Joan leapt to her feet. "It must be the stupendous gravity tug of Jupiter," she exclaimed. "Hadley warned us it might impede the molecular flow of our cold force currents the instant we passed Ganymede's orbit." Exultation shone in her gaze. I stared at her, aghast. She was actually rejoicing that the Smithsonian physicist had predicted our destruction. Knowing that vessels were continually traveling to Io and Callisto despite their nearness to the greatest disturbing body in the Solar System, I had assumed we could reach Ganymede with our navigation instruments intact. I had scoffed at Hadley's forebodings, ignoring the fact that we were using cold force for the first time in an atomotor propelled vessel, and were dependent on a flow adjustment of the utmost delicacy. Dawson was staring at Joan in stunned horror. Our fate was sealed and yet Joan had descended from the pilot dais and was actually waltzing about the chamber, her eyes glowing like incandescent meteor chips. "We'll find out now, Richard," she exclaimed. "It's too late for caution or regrets. We're going right through forty thousand miles of mist to Jupiter's _solid_ crust." CHAPTER II THROUGH THE CLOUD BLANKET I thought of Earth as we fell. Tingling song, and bright awakenings and laughter and joy and grief. Woodsmoke in October, tall ships and the planets spinning and hurdy-gurdies in June. I sat grimly by Joan's side on the pilot dais, setting my teeth as I gripped the atomotor controls and stared out through the quartz port. We were plummeting downward with dizzying speed. Outside the quartz port there was a continuous misty glimmering splotched with nebulously weaving spirals of flame. We were already far below Jupiter's outer envelope of tenuous gases in turbulent flux, and had entered a region of pressure drifts which caused our little vessel to twist and lunge erratically. Wildly it swept from side to side, its gyrations increasing in violence as I cut the atomotor blasts and released a traveling force field of repulsive negrations. I thanked our lucky stars that the gravity tug had spared the atomotors and the landing mechanism. We hadn't anything else to be thankful for. I knew that if we plunged into a lake of fire even the cushioning force field couldn't save us. Joan seemed not to care. She was staring through the quartz port in an attitude of intense absorption, a faint smile on her lips. There are degrees of recklessness verging on insanity; of courage which deserves no respect. I had an impulse to shake her, and shout: "Do you realize we're plunging to our death?" I had to keep telling myself that she was still a child with no realization of what death meant. She simply couldn't visualize extinction; the dreadful blackness sweeping in-- Our speed was decreasing now. The cushioning force field was slowing us up, forcing the velocity needle sharply downward on the dial.