His eyes sought the sky resentfully. Moon Five was hidden; down here, at the bottom of the air ocean, you saw nothing but the sun and the four Galilean satellites. He wasnt even sure where Five was just now, in relation to himself. Wait a minute, its sunset here, but i/I went out to the viewdome id see Jupiter in the last quarter, or would 1, oh, hell, it only takes us half an Earth day to swing around the planet anyhow Joe shook his head. After all this time, it was stifi damnably hard,
now and then, to keep his thoughts straight. I, the essential I, am up in heaven, riding Jupiter Five between cold stars. Remember that. Open your eyes, if you will, and see the dead control room superimposed on a living hillside.
He didnt, though. Instead, he regarded the boulders strewn windblasted gray over the tough mossy vegetation of the slope. They were not much like Earth rocks, nor was the soil beneath his feet like terrestrial humus.
For a moment Anglesey speculated on the origin of the silicates, aluminates, and other stony compounds. Theoretically, all such materials should be inaccessibly locked in the Jovian core, down where the pressure got vast enough for atoms to buckle and collapse. Above the core should lie thousands of miles of allotropic ice, and then the metallic-hydrogen layer. There should not be complex minerals this far up, but there were.
Well, possibly Jupiter had formed according to theory, but had thereafter sucked enough cosmic dust, meteors, gases and vapors down its great throat of gravitation to form a crust several miles thick. Or more likely the theory was altogether wrong. What did they know, what could they know, the soft pale worms of Earth?
Anglesey stuck hisJoesfingers in his mouth and whistled. A baying sounded in the brush, and two midnight forms leaped toward him. He grinned and stroked their heads; training was progressing faster than hed hoped, with these pups of the black caterpillar beasts
he had taken. They would make guardians for him, herders, servants. On the crest of the hill, Joe was building himself a home. He had
logged off an acre of ground and erected a stockade. Within the grounds there now stood a lean-to for himself and his stores, a methane well, and the beginnings of a large, comfortable cabin.
But there was too much work for one being. Even with the halfintelligent caterpillars to help, and with cold storage for meat, most of his time would still go to hunting. The game wouldnt last forever, either; he had to start agriculture within the next year or soJupiter year, twelve Earth years, thought Anglesey. There was the cabin to finish and furnish; he wanted to put a waterwheel, no, methane wheel, in the river to turn any of a dozen machines he had in mind, he wanted to experiment with alloyed ice and And, quite apart from his need of help, why should he remain
alone, the single thinking creature on an entire planet? He was a male in this body, with male instinctsin the long run, his health was bound to suffer if he remained a hermit, and right now the whole project depended on Joes health.
It wasnt right!
But I am not alone. There are fifty men on the satellite with me. I can talk to any of them, anytime 1 wish. its only that I seldom wish it, these days. I would rather be Joe.
Nevertheless … I, the cripple, feel all the tiredness, anger, hurt, frustration, of that wonderful biological machine called Joe. The others dont understand. When the ammonia gale flays open his skin, it is! who bleed.
Joe lay down on the ground, sighing. Fangs flashed in the mouth of the black beast which humped over to lick his face. His belly growled with hunger, but he was too tired to fix a meal. Once he had the dogs trained.
Another pseudo would be so much more rewarding to educate.
He could almost see it, in the weary darkening of his brain. Down there, in the valley below the hifi, fire and thunder as the ship came to rest. And the steel egg would crack open, the steel armsalready crumbling, puny work of worms!lift out the shape within and lay it on the earth.