Chapter 11

As ET walked down the street toward his laboratory, he beamed with pride to see the glistening browns and grays that were beginning to be seen on buildings as paint became more and more popular. He was proud to know that he had been instrumental in getting rid of those horrible greens and reds and yellows that people had been forced to look at for so many years. And, on top of the aesthetic value of his contribution, he was making a hell of a lot of money off the deal. His family had already moved to a more high toned part of town, and they might soon be able to afford a maid so that he and his co-husbands would not have to spend so much time keeping the house clean. Their wife was a bit demanding, but he loved her anyway, and wanted to do whatever he could to keep her happy.

I was in my office going over some plans for an extension on our main office building when Jenny came in with a big grin. "Honey, I'm just back from the clinic and it's confirmed: I'm pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl! I'm so happy that I couldn't wait to tell you."

I jumped up to hug her as tight as I dared and to kiss her. "Well, Honey, I'm glad you didn't wait. I'll be happy to say hello to both of them in bed, tonight."

Jenny laughed as she went out the door. Man! I do love that woman!

Suddenly there was a pounding at my door. "Come in!"

Sherry Bodine, our Chief Structural Engineer, came bounding in through the door with a big grin and a sheaf of papers in her hand which she kept waving at me. "Boss, I couldn't wait to tell you. We've got the pressure problem solved! Jimmy was right, that side effect of the artificial gravity generator can be used to reinforce the hull. The math on this thing is absolutely crazy! The partial derivative of the pressure differential resolves to infinity. In other words, it is simply impossible to penetrate or crack the hull under the right circumstances. Jimmy is certain he can tap that force for us."

"No shit! That's great news! Tell him I said that we are proud of him and you should start figuring out his bonus. Put him and everything he needs to working up a prototype as soon as possible. We may yet travel to Jupiter's core the way Prof. Jacoby wants."

The modification was made to the artificial gravity unit on board Emily VI and we were ready for a short experiment. Strain gages were plastered all over the hull and four technicians were along to help me monitor the data. We took off for The Marianas Trench via a few minutes in space to calibrate the gages. That took only a few minutes so I pointed us at the Pacific Ocean and away we went. We made a hefty splash as we dropped into the ocean, but it didn't slow us down as we sank slowly to the bottom of the trench, nearly 7 miles down under the Pacific Ocean. All of us aboard were carefully monitoring the output of the strain gages, and we were absolutely amazed! There was no detectable deflection of the hull as all of that water pressure bore in upon us, over 15,000 psi. This was so far beyond the design specifications of the original hull that there was no comparison.

OK, we were ready for the next test. I flew us to Venus, which was conveniently on the same side of the sun as Earth, so it only took us a few minutes to get there. As we sank into the atmosphere, this was going to be a test of temperature as well as pressure control. Since heat is a manifestation of molecular vibration, I was hoping that the same effect that made the hull so rigid would also act as a heat insulator. Well, we would find out, considering how hot and heavy the Venusian atmosphere is.

We got lined up on Venus and slowly sank into that mass of hot sulfuric acid, etc. that is laughingly called an atmosphere. We went slowly down because I wanted to have plenty of time to react if we ran into trouble. I was watching the data readout both on strain and temperature, and both were holding steady. We got all the way to the surface of Venus without any deviation from normal in any of the readouts, but I didn't want to hang around too long and tempt fate with that acid wash on the hull. We should be protected from chemical attack by the same force that kept us from feeling the pressure and the temperature, but I was still a little antsy.

We boosted out of the Venusian atmosphere and headed home as fast as I could take us. Just to be sure that all of the acid was gone, I took us for a quick dip in the Gulf before landing at Auburn.

Everything had worked exactly as it was supposed to, so we were ready to try almost anything. One last trial awaited, so we inspected the hull and found nothing detectable to have happened to it. We took off, along with one of the other spaceships. We went up about 450 miles and I had the other ship shoot at us with its machine gun. We tried several combinations of closing speed and angles before returning to Auburn. Again, there was no detectable marks or other indications that anything had happened to the hull. As far as I was concerned, we were ready to give Jupiter a try.

Our sales department contacted Prof. Jacoby and made arrangements for him to show up in two weeks with his graduate students and the instrumentation he planned to use. The instruments were stowed in the "sail" and hooked up. When everything was ready, which took about five hours to arrange, we were ready to head for Jupiter. The trip was a little tricky, since we all wanted to get there as soon as possible, but we didn't want to get up close to light speed, so I had to slow us down. We took three days getting to Jupiter, but everything went well during the trip.

It was a little tricky navigating among all those damned moons, but I had no real trouble, just aggravation. I had to be careful not to perturb any of their orbits, especially those of the smaller moons. At least, there was no problem getting lined up and locked onto Jupiter's gravity well.

There wasn't much to see as we dropped down into the miasma of gases that Jupiter calls an atmosphere. My biggest problem was in holding our relative position as we dropped through those multi-hundred MPH winds that circle the planet. I had left the strain gages around the hull so that I could be on the lookout for trouble before it happened.

I had settled into a half doze as we dropped relatively slowly through the atmosphere toward the center of the planet. One of the things I was interested in seeing was the blob of metallic hydrogen that was hypothesized to be at the core of Jupiter. I was not paying attention to anything but my instrument readouts when somebody shouted, "TURN ON THE OUTSIDE LIGHTS! HURRY!"

Well, one of the things I do well is react when somebody is shouting at me. Before I did anything else, I turned on the lights. We saw the biggest damned flying creature that I could ever hope to see! Something was paralleling our course as the autopilot fought against the terrible winds. We could see this "thing" in the viewer displays sort of undulating as it cruised along with us. It was pretty much oval in its horizontal crosssection, but sort of triangular in its vertical crosssection, with a pointed front and a flattened rear. The creature stayed with us for a while and then flew off, possibly out of boredom.

Well, whatever that was, it was certainly unexpected. Fortunately we had a complete photographic record of the entire time from when I flipped on the lights until it disappeared in the gloom. Aha, another policy change—always run with the lights on unless there is a compelling reason to turn them off. I didn't know what its ultimate name would be, but I was temporarily calling it "Jacoby's beast."

We continued to drop through the atmosphere, but we never saw another creature of any sort. It certainly was not for lack of looking. I suggested that everybody get some sleep, since ship alarms would wake us up if anything interesting happened. All I had to do to sleep was to realign my seat into a bed. It would convert back and forth in seconds at the touch of a button, so I did not feel the need for a relief pilot. The only time I needed to leave my station was for shot trips to the toilet or short exercise breaks.

Eventually, we reached the limit of our ability to travel downward. We seemed to be resting against a resilient blob of something that I certainly did not recognize. I assumed that this was the metallic hydrogen that was supposed to be at Jupiter's core. Everybody else was running around making measurements and gazing in awe at the stuff, whatever it was. I just tried to stay out of the way.

We stayed there for about two hours until Prof. Jacoby said that he had all of the data he wanted, so we started home. On the way back up, we spotted two more of the "Jacoby's beast" creatures and got a photographic record of them, too. I wondered how many astronomers had living beasts named after them?

Dammit, one of the Space Excursion spaceships is missing. We had no way of knowing exactly where it was when it disappeared. I was really disturbed, both from the loss of nine lives and from the wonder of how it could have happened.