he said with unnecessary heartiness, “I certainly never expected to find anyone here before me; and I certainly didn’t expect to find all this.”

“What brought you here?” said Ashton, trying to sound not too suspiciously inquisitive.

“I was just explaining that to the Professor. Can I have that folder please, Marianne? Thanks.”

He drew out a series of very fine astronomical paintings and passed them round. They showed the planets from their satellites-a common-enough subject, of course.

“You’ve all seen this sort of thing before,” Mays continued. “But there’s a difference here. These pictures are nearly a hundred years old. They were painted by an artist named Chesley Bonestell and appeared in Life back in 1944-long before space-travel began, of course. Now what’s happened is that Life has commissioned me to go round the Solar System and see how well I can match these imaginative paintings against the reality. In the centenary issue, they’ll be published side by side with photographs of the real thing. Good idea, eh?”

I had to admit that it was. But it was going to make matters rather complicated, and I wondered what the Professor thought about it. Then I glanced again at Miss Mitchell, standing demurely in the corner, and decided that there would be compensations.

In any other circumstances, we would have been glad to meet another party of explorers, but here there was the question of priority to be considered. Mays would certainly be hurrying back to Earth as quickly as he could, his original mission abandoned and all his film used up here and now. It was difficult to see how we could stop him, and not even certain that we desired to do so. We wanted all the publicity and support we could get, but we would prefer to do things in our own time, after our own fashion. I wondered how strong the Professor was on tact, and feared the worst.

Yet at first diplomatic relations were smooth enough. The Professor had hit upon the bright idea of pairing each of us with one of Mays’s team, so that we acted simultaneously as guides and supervisors. Doubling the number of investigating groups also greatly increased the rate at which we could work. It was unsafe for anyone to operate by himself under these conditions, and this had handicapped us a great deal.

The Professor outlined his policy to us the day after the arrival of Mays’s party.

“I hope we can get along together,” he said a little anxiously. “As far as I’m concerned they can go where they like and photograph what they like, as long as they don’t take anything, and as long as they don’t get back to Earth with their records before we do.”

“I don’t see how we can stop them,” protested Ashton.

“Well, I hadn’t intended to do this, but I’ve now registered a claim to Five. I radioed it to Ganymede last night, and it will be at The Hague by now.”

“But no one can claim an astronomical body for himself. That was settled in the case of the Moon, back in.the last century.”

The Professor gave a rather crooked smile.

“I’m not annexing an astronomical body, remember. I’ve put in a claim for salvage, and I’ve done it in the name of the World Science Organization. If Mays takes anything out of Five, he’ll be stealing it from them. Tomorrow I’m going to explain the situation gently to him, just in case he gets any bright ideas.”

It certainly seemed peculiar to think of Satellite Five as salvage, and I could imagine some pretty legal quarrels developing when we got home. But for the present the Professor’s move should have given us some safeguards and might discourage Mays from collecting souvenirs-so we were optimistic enough to hope.

It took rather a lot of organizing, but I managed to get paired off with Marianne for several trips round the interior of Five. Mays didn’t seem to mind: there was no particular reason why he should. A spacesuit is the most perfect chaperon ever devised, confound it.

Naturally enough I took her to the art gallery at the first opportunity, and showed her my find. She stood looking at the statue for a long time while I held my torch beam upon it.

“It’s very wonderful,” she breathed at last. “Just think of it waiting here in the darkness all those millions of years! But you’ll have to give it a name.”

“I have. I’ve christened it ‘The Ambassador.’”

“Why?”

“Well, because I think it’s a kind of envoy, if you like, carrying a greeting to us. The people who made it knew that one day someone else was bound to come here and find this place.”

“I think you’re right. ‘The Ambassador’-yes, that was clever of you. There’s something noble about it, and something very sad, too. Don’t you feel it?”

I could tell that Marianne was a very intelligent woman. It was quite remarkable the way she saw my point of view, and the interest she took in everything I showed her. But “The Ambassador” fascinated her most of all, and she kept on coming back to it.

“You know, Jack,” she said (I think this was sometime the next day, when Mays had been to see it as well) “you must take that statue back to Earth. Think of the sensation it would cause.”

I sighed.

“The Professor would like to, but it must weigh a ton. We can’t afford the fuel. It will have to wait for a later trip.”

She looked puzzled.

“But things hardly weigh anything here,” she protested.

“That’s different,” I explained. “There’s weight, and there’s inertia-two quite different things. Now inertia-oh, never mind. We can’t take it back, anyway. Captain Searle’s told us that, definitely.”

“What a pity,” said Marianne.

I forgot all about this conversation until the night before we left. We had had a busy and exhausting day packing our equipment (a good deal, of course, we left behind for future use.) All our photographic material had been used up. As Charlie Ashton remarked, if we met a live Jovian now we’d be unable to record the fact. I think we were all wanting a breathing space, an opportunity to relax and sort out our impressions and to recover from our head-on collision with an alien culture.

Mays’s ship, the “Henry Luce,” was also nearly ready for take-off. We would leave at the same time, an arrangement which suited the Professor admirably as he did not trust Mays alone on Five.

Everything had been settled when, while checking through our records, I suddenly found that six rolls of exposed film were missing. They were photographs of a complete set of transcriptions in the Temple of Art. After a certain amount of thought I recalled that they had been entrusted to my charge, and I had put them very carefully on a ledge in the Temple, intending to collect them later.

It was a long time before take-off, the Professor and Ashton were canceling some arrears of sleep, and there seemed no reason why I should not slip back to collect the missing material. I knew there would be a row if it was left behind, and as I remembered exactly where it was I need be gone only thirty minutes. So I went, explaining my mission to Bill just in case of accidents.

The floodlight was no longer working, of course, and the darkness inside the shell of Five was somewhat oppressive. But I left a portable beacon at the entrance, and dropped freely until my hand torch told me it was time to break the fall. Ten minutes later, with a sigh of relief, I gathered up the missing films.

It was a natural-enough thing to pay my last respects to The Ambassador: it might be years before I saw him again, and that calmly enigmatic figure had begun to exercise an extraordinary fascination over me.

Unfortunately, that fascination had not been confined to me alone. For the chamber was empty and the statue gone.

I suppose I could have crept back and said nothing, thus avoiding awkward explanations. But I was too furious to think of discretion, and as soon as I returned we woke the Professor and told him what had happened.

He sat on his bunk rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, then uttered a few harsh words about Mr. Mays and his companions which it would do no good at all to repeat here.

“What I don’t understand,” said Searle “is how they got the thing out-if they have, in fact. We should have spotted it.”

“There are plenty of hiding places, and they could have waited until there was no one around before they took it up through the hull. It must have been quite a job, even under this gravity,” remarked Eric Fulton, in tones of admiration.

“There’s no time for post-mortems,” said the Professor savagely. “We’ve got five hours to think of something. They can’t take off before then, because we’re only just past opposition with Ganymede. That’s correct, isn’t it Kingsley?”

Searle nodded agreement.

“Yes. We must move round to the other side of Jupiter before we can enter a transfer orbit-at least, a reasonably economical one.”

“Good. That gives us a breathing space. Well, has anyone any ideas?”

Looking back on the whole thing now, it often seems to me that our subsequent behavior was, shall I say, a little peculiar and slightly uncivilized. It was not the sort of thing we could have imagined ourselves doing a few months before. But we were annoyed and overwrought, and our remoteness from all other human beings somehow made everything seem different. Since there were no other laws here, we had to make our own….

“Can’t we do something to stop them from taking off?

Could we sabotage their rockets, for instance?” asked Bill.

Searle didn’t like this idea at all.

“We mustn’t do anything drastic,” he said. “Besides, Don Hopkins is a good friend of mine. He’d never forgive me if I damaged his ship. There’d be the danger, too, that we might do something that couldn’t be repaired.”

“Then pinch their fuel,” said Groves laconically.

“Of course! They’re probably all asleep, there’s no light in the cabin. All we’ve got to do is to connect up and pump.”

“A very nice idea,” I pointed out “but we’re two kilometers apart. How much pipeline have we got? Is it as much as a hundred meters?”

The others ignored this interruption as though it was beneath contempt and went on making their plans. Five minutes later the technicians had settled everything: we only had to climb into our spacesuits and do the work.

I never thought, when I joined the Professor’s expedition, that I should end up like an African porter in one of those old adventure stories, carrying a load on my head. Especially when that load was a sixth of a spaceship (being so short, Professor Forster wasn’t able to provide very effective help). Now that its fuel tanks were half empty, the weight of the ship in this gravity was about two hundred kilograms. We squeezed beneath, heaved, and up she went-very slowly, of course, because her inertia was still unchanged. Then we started marching.

It took us quite a while to make the journey, and it wasn’t quite as easy as we’d thought it would be. But presently the two ships were lying side by side, and nobody had noticed us. Everyone in the “Henry Luce” was fast asleep, as they had every reason to expect us to be.

Though I was still rather short of breath, I found a certain schoolboy amusement in the whole adventure as Searle and Fulton drew the refueling pipeline out of our airlock and quietly coupled up to the other ship.

“The beauty of this plan,” explained Groves to me as we stood watching, “is that they can’t do anything to stop us, unless they come outside and uncouple our line. We can drain them dry in five minutes, and it will take them half that time to wake up and get into their spacesuits.”

A sudden horrid fear smote me.

“Suppose they turned on their rockets and tried to get away?”

“Then we’d both be smashed up. No, they’ll just have to come outside and see what’s going on. Ah, there go the pumps.”

The pipeline had stiffened like a fire-hose under pressure, and I knew that the fuel was pouring into our tanks. Any moment now the lights would go on in the “Henry Luce” and her startled occupants would come scuttling out.

It was something of an anticlimax when they didn’t. They must have been sleeping very soundly not to have felt the vibration from the pumps, but when it was all over nothing had happened and we just stood round looking rather foolish. Searle and Fulton carefully uncoupled the pipeline and put it back into the airlock.

“Well?” we asked the Professor.

He thought things over for a minute.

“Let’s get back into the ship,” he said.

When we had climbed out of our suits and were gathered together in the control room, or as far in as we could get, the Professor sat down at the radio and punched out the “Emergency” signal. Our sleeping neighbors would be awake in a couple of seconds as their automatic receiver sounded the alarm.

The TV screen glimmered into life. There, looking rather frightened, was Randolph Mays.

“Hello, Forster,” he snapped. “What’s the trouble?”

“Nothing wrong here,” replied the Professor in his best deadpan manner, “but you’ve lost something important. Look at your fuel gauges.”

The screen emptied, and for a moment there was a confused mumbling and shouting from the speaker. Then Mays was back, annoyance and alarm competing for possession of his features.

“What’s going on?” he demanded angrily. “Do you know anything about this?”

The Prof, let him sizzle for a moment before he replied.

“I think you’d better come across and talk things over,” he said. “You won’t have far to walk.”

Mays glared back at him uncertainly, then retorted “You bet I will!” The screen went blank.

“He’ll have to climb down now!” said Bill gleefully. “There’s nothing else he can do!”

“It’s not so simple as you think,” warned Fulton. “If he really wanted to be awkward, he could just sit tight and radio Ganymede for a tanker.”

“What good would that do him? It would waste days and cost a fortune.”

“Yes, but he’d still have the statue, if he wanted it that badly. And he’d get his money back when he sued us.”

The airlock light flashed on and Mays stumped into the room. He was in a surprisingly conciliatory mood; on the way over, he must have had second thoughts.

“Well, well,” he said affably. “What’s all this nonsense in aid of?”

“You know perfectly well,” the Professor retorted coldly. “I made it quite clear that nothing was to be taken off Five. You’ve been stealing property that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Now, let’s be reasonable. Who does it belong to? You can’t claim everything on this planet as your personal property.”

“This is not a planet-it’s a ship and the laws of salvage operate.”

“Frankly, that’s a very debatable point. Don’t you think you should wait until you get a ruling from the lawyers?”

The Professor was being icily polite, but I could see that the strain was terrific and an explosion might occur at any moment.

“Listen, Mr. Mays,” he said with ominous calm. “What you’ve taken is the most important single find we’ve made here. I will make allowances for the fact that you don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and don’t understand the viewpoint of an archaeologist like myself. Return that statue, and we’ll pump your fuel back and say no more.”

Mays rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“I really don’t see why you should make such a fuss about one statue, when you consider all the stuff that’s still here.”

It was then that the Professor made one of his rare mistakes.

“You talk like a man who’s stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and argues that nobody will miss it because of all the other paintings. This statue’s unique in a way that no terrestrial work of art can ever be. That’s why I’m determined to get it back.”

You should never, when you’re bargaining, make it obvious that you want something really badly. I saw the greedy glint in Mays’s eye and said to myself “Uh-huh! He’s going to be tough.” And I remembered Fulton’s remark about calling Ganymede for a tanker.

“Give me half an hour to think it over,” said Mays, turning to the airlock.

“Very well,” replied the Professor stiffly. “Half an hour -no more.”

I must give Mays credit for brains. Within five minutes we saw his communications aerial start slewing round until it locked on Ganymede. Naturally we tried to listen in, but he had a scrambler. These newspaper men must trust each other.

The reply came back a few minutes later; that was scrambled, too. While we were waiting for the next development, we had another council of war. The Professor was now entering the stubborn, stop-at-nothing stage. He realized he’d miscalculated and that had made him fighting mad.

I think Mays must have been a little apprehensive, because he had reinforcements when he returned. Donald Hopkins, his pilot, came with him, looking rather uncomfortable.

“I’ve been able to fix things up, Professor,” he said smugly. “It will take me a little longer, but I can get back without your help if I have to. Still, I must admit that it will save a good deal of time and money if we can come to an agreement. I’ll tell you what. Give me back my fuel and I’ll return the other-er-souvenirs I’ve collected. But I insist on keeping Mona Lisa, even if it means I won’t get back to Ganymede until the middle of next week.”

The Professor then uttered a number of what are usually called deep-space oaths, though I can assure you they’re much the same as any other oaths. That seemed to relieve his feelings a lot and he became fiendishly friendly.

“My dear Mr. Mays,” he said, “You’re an unmitigated crook, and accordingly I’ve no compunction left in dealing with you. I’m prepared to use force, knowing that the law will justify me.”

Mays looked slightly alarmed, though not unduly so. We had moved to strategic positions round the door.

“Please don’t be so melodramatic,” he said haughtily. “This is the twenty-first century, not the Wild West back in 1800.”

“1880,” said Bill, who is a stickler for accuracy.

“I must ask you,” the Professor continued, “to consider yourself under detention while we decide what is to be done. Mr. Searle, take him to Cabin B.”

Mays sidled along the wall with a nervous laugh.

“Really, Professor, this is too childish! You can’t detain me against my will.” He glanced for support at the Captain of the “Henry Luce.”

Donald Hopkins dusted an imaginary speck of fluff from his uniform.

“I refuse,” he remarked for the benefit of all concerned, “to get involved in vulgar brawls.”

Mays gave him a venomous look and capitulated with bad grace. We saw that he had a good supply of reading matter, and locked him in.

When he was out of the way, the Professor turned to Hopkins, who was looking enviously at our fuel gauges.

“Can I take it, Captain,” he said politely, “that you don’t wish to get mixed up in any of your employer’s dirty business?”

“I’m neutral. My job is to fly the ship here and take her home. You can fight this out among yourselves.”

“Thank you. I think we understand each other perfectly. Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your ship and explained the situation. We’ll be calling you in a few minutes.”

Captain Hopkins made his way languidly to the door. As he was about to leave he turned to Searle.

“By the way, Kingsley,” he drawled. “Have you thought of torture? Do call me if you get round to it-I’ve some jolly interesting ideas.” Then he was gone, leaving us with our hostage.

I think the Professor had hoped he could do a direct exchange. If so, he had not bargained on Marianne’s stubborness.

“It serves Randolph right,” she said. “But I don’t really see that it makes any difference. He’ll be just as comfortable in your ship as in ours, and you can’t do anything to him. Let me know when you’re fed up with having him around.”

It seemed a complete impasse. We had been too clever by half, and it had got us exactly nowhere. We’d captured Mays, but he wasn’t any use to us.

The Professor was standing with his back to us, staring morosely out of the window. Seemingly balanced on the horizon, the immense bulk of Jupiter nearly filled the sky.

“We’ve got to convince her that we really do mean business,” he said. Then he turned abruptly to me.

“Do you think she’s actually fond of this blackguard?”

“Er-I shouldn’t be surprised. Yes, I really believe so.”

The Professor looked very thoughtful. Then he said to Searle, “Come into my room. I want to talk something over.”

They were gone quite a while. When they returned, they both had an indefinable air of gleeful anticipation, and the Professor was carrying a piece of paper covered with figures. He went to the radio, and called the “Henry Luce.”

“Hello,” said Marianne, replying so promptly that she’d obviously been Waiting for us. “Have you decided to call it off? I’m getting so bored.”

The Professor looked at her gravely.

“Miss Mitchell,” he replied. “It’s apparent that you have not been taking us seriously. I’m therefore arranging a somewhat-er-drastic little demonstration for your benefit. I’m going to place your employer in a position from which he’ll be only too anxious for you to retrieve him as quickly as possible.”

“Indeed?” replied Marianne noncommittally-though I thought I could detect a trace of apprehension in her voice.

“I don’t suppose,” continued the Professor smoothly, “that you know anything about celestial mechanics. No? Too bad, but your pilot will confirm everything I tell you. Won’t you, Hopkins?”

“Go ahead,” came a painstakingly neutral voice from the background.

“Then listen carefully, Miss Mitchell. I want to remind you of our curious-indeed our precarious-position on this satellite. You’ve only got to look out of the window to see how close to Jupiter we are, and I need hardly remind you that Jupiter has by far the most intense gravitational field of all the planets. You follow me?”

“Yes,” replied Marianne, no longer quite so self-possessed. “Go on.”

“Very well. This little world of ours goes round Jupiter in almost exactly twelve hours. Now there’s a well-known theorem stating that if a body falls from an orbit to the center of attraction, it will take point one seven seven of a period to make the drop. In other words, anything falling from here to Jupiter would reach the center of the planet in about two hours seven minutes. I’m sure Captain Hopkins can confirm this.”

There was a long pause. Then we heard Hopkins say, “Well, of course I can’t confirm the exact figures, but they’re probably correct. It would be something like that, anyway.”

“Good,” continued the Professor. “Now I’m sure you realize,” he went on with a hearty chuckle, “that a fall to the center of the planet is a very theoretical case. If anything really was dropped from here, it would reach the upper atmosphere of Jupiter in a considerably shorter time. I hope I’m not boring you?”

“No,” said Marianne, rather faintly.

“I’m so glad to hear it. Anyway, Captain Searle has worked out the actual time for me, and it’s one hour thirty five minutes-with a few minutes either way. We can’t guarantee complete accuracy, ha, ha!

“Now, it has doubtless not escaped your notice that this satellite of ours has an extremely weak gravitational field. It’s escape velocity is only about ten meters a second, and anything thrown away from it at that speed would never come back. Correct, Mr. Hopkins?”

“Perfectly correct.”

. “Then, if I may come to the point, we propose to take Mr. Mays for a walk until he’s immediately under Jupiter, remove the reaction pistols from his suit, and-ah-launch him forth. We will be prepared to retrieve him with our ship as soon as you’ve handed over the property you’ve stolen. After what I’ve told you, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that time will be rather vital. An hour and thirty five minutes is remarkably short, isn’t it?”

“Professor!” I gasped, “You can’t possibly do this!”

“Shut up!” he barked. “Well, Miss Mitchell, what about it?”

Marianne was staring at him with mingled horror and disbelief.

“You’re simply bluffing!” she cried. “I don’t believe you’d do anything of the kind! Your crew won’t let you!”

The Professor sighed.

“Too bad,” he said. “Captain Searle-Mr. Groves-will you take the prisoner and proceed as instructed.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” replied Searle with great solemnity.

Mays looked frightened but stubborn.

“What are you going to do now?” he said, as his suit was handed back to him.

Searle unholstered his reaction pistols. “Just climb in,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”

I realized then what the Professor hoped to do. The whole thing was a colossal bluff: of course he wouldn’t really have Mays thrown into Jupiter; and in any case Searle and Groves wouldn’t do it. Yet surely Marianne would see through the bluff, and then we’d be left looking mighty foolish.

Mays couldn’t run away; without his reaction pistols he was quite helpless. Grasping his arms and towing him along like a captive balloon, his escorts set off toward the horizon-and towards Jupiter.

I could see, looking across the space to the other ship, that Marianne was staring out through the observation windows at the departing trio. Professor Forster noticed it too.

“I hope you’re convinced, Miss Mitchell, that my men aren’t carrying along an empty spacesuit. Might I suggest that you follow the proceedings with a telescope? They’ll be over the horizon in a minute, but you’ll be able to see Mr. Mays when he starts to-er-ascend.”

There was a stubborn silence from the loudspeaker. The period of suspense seemed to last for a very long time. Was Marianne waiting to see how far the Professor really would go?

By this time I had got hold of a pair of binoculars and was sweeping the sky beyond the ridiculously close horizon. Suddenly I saw it-a tiny flare of light against the vast yellow back-cloth of Jupiter. I focused quickly, and could just make out the three figures rising into space. As I watched, they separated: two of them decelerated with their pistols and started to fall back toward Five. The other went on ascending helplessly toward the ominous bulk of Jupiter.

I turned on the Professor in horror and disbelief.

“They’ve really done it!” I cried. “I thought you were only bluffing!”

“So did Miss Mitchell, I’ve no doubt,” said the Professor calmly, for the benefit of the listening microphone. “I hope I don’t need to impress upon you the urgency of the situation. As I’ve remarked once or twice before, the time of fall from our orbit to Jupiter’s surface is ninety-five minutes. But, of course, if one waited even half that time, it would be much too late… .”

He let that sink in. There was no reply from the other ship.

“And now,” he continued, “I’m going to switch off our receiver so we can’t have any more arguments. We’ll wait until you’ve unloaded that statue-and the other items Mr. Mays was careless enough to mention-before we’ll talk to you again. Good-by.”

It was a very uncomfortable ten minutes. I’d lost track of Mays, and was seriously wondering if we’d better overpower the Professor and go after him before we had a murder on our hands. But the people who could fly the ship were the ones who had actually carried out the crime. I didn’t know what to think.

Then the airlock of the “Henry Luce” slowly opened. A couple of spacesuited figures emerged, floating the cause of all the trouble between them.

“Unconditional surrender,” murmured the Professor with a sigh of satisfaction. “Get it into our ship,” he called over the radio, “I’ll open up the airlock for you.”

He seemed in no hurry at all. I kept looking anxiously at the clock; fifteen minutes had already gone by. Presently there was a clanking and banging in the airlock, the inner door opened, and Captain Hopkins entered. He was followed by Marianne, who only needed a bloodstained axe to make her look like Clytaemnestra. I did my best to avoid her eye, but the Professor seemed to be quite without shame. He walked into the airlock, checked that his property was back, and emerged rubbing his hands.

“Well, that’s that,” he said cheerfully. “Now let’s sit down and have a drink to forget all this unpleasantness, shall we?”

I pointed indignantly at the clock.

“Have you gone crazy!” I yelled. “He’s already halfway to Jupiter!”

Professor Forster looked at me disapprovingly.

“Impatience,” he said, “is a common failing in the young. I see no cause at all for hasty action.”

Marianne spoke for the first time; she now looked really scared.

“But you promised,” she whispered.

The Professor suddenly capitulated. He had had his little joke, and didn’t want to prolong the agony.

“I can tell you at once, Miss Mitchell-and you too, Jack-that Mays is in no more danger than we are. We can go and collect him whenever we like.”

“Do you mean that you lied to me?”

“Certainly not. Everything I told you was perfectly true. You simply jumped to the wrong conclusions. When I said that a body would take ninety-five minutes to fall from here to Jupiter, I omitted-not, I must confess, accidentally-a rather important phrase. I should have added “a body at rest with respect to Jupiter.” Your friend Mr. Mays was sharing the orbital speed of this satellite, and he’s still got it. A little matter of twenty-six kilometers a second, Miss Mitchell.

“Oh yes, we threw him completely off Five and toward Jupiter. But the velocity we gave him then was trivial. He’s still moving in practically the same orbit as before. The most he can do-I’ve got Captain Searle to work out the figures-is to drift about a hundred kilometers inward. And in one revolution-twelve hours-he’ll be right back where he started, without us bothering to do anything at all.”

There was a long, long silence. Marianne’s face was a study in frustration, relief, and annoyance at having been fooled. Then she turned on Captain Hopkins.

“You must have known all the time! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Hopkins gave her a wounded expression.

“You didn’t ask me,” he said.

We hauled Mays down about an hour later. He was only twenty kilometers up, and we located him quickly enough by the flashing light on his suit. His radio had been disconnected, for a reason that hadn’t occurred to me. He was intelligent enough to realize that he was in no danger, and if his set had been working he could have called his ship and exposed our bluff. That is, if he wanted to. Personally, I think I’d have been glad enough to call the whole thing off even if I had known that I was perfectly safe. It must have been awfully lonely up there.

To my great surprise, Mays wasn’t as mad as I’d expected. Perhaps he was too relieved to be back in our snug little cabin when we drifted up to him on the merest fizzle of rockets and yanked him in. Or perhaps he felt that he’d been worsted in fair fight and didn’t bear any grudge. I really think it was the latter.

There isn’t much more to tell, except that we did play one other trick on him before we left Five. He had a good deal more fuel in his tanks than he really needed, now that his payload was substantially reduced. By keeping the excess ourselves, we were able to carry The Ambassador back to Ganymede after all. Oh, yes, the Professor gave him a cheque for the fuel we’d borrowed. Everything was perfectly legal.

There’s one amusing sequel I must tell you, though. The day after the new gallery was opened at the British Museum I went along to see The Ambassador, partly to discover if his impact was still as great in these changed surroundings. (For the record, it wasn’t-though it’s still considerable and Bloomsbury will never be quite the same to me again.) A huge crowd was milling around the gallery, and there in the middle of it was Mays and Marianne.

It ended up with us having a very pleasant lunch together in Holborn. I’ll say this about Mays-he doesn’t bear any grudges. But I’m still rather sore about Marianne.

And, frankly, I can’t imagine what she sees in him.

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