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It was Lucky who broke the deadly silence that followed, in sharp, incisive tones "No ht Who can handle this ship&039;s computer most rapidly?"

Coular trajectory man"

"Is he up in the control rooet to him I want the detailed Planetary Epheet to work cannibalizing and ian

Lucky cut in at once "Perhaps no good at all If so, we&039;ll hit Jupiter and you&039;ll die after having wasted a few hours of labor Now I&039;ve given you an order Get to work!"

"But" Commander Donahue seemed stuck after that one word

Lucky said, "As council command of this vessel If you wish to dispute that, I&039;ll have Bigue it out at the court- we survive"

Lucky turned away and man motioned Commander Donahue up with a quick jerk of his thumb and followed last

Panner looked after theineers, and said, "All right, you bunch of corpses No use waiting for it with our fingers in our mouths Hop to it"

Lucky strode into the control room

The officer at the controls said, "What&039;s wrong down there?" His lips hite

"You&039;re Major Brant," said Lucky, "We haven&039;t been formally introduced, but never mind that I&039; orders from me Get at that computer and do what you&039;re told with all the speed you have"

Lucky had the Planetary Ephereat reference works, it was in book fores, after all, made for the more rapid location of a specific piece of infor of files noith practiced hand, searching a the rows and columns of numbers that located the position of every chunk of matter in the solar system over ten miles in diaether with their planes of revolution and velocity ofco-ordinates as I call theether with the line of motion, and calculate the characteristics of the orbit and the position of the point at this ht hours"

The ures were converted by the special punch machine into a coded tape which was fed into the co place, Lucky said, "Calculate from our present position and velocity our orbit with respect to Jupiter and the point of intersection with the object whose orbit you have just calculated"

Again the major worked

The computer spat out its results in coded tape that wound on to a spool and dictated the tapping of a typewriter that spelled out the results in figures

Lucky said, "At the point of intersection, what is time discrepancy between our ship and the object?"

Again the major worked He said, "We miss it by four hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty-four seconds"

"Calculate how the velocity of the ship must be altered in order to hit the point squarely Use one hour fro time"

Co this close to Jupiter, Councilency poon&039;t break us away Don&039;t you understand that?"

"I&039; thehim to accelerate the ship toward Jupiter, for whatever our reserve power is worth"

The commander rocked back on his heels "Toward Jupiter?"

The co in Lucky said, "Can you accelerate by that much on the power available?"

Major Brant said shakily, "I think so"

"Then do it"

Coain, "Toward Jupiter?"

"Yes Exactly Io isn&039;t the innermost of Jupiter&039;s satellites Amalthea is closer, Jupiter Five If we can intersect its orbit properly, we can land on it If we miss it, well, then, ill have hurried death by two hours"

Bige of sudden hope He could never entirely despair while Lucky was in action, but until thatHe remembered now his earlier conversation with Lucky on the subject The satellites were numbered in order of discovery Amalthea was a small satellite, just a hundred miles in diameter, and it was discovered only after the four h the closest to Jupiter, it was Jupiter Five Soet that Because Io was called Jupiter One, there was always the tendency to think there was nothing between it and the planet itself

And one hour later the Jovian Moon began a carefully plotted acceleration toward Jupiter, hastening toward the death trap

They no longer centered the visiplate on any part of Jupiter Though the latter swelled hourly, the center of sight remained on a portion of the star field a considerable distance fronification At that point should be Jupiter Five, streaking for its rendezvous with a ship which was hurtling and straining down, doard Jupiter Either the ship would be caught by the speck of rock and saved, or it would man in excitement "That star shows a visible disk"

"Calculate observed position and motion," ordered Lucky, "and check with the computed orbit"

This was done

"Any correction?" Lucky asked

&039;&039;We&039;ll have to slon by-"

&039;&039;Never ures Do it!"

Jupiter Five circled Jupiter in twelve hours,in its orbit at a speed of nearly three thousand miles an hour This was one and a half tiravitational field was only one twentieth that of Io For both reasons, it et

Major Brant&039;s fists trembled on the controls as the all-important side thrusts bent the Jovian Moon&039;s orbit ever so slightly toJupiter Five, slip behind it and round,speeds for just those vital ravity to establish the ship in an orbit about itself

Jupiter Five was a large, brilliant object now If it stayed so, good If it began to grow smaller, they had missed

Major Brant whispered, "We&039;vepalms as he released the controls

Even Lucky closed his eyes momentarily in a land of weary relief

In one way the situation on Jupiter Five was far different froht-seers; the consideration of the heavens had taken precedence over the leisurely preparations in the valley

Here on Jupiter Five, however, no one eed from the Jovian Moon What there was to see, no one saw

The ines Nothing elseon Jupiter Five could only postpone dooony

No normal ship could land on Jupiter Five to rescue therav ship existed or would exist for a year at least If they failed, there would be tih to watch Jupiter and the vision of the skies while they waited for death

Yet under less urgent conditions the vision would have been worth watching It was Io all over again with everything doubled and tripled

From the point at which the Jovian Moon landed, Jupiter&039;s lower riiant looked so close in the airlessness that a watcher would have iined he could reach out his hand and bury it in that circle of light

From the horizon Jupiter stretched upward, halfway to zenith At the moment the Jovian Moon landed, Jupiter was almost full, and within the unbearable circle of brilliant stripes and colors nearly ten thousand full moons Earth variety, could have been placed Almost one sixteenth of the entire vault of the sky was covered by Jupiter

And because Jupiter Five circled Jupiter in twelve hours, the visible moons-there were four here rather than three as on Io, since Io itself was now a moon - moved three times as fast as they did on Io So did all the stars and everything else in the sky, except for frozen Jupiter, which one side of the satellite eternally faced and which therefore never moved

In five hours the sun would rise and it would be exactly the sa that hadn&039;t changed But it would race toward a four-tie Jupiter at three times the speed and ly beautiful

But no one saw it It took place thile the Jovian Moon stayed and no one saw it No one had the time No one had the heart

Panner finally sat down and stared out of bleary eyes The flesh around them was red and puffy His voice was a hoarse whisper