A Meeting with Medusa

5. The Wheels of Poseidon

“I’m very happy to be proved wrong,” Dr Brenner radioed back cheerfully. “Nature always has something up her sleeve. Keep the long-focus camera on target and give us the steadiest pictures you can.”

The things moving up and down those waxen slopes were still too far away for Falcon to make out many details, and they must have been very large to be visible at all at such a distance. Almost black, and shaped like arrowheads, they manoeuvred by slow undulations of their entire bodies, they looked rather like giant manta rays, swimming above some tropical reef.

Perhaps they were sky-borne cattle, browsing on the cloud pastures of Jupiter, for they seemed to be feeding along the dark, red-brown streaks that ran like dried-up river beds down the flanks of the floating cliffs. Occasionally, one of them would dive headlong into the mountain of foam and disappear completely from sight.

Kon-Tiki was moving only slowly with respect to the cloud layer below, it would be at least three hours before she was above those ephemeral hills. She was in a race with the Sun. Falcon hoped that darkness would not fall before he could get a good view of the mantas, as he had christened them, as well as the fragile landscape over which they flapped their way.

It was a long three hours. During the whole time, he kept the external microphones on full gain, wondering if here was the source of that booming in the night. The mantas were certainly large enough to have produced it, when he could get an accurate measurement, he discovered that they were almost a hundred yards across the wings. That was three times the length of the largest whale, though he doubted if they could weigh more than a few tons.

Half an hour before sunset, Kon-Tiki was almost above the “mountains’.

“No,” said Falcon, answering Mission Control’s repeated questions about the mantas, “they’re still showing no reaction to me. I don’t think they’re intelligent, they look like harmless vegetarians. And even if they try to chase me, I’m sure they can’t reach my altitude.”

Yet he was a little disappointed when the mantas showed not the slightest interest in him as he sailed high above their feeding ground. Perhaps they had no way of detecting his presence. When he examined and photographed them through the telescope, he could see no signs of any sense organs. The creatures were simply huge black deltas, rippling over hills and valleys that, in reality, were little more substantial than the clouds of Earth. Though they looked solid, Falcon knew that anyone who stepped on those white mountains would go crashing through them as if they were made of tissue paper.

At close quarters he could see the myriads of cellules or bubbles from which they were formed. Some of these were quite large, a yard or so in diameter and Falcon wondered in what witches’ cauldron of hydrocarbons they had been brewed. There must be enough petrochemicals deep down in the atmosphere of Jupiter to supply all Earth’s needs for a million years.

The short day had almost gone when he passed over the crest of the waxen hills, and the light was fading rapidly along their lower slopes. There were no mantas on this western side, and for some reason the topography was very different. The foam was sculptured into long, level terraces, like the interior of a lunar crater. He could almost imagine that they were gigantic steps leading down to the hidden surface of the planet.

And on the lowest of those steps, just clear of the swirling clouds that the mountain had displaced when it came surging skyward, was a roughly oval mass, one or two miles across. It was difficult to see, since it was only a little darker than the grey-white foam on which it rested. Falcon’s first thought was that he was looking at a forest of pallid trees, like giant mushrooms that had never seen the Sun.

Yes, it must be a forest, he could see hundreds of thin trunks, springing from the white waxy froth in which they were rooted. But the trees were packed astonishingly close together, there was scarcely any space between them. Perhaps it was not a forest, after all, but a single enormous tree, like one of the giant multi-bunked banyans of the East. Once he had seen a banyan tree in Java that was over six hundred and fifty yards across; this monster was at least ten times that size.

The light had almost gone. The cloudscape had turned purple with refracted sunlight, and in a few seconds that, too, would have vanished. In the last light of his second day on Jupiter, Howard Falcon saw, or thought be saw, something that cast the gravest doubts on his interpretation of the white oval.

Unless the dim light had totally deceived him, those hundreds of thin trunks were beating back and forth, in perfect synchronism, like fronds of kelp rocking in the surge.

And the tree was no longer in the place where he had first seen it.

“Sorry about this,” said Mission Control, soon after sunset, “but we think Source Beta is going to blow within the next hour. Probability seventy per cent.”

Falcon glanced quickly at the chart. Beta, Jupiter latitude one hundred and forty degrees, was over eighteen thousand six hundred miles away and well below his horizon. Even though major eruptions ran as high as ten megatons, he was much too far away for the shock wave to be a serious danger. The radio storm that it would trigger was, however, quite a different matter.

The decameter outbursts that sometimes made Jupiter the most powerful radio source in the whole sky had been discovered back in the 1950s, to the utter astonishment of the astronomers. Now, more than a century later, their real cause was still a mystery. Only the symptoms were understood, their explanation was completely unknown.

The “volcano” theory had best stood the test of time, although no one, imagined that this word had the same meaning on Jupiter as on Earth. At frequent intervals, often several times a day, titanic eruptions occurred in the lower depths of the atmosphere, probably on the hidden surface of the planet itself. A great column of gas, more than six hundred miles high, would start boiling upward as if determined to escape into space.

Against the most powerful gravitational field of all the planets, it had no chance. Yet some traces, a mere few million tons, usually managed to reach the Jovian ionosphere, and when they did, all hell broke loose.

The radiation belts surrounding Jupiter completely dwarf the feeble Van Allen belts of Earth. When they are short-circuited by an ascending column of gas, the result is an electrical discharge millions of times more powerful than any terrestrial flash of lightning, it sends a colossal thunder clap of radio noise flooding across the entire solar system and on out to the Stars.

It had been discovered that these radio outbursts came from four main areas of the planet. Perhaps there were weaknesses there that allowed the flares of the interior to break out from time to time. The scientists on Ganymede, largest of Jupiter’s many moons, now thought that they could predict the onset of a decameter storm, their accuracy was about as good as a weather forecaster’s of the early 1900s.

Falcon did not know whether to welcome or to fear a radio storm, it would certainly add to the value of the mission, if he survived it. His course had been planned to keep as far as possible from the main centres of disturbance, especially the most active one, Source Alpha. As luck would have it, the threatening Beta was the closest to him. He hoped that the distance, almost three-fourths the circumference of Earth, was safe enough.

“Probability ninety per cent,” said Mission Control with a distinct note of urgency. “And forget that hour. Ganymede says it may be any moment.”

The radio had scarcely fallen silent when the reading on the magnetic field-strength meter started to shoot upward. Before it could go off scale, it reversed and began to drop as rapidly as it had risen. Far away and thousands of miles below, something had given the planet’s molten core a titanic jolt.

“There she blows!” called Mission Control.

“Thanks, I already know. When will the storm hit me?”

“You can expect onset in five minutes. Peak in ten.

Far around the curve of Jupiter, a funnel of gas as wide as the Pacific Ocean was climbing spaceward at thousands of miles an hour. Already, the thunderstorms of the lower atmosphere would be raging around it, but they were nothing compared with the fury that would explode when the radiation belt was reached and began dumping its surplus electrons onto the planet. Falcon began to retract all the instrument booms that were extended out from the capsule. There were no other precautions he could take. It would be four hours before the atmospheric shock wave reached him, but the radio blast, travelling at the speed of light, would be here in a tenth of a second, once the discharge had been triggered.

The radio monitor, scanning back and forth across the spectrum, still showed nothing unusual, just the normal mush of background static. Then Falcon noticed that the noise level was slowly creeping upward. The explosion was gathering its strength.

At such a distance he had never expected to see anything. But suddenly a flicker as of far-off heat lightning danced along the eastern horizon. Simultaneously, half the circuit breakers jumped out of the main switchboard, the lights failed, and all communications channels went dead.

He tried to move, but was completely unable to do so. The paralysis that gripped him was not merely psychological, he seemed to have lost all control of his limbs and could feel a painful tingling sensation over his entire body. It was impossible that the electric field could have penetrated this shielded cabin. Yet there was a flickering glow over the instrument board, and he could hear the unmistakable crackle of a brush discharge.

With a series of sharp bangs, the emergency systems went into operation and the overloads reset themselves. The lights flickered on again. And Falcon’s paralysis disappeared as swiftly as it had come.

After glancing at the board to make sure that all circuits were back to normal, he moved quickly to the viewing ports.

There was no need to switch on the inspection lamps, the cables supporting the capsule seemed to be on fire. Lines of light glowing an electric blue against the darkness stretched upward from the main lift ring to the equator of the giant balloon, and rolling slowly along several of them were dazzling balls of fire.

The sight was so strange and so beautiful that it was hard to read any menace in it. Few people, Falcon knew, had ever seen ball lightning from such close quarters, and certainly none had survived if they were riding a hydrogen-filled balloon back in the atmosphere of Earth. He remembered the flaming death of the Hindenburg, destroyed by a stray spark when she docked at Lakehurst in 1937, as it had done so often in the past, the horrifying old newsreel film flashed through his mind. But at least that could not happen here, though there was more hydrogen above his head than had ever filled the last of the Zeppelins. It would be a few billion years yet, before anyone could light a fire in the atmosphere of Jupiter.

With a sound like briskly frying bacon, the speech circuit came back to life.

“Hello, Kon-Tiki, are you receiving? Are you receiving?”

The words were chopped and badly distorted, but intelligible. Falcon’s spirits lifted, he had resumed contact with the world of men.

“I receive you,” he said. “Quite an electrical display, but no damage, so far.”

“Thanks, thought we’d lost you. Please check telemetry channels three, ten, twenty-six. Also gain on camera two. And we don’t quite believe the readings on the external ionisation probes…

Reluctantly Falcon tore his gaze away from the fascinating pyrotechnic “splay around Kon-Tiki, though from time to time he kept glancing out of the windows. The ball lightning disappeared first, the fiery globes slowly expanding until they reached a critical size, at which they time vanished in a gentle explosion. But even an hour later, there were still faint glows around the exposed metal on the outside of the capsule, and the radio circuits remained noisy until well after midnight.

The remaining hours of darkness were completely uneventful, until just before dawn. Because it came from the east, Falcon assumed that he was seeing the first faint hint of sunrise. Then he realised that it was twenty minutes too early for this, and the glow that had appeared along the horizon was moving toward him even as he watched. It swiftly detached itself from the arch of stars that marked the invisible edge of the planet, and he saw that it was a relatively narrow band, quite sharply defined. The beam of an enormous searchlight appeared to be swinging beneath the clouds.

Perhaps sixty miles behind the first racing bar of light came another, parallel to it and moving at the same speed. And beyond that another, and another, until all the sky flickered with alternating sheets of light and darkness.

By this time, Falcon thought, he had been inured to wonders, and it seemed impossible that this display of pure, soundless luminosity could present the slightest danger. But it was so astonishing, and so inexplicable, that he felt cold, naked fear gnawing at his self-control. No man could look upon such a sight without feeling like a helpless pygmy in the presence of forces beyond his comprehension. Was it possible that, after all, Jupiter carried not only life but also intelligence? And, perhaps, an intelligence that only now was beginning to react to his alien presence?

“Yes, we see it,” said Mission Control, in a voice that echoed his own awe. “We’ve no idea what it is. Stand by, we’re calling Ganymede.”

The display was slowly fading; the bands racing in from the far horizon were much fainter, as if the energies that powered them were becoming exhausted. In five minutes it was all over, the last faint pulse of light flickered along the western sky and then was gone. Its passing left Falcon with an overwhelming sense of relief. The sight was so hypnotic, and so disturbing, that it was not good for any man’s peace of mind to contemplate it too long.

He was more shaken than he cared to admit. The electrical storm was something that he could understand; but this was totally incomprehensible.

Mission Control was still silent. He knew that the information banks up on Ganymede were now being searched as men and computers turned their minds to the problem. If no answer could be found there, it would be necessary to call Earth, that would mean a delay of almost an hour. The possibility that even Earth might be unable to help was one that Falcon did not care to contemplate.

He had never before been so glad to hear the voice of Mission Control as when Dr Brenner finally came on the circuit. The biologist sounded relieved, yet subdued, like a man who has just come through some great intellectual crisis.

“Hello, Kon-Tiki. We’ve solved your problem, but we can still hardly believe it.

“What you’ve been seeing is bioluminescence, very similar to that produced by microorganisms in the tropical seas of Earth. Here they’re in the atmosphere, not the ocean, but the principle is the same.”

“But the pattern,” protested Falcon, “was so regular, so artificial. And it was hundreds of miles across!”

“It was even larger than you imagine; you observed only a small part of it. The whole pattern was over three thousand miles wide and looked like a revolving wheel. You merely saw the spokes, sweeping past you at about six-tenths of a mile a second. A second!” Falcon could not help interjecting. “No animals could inOVC that fast!”

“Of course not. Let me explain. What you saw was triggered by the shock wave from Source Beta, moving at the speed of sound.”

“But what about the pattern?” Falcon insisted.

“That’s the surprising part. It’s a very rare phenomenon, but identical wheels of light, except that they’re a thousand times smaller, have been observed in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Listen to this: British Company’s Patna, Persian Gulf, May 1880, 11:30 P.M… ‘an enormousous wheel, whirling round, the spokes of which appeared to brush ship along. The spokes were 200 or 300 yards long… each wheel contained about sixteen spokes…’ And here’s one from the Gulf of Oman, May 23, 1906: ‘The intensely bright luminescence approached us suddenly, shooting sharply defined light rays to the west in rapid succession, the beam from the searchlight of a warship… To the left of us, a fantastic fiery wheel formed itself, with spokes that reached as far as one could see. The whole wheel whirled around for two or three minutes.’ The archive computer on Ganymede dug up about five hundred cases. It would have printed out the lot if we hadn’t stopped it in time.”

“I’m convinced, but still baffled.”

“I don’t blame you. The full explanation wasn’t worked out until late in twentieth century. It seems that these luminous wheels are the results submarine earthquakes, and always occur in shallow waters where the waves can be reflected and cause standing wave patterns. Sometimes rotating wheels, sometimes, the ‘Wheels of Poseidon’. The theory was finally proved by making underwater explosions and photographing the results from a satellite. No wonder sailors used to be superstitious. Who would have believed a thing like this?”

That was it, Falcon told himself. When Source Beta blew its top, it must have sent shock waves in all directions, through the compressed gas of the lower atmosphere, through the solid body of Jupiter itself. Meeting, crisscrossing, those waves must have cancelled here, reinforced there, the whole planet must have rung like a bell.

Yet the explanation did not destroy the sense of wonder and awe, he would never be able to forget those flickering bands of light, racing through unattainable depths of the Jovian atmosphere. He felt that he was not only on a strange planet, but in some magical realm between myth and reality.

This was a world where absolutely anything could happen, and no man possibly could guess what the future would bring.

And he still had a whole day to go.