Generators broke down after only short periods of use, burned out, unpredictably, sometimes only moments after testing up without a flawlike vacuum tubes in waking life.
That was what Helmuth’s set was about to do. He crouched inside his personal womb, above the boiling sea, the clouds raging about him, lit by a plume of hydrogen flame, and waited to feel his weight suddenly become eight times greater than normal. He knew what would happen to him then.
It happened.
Helmuth greeted morning on Jupiter V with his customary scream.
V
The ship that landed as he was going on duty did nothing to lighten the load on his heart. In shape it was not dis-tinguishable from any of the long-range cruisers which ran the legs of the Moon-Mars-Belt-Ganymede trip. But it grounded its huge bulk with less visible expenditures of power than one of the little intersatellary boats.
That landing told Helmuth that his dream was well on its way to coming true. If the high brass had had a real antigravity, there would have been no reason why the main jets should have been necessary at all. Obviously, what had been discovered was some sort of partial screen, which allowed a ship to operate with far less jet action than was normal, but which still left it subject to a sizeable fraction of the universal stress of space.
Nothing less than complete and completely controllable antigravity would do on Jupiter.
He worked mechanically, noting that Charity was not in evidence. Probably he was conferring with the senators, receiving what would be for him the glad news.