She forced a smile. "Happy landing?" she inquired.
"Not so happy," I muttered grimly. "You were right about Jupiter. It's a solid world and we've landed smack upon it with considerable violence, judging from the way things have been hurled about."
"Then the cushioning force field—"
"Oh, it cushioned us, all right. If it hadn't we'd be roasting merrily inside a twisted mass of wreckage. But I wouldn't call it happy landing. You've got a nasty cut there."
"I'm all right, Richard."
Joan reached up and patted my cheek. "Good old Richard. You're just upset because we didn't plunge into a lake of molten zinc."
"Sure, that's it," I grunted. "I was hoping for a swift, easy out."
"Maybe we'll find it, Richard," she said, her eyes suddenly serious. "I'm not kidding myself. I know what a whiff of absolute zero can do to mucous membranes. All I'm claiming is that we've as good a chance here as we would have had on Ganymede."
"I wish I could feel that way about it. How do we know the atomotors can lift us from a world as massive as Jupiter?"
"I think they can, Richard. We had twelve times as much acceleration as we needed on tap when we took off from Earth."