I roared, "Dammit all, Lanse knew this was going to happen, and planned for it. Depress that No. 3 lever, Todd! Shoot the juice through those coils we've been building!"
And Todd was so rattled that he obeyed me. Like I told you before, we'd created a wild-looking network of wires all over the framework of the Saturn. We had even constructed a whole new inner hull, juicing it according to some diagram that didn't appear to make sense.
Now rheostats rheostated and condensers condense and the air got so full of electricity that my teeth began to hum like bees in a bathtub. And it got hot in the control-turret. But—
But our frightful plunging motion ceased! Not just like that, you know; I don't mean we stopped stock-still and hung motionless in space. But we drifted into an easy glide. A gentle, leaf-in-the-breeze sort of motion.
Cap Hanson's jaw fell down to his fourth button. A gasp worked its way up out of his lumbar region. "It—it's impossible!" he said. "I—I don't believe it!"
I didn't either. For what we were seeing mirrored on the turret visiplate was something no man in the universe had ever seen before—and lived to tell about it. We were seeing the troposphere, the stratosphere, the surface atmosphere of the massive planet Jupiter at easy visual range. And we were drifting to solid ground so gently that we were in no more danger than a parachutist approaching a field full of sofa cushions!
It didn't even occur to me, then, to notice how far off the scientists had been in attributing fantastic characteristics to unstudied Jupiter. Because its density was so much less than Earth's, they had envisioned it as a gaseous or semi-liquid planet. Which was so much hogwash. It was a normal-sized core surrounded by blankets, thousands of miles deep, of atmosphere. It was lush, luxuriant, green. Steamy with vapors, riotous with vegetable life. Protected by its swaddling clothes, it was the most likely abode of life Man had ever found outside his native Earth!
But as I say, I scarcely noticed this at first. I was conscious only of my own pulse-numbing astonishment, of the casual, lazy motion of our ship, of Captain Hanson gasping beside me in a cracked, incredulous voice, "Anti-gravitation! He's found it!"
Our task was not yet done. The instructions called for the lifting and depression of a dozen more studs. But by now, Dick Todd—who is a damn sight better navigator than he is a mental giant—was hunched over his controls playing the intricate keys like a master organist.
In three hours that sped by like as many minutes we had gained the surface of Jupiter. We sought the declension points Biggs' ghost had set forth to us. We hovered over the juncture ... spotted a small, glistening mote of silver beneath us ... lowered on our amazing anti-gravitational beam. It was a perfect landing. Less than an eighth of a mile from the lean, gangling, radiant, unspace-suited figure who came racing across the field toward us—