Joan swung toward me, her face jubilant. "We'll know in a minute, Richard. We're only eight thousand miles above the planet's crust." "Crust?" I flung at her. "You mean a roaring furnace." "No, Richard. If Jupiter were molten we'd be feeling it now. The plates would be white-hot." It was true, of course. I hadn't realized it before. I wiped sweat from my forehead, and stared at her with sombre respect. She had been right for once. In her girlish folly she had out-guessed all the astronomers on Earth. The deceleration was making my temples throb horribly. We were decelerating far too rapidly, but it was impossible to diminish the speed-retarding pressure of the force field, and I didn't dare resort to another atomotor charge so close to the planet's surface. To make matters worse, the auxiliary luminalis blast tubes had been crippled by the arrest of the force current, along with the almost indispensable gravity stabilizers. The blood was draining from my brain already. I knew that I was going to lose consciousness, and my fingers passed swiftly up and down the control panel, freezing the few descent mechanisms which were not dependent on the interior force current in positions of stability and maximum effectiveness, and cupping over the meteor collision emergency jets. Joan was the first to collapse. She had been quietly assisting me, her slim hands hovering over the base of the instrument board. Suddenly as we manipulated dials and rheostats she gave a little, choking cry and slumped heavily against me. There was a sudden increase of tension inside my skull. Pain stabbed at my temples and the control panel seemed to waver and recede. I threw my right arm about Joan and tried to prevent her sagging body from slipping to the floor. A low, vibrant hum filled the chamber. We rocked back and forth before the instrument board, our shoulders drooping. We were still rocking when a terrific concussion shook the ship, hurling us from the dais and plunging the chamber into darkness. Bruised and dazed, I raised myself on one elbow and stared about me. The jarred fluorescent cubes had begun to function again, filling the pilot chamber with a slightly diminished radiance. But the chamber was in a state of chaos. Twisted coils of _erillium_ piping lay at my feet, and an overturned jar of sluice lubricant was spilling its sticky contents over the corrugated metal floor. Joan had fallen from the pilot dais and was lying on her side by the quartz port, her face ashen, blood trickling from a wound in her cheek. I pulled myself toward her, and lifted her up till her shoulders were resting on my knees. Slowly her eyes blinked open, and bored into mine. She forced a smile. "Happy landing?" she inquired. "Not so happy," I muttered grimly. "You were right about Jupiter. It's a solid world and we've landed smack upon it with considerable violence, judging from the way things have been hurled about." "Then the cushioning force field--"