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PENAL WORLD

BY THORNTON AYRE

From Astounding Stories, September 1937

That Fearn—and not Frank Jones—was the author of this, the first Ayre story to be published—is proven by the fact that a dozen years later, he incorporated whole swathes of it into his own ‘Golden Amazon’ novel, Lord of Jupiter (1949).

As the Amazon series progressed, the superwoman had been planet-hopping, and in this novel she adventures on the tempest-lashed hell planet of Jupiter, where she meets Relka, a true Jovian. Relka is one of Fearn’s most fascinating alien characters, and he was entirely based on Jo, the ‘Joherc’ Jovian character in “Penal World.”

Stanley G. Weinbaum was universally acknowledged by his peers as the creator of the first really memorable alien in science fiction. The noted SF historian Sam Moskowitz has written in Explorers of the Infinite (1963) that:

“It was Weinbaum’s creative brilliance in making strange creatures seem as real as the characters in David Copperfield that impressed readers most. Tweel, the intelligent Martian, an ostrich-like alien with useful manipular appendages—obviously heir of an advanced technology—is certainly one of the most memorable aliens in science fiction. The author placed great emphasis on the possibility that so alien a being would think differently from a human being and therefore perform actions which would seem paradoxical or completely senseless to us.”

Whilst Fearn’s Joherc is not quite in the same league, he is not so far below it.

On rereading “Penal World”, Fearn had realized that, suitably adapted, much of it could nicely be incorporated into his novel, including his vivid descriptions of the conditions on Jupiter’s surface:

“They afforded him a little shelter from the tycane—technical name for the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile-per-hour wind forever raging from pole to pole of the giant world. Yet by reason of the enormous gravity the effect of the wind on a human being was about equal to a gale of one hundred miles per hour.” (“Penal World”)

“…as they emerged from beyond the protection of the dome’s bulk the full fury of the eternal hurricane of Jove smote them. They both staggered beneath its onslaught, but did not lose their balance. Mightily though it blew they could still make slow, laborious progress, the reason being that the wind, held by the vast gravity, only equalled the pressure of an earthly gale at perhaps ninety miles an hour.” (Lord of Jupiter)

“With lackluster eyes he peered into the shadows beneath the Fishnet Trees. In every direction about their boles sprouted the weird below-zero Jovian plants, bearing not the vaguest relation to Earthly vegetation, but patterned in some incomprehensible surrealist style, full of bars, cubes, oblongs and angles, more crystal than vegetational in form. Flowers there were none. Jovian vegetation, in the main, reproduced itself by fission and lived in the slow, creeping style of the unicell.” (“Penal World”)

“…the trees of the crystalline jungle sprouted branches of much the same pattern as newly woven cobwebs, rings of interlace, glittering crystal, the outermost edges of the rings being octagonal in shape. Here there was weird, fantastic beauty, every atom of it composed of ammonium base. Even the ‘grass’ was composed of fantastic spears of glass-like substance, which cracked to powder as the pair advanced.

“Ever and again, as they stumbled more deeply into the preposterous wilderness, below-zero forms—living by dividing upon themselves in the fission style of a unicell—scudded into safety, looking rather like spiked glass marbles shot through with veins of superb colour.” (Lord of Jupiter)

“Still they watched as the joherc came into complete view—a biped, only two feet tall, with two legs nearly as thick as a man’s body and almost fantastically muscled. Further support was provided by the broad, kangaroo-like tail on which it sat ever and again. Its remaining anatomy was made up of a pear-shaped body, stumpy arms, enormous pectoral muscles and chest—in which, according to description and reconstruction at the settlement bureau, there beat three powerful hearts to create a normal circulation in the enormous drag. On the mighty shoulders was the strange, triple-jointed neck, semi-human face with wide, half-grinning mouth and scaly head. A pure product of ammonia, living in a climate ideally suited to it—a living, thinking creature of superhuman strength and swiftness, mentally active, yet humanly childlike in manner—a veritable cosmic paradox.” (“Penal World”)

“He found himself gazing at an incredible creature. He had the contour of a man standing three feet in height and probably every inch as broad. Short, blocky legs were very powerful. His arms, too, were short and corded with muscles. To this was added a great barrel of a chest, a neck like a pillar and a perfectly round head. He had yellow eyes, broad nose and a fanged mouth. He had neither hair nor raiment, his entire body seeming to be covered in crystalline scales.” (Lord of Jupiter)

Relka also shares the joherc’s passion for consuming crystalline ammonia salts. And like him he has no ears, and is telepathic (“nature’s provision to prevent us being deafened by the vibrations in this heavy atmosphere”) and is highly intelligent. However, Fearn added some new qualities for the purposes of the novel—Relka has a decided sense of humour, and a unique philosophy: “…we are a lazy race. We don’t want to progress. We understand most scientific things but are not interested enough to develop them. Our theory is that the more refined you become the less happiness you have.”

Fearn clearly had great fun with this amazing character, and he provides much light relief, as well as figuring in some key plot developments. He was to feature to even greater advantage in later novels, electing to join forces with the Amazon out of his own, queer sense of loyalty.

“Penal World” by “Thornton Ayre” was submitted to Astounding Stories and accepted by its editor Orlin Tremaine on 23 July 1937. Thus encouraged, Fearn went on to produce more stories in the same vein.

PENAL WORLD

Mad, idiotic world! Air of absolute poison—trees basically ammonium carbonate—creatures living in a temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below zero centigrade—

James Cardew, former American citizen, was on Jupiter through no fault of his own. He was in no way to blame for the fact that he now stood inside his enormously reinforced spacesuit gazing out on a landscape incredibly vast and rugged, stretching to a colossal distance, bounded at remoteness by the boiling horror of the seven-thousand-mile-wide Great Red Spot.

Jupiter was the penal world of the system, last working place of the criminals of Earth, Mars, and Venus. And for a very good reason! Once a space machine landed on Jupiter it was common knowledge that, in the case of the huge convict machines at least, it could never leave. The titanic gravity of the planet claimed large-sized ships absolutely.

James Cardew had been framed by certain jealous officials of the space ways—shipped to Jupiter because he knew too much of graft and corruption in high places. For two years he had worked among the bitter-hearted men at the settlement—a vast underground abode of itanium metal, Periodic No. 187, vastly heavy, and the only known metal capable of withstanding, for six continuous months, the unbelievable pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere and down-drag. By the time the six months were up, this highly radioactive metal began to collapse—

The convicts’ entire life, therefore, consisted of building up the very walls that hemmed them in, And twenty miles away, where the walls were likewise always being repaired by good behavior men, was the underground residence of Governor Mason and his family, voluntarily marooned on this colossal world.

Despite the fact that within the governor’s abode and the settlement there were machines which nullified the crushing gravitation, men did go berserk at times—warders and prisoners alike. Some went to the exterior—a freely permitted act—quite unprotected, to die instantly in an atmosphere of pure ammoniated hydrogen at a frigid temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below zero centigrade.

Others were smarter. They frisked itanium spacesuits and furtively escaped in them—but they were never heard of again. Either way it was suicide.

James Cardew had done pretty much the same thing. Suicide had been in his mind for months; he’d been on the verge of walking unprotected to the exterior. Then, from the external reflectors in the main machine room, he had seen a spaceship of the private variety—small and easy to handle—fall like a brilliant comet in the dense atmosphere, dropping finally about two hundred miles due east. If he could reach that ship he might, by very reason of its smallness, break the effect of Jupiter’s drag and get back to Earth, square his wrongful conviction.

It was pretty obvious that the vessel had been accidentally caught in the giant world’s enormous attractive field; maybe the pilot had been an amateur, unauthorized by the space flying committees. Whatever it was, James Cardew realized that he had to reach that ship within three weeks before the violent atmosphere and pressure made an end of it.

Three weeks—two hundred miles across Jupiter’s terrible terrain. To escape the prison had not been difficult. It was now that the difficulties began.

Cardew’s gray eyes were grim behind the six-inch, unbreakable glass of his helmet; his lean, powerful face was set in grimly determined lines, the lines of a man accustomed, by now, to bearing inexorable strain. For every step he took he was forced to raise a weight about three times in excess of normal, including his densely heavy spacesuit, so designed as to exclude external and maintain internal pressures.

Even so, being a one hundred and sixty eight-pound man, he weighed four hundred and forty-eight pounds on Jupiter, with his space suit and heavy equipment added to it. It made of his body a vastly heavy, aching machine.

He took stock of his position from behind the protection of two upjutting rocks of tremendously dense material. They afforded him a little shelter from the tycane—technical name for the vast two hundred and fifty mile-per-hour wind forever raging from pole to pole of the giant world. Yet by reason of the enormous gravity the effect of the wind on a human being was about equal to a gale of one hundred miles per hour. Around the Great Red Spot, the one remaining portion of Jupiter still un-solidified, despite the frigid cold of the rest of the surface, the tycane had been known to reach the incredible velocity of over four hundred miles per hour—but then the Spot was recognized by all experts as the fester spot of Jove, seven thousand miles of bubbling, densely heavy materials—

Cardew, moving his arms with enormous effort, studied his compass inside its protective itanium case, and took stock of his direction. His route would lead him to the Fishnet Jungle, through a cleft of the Seven Peak Mountains, and after that along the shores of the Turquoise Ocean. The points were fairly familiar in his mind, but the jungle was the main thing that worried him—how he was going to pick his way through its weird mass.

Finally he pushed his compass back in place on his back and swiftly checked over his heavily shielded equipment—first-aid pack, down to a common container of smelling salts, tabloid provisions, and an oxygen-jet pistol, the only practicable weapon of destruction in an atmosphere containing vast preponderances of hydrogen and ammonia. Not much equipment, but enough in a world where every scrap of weight added to an already crushing burden.

Cardew braced himself and emerged from his protection into the full blast of the eternal wind. Since dawn had arrived about an hour ago, he had about eight clear hours in which to make further progress; with a bit of luck he might reach the Fishnet Jungle in that time. That it was already quite visible to him in the weak daylight filtering through the writhing clouds signified nothing. There were always the tycane and the constant down-drag to be reckoned with. He moved with labored effort, the strain bathing him in perspiration inside his hot, heavy suit.

To the rear, now far distant, gleamed the sunken dome of the penal settlement, and farther away still the governor’s habitation. To left and right there was naught but hard red ground. Once it had all been like the Red Spot; now it had cooled to produce an effect as dreary as anything that could be imagined.

Only the Fishnet Jungle, with its blunted trees and weird tracery branches—from which the fanciful name was derived—provided any relief in the otherwise crushed monotony. Even the highest summit of the distant Seven Peak Mountains only reached a thousand feet in height, held down by the mighty gravitation.

Cardew struggled on, forcing his weight-anguished body into the teeth of the tycane. He found it hard to believe that the wind outside his helmet was absolute poison, that the trees of the distant jungle were basically ammonium carbonate, living in a temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below centigrade zero.…

Mad, idiotic world! It was populated, too, by creatures as mad as their environment. Cardew had heard of them—mighty strong things with a fairly high scientific intelligence—known as the joherc, derived from Jovian Hercules. Where they abided, however, was something of a mystery; since they were rarely seen on the surface.

Grunting with effort. Cardew went on slowly, slipping and sliding on ground of enormous hardness, one wary eye fixed on the distant, quivering upspoutings of molten matter from the Great Red Spot. No telling when it might decide to erupt. It had a nasty habit now and again of covering thousands of square miles of Jupiter with molten chemicals. That, in a landscape normally bitterly cold, produced effects almost too cataclysmic for imagination—certainly death for a lone traveler.

Occasionally the fitful gleams of sunlight through the dense scurrying clouds made the scene even more desolate, painted it with weak, washy colors, like some redstone plane of Earth at twilight. Gloom, depression, and barrenness—mighty Jove had all these attributes.

Cardew stopped only once, to nourish himself, on his journey toward the jungle. He moved a switch on his helmet and a spring, releasing itself, dropped into his open mouth a vitamin pellet, following it with a rejuvenating drink-essence tablet. Neither of them were more than quarter of a centimeter in size, but so potent in effect that he felt renewed strength surge into his aching limbs.

He rose up again from the rock against which he had been lounging and staggered on—onward all through the drab afternoon, battling the eternal wind, muttering threats, in good American, upon Jupiter and all it contained.

As he had calculated, he reached the outskirts of the Fishnet at dusk. The twilight was brief, dimmed from murky drabness into night, relieved only slightly by the clouded glow of the attendant moons.

With lackluster eyes he peered into the shadows beneath the Fishnet trees. In every direction about their boles sprouted the weird, below-zero forms of Jovian plants, bearing not the vaguest relation to Earthly vegetation, but patterned in some incomprehensible surrealist style, full of bars, cubes, oblongs, and angles, more crystal than vegetational in form. Flowers there were none. Jovian vegetation, in the main, reproduced itself by fission and lived in the slow, creeping style of the unicell. There was something almost disgusting about the way the growths occasionally popped noisily and became two, growing with extreme slowness thereafter toward maturity and further reproduction. Cardew heard them bisect quite distinctly through his sensitive external helmet detector as he plodded onward—

Until he gained a Fishnet tree with branches lower than the rest— To scramble into them, though they were only six feet from the ground, demanded enormous effort—took thirty minutes of muscle-wrenching strain. But once he was in their firmly spread, bed-like mass he relaxed with a sigh, satisfied that he was safe from the weird ammoniacal crawlers.

Beyond a wish that he could get out of his space suit and have a real breath of honest fresh air, he had no regrets. So far, so good. His eyes closed with leaden weariness; the tree branch moved up and down in the grip of the tycane slowly, ceaselessly—

As he half dozed, the detector phones brought in a medley of vaguely familiar noises above the wind’s whine, chief amongst which were the weird, half-human twittering of the ostriloath—strange, birdlike creature crossed vaguely between ostrich and sloth—and the deep bass grunting of the feather-sphere, the porcupine of Jove, rolling everywhere at terrible speed like a heavily flaked cannon ball. Familiar sounds all—

Then, suddenly, Cardew jolted violently upright, wide awake, his heart slamming painfully with the sudden intensity of his effort, his ears still ringing with what had definitely been a human shout of fear!

“Damned delusions!” he breathed quickly, staring round and below at the crazy jungle. “Couldn’t have been—”

He frowned in bewilderment. A scream from inside a helmet would be carried to the amplifier on the helmet exterior; even the slightest cry from anybody would be instantly enormously amplified by the dense atmosphere. But nobody else could be in such a cockeyed spot, surely—

Cardew broke off in his quick reflections and stared with amazed eyes through the clear patch between the nearest Fishnet trees. The light of Europa shone down through cloud breaks upon a space-suited figure lying flat on the ground, struggling against the gravity to tug out an oxygen pistol. A little distance away a hideous little-headed sican, violently strong, sheathed in an armor plating of frozen scales, fixed his intended prey with enormous glassy eyes. It was the largest of all Jovian animals, measuring five feet in length and nearly the same in width. Then it began to advance slowly on its six immensely powerful legs.

Almost as quickly as the danger registered in Cardew’s mind, he had dropped violently to the ground and tugged out his own oxygen pistol. With ponderously dragging feet, the ghastly pull of a nightmare’s dragging chains, he tried to run forward—fired his gun as he went.

Immediately a vicious stream of devastating flame spouted through the moonlight, momentarily lighted the mad glade with bluish-yellow fire. The force of the jet struck the sican clean in the center of its body, sent it rearing upward in a sudden paroxysm of searing pain.

Maddened, it twirled round and jumped dangerously near the sprawling, motionless figure. Then, at another vicious cut across its hideous face, it twisted round and traveled at high speed on its enormously strong legs into the jungle fastness.

Cardew felt the sweat of relief suddenly start to pour down his face. He replaced his gun and clumped slowly forward against the raging wind, turned over the prostrate figure with considerable effort. Jerking out his torch, he flashed the beam through the dense face glass, then started back in astonishment at beholding the perspiration-dewed face of a girl, eyes closed, hair raven-dark, lips pale with unconsciousness.

“Where in Heaven’s name did you drop from?” he said in bewilderment. Then he turned industriously to his first-aid kit and set to work with her helmet trappings. Swiftly he uncapped the triple valve socket connected to her respirator, screwed the heavy metal tube to the top of his smelling-salt container.

Immediately the powerful aromatic ammonia fumes surged into her helmet, set her lips moving with sudden revulsion, forced her clear, dark eyes to open in sudden alarm.

“Better?” Cardew whispered into her external receiver, as he recapped her respirator and laid the salts container beside him.

She nodded weakly. “Yes—I think so. I—I don’t know where you’ve come from, but it certainly was opportune.” She spoke rather shakily in a voice that was pleasantly mellow. “I thought I was going to make a perfect target for the sican!”

“Not with my oxygen pistol in good order.” He smiled. Then, locking his arms round her metal-clad waist he heaved her to her feet. Her face was clearly relieved and grateful in Europa’s murky light.

“I guess that was good of you,” she said warmly. “You risked your life. Probably you’re thinking I’m an awful fool to pass out like that? Suppose we call it plain fright?”

He ignored her apologies. “American?” he questioned eagerly.

She nodded. “By inheritance, yes—but born on this ghastly planet through no fault of my own. I’m Claire Mason, daughter of Hubert Mason, the settlement governor.”

He stared at her in amazement; her gaze, too, was one of polite inquiry.

“I’ve heard of you, of course.” He hesitated. “Like the rest of the people on this ghastly world, you’re its prisoner. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here all the same.”

She laughed shortly. “That’s easy! If you’d been born here because your father and mother’s social position demanded that they give up all thought of Earthly life and devote their lives to this planet, what would you do on seeing a private, small-sized space machine fall two hundred miles to the east? You’d head for it, of course! Well, that’s what I’m doing. I reckon about three weeks before pressure wipes it out. Naturally, there are no small ships at the settlement—only the useless, heavy prison machines, and they’re about crushed to powder.”

She paused and regarded him rather naively. “I know you can’t be Dr. Livingstone,” she said demurely. “But just the same, I suppose you have a name?”

“I did have a number,” he growled; then, more sociably, “James Cardew’s my name—escaped prisoner trying to get back to Earth to prove my innocence. I’m heading the same way as you are.”

“Really?” Her voice seemed a little cool. She seemed to sense there was something not quite right about hobnobbing with an escaped prisoner.

“I suppose, since the governor’s place is twenty miles from the settlement, you took a wider route to this jungle?” he asked.

“Obviously,” she said calmly. Then, tossing aside her uncertain manner, she went on earnestly, “I want to see the world I belong to, feel natural instead of artificial gravity, breathe fresh air, see fields and great cities—New York in particular. It must be wonderful!”

“Not bad,” he admitted reflectively.

“To get back to Earth—or, rather, to visit it for the first time—I’m prepared to risk Jupiter drag in the spaceship. That is, if it’s still spaceworthy.”

“It’ll probably mean death,” he said.

But she only shrugged inside her huge suit. “Supposing it does? Better than Jupiter. In fact, I—”

She stopped short and gave a little cry, made a clumsy movement backward into Cardew’s protecting right arm.

“What—what is it?” she gasped in alarm, pointing. “Look!”

He tugged out his gun again. “Take it easy,” he murmured. “A joherc, or I miss my guess!”

They stood motionless, watching the fantastic creature that had suddenly appeared in the clearing, plainly visible in the now combined lights of unclouded Europa and Ganymede. It moved cautiously, with a certain oddly childlike nervousness quite incongruous for such a tremendously powerful body.

“A joherc, all right,” Cardew affirmed. “Heard of ’em many a time, and heard their description, but never saw one. They’re pretty good scientists in their way—maybe a bit dangerous, though.”

Still they watched as the joherc came into complete view—a biped, only two feet tall, with two legs nearly as thick as a man’s body and almost fantastically muscled. Further support was provided by the broad, kangaroo-like tail. on which it sat ever and again. Its remaining anatomy was made up of a pear-shaped body, stumpy arms, enormous pectoral muscles and chest—in which, according to description and reconstruction at the settlement bureau, there beat three powerful hearts to create a normal circulation in the eternal drag. On the mighty shoulders was the strange, triple-jointed neck, semi-human face with wide, half-grinning mouth and scaly head.

A pure product of ammonia, living in a climate ideally suited to it—a living, thinking creature of superhuman strength and swiftness, mentally active, yet humanly childlike in manner—a veritable cosmic paradox.

The two remained motionless as the creature advanced. His broad nostrils were quivering oddly, scenting something. The deeply-set, many-layered eyes stared penetratingly round the coldly lighted clearing—then suddenly espied Cardew’s smelling-salt container! That was enough! The joherc dived like a flash of gray and seized the container in a powerful hand, picking out the already half-pressure-crushed crystals with the blunt fingers of the other, tossing them into his huge mouth,

Cardew came to life at that and let out a yell. “Hey, you! That belongs to my kit! Get out of it! Get going!”

He flung himself forward strainedly and snatched up the container with a gloved hand, slammed the cap back on top of it. The joherc sat on its broad tail, licking its lips complacently. Obviously, with its usual phenomenal sense of smell, it had detected the crystals from a distance. Such a treasure trove, though sheer poison to an Earthling, was evidently too much to resist.

“On your way, joherc!” Cardew snapped, returning the container to the hook on his belt. “No crystals going free!”

The joherc made no move, but his keen eyes followed Cardew’s every move as he returned to the relieved girl, replacing his pistol in its holster.

“Obviously not hostile,” was her comment.

He grinned behind his face glass, “Not while I have these crystals, anyhow.” He chuckled. “Try to imagine a guy wandering around with a bag of priceless gems, not caring much whether he had them or not. If you were naturally decent, would you be hostile? No, sir! You’d just stick around on the chance of getting some—”

He stopped and looked about him. “What do we do?” he asked. “Stop for the night or carry on?”

She surveyed the jungle’s menacing depths. “Might as well carry on, since every moment counts. We’ve got to find our way through this tangle somehow and reach the Seven Peaks. Let’s be going.”

“Suits me!” He fell into clumsy step beside her as they began their laborious struggle forward into the Europa-and Ganymede-lighted madness of the Jovian forest—

And behind them, sniffing the ammoniated breeze, shooting against the enormous gravity with the ease of an Earthly kangaroo, came the joherc, odd face almost like that of an anxious child, as its unmoving gaze watched the bobbing smelling-salt container on Cardew’s waist belt—

The forest became sparser as the two progressed, but its life teemed as furiously as of yore. Here and there a deadly lance-stem, fastest growing thing in the wilderness, stabbed outward with an unbearably cold, dagger-like frond, able at close quarters to penetrate the thick armor of the spacesuits.

Somehow the two avoided the horrors, only to find themselves constantly dodging whizzing feather-spheres and jabbering ostriloaths. Ever and again they found themselves hurled to the ground as the cannon-ball hardness and speed of the feather-spheres knocked their legs from under them. Nor were their feelings improved at finding the joherc not far behind in the moonlight.

“I wish you’d go away, Jo!” Cardew snorted in discomfiture, and his voice boomed through his microphone on the creature’s tiny ears. “Go play tag with the cannon balls! In plain words, scram!”

Jo sat on his tail and waited, cast a thoughtful pair of eyes toward the now vaguely dawn-lighted sky.

“No go,” Cardew growled to the girl, shrugging. “I guess he’ll follow until we reach the spaceship.”

They struggled on again. Then, in the increasing light, they suddenly saw ahead that lance-stems and Fishnets were smashing and splintering violently under the force of enormous feet. Exactly as they had expected, a huge specimen of the sican genus came blundering into view.

Cardew’s fingers tensed on his oxygen pistol; but long before he could take aim, something shot past him in a blur of motion, stumpy arms and hands flung wide, block-like legs tensing into bulgings of muscle at each terrific spring.

“Jo!” the girl cried in amazement. “Of all the foolhardy things—”

“Don’t be too sure!” Cardew interrupted her tensely. “These Jovian blighters, especially the bipeds, have got strength beyond imagination. Look!”

He pointed quickly. The joherc had already seized the powerful sican by the throat, was crushing, with every scrap of his enormous, concentrated, tight-packed strength, into that leathery neck, performing his actions at such a terrific rate it was hardly possible to follow him. Working against a gravity two and a half times more powerful than Earth’s, his actions correspondingly increased in like ratio.

He was obviously lighter than his antagonist, and by far the more intelligent. The sican finally retreated, thin, aqueous humor freezing solid on its thick neck as fast as it appeared.

“Bet the air smells even more pungent than usual outside,” Claire said reflectively as she watched the brute retreat in the now full daylight. “Imagine bursting a bladder of pure ammonia in an atmosphere already thick with it!”

“I can imagine!” Cardew murmured. Then he turned quickly as Jo came springing back, grinning hugely. “Nice going, Jo!” he exclaimed in gratitude, swinging round his smelling-salt container. “Here are some crystals for services rendered!”

The Jovian’s powerful tail sent him thumping to Cardew’s side. The greedy, scaled fingers scooped out a dozen of the crystals before the pressure had a chance to crush them, transferring them to his wide mouth with astonishing avidity.

“Ammonia, so you say,” he said suddenly in a hoarse voice—and the two stared at him blankly. “Your poison. Good to me. Block salt extra good. Cliffs of it—way there!” He swung his blocky arm vaguely.

“That covers a lot of territory,” Claire murmured.

“Yeah, about two hundred and sixty-five thousand miles of it,” Cardew agreed dryly. Then he looked at the Jovian in puzzlement. “So you talk, eh?”

“Read mind,” Jo explained briefly. “Not very clear—only damn smatterings. Not sure of position of words but meaning get. Read minds easily.”

“You’re ammonia, aren’t you? Formed by pressure and below zero temperature?”

“For years numbering hundreds,” Jo agreed affably. “Eat white salt. Water, you call it. Peroxides, too. Plenty of those. And crystals—like I saved your life for. You got them.”

“Hm-m-m,” Cardew murmured, frowning. “Strikes me as queer to find a fellow like you hopping about on a mad world like this, and yet you can read thoughts. High mental development, eh?”

“Very high,” Jo agreed modestly. “I am clever. I have oriental, too. No, not oriental—orientation!”

“What’s that?” Claire asked in puzzlement.

“Sort—sort of homing instinct common in pigeons,” Cardew explained. “And you’ve got it, Jo?”

“You’re right I have! And I smell, too!”

Cardew grinned. “You’re telling us! But I suppose you mean you have a strong sense of smell? Well, thanks for the help, anyway. We’ve got to be getting along.”

“You can’t do without my clever ideas,” Jo remarked flatly. “I’m coming like hell with you.”

Cardew winced as he caught sight of the girl coolly smiling at him.

“Seems to be reading your language quite well, doesn’t he?” she asked sweetly.

He looked anxiously. “Just what I’m afraid of! If he happens on the language I used at the settlement, he’ll set the atmosphere on fire.”

He caught her by the arm, and they pushed on again, followed constantly by the tireless Jo, occasionally directing their path. He stopped only now and again to break off pieces of unclassifiable crystallized bark and jam it in his mouth. Then, with that same look of asinine foolishness on his face, he sprang on behind them.

By another nightfall they had cleared the jungle—but away to the west, under the lowering sky, there beat scarlet tremblings and pulsings.

“Guess we ought to rest, but I don’t like risking it with that going on,” Cardew muttered wearily.

“The Great Red Spot, eh?” Claire mused.

“Correct. And from the look of things, it’s in a state of eruption. It may mean a thousand-mile flood of destruction. Coming our way, too! Eh, Jo?”

The joherc fixed his odd eyes on the disturbance. “Better step on hurry,” he suggested anxiously. “Give yourselves gas, I imagine. The way is straight; I know it.”

“What way?” Cardew demanded irritably. “For Heaven’s sake, pick your words straight, Jo! Can we rest, or is the danger too great?”

“I’ll say!” Jo responded surprisingly. “Straight is the way to Seven Peaks, and then to Turquoise Sea and oxygen block cliffs—out to spaceship. That’s where you head?”

“Sure, but how did you know?” Cardew shrugged wearily. “Oh, I’d forgotten your thought reading for the moment. If you know the way, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Jo didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said slyly, “Way guided for crystals only. Like hell I want them now. Step on it!”

Cardew grimaced and handed him some more from the container.

“There you are. Now lead on.”

Jo needed no second bidding. He leaped forward with astounding energy, leading the way across the barren red plain in the direction of the main giant cleft in the Seven Peak range. Weary, unutterably leaden, the two jogged after him. Then, suddenly, Claire, exhausted beyond measure, could stand it no longer. She sank weakly to the ground. “It’s no good; I can’t make it!” she panted, her face pale and strained in the Europa light.

Cardew braced himself against the screaming wind and looked down at her in perplexity. Certainly he could not carry her; his own weight was severe enough. He glanced anxiously to the rear and beheld visible streams of redness crawling through the night—searing overflows from the erupting Spot. Once through the cleft there would be safety, but here— To wait until dawn meant certain death.

“Only another few miles, Claire!” he implored desperately. “We’ve got to make it! It’s the difference between life and death—”

She did not answer—only lay flat and relaxed.

Then Jo descended from the gloom. “No dice?” he questioned anxiously. “Claire lie down?”

“It’s the damned gravity,” Cardew growled. “We’re not used to it.”

Jo did not respond. Without a moment’s hesitation he bent down and hauled the girl, spacesuit and all, onto his broad left shoulder; then, before Cardew could grasp the situation, he was treated likewise on the other shoulder. The next thing he knew he was flying through the air with dizzying speed, heart and lungs strained to the uttermost by the upward pulls against the gravity.

“Trifles mere!” Jo tossed out enthusiastically, vaulting mightily with legs and tail. “I have clever brain and big legs. Strength in large size. Get you safe, or else—”

Cardew couldn’t reply; he was too strained for that. But the apparent marvel of Jo’s activity soon vanished from his mind. The odd creature, gifted by Nature with a complex brain in which there ran a decided streak of generosity, was deliberately risking his own life to save two people of another world—unless it was for love of the smelling salts. The extraordinary nature of his giant strength became more and more evident as time passed. He seemed to regard the weight on his shoulders with no more concern than a man would trouble over a couple of canaries.

And he kept it up, mixing American slang with observations of considerable scientific significance ever and again—until at last the mountain cleft was reached and all possible danger from the overflowing Red Spot was far behind.

Ahead, in the light of the moons, lay the amazing Turquoise Ocean, greenish blue in the pale light—enormous in extent, pure ammonia; its heavy, turgid waves thundering ear-splittingly on a beach that was red rock, backed to the rear with crawling cliffs of white, frozen oxygen.

Here Jo stopped and dropped his burdens rather violently on the shore. Like a gray streak, he headed toward the cliffs and began tearing at their frozen hardness, until, at last, he wrested free a jagged, splintering square.

By the time Cardew and the girl had sat up, he was eating the stuff hungrily. When at last he finished, he came forward rather sheepishly.

“The eats,” he explained.

Cardew nodded as he and Claire allowed tabloids to drop into their own mouths. “Not surprised, old man. Guess I’d never get used to your diet any more than you’d get used to mine. Incidentally, how much further shall we have to go after staying the night?”

“No further. Spaceship right here.”

“Here!” Cardew looked round in puzzlement. He only saw the bleak desolation of that ammoniated shore. “Think again, Jo!” he said. “I reckon we’ve another hundred and fifty miles to cover at least.”

“Get wise to yourself!” Jo suggested calmly. Then he motioned, with his thick arm, toward the cliffs.

Fatigued though they were, the two got to their feet and followed him, stopping finally before the argent masses. Jo pointed to the red ground and grinned gleefully.

Cardew started and the girl gave a little cry as they beheld a mighty circle of metal, apparently similar to itanium, sunken into the redness—a colossal manhole cover.

“We live below,” Jo explained calmly. “Rarely come up except for special reason. Two reasons this time. We have many instruments. They showed us spaceship fall and two people leaving prison settlement. I was told to get the lot—you and spaceship.”

Cardew felt something clutch at his heart. “You—you damned traitorous little horror!” he burst out. “You mean you’ve kept up with us all this time so you could turn us into your rotten underworld? Why, you—”

“Keep on shirt!” Jo interrupted quickly. “No captives. I could easily lose you. Our leader wants you, sure—but I don’t. Prefer to help. Very clever and generous; that’s me.”

“You mean you’ll let us go?” Claire asked anxiously.

“You betcha!”

“But how can we—without a spaceship?” Cardew yelped. “You say you were told to capture it—”

“I did; it’s down below—but only in the first gallery. I can get it. Now you know how came I on the surface to meet you. Obeying orders.”

“That’s clear enough.” Cardew nodded tensely. “But about the ship. You say it’s below. Did you drive it here?”’

“I can do anything. I carried it.”

“Carried it?” Cardew’s voice was faint with amazement.

“Sure. Damned easy! I’ll show you.”

The two stood aside and watched, in bewilderment, as he locked his hand in the manhole’s ring and pulled with all his power. By degrees the great valve rose upward under his enormous strength until it was vertical. Then he jumped down into a cavernous pit.

For nearly five minutes the two waited; then they both gasped in surprise as the familiar, blunted nose of a small private space flier began to appear. Little by little the whole ship began to emerge, thrust up the long pit incline by Jo’s tremendous muscles. When at last it was on the flat ground he looked at them anxiously.

“Down below it was safe from pressure for much longer time than up,” he explained. “Better go quick, scram. Very light to me—almost vacuum.”

Cardew quickly looked the ship over. It was only dented from its earlier fall. He turned to Jo. “Did you manage to find out who it belonged to?”

“Sure. Two people like you—Pluto travelers. Caught in drag and crashed—necks broken. I read their brains before I threw them outside. Darned smart of me, and then some!”

Cardew looked; at him gratefully. “You’re a great scout, Jo,” he said warmly. “I only wish I could repay your generosity. Your orientation was right, by the way. How the devil you knew your way to these cliffs from the Fishnet is more than I can figure.”

Jo’s huge mouth grinned expansively.

“Oriental sense first class,” he agreed modestly. “You carbohydrates—me ammonia, but we think regular, Darned good race mine. Wish I could come with you, but your world would let my compressed body blow apart. No dice and deep regrets offered right now.”

“There must be something we can do!” the girl insisted, turning toward the spaceship’s airlock.

“Perhaps—crystals?” Jo said almost shyly.

Laughing, Cardew unhooked the container from his belt and tossed it over. Then, with a final farewell, he and the girl passed inside the vessel and screwed up the airlock.

Once their stifling suits were removed, Cardew fired the rocket tubes. With a grinding roar, the ship tore furiously against the gravity; the terrific drag of Jupiter made itself evident instantly, a drag mounting with every second that the ship boomed and exploded upward from that titanic world.

In eight minutes both Claire and Cardew were unconscious, robot machinery alone firing the tubes. Then, little by little, as the distance increased and the gravity correspondingly lessened, they came out of insensibility, to find Jupiter a vast, banded disk behind them. Ahead was the void with the single green star of Earth plainly visible in the firmament.

“We made it!” Cardew breathed thankfully. “We actually made it!”

“Thanks to Jo,” the girl put in quietly. “I shall never see smelling salts again but what I’ll think of him.”

Cardew did not answer, but he was smiling.