"What you see is Jupiter's tremendous atmosphere belt. For some reason never satisfactorily explained, Jupiter's gaseous protective envelope is more than a thousand times deeper than that of any other planet. That's why Earth's astronomical instruments always show Jupiter's mass to be so tenuous; with a specific gravity, in fact, less than that of water. Jupiter is a gigantic cosmic fake; a huge bubble of semi-viscous atmosphere in the heart of which is embedded only a tiny, normal-sized core of the more cohesive elements which go to make up a planet."
"Why, the big quack!" said Muldoon indignantly. Then another thought struck him. "But say, if that's the case it must be colder than Tophet on that planet? Those miles upon miles of cloudbank should completely blot out the sun."
O'Day nodded. "And so they do. But on the other hand, they completely blanket the cold of interstellar space. You'll find Jupiter a dark, murky planet, but one with a very pleasant and equitable climate. Well—" He nodded to Warren as the vision plate before them was suddenly befilmed with writhing tendrils of moisture-laden atmosphere—"we're diving into the cotton. From now on it's blind flight. Co-ordinates O.Q.?"
"O.Q.," said Warren briefly, and concentrated on the task of dropping the Liberty through unfathomable miles of enswaddling cloud to the tiny core within.
A short time later his efforts gained their recompense. The gray veil thinned, then parted, and once again the Liberty was scudding through clear atmosphere, sunless and damply gray, but not unpleasant. Above the virgin surface of a planet not unlike jungle-strewn Venus, great rivers sprawled through chains of rolling hills. The brown soil was resplendent with wild, brilliantly multicolored foliage.
The rest was simple. Pangré, capital city, lay at the north polar extremity of Jupiter. They had but to follow their compass to reach it. So in a space of time measurable by minutes the Liberty had attained and hovered over the fourth of the great world capitals that they had visited on their flight.
A bustle of activity on the spaceport below greeted their arrival. They asked and were given clearance. Smoothly Hugh Warren dropped the whippet craft into the designated cradle. And as the hypatomics spluttered into silence, the spacefarers prepared to leave their ship.
A great throng was gathered at the rocketdrome. That was understandable, for of all the civilized planets, Jupiter was least visited by Earth's commercemen, and it was a rare occasion indeed which saw a sleek cruiser of the Space Patrol dropping jets on the faraway world.
That many of the assemblage were bearing arms was also evident to those aboard the Liberty, but Gary Lane found no cause for alarm in this fact. It was only natural that since suspicion and a degree of animosity existed amongst the governments of all the planets the Jovians should come to meet their visitors prepared for any eventuality. On every planet so far his mission had been greeted with distrust. He did not expect it to be otherwise here. He only hoped that candor and a complete explanation of the crisis would here win him the last of those four needed secrets.