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It was Jupiter they stopped to look at It was Jupiter that held them frozen There was no talk about it, no babble over the heliant globe which, frohth of the way across the visible sky Had it been full, it would have been two thousand tiht shadow cut a third of it away

The bright zones and dark belts that crossed it were not h to show full clear color: pink, green, blue, and purple, aed and slowly changed shape as they watched, as though the atantic and turbulent storms, as most probably it was Io&039;s clear, thin atmosphere didn&039;t obscure the s surface

The Great Red Spot was heaving ponderously into sight It gave the i lazily

They watched for a long tie position The stars moved past it, but Jupiter remained fixed where it was, low in the western sky It could not move, since Io presented only one side to Jupiter as it revolved On nearly half of Io&039;s surface Jupiter never rose, and on nearly half it never set In an in-between region of the satellite, a regionup nearly a fifth of the total surface, Jupiter re, part hidden

"What a place for a telescope!"the pre-landing briefing

Lucky said, "They&039;ll have one soon and a lot of other equipman touched Lucky&039;s face-plate to attract his attention and pointed quickly "Look at Norrich Poor guy, he can&039;t see any of this!"

Lucky said, "I noticed hiot Mutt with hio to trouble for that Norrich! That dog suit is a special job I atching the They had to test to make sure he could hear the orders and obey theot into a space suit Apparently it all worked out"

Lucky nodded On impulse he ravity was just a trifle over that of the , flat strides did the job "Norrich," said Lucky, shifting to the engineer&039;s wave length

One cannot tell direction of a sound when it comes out of earphones, of course, and Norrich&039;s blind eyes looked about helplessly "Who is it?"

"Lucky Starr" He was facing the blind h the face-plate could make out clearly the look of intense joy on Norrich&039;s face "You&039;re happy to be here?"

"Happy? You ht call it that Is Jupiter very beautiful?"

"Very Would you want me to describe it to you?"

"No You don&039;t have to I&039;ve seen it by telescope hen I had eyes, and I can see it in my mind now It&039;s just that I don&039;t know if I can make you understand We&039;re some of the few people to stand on a neorld for the first tiroup that makes us?"

His hand reached down to stroke Mutt&039;s head and contacted only the h the curved face-plate, Lucky could see the dog&039;s lolling tongue, and his uneasy eyes turning restlessly this way and that, as though disturbed by the strange surroundings or by the presence of his master&039;s voice without the familiar body that ith it

Norrich said quietly, "Poor Mutt! The low gravity has hier"

Then, with an increase of passion again, "Think of all the trillions of people in the galaxy Think ho of them have had the luck to be the first on a world You can al were the firstthe first man on Mars, Lubell and Smith on Venus Add them all up Even count in all the asteroids and all the planets outside the solar system Add up all the firsts and see ho there are And we&039;re a those few"

He flung his arh he were ready to embrace the whole satellite "And I owe that to Summers, too When he worked out a new technique forthe lead contact point-it was just a matter of a bent rotor, but it saved two million dollars and a year&039;s time, and he not even a trained mechanic -they offered to let him be in the party as reward You knohat he said He said I deserved it in his place They said sure, but I was blind, and he reo without me So they took us both I know you two don&039;t think much of Summers, but that&039;s what I think of when I think of hily in all helet to work, men Jupiter will stay where it is Look at it later"

For hours the ship was unloaded, equiphts were prepared for possible use as oxygen-supplied headquarters outside the ship

The h As it happened, all three of Jupiter&039;s other large satellites were in the sky

Europa was closest, appearing somewhat smaller than Earth&039;s moon It was a crescent, near the eastern horizon Gany smaller still, was nearer zenith and half full Callisto, only a quarter the width of Earth&039;sclose to Jupiter and, like Jupiter, was soave not one quarter the light of Earth&039;s full moon and were completely inconspicuous in the presence of Jupiter

Bigman said exactly that

Lucky looked down at his s studied the eastern horizon thoughtfully "You think nothing could beat Jupiter, do you?"

"Not out here," Big," said Lucky

In Io&039;s thin at There was a diae of low hills, and seven seconds later the sun had topped the horizon

It was a tiny seed-pearl of a sun, a little circle of brilliant white, and for all the light that giant Jupiter cast, the pigot the telescope up in ti behind Jupiter One by one, all three satellites would do the sah it kept only one face to Jupiter, revolved about it in forty-two hours That meant that the sun and all the stars seemed to march around Io&039;s skies in those forty-two hours

As for the satellites, Iothem in the race about Jupiter It overtook the farthest and slowest, Callisto, most rapidly; so Callisto circled Io&039;s heavens in two days Ganymede took four days and Europa seven Each traveled from east to west and each in due turn was to pass behind Jupiter

The excitement in the case of the Callisto eclipse, which was the first to be witnessed, was extrerown increasingly used to low gravity, and Norrich gave hirotesquely about and tried vainly to inspect by nose the nus he encountered And in the end, when Callisto reached Jupiter&039;s glowing curve and passed behind, and all the rew silent, Mutt, too, sat on his swathed haunches and, tongue lolling, stared upward at the sky

But it was the sun they were really waiting for Its apparent ained on Europa (whose crescent thinned to nothingness) and passed behind it, re less than thirty seconds It eain, with its horns facing in the other direction now

Ganyed behind Jupiter before the sun could reach it, and Callisto, having eed from behind Jupiter, was below the horizon

It was the sun and Jupiter now, those two

The her in the sky As it did, Jupiter&039;s phase grew narrower, its lighted portion always, of course, facing the sun Jupiter became a "half-moon," then a fat crescent, then a thin one