October 24, 2025 • 28 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:36):
Mind Welcome to a half hour of mind web short
stories from.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The world of spect Section O Rang.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
This is Michael Hanson with a mind web story from
The Big Book of Science Fiction, which was edited.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
By Gruff Conklin.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
This is Clifford Simac's Desertion. Four men, two by two
had gone into the howling maelstroom that was Jupiter and
had not returned.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They had walked into the kening gale.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Or rather they had loped bullies low against the ground,
wet sides gleaming in the rain, for they did not
go in the shape of men. Now the fifth man
stood before the desk of Kent Fowler, head of Dome
number three, Jovian Survey Commission. Under Fowler's desk, Old Towser
scratched a flea and then settled down to sleep again.
Harold Allen Fowler saw the sudden pang. Was young, too young.
(01:53):
He had the easy confidence of youth, the straight back
and straight eyes, the face of one who never had
known fear. And it was strange for men in the
domes of Jupiter did know fear, fear and humility. It
was hard for man to reconcile his puny self with
the mighty forces of the monstrous planet.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Fowler said to him.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
You understand that you need not do this. You understand
that you need not go. It was formula.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
The other four had been told the same thing, but
they had gone. This fifth one, Fowler knew, would go too.
But suddenly he felt a dull hope stir within him
that Allan wouldn't go.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
When do I start, asked Allan.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
There was a time when Fowler might have taken quiet
pride in that answer, but not now. He frowned briefly.
Within the hour, he said, Allan stood waiting quietly. Four
other men have gone out and have not returned, said Fowler.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know that. Of course we want you to return.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We don't want you going off on any heroic rescue expedition.
The main thing, the only thing is that you come back,
that you prove man can live in a Jovian form.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Go to the first survey's stake, no farther than come back.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Don't take any chances, don't investigate anything, Just come back.
Alan nodded and said that he understood all that. Miss
Stanley will operate the converter. Follower went on, you need
have no fear on that particular point, the other men
were converted without mishap. They left the converter and apparently
perfect condition. You will be in thoroughly competent hands. Miss
(03:28):
Stanley's the best qualified conversion operator.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
In the Solar System.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
She had had experience on most of the other planets,
and that's why she's here.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Allan grinned at the woman, and.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Followers saw something flicker across Miss Stanley's face, something that
might have been pity, or rage, or just plain fear,
but was gone again, and she was smiling.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Back at the youth who stood before the desk, smiling
in that prim school.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Teacherish way she had of smiling, almost as if she
hated herself for doing it. Alan said, I'll be looking
forward to my converse. And the way he said it,
he had made it all a joke, a vast ironic joke.
But it was no joke. It was serious business, deadly serious.
(04:12):
Upon these tests, Fouler knew depended the fate of men
on Jupiter. If the tests succeeded, the resources of the
giant planet would be thrown open. Man would take over Jupiter,
as he already had taken over the other smaller planets.
And if they failed. If they failed, man would continue
to be chained and hampered by the terrific pressure, the
(04:32):
greater force of gravity, the weird chemistry of the planet.
He would continue to be shut within the domes, unable
to set actual foot upon the planet, unable to see
it with direct unaided vision, forced to rely upon the
awkward tractors and the televisor forced to work with clumsy
tools and mechanisms, or through the medium of robots that
themselves were clumsy. For Man, unprotected and in his natural form,
(04:57):
would be blotted out by Jupiter's terrific pressure of fifth
eighteen thousand pounds per square inch, pressure that made terrestrial
sea bottom seem of vacuum. By comparison, even the strongest
metal earthmen could devise could not exist under pressure such
as that. Under the pressure in the alkaline rains that
forever swept the planet, it grew brittle and flaky, crumbling
(05:19):
like clay, or it ran away in little streams and
puddles of ammonia salts. Only by stepping up the toughness
and strength of that metal, by increasing its electronic tension,
could be made to withstand the weight of thousands of
miles of swirling, choking gases that made up the atmosphere,
and even when that was done, everything had to be
(05:40):
coated with tough quartz to keep away the rain, a
bitter rain that was liquid ammonia. Fowlers sat listening to
the engines in the sub floor of the dome, engines
that ran on endlessly, the dome never quiet of them.
They had to run and keep on running, for if
they stopped, the power flowing in the metal walls of
(06:00):
the dome would stop, the electronic tension would ease up,
and that would be the end of everything. Towser roused
himself under Foaler's desk and scratched another flea, his leg
thumping hard against the floor. Is there anything else, asked Alan.
Follower shook his head. Oh, perhaps there's something you want
(06:22):
to do. Perhaps you He had meant to say, write
a letter, and he was glad he caught himself quick
enough so he didn't say it. Alan looked at his watch.
I'll be there on time. Then he swung and headed
for the door. Fower knew Miss Stanley was watching him,
and he didn't want to turn and meet her eyes.
He fumbled with a sheaf of papers on the desk
(06:44):
before him.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
How long are you going to keep this up?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Asked Miss Stanley, and she bit off each word with
a vicious snap. You're going to keep on sentencing them
to death, she said.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
You're going to keep marching them out face to face
with Jupiter.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You're going to sit in here, safe and comfortable, and
send them out to die. There's no room for sentimentality
in Miss Stanley, Fowler said, trying to keep the note
of anger from his voice. You know as well as
I do, why we're doing this. You realize that man
in his own form simply cannot cope with Jupiter. The
only answers to turn men into the sort of things
(07:18):
that can cope with it. We've done it on the
other planets. If a few men die, but we finally succeed,
the price is small. Through the ages, men have thrown
away their lives on foolish things for foolish reasons. Why
should we hesitate then, at a little death and the
thing as great as this. Miss Stanley sat stiff and straight,
(07:39):
hands folded in her lap, the light shining on her
gray hair, and Fowler watching her try to imagine what
she might feel, what she might be thinking. He wasn't
exactly afraid of her, but he didn't feel quite comfortable
when she was around. Those sharp blue eyes saw too much.
Her hands looked far too competent. She should be somebody
(08:00):
nat sitting in a rocking chair with her knitting needles.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
But she wasn't.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
She was the top notch conversion unit operator in the
solar system, and she didn't like the way he was
doing things. There is something wrong, mister Folly, precisely agreed.
Follow precisely, Miss Stanley. That's why I'm sending Young Ellen
out alone. He may find out what it is, and
if he doesn't, I'll send someone else. She rose slowly
(08:28):
from her chair, started toward the door, and then stopped
before his desk. Miss Stanley, Young Allen is going out soon.
Please be sure that your machine, my machine, is not
to blame. It operates along the coordinates the biologists set up.
He sat hunched at his desk, listening to her footsteps
put on the corridor. What she said was true, of course,
(08:51):
the biologists had said of the coordinates. But the biologists
could be wrong. Just a hair breadth of difference one
order of aggression, and the converter would be sent, not
something that wasn't the thing they meant to send, a
mutant that might crack up go haywire, come unstuck under
some condition or stress of circumstance, wholly unsuspected, for men
(09:13):
didn't know much about what was going on outside, only
what his instruments totallying, was going on, and the samplings
of those happenings furnished by those instruments and mechanisms had
been no more than samplings, for Jupiter was unbelievably large
in the domes.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Were very few.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Even the work of the biologists and getting the data
on the lopers, apparently the highest form of Jovian life,
had involved more than three years of intensive study, and
after that two years of checking to make sure. Work
that could have been done on Earth in a week
or two, but work that in this case couldn't be
done on Earth at all, For one couldn't take a
Jovian life form to worth the pressure here on Jupiter
(09:53):
couldn't be duplicated outside of Jupiter, and at Earth pressure
and temperature, the lopers would simply have disappeared in a
puff of gas. Yet it was work that had to
be done if man ever hoped to go about Jupiter
in the life form of the lopers, for before the
converter could change a man to another life form, every
detailed physical characteristic of that life form must be known
(10:15):
surely and positively, with no chance of mistake. Allen did
not come back. The tractors coming in the nearby terrain
(10:38):
found no trace of him, unless the skulking thing reported
by one of the drivers had been the missing earth
man in the lower form. The biologists sneered their most
accomplished academic sneers when followers suggested the coordinates might be wrong. Carefully,
they pointed out the coordinates worked when a man was
put into the converter. In the switch was thrown, the
(10:58):
man became a loper. He left the machine and moved away,
out of sight into the soupy atmosphere. Some quirk, Fowler
had suggested some tiny deviation from the thing a loper
should be some minor defects. If there were, the biologists
said it would take years to find out, and Fowler
(11:19):
knew that they were right. So there were five men
now instead of four, and Harold Allen had walked out
into Jupiter for nothing at all. It was as if
he'd never gone so far as knowledge was concerned. Fowler
reached across his desk and picked up the personal file,
a thin sheaf.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Of papers neatly clicked together.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
There was a thing he dreaded, but a thing he
had to do somehow. The reason for these strange disappearances
must be fond. There was no other way than to
send out more men. He sat for a moment, listening
to the howling of the wind above the dome, the everlasting,
thundering gale that swept across the planet in boiling, twisting wrath.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Was there some threat out there, he asked himself.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Some danger they did not know about, something that lay
in wait and gobbled up the lopers, making no distinction
between lopers that were bonafide and the lopers that were men.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
To the gobblers, of course, it would make no.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Difference, or had there been a basic fault in selecting
the lopers as the type of life best fitted for
existence on the surface of the planet. The evident intelligence
of the lopers, he knew, had been one factor in
that determination. For if the thing man became did not
have capacity for intelligence, man could not for long retain
(12:39):
his own intelligence In such a guys had the biologists
let that one factor way too heavily, using it to
upset some other factor that might be unsatisfactory, even disastrous,
It didn't seem likely. Stiff necked as they might be,
the biologists knew their business. Or was the whole thing impossible,
(13:00):
doomed from the very start. Conversion to whatther life forms
had worked on other planets, but that did not necessarily
mean it would work on Jupiter. Perhaps man's intelligence could
not function correctly through the sensory apparatus provided Jovian life.
Perhaps the lopers were so alien there was no common
ground for human knowledge in the Jovian conception of existence
(13:22):
to meet and work together. Or the fault might lie
with man, be inherent with the race. Some mental aberration
which coupled with what they found outside, wouldn't let them
come back, although it might not be an aberration, not.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
In the human sense, perhaps just one ordinary human mental trait.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Except that as commonplace on Earth, would be so violently
at odds with Jovian existence that it would blast all
human intelligence and sanity. Claws rattled and clicked on the corridor.
Listening to them, Fowler smiled wandly. It was Towsier coming
back from the kitchen, where he had gone to see
his friend, the cook. Tawsier came into the room carrying
(14:05):
a bone. He wagged his tailored Fowler and flapped down
beside the desk, bone between his paws for a long moment.
His roomy old eyes reguarded his master, and Foller reached
down a hand to ruffle a ragged ear. He still
like me, Towser, Fowler asked, and Towser thumped his tail.
You're the only one, said Foller, All through the dome.
(14:29):
They're cussing me, calling me a murderer. More than likely.
He straightened and swung back to the desk. His hand
reached out and picked up the file Bennett. Bennett had
a girl waiting for him back on Earth Andrews. Andrews
was planning on going back to Mars Tech just as
(14:49):
soon as earned enough to see him through a year.
Olsen Olson was nearing pension age all the time, telling
the boys how he was going to settle down and
grill roses carefully.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Fowler laid the file back.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
On the desk, sandancing men to death. Miss Stanley had
said that her pale lips scarcely moving her parchment face,
marching men out to.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Die while he Fower sat here, safe and comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
They were saying it all through the dome, no doubt,
especially since Alan had failed to return. They wouldn't say
it to his face, of course. Even the man or
men he called before his desk and told they were
the next to go, wouldn't say it to him. They
would only say when do we start? For that was
the formula. But he would see it in her eyes.
(15:41):
He picked up the file again. Bennett Andrew's Olsen. There
were others, but there was no use in going on.
Kent Fowler knew that he couldn't do it, couldn't face them,
couldn't send more men to die. He leaned forward and
flipped up the toggle on the enter. Ken Kater, Yes,
(16:02):
mister Fowler, Miss Stanley please. He waited for Miss Stanley,
listening to Towser chewing half heartedly on the bone. Towser's
teeth for getting bad, Miss Stanley said Miss Stanley's voice.
H I just wanted to tell you, Miss Stanley, to
get ready for two more. Aren't you afraid that you
(16:23):
run out of them?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Standing out one.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
At a time, they'd last longer. Give you twice the satisfaction,
mister Fowler, one of them this time will be a dog.
A dog, yes, Towser, he heard the quick, cold rage
that iced her voice. Your own dog. He's been with
you all these years. That's the point, Miss Stanley. Towser
(16:48):
would be unhappy if I left him behind. It was
not the Jupiter he had known through the televisor. He
had expected it to be different, but.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Not like this.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He had expected a hell of ammonia rains and stinking fumes,
and the deafening, thundering tumult of the storm. He had
expected swirling clouds and fog, and the snarling flicker of
monstrous thunderbolts. He had not expected the lashing downpour would
be reduced to drifting purple mists that moved.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like fleeing shadows over a red and purple sword.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He had not even guessed the snaking bolts of lightning
would be flares of pure ecstasy across the painted sky
waiting for Towser. Fowler flexed the muscles of his body,
amazed at the smooth, sleek strength he found. Not a
bad body, he decided, and grimaced at remembering how he
had pitied the loafers when he glimpsed them through the
(17:46):
television spring. For it had been hard to imagine a
living organism based upon ammonia and hydrogen rather than upon
water and oxygen, hard to believe that such a form
of life could know the same quick thrill of life
the humankind could know, hard to conceive of life out
in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course,
(18:07):
that through Jovin eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all.
The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers,
and he remembered with a start that by Earth's standards,
the wind was a roaring gale, a two hundred mile
an hour howler, laden with deadly gases. Pleasant sense seeped
(18:27):
into his body, and yet scarcely sense, for it was
not the sense of smell, as he remembered it. It
was as if his whole being was soaking up the
sensation of lavender, and yet not lavender. It was something
he knew for which he had no word, undoubtedly the
first of many enigmas and terminology for the words he
(18:50):
knew the thought symbols that served him as an earth
man would not serve in as a Jovian. Suddenly he
was aware of Towser. I'm soully aware of the bumbling,
eager friendliness of the shaggy animal that had followed him
from Earth to many planets, as if the thing that
was Towser had reached out and for a moment sat
(19:12):
within his brain, and out of the bubbling welcome that
he sensed came the.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Words Hi, a pal. Not words really better than words.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Thought symbols in his brain communicated thought, symbols that had
shades of meaning words could never have.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
And he said, Hi a Towser.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I feel good, said Tauser, I feel good like I
was a pup lately. I've been feeling pretty punk. Legs
stiffening up on me, teeth wearing down almost nothing. Hard
to mumble a bone with teeth like that. Besides, the
fleas give me trouble. Used to be I never paid
much attention to him, A couple of fleas more or
less never met much in my early days. But but
(20:01):
to Towser. But Follower's thoughts tumbled awkwardly. Towser, you are
talking to me, sure thing. Yeah, I've always talked to you,
But you couldn't hear me. I tried to say things
to you, but I couldn't make the grade. I understood
you sometimes, Towser, No.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Not very well. You knew when I wanted food, when
I wanted to drink, and when I.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Wanted out, but that's about all you ever managed.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I'm sorry about that. I forget it. Hey, I'll race
you to the cliff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
For the first time, Foller saw the cliff, apparently many
miles away, but with a strange, crystalline beauty that sparkled
in the shadow of the many colored clouds. Father hesitated, well, mm,
so long way off, Towser aw come on, and he
started for the cliff. Foller followed, testing his legs, testing
(20:54):
the strength and the new body of his a bit
doubtful at first, amazed a moment later, and then running
with a sheer joyousness that was one with a red
and purple sword, with a drifting smoke of the rain
across the land.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
As he ran, the consciousness of.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Music came to him, a music that beat into his body,
that surged throughout his being, swings of silver speed, music
like bells might make from some steeple on a sunny
springtime hill. As the cliff drew nearer, the music deepened
and filled the universe with a.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Spray of magic sound.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And he knew the music came from the tumbling waterfall
that feathered down the face of the shining cliff. Only
he knew it was no waterfall but an ammonia fall,
and the cliff was white because it was oxygen solidified.
He skidded to a stop beside.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Towser, where the waterfall broke.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Into a glittering rainbow of many hundred colors, literally many hundred,
for here he saw it was no shading of one
primary to another's human being saw but a clear cut
selectivity that broke the prism down to its last ultimate classification.
The music, said, Towser, you know what about it? The
(22:13):
music is vibrations, vibrations of water falling.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Towser, you don't know about vibrations. Yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yes, It just popped into my head, just popped suddenly
within his own head. He held a formula, the formula
for a process it would make metal to withstand.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The pressure of Jupiter. He stared, astounded.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
At the waterfall, and swiftly his mind took the many
colors and placed them in their exact sequence in the spectrum,
just like that, just out of blue sky, out of nothing.
For he knew nothing either of metals or of colors, Towser.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Towser, something's happening to us. Yeah, I know, Towser.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
It's our brains were using them, all of them, down
to the last hidden corner, using them to figure out
things we should have known all the time. Maybe maybe
the brains of Earth things naturally are slow and foggy.
Maybe we are the morons of the universe, Tousic. Maybe
we're fit, so we have to do things a hard way.
(23:21):
And in the new sharp clarity of thought would seemed
to grip him, he knew that it would not only
be the matter of colors in the waterfall or metals
that would resist the pressure of Jupiter. He sensed other things,
things not yet quite clear, a vague whispering that hinted
of greater things, of mysteries beyond the pale of human thought,
(23:41):
beyond even the pale of human imagination, mysteries, facts, logic
built on reasoning, things that any brain should know if
it used all its reasoning power. We're still mostly Earth.
We're just beginning to learn a few of the things
we are to, though, Taser a few of the things
(24:02):
that were kept from us as human beings, perhaps because
we were human beings, because our human bodies were poor bodies,
poorly equipped for thinking, poorly equipped in certain senses that
one has to have to know, perhaps even lacking in
certain senses that are necessary to true knowledge. He stared
back at the dome, a tiny black thing, dwarfed by
(24:25):
the distance back. There were men who couldn't see the
beauty that was Jupiter. Men who thought that swirling clouds
and lashing rain obscured the face of the planet unseeing
human eyes, poor eyes, eyes that could not see the
beauty in the clouds, that could not see through the storms.
(24:47):
Bodies that could not feel the thrill of twilling music
stemming from the rush of broken water. Men who walked
alone in terrible loneliness, talking with their tongue like boy scouts,
wigwagging out their messages, unable to reach out and touch
one another's mind as he could reach out and touch
Towser's mind. Men shut off forever from that personal, intimate
(25:11):
contact with other living things. He Fowler had expected terror
inspired by alien things out here on the surface, had
expected the cower before the threat of unknown things had
steeled himself against disgust of the situation that was not
of earth. But instead, instead he had found something greater
(25:33):
than man had ever known. A swifter, sure body, a
sense of exhilaration, a deeper sense of life, a sharper mind,
a world of beauty that even the dreamers of the
earth had not yet imagined. Those other five had felt it,
two had felt the urge to go and see, the
(25:55):
compelling sense that here lay a life of fullness of
love that he knew was why they had not returned.
I won't go back, said Towser. We can't let him down.
Fellow Foller took a step or two back toward the dome.
(26:17):
Then he stopped. Back to the dome, back to that aching,
poisoned laden body he had left. It hadn't seemed aching before,
but now he knew it was. Back to the fuzzy brain,
back to the muddled thinking, back to the flapping mouths
(26:39):
it formed signals others understood. Back to wise It now
would be worse than no sight at all. Back to squalor,
back to crawling, back to ignorance.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
MM. Perhaps perhaps someday we got a lot to do,
and a lot to see, said Taosi. We've got a
lot to learn. We'll find things. Yes, they could.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Find things, civilizations, perhaps civilizations.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It would make the civilization of.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Man seen cuney by comparison beauty and more important, and
understanding of that beauty and a comradeship no one had
ever known before, that, no man, no dog had ever
known before. And life, the quickness of life after what
(27:33):
seemed a drug of existence. Taosi said, I can't go back,
nor I said Fowler.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
They would turn me back into a dog.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Said Tarsi. And me, said Fowler, and me back into
a man. That was Clifford Simac. Story Desertion appears in
The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Graff Conklin.
(28:08):
I'm Michael Hanson. Technical production for mindwebs by Leslie Hilsenhoff.
Mindwebs comes to you from WHA Radio and Madison, a
service of the University of Wisconsin Extension
Mind Welcome to a half hour of mind web short
stories from.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The world of spect Section O Rang.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
This is Michael Hanson with a mind web story from
The Big Book of Science Fiction, which was edited.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
By Gruff Conklin.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
This is Clifford Simac's Desertion. Four men, two by two
had gone into the howling maelstroom that was Jupiter and
had not returned.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They had walked into the kening gale.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Or rather they had loped bullies low against the ground,
wet sides gleaming in the rain, for they did not
go in the shape of men. Now the fifth man
stood before the desk of Kent Fowler, head of Dome
number three, Jovian Survey Commission. Under Fowler's desk, Old Towser
scratched a flea and then settled down to sleep again.
Harold Allen Fowler saw the sudden pang. Was young, too young.
(01:53):
He had the easy confidence of youth, the straight back
and straight eyes, the face of one who never had
known fear. And it was strange for men in the
domes of Jupiter did know fear, fear and humility. It
was hard for man to reconcile his puny self with
the mighty forces of the monstrous planet.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Fowler said to him.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
You understand that you need not do this. You understand
that you need not go. It was formula.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
The other four had been told the same thing, but
they had gone. This fifth one, Fowler knew, would go too.
But suddenly he felt a dull hope stir within him
that Allan wouldn't go.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
When do I start, asked Allan.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
There was a time when Fowler might have taken quiet
pride in that answer, but not now. He frowned briefly.
Within the hour, he said, Allan stood waiting quietly. Four
other men have gone out and have not returned, said Fowler.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You know that. Of course we want you to return.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We don't want you going off on any heroic rescue expedition.
The main thing, the only thing is that you come back,
that you prove man can live in a Jovian form.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Go to the first survey's stake, no farther than come back.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Don't take any chances, don't investigate anything, Just come back.
Alan nodded and said that he understood all that. Miss
Stanley will operate the converter. Follower went on, you need
have no fear on that particular point, the other men
were converted without mishap. They left the converter and apparently
perfect condition. You will be in thoroughly competent hands. Miss
(03:28):
Stanley's the best qualified conversion operator.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
In the Solar System.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
She had had experience on most of the other planets,
and that's why she's here.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Allan grinned at the woman, and.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Followers saw something flicker across Miss Stanley's face, something that
might have been pity, or rage, or just plain fear,
but was gone again, and she was smiling.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Back at the youth who stood before the desk, smiling
in that prim school.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Teacherish way she had of smiling, almost as if she
hated herself for doing it. Alan said, I'll be looking
forward to my converse. And the way he said it,
he had made it all a joke, a vast ironic joke.
But it was no joke. It was serious business, deadly serious.
(04:12):
Upon these tests, Fouler knew depended the fate of men
on Jupiter. If the tests succeeded, the resources of the
giant planet would be thrown open. Man would take over Jupiter,
as he already had taken over the other smaller planets.
And if they failed. If they failed, man would continue
to be chained and hampered by the terrific pressure, the
(04:32):
greater force of gravity, the weird chemistry of the planet.
He would continue to be shut within the domes, unable
to set actual foot upon the planet, unable to see
it with direct unaided vision, forced to rely upon the
awkward tractors and the televisor forced to work with clumsy
tools and mechanisms, or through the medium of robots that
themselves were clumsy. For Man, unprotected and in his natural form,
(04:57):
would be blotted out by Jupiter's terrific pressure of fifth
eighteen thousand pounds per square inch, pressure that made terrestrial
sea bottom seem of vacuum. By comparison, even the strongest
metal earthmen could devise could not exist under pressure such
as that. Under the pressure in the alkaline rains that
forever swept the planet, it grew brittle and flaky, crumbling
(05:19):
like clay, or it ran away in little streams and
puddles of ammonia salts. Only by stepping up the toughness
and strength of that metal, by increasing its electronic tension,
could be made to withstand the weight of thousands of
miles of swirling, choking gases that made up the atmosphere,
and even when that was done, everything had to be
(05:40):
coated with tough quartz to keep away the rain, a
bitter rain that was liquid ammonia. Fowlers sat listening to
the engines in the sub floor of the dome, engines
that ran on endlessly, the dome never quiet of them.
They had to run and keep on running, for if
they stopped, the power flowing in the metal walls of
(06:00):
the dome would stop, the electronic tension would ease up,
and that would be the end of everything. Towser roused
himself under Foaler's desk and scratched another flea, his leg
thumping hard against the floor. Is there anything else, asked Alan.
Follower shook his head. Oh, perhaps there's something you want
(06:22):
to do. Perhaps you He had meant to say, write
a letter, and he was glad he caught himself quick
enough so he didn't say it. Alan looked at his watch.
I'll be there on time. Then he swung and headed
for the door. Fower knew Miss Stanley was watching him,
and he didn't want to turn and meet her eyes.
He fumbled with a sheaf of papers on the desk
(06:44):
before him.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
How long are you going to keep this up?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Asked Miss Stanley, and she bit off each word with
a vicious snap. You're going to keep on sentencing them
to death, she said.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
You're going to keep marching them out face to face
with Jupiter.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You're going to sit in here, safe and comfortable, and
send them out to die. There's no room for sentimentality
in Miss Stanley, Fowler said, trying to keep the note
of anger from his voice. You know as well as
I do, why we're doing this. You realize that man
in his own form simply cannot cope with Jupiter. The
only answers to turn men into the sort of things
(07:18):
that can cope with it. We've done it on the
other planets. If a few men die, but we finally succeed,
the price is small. Through the ages, men have thrown
away their lives on foolish things for foolish reasons. Why
should we hesitate then, at a little death and the
thing as great as this. Miss Stanley sat stiff and straight,
(07:39):
hands folded in her lap, the light shining on her
gray hair, and Fowler watching her try to imagine what
she might feel, what she might be thinking. He wasn't
exactly afraid of her, but he didn't feel quite comfortable
when she was around. Those sharp blue eyes saw too much.
Her hands looked far too competent. She should be somebody
(08:00):
nat sitting in a rocking chair with her knitting needles.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
But she wasn't.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
She was the top notch conversion unit operator in the
solar system, and she didn't like the way he was
doing things. There is something wrong, mister Folly, precisely agreed.
Follow precisely, Miss Stanley. That's why I'm sending Young Ellen
out alone. He may find out what it is, and
if he doesn't, I'll send someone else. She rose slowly
(08:28):
from her chair, started toward the door, and then stopped
before his desk. Miss Stanley, Young Allen is going out soon.
Please be sure that your machine, my machine, is not
to blame. It operates along the coordinates the biologists set up.
He sat hunched at his desk, listening to her footsteps
put on the corridor. What she said was true, of course,
(08:51):
the biologists had said of the coordinates. But the biologists
could be wrong. Just a hair breadth of difference one
order of aggression, and the converter would be sent, not
something that wasn't the thing they meant to send, a
mutant that might crack up go haywire, come unstuck under
some condition or stress of circumstance, wholly unsuspected, for men
(09:13):
didn't know much about what was going on outside, only
what his instruments totallying, was going on, and the samplings
of those happenings furnished by those instruments and mechanisms had
been no more than samplings, for Jupiter was unbelievably large
in the domes.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Were very few.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Even the work of the biologists and getting the data
on the lopers, apparently the highest form of Jovian life,
had involved more than three years of intensive study, and
after that two years of checking to make sure. Work
that could have been done on Earth in a week
or two, but work that in this case couldn't be
done on Earth at all, For one couldn't take a
Jovian life form to worth the pressure here on Jupiter
(09:53):
couldn't be duplicated outside of Jupiter, and at Earth pressure
and temperature, the lopers would simply have disappeared in a
puff of gas. Yet it was work that had to
be done if man ever hoped to go about Jupiter
in the life form of the lopers, for before the
converter could change a man to another life form, every
detailed physical characteristic of that life form must be known
(10:15):
surely and positively, with no chance of mistake. Allen did
not come back. The tractors coming in the nearby terrain
(10:38):
found no trace of him, unless the skulking thing reported
by one of the drivers had been the missing earth
man in the lower form. The biologists sneered their most
accomplished academic sneers when followers suggested the coordinates might be wrong. Carefully,
they pointed out the coordinates worked when a man was
put into the converter. In the switch was thrown, the
(10:58):
man became a loper. He left the machine and moved away,
out of sight into the soupy atmosphere. Some quirk, Fowler
had suggested some tiny deviation from the thing a loper
should be some minor defects. If there were, the biologists
said it would take years to find out, and Fowler
(11:19):
knew that they were right. So there were five men
now instead of four, and Harold Allen had walked out
into Jupiter for nothing at all. It was as if
he'd never gone so far as knowledge was concerned. Fowler
reached across his desk and picked up the personal file,
a thin sheaf.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Of papers neatly clicked together.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
There was a thing he dreaded, but a thing he
had to do somehow. The reason for these strange disappearances
must be fond. There was no other way than to
send out more men. He sat for a moment, listening
to the howling of the wind above the dome, the everlasting,
thundering gale that swept across the planet in boiling, twisting wrath.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Was there some threat out there, he asked himself.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Some danger they did not know about, something that lay
in wait and gobbled up the lopers, making no distinction
between lopers that were bonafide and the lopers that were men.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
To the gobblers, of course, it would make no.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Difference, or had there been a basic fault in selecting
the lopers as the type of life best fitted for
existence on the surface of the planet. The evident intelligence
of the lopers, he knew, had been one factor in
that determination. For if the thing man became did not
have capacity for intelligence, man could not for long retain
(12:39):
his own intelligence In such a guys had the biologists
let that one factor way too heavily, using it to
upset some other factor that might be unsatisfactory, even disastrous,
It didn't seem likely. Stiff necked as they might be,
the biologists knew their business. Or was the whole thing impossible,
(13:00):
doomed from the very start. Conversion to whatther life forms
had worked on other planets, but that did not necessarily
mean it would work on Jupiter. Perhaps man's intelligence could
not function correctly through the sensory apparatus provided Jovian life.
Perhaps the lopers were so alien there was no common
ground for human knowledge in the Jovian conception of existence
(13:22):
to meet and work together. Or the fault might lie
with man, be inherent with the race. Some mental aberration
which coupled with what they found outside, wouldn't let them
come back, although it might not be an aberration, not.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
In the human sense, perhaps just one ordinary human mental trait.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Except that as commonplace on Earth, would be so violently
at odds with Jovian existence that it would blast all
human intelligence and sanity. Claws rattled and clicked on the corridor.
Listening to them, Fowler smiled wandly. It was Towsier coming
back from the kitchen, where he had gone to see
his friend, the cook. Tawsier came into the room carrying
(14:05):
a bone. He wagged his tailored Fowler and flapped down
beside the desk, bone between his paws for a long moment.
His roomy old eyes reguarded his master, and Foller reached
down a hand to ruffle a ragged ear. He still
like me, Towser, Fowler asked, and Towser thumped his tail.
You're the only one, said Foller, All through the dome.
(14:29):
They're cussing me, calling me a murderer. More than likely.
He straightened and swung back to the desk. His hand
reached out and picked up the file Bennett. Bennett had
a girl waiting for him back on Earth Andrews. Andrews
was planning on going back to Mars Tech just as
(14:49):
soon as earned enough to see him through a year.
Olsen Olson was nearing pension age all the time, telling
the boys how he was going to settle down and
grill roses carefully.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Fowler laid the file back.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
On the desk, sandancing men to death. Miss Stanley had
said that her pale lips scarcely moving her parchment face,
marching men out to.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Die while he Fower sat here, safe and comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
They were saying it all through the dome, no doubt,
especially since Alan had failed to return. They wouldn't say
it to his face, of course. Even the man or
men he called before his desk and told they were
the next to go, wouldn't say it to him. They
would only say when do we start? For that was
the formula. But he would see it in her eyes.
(15:41):
He picked up the file again. Bennett Andrew's Olsen. There
were others, but there was no use in going on.
Kent Fowler knew that he couldn't do it, couldn't face them,
couldn't send more men to die. He leaned forward and
flipped up the toggle on the enter. Ken Kater, Yes,
(16:02):
mister Fowler, Miss Stanley please. He waited for Miss Stanley,
listening to Towser chewing half heartedly on the bone. Towser's
teeth for getting bad, Miss Stanley said Miss Stanley's voice.
H I just wanted to tell you, Miss Stanley, to
get ready for two more. Aren't you afraid that you
(16:23):
run out of them?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Standing out one.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
At a time, they'd last longer. Give you twice the satisfaction,
mister Fowler, one of them this time will be a dog.
A dog, yes, Towser, he heard the quick, cold rage
that iced her voice. Your own dog. He's been with
you all these years. That's the point, Miss Stanley. Towser
(16:48):
would be unhappy if I left him behind. It was
not the Jupiter he had known through the televisor. He
had expected it to be different, but.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Not like this.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
He had expected a hell of ammonia rains and stinking fumes,
and the deafening, thundering tumult of the storm. He had
expected swirling clouds and fog, and the snarling flicker of
monstrous thunderbolts. He had not expected the lashing downpour would
be reduced to drifting purple mists that moved.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like fleeing shadows over a red and purple sword.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He had not even guessed the snaking bolts of lightning
would be flares of pure ecstasy across the painted sky
waiting for Towser. Fowler flexed the muscles of his body,
amazed at the smooth, sleek strength he found. Not a
bad body, he decided, and grimaced at remembering how he
had pitied the loafers when he glimpsed them through the
(17:46):
television spring. For it had been hard to imagine a
living organism based upon ammonia and hydrogen rather than upon
water and oxygen, hard to believe that such a form
of life could know the same quick thrill of life
the humankind could know, hard to conceive of life out
in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course,
(18:07):
that through Jovin eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all.
The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers,
and he remembered with a start that by Earth's standards,
the wind was a roaring gale, a two hundred mile
an hour howler, laden with deadly gases. Pleasant sense seeped
(18:27):
into his body, and yet scarcely sense, for it was
not the sense of smell, as he remembered it. It
was as if his whole being was soaking up the
sensation of lavender, and yet not lavender. It was something
he knew for which he had no word, undoubtedly the
first of many enigmas and terminology for the words he
(18:50):
knew the thought symbols that served him as an earth
man would not serve in as a Jovian. Suddenly he
was aware of Towser. I'm soully aware of the bumbling,
eager friendliness of the shaggy animal that had followed him
from Earth to many planets, as if the thing that
was Towser had reached out and for a moment sat
(19:12):
within his brain, and out of the bubbling welcome that
he sensed came the.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Words Hi, a pal. Not words really better than words.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Thought symbols in his brain communicated thought, symbols that had
shades of meaning words could never have.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
And he said, Hi a Towser.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I feel good, said Tauser, I feel good like I
was a pup lately. I've been feeling pretty punk. Legs
stiffening up on me, teeth wearing down almost nothing. Hard
to mumble a bone with teeth like that. Besides, the
fleas give me trouble. Used to be I never paid
much attention to him, A couple of fleas more or
less never met much in my early days. But but
(20:01):
to Towser. But Follower's thoughts tumbled awkwardly. Towser, you are
talking to me, sure thing. Yeah, I've always talked to you,
But you couldn't hear me. I tried to say things
to you, but I couldn't make the grade. I understood
you sometimes, Towser, No.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Not very well. You knew when I wanted food, when
I wanted to drink, and when I.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Wanted out, but that's about all you ever managed.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I'm sorry about that. I forget it. Hey, I'll race
you to the cliff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
For the first time, Foller saw the cliff, apparently many
miles away, but with a strange, crystalline beauty that sparkled
in the shadow of the many colored clouds. Father hesitated, well, mm,
so long way off, Towser aw come on, and he
started for the cliff. Foller followed, testing his legs, testing
(20:54):
the strength and the new body of his a bit
doubtful at first, amazed a moment later, and then running
with a sheer joyousness that was one with a red
and purple sword, with a drifting smoke of the rain
across the land.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
As he ran, the consciousness of.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Music came to him, a music that beat into his body,
that surged throughout his being, swings of silver speed, music
like bells might make from some steeple on a sunny
springtime hill. As the cliff drew nearer, the music deepened
and filled the universe with a.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Spray of magic sound.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And he knew the music came from the tumbling waterfall
that feathered down the face of the shining cliff. Only
he knew it was no waterfall but an ammonia fall,
and the cliff was white because it was oxygen solidified.
He skidded to a stop beside.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Towser, where the waterfall broke.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Into a glittering rainbow of many hundred colors, literally many hundred,
for here he saw it was no shading of one
primary to another's human being saw but a clear cut
selectivity that broke the prism down to its last ultimate classification.
The music, said, Towser, you know what about it? The
(22:13):
music is vibrations, vibrations of water falling.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Towser, you don't know about vibrations. Yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yes, It just popped into my head, just popped suddenly
within his own head. He held a formula, the formula
for a process it would make metal to withstand.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The pressure of Jupiter. He stared, astounded.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
At the waterfall, and swiftly his mind took the many
colors and placed them in their exact sequence in the spectrum,
just like that, just out of blue sky, out of nothing.
For he knew nothing either of metals or of colors, Towser.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Towser, something's happening to us. Yeah, I know, Towser.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
It's our brains were using them, all of them, down
to the last hidden corner, using them to figure out
things we should have known all the time. Maybe maybe
the brains of Earth things naturally are slow and foggy.
Maybe we are the morons of the universe, Tousic. Maybe
we're fit, so we have to do things a hard way.
(23:21):
And in the new sharp clarity of thought would seemed
to grip him, he knew that it would not only
be the matter of colors in the waterfall or metals
that would resist the pressure of Jupiter. He sensed other things,
things not yet quite clear, a vague whispering that hinted
of greater things, of mysteries beyond the pale of human thought,
(23:41):
beyond even the pale of human imagination, mysteries, facts, logic
built on reasoning, things that any brain should know if
it used all its reasoning power. We're still mostly Earth.
We're just beginning to learn a few of the things
we are to, though, Taser a few of the things
(24:02):
that were kept from us as human beings, perhaps because
we were human beings, because our human bodies were poor bodies,
poorly equipped for thinking, poorly equipped in certain senses that
one has to have to know, perhaps even lacking in
certain senses that are necessary to true knowledge. He stared
back at the dome, a tiny black thing, dwarfed by
(24:25):
the distance back. There were men who couldn't see the
beauty that was Jupiter. Men who thought that swirling clouds
and lashing rain obscured the face of the planet unseeing
human eyes, poor eyes, eyes that could not see the
beauty in the clouds, that could not see through the storms.
(24:47):
Bodies that could not feel the thrill of twilling music
stemming from the rush of broken water. Men who walked
alone in terrible loneliness, talking with their tongue like boy scouts,
wigwagging out their messages, unable to reach out and touch
one another's mind as he could reach out and touch
Towser's mind. Men shut off forever from that personal, intimate
(25:11):
contact with other living things. He Fowler had expected terror
inspired by alien things out here on the surface, had
expected the cower before the threat of unknown things had
steeled himself against disgust of the situation that was not
of earth. But instead, instead he had found something greater
(25:33):
than man had ever known. A swifter, sure body, a
sense of exhilaration, a deeper sense of life, a sharper mind,
a world of beauty that even the dreamers of the
earth had not yet imagined. Those other five had felt it,
two had felt the urge to go and see, the
(25:55):
compelling sense that here lay a life of fullness of
love that he knew was why they had not returned.
I won't go back, said Towser. We can't let him down.
Fellow Foller took a step or two back toward the dome.
(26:17):
Then he stopped. Back to the dome, back to that aching,
poisoned laden body he had left. It hadn't seemed aching before,
but now he knew it was. Back to the fuzzy brain,
back to the muddled thinking, back to the flapping mouths
(26:39):
it formed signals others understood. Back to wise It now
would be worse than no sight at all. Back to squalor,
back to crawling, back to ignorance.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
MM. Perhaps perhaps someday we got a lot to do,
and a lot to see, said Taosi. We've got a
lot to learn. We'll find things. Yes, they could.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Find things, civilizations, perhaps civilizations.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It would make the civilization of.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Man seen cuney by comparison beauty and more important, and
understanding of that beauty and a comradeship no one had
ever known before, that, no man, no dog had ever
known before. And life, the quickness of life after what
(27:33):
seemed a drug of existence. Taosi said, I can't go back,
nor I said Fowler.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
They would turn me back into a dog.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Said Tarsi. And me, said Fowler, and me back into
a man. That was Clifford Simac. Story Desertion appears in
The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Graff Conklin.
(28:08):
I'm Michael Hanson. Technical production for mindwebs by Leslie Hilsenhoff.
Mindwebs comes to you from WHA Radio and Madison, a
service of the University of Wisconsin Extension
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