"Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future's Worlds of Tomorrow 01 - Jupiter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

A DEPARTMENT OF ASTRO-GEOGRAPHY
JUPITER
UPITER, mighty monarch-world of the Solar Sys-
tem, was first colonized by Earthmen in the year
2005. But men had visited it some years previous-
ly, and had brought back reports of the giant planet's
wonders.
J
As every school child knows, the first space flight
was that of Gorham Johnson to the moon, in 1971.
Johnson was a veteran of the Second World War who
spent years trying to perfect a rocket that would make
use of the newly discovered atomic power. Soon, after
his first great flight to the moon, he made a second voy-
age in which he reached Venus and Mercury, and a
third in which he touched Mars and Jupiter.
Johnson was accompanied on this great third voyage
of 1988 by Mark Carew, inventor of the gravitation
equalizer. When they sailed on that voyage, their crew
did not know that they meant to go beyond the orbit of
Mars. Had they known, the men would never have
signed up for the trip.
After leaving Mars, Johnson and Carew headed on
outward through the asteroidal belt. Carew, in his book
(Spaceward to Glory, 1994), says that the men became
mutinous when they realized that the voyage was to
continue to Jupiter. They believed, like most other
Earthmen at that time, that the outer planets were all
too cold and poisonous of atmosphere for human exis-
tence, and that they would surely perish there.
LANDED AT CALLISTO
To quiet them, Johnson told them he would not land
on Jupiter, but on one of its larger moons. Their rocket,
the Pioneer II, made a landing on Callisto. There they
were attacked by the crystals of that moon, which
Carew calls "a creeping diamond horror." And it was
there on Callisto that Gorham Johnson was stricken by
a swift fatal sickness, his frame enfeebled by the in-
credible hardships of his three stupendous voyages.
Carew in his book (Page 434) tells how Gorham
Johnson, dying, asked that they carry him out of the
rocket and let him look up at Jupiter, whose vast,
cloudy white bulk filled the sky over them.
"I will never live to reach it, but you must land
there," Johnson murmured to his loyal lieutenant. "It
will be safe. The day will come when Earthmen will
have cities on that great world - yes, and on the worlds
beyond, even out to Pluto."
IN THE VOID
A little later, Johnson died. His last speech, Carew