The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [61]
“What I didn’t tell anyone then was that while I was on Mercury I discovered an important clue to the origin of Culture X. I’ve kept quiet about it, although I’ve been sorely tempted when fools like Dr. Haughton have tried to be funny at my expense. But I wasn’t going to risk letting someone else get here before I could organize this expedition.
“One of the things I found on Mercury was a rather well preserved bas-relief of the Solar System. It’s not the first that’s been discovered—as you know, astronomical motifs are common in true Martian and Culture X art. But there were certain peculiar symbols against various planets, including Mars and Mercury. I think the pattern had some historic significance, and the most curious thing about it is that little Jupiter Five—one of the least important of all the satellites—seemed to have the most attention drawn to it. I’m convinced that there’s something on Five which is the key to the whole problem of Culture X, and I’m going there to discover what it is.”
As far as I can remember now, neither Bill nor I was particularly impressed by the Professor’s story. Maybe the people of Culture X had left some artifacts on Five for obscure reasons of their own. It would be interesting to unearth them, but hardly likely that they would be as important as the Professor thought. I guess he was rather disappointed at our lack of enthusiasm. If so it was his fault since, as we discovered later, he was still holding out on us.
We landed on Ganymede, the largest moon, about a week later. Ganymede is the only one of the satellites with a permanent base on it; there’s an observatory and a geophysical station with a staff of about fifty scientists. They were rather glad to see visitors, but we didn’t stay long as the Professor was anxious to refuel and set off again. The fact that we were heading for Five naturally aroused a good deal of interest, but the Professor wouldn’t talk and we couldn’t; he kept too close an eye on us.
Ganymede, by the way, is quite an interesting place and we managed to see rather more of it on the return journey. But as I’ve promised to write an article for another magazine about that, I’d better not say anything else here. (You might like to keep your eyes on the National Astrographic Magazine next Spring.)
The hop from Ganymede to Five took just over a day and a half, and it gave us an uncomfortable feeling to see Jupiter expanding hour by hour until it seemed as if he was going to fill the sky. I don’t know much about astronomy, but I couldn’t help thinking of the tremendous gravity field into which we were falling. All sorts of things could go wrong so easily. If we ran out of fuel we’d never be able to get back to Ganymede, and we might even drop into Jupiter himself.
I wish I could describe what it was like seeing that colossal globe, with its raging storm belts spinning in the sky ahead of us. As a matter of fact I did make the attempt, but some literary friends who have read this MS advised me to cut out the result. (They also gave me a lot of other advice which I don’t think they could have meant seriously, because if I’d followed it there would have been no story at all.)
Luckily there have been so many color close-ups of Jupiter published by now that you’re bound to have seen some of them. You may even have seen the one which, as I’ll explain later, was the cause of all our trouble.
At last Jupiter stopped growing: we’d swung into the orbit of Five and would soon catch up with the tiny moon as it raced around the planet. We were all squeezed in the control room waiting for our first glimpse of our target. At least, all of us who could get in were doing so. Bill and I were crowded out into the corridor and could only crane over other people’s shoulders. Kingsley