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Viewed through a telescope, Jupiter is spectacular – a multi-colored sphere that seems to fill the sky. Its size is hard to grasp; Bowman had to remind himself again and again that it was eleven times the size of the Earth, but for a long time this figure did not seem to be of much practical significance.

Later, when he used the tape in Howl's memory device to explain to himself, he discovered something that made him suddenly realize Jupiter's breathtaking dimensions.

It was an illustration that peeled back the skin of the Earth and nailed it to the cross-section of Jupiter like an animal skin. Against this backdrop, the entire land mass of the earth is the size of India on an ordinary globe.

Bowman adjusted the telescope on Discovery to the maximum, and at this point he seemed to be hanging above to observe a slightly flattened Earth, and saw rows of torrent-like clouds forming rings of clouds due to the rapid rotation of the giant Jupiter. Sometimes, these rings of clouds condense into patches of colored vapor, each as large as a continent on Earth; Sometimes, they are connected by a temporary trestle, each of which is thousands of miles long. Under the clouds, the matter there is larger than the other planets in the solar system combined. "Other than that," Bowman wondered, "what else is hanging over?" ”

Above the swimming and roaring clouds that forever obscured Jupiter's true face, there were sometimes circular shadows floating. This is the moon near Jupiter crossing from beneath the distant sun, its shadow slipping over the cloud cover of Jupiter, which is never stationary.

Twenty million miles away from Jupiter, there are also some much smaller moons. However, they are only flying peaks tens of miles in diameter, and the ship cannot fly near them. Every few minutes, the radar transmitter sends out a silent thunderbolt of electricity; There is no echo in the sky, indicating that no new satellites have appeared.

What is received is the growing roar of radio waves from Jupiter itself. In 1955, on the eve of the dawn of the space age, astronomers were amazed to discover that Jupiter, despite its power of several million horsepower, emits powerful radio waves in the ten-meter band. It's actually a stiff noise, accompanied by a light wheel of charged particles orbiting Jupiter, like the Earth's Van Allen belts (Van Allen belts: high-intensity bands of ionizing radiation that surround the Earth's atmosphere, named after James Van Allen). Same, but on a much larger scale.

Although Discovery is speeding at 100,000 miles per hour, it will take almost two weeks to orbit all of Jupiter's moons. There are more planets orbiting Jupiter than the moon; The Lunar Observatory discovers new moons of Jupiter every year, bringing the total to thirty-six. The outermost Twenty-Seven satellite is turning upside down on an unstable road 19 million miles from its temporary owner. It is the winner of the never-ending tug-of-war between Jupiter and the Sun, as Jupiter continues to capture short-lived planets from the planetary belt and throw them away in millions of years. Only the inner edge of the moon is its constant production; The sun will never be able to take it away.

Now, there is a new prey between these two conflicting gravitational fields.

Discovery is accelerating toward Jupiter along a complex orbit calculated by astronomers on Earth many months ago and corrected by Hall. For meticulous corrections, the jet manipulator has to be automatically propelled from time to time, but it is almost imperceptible in the ship.

Through radio contact with Earth, intelligence is constantly sent back. They are now so far away from home that their signal would take fifty minutes to reach even at the speed of light.

While the whole world is watching with concern as they approach Jupiter, watching through their eyes and instruments, it will take about an hour for news of any of their discoveries to be filmed back to Earth.

As the spacecraft traverses the orbits of those huge inner ring satellites, the telescopic cameras are constantly running. All of those huge inner circle moons are larger than the moon, and all of them are unknown.

Three hours before the crossing, the Discovery passed just 20,000 miles from Europa; As the satellite grew larger and larger, changed from round to missing, and rapidly swiped in the direction of the sun, all the instruments on the spacecraft were pointing at it.

From a distance, Europa resembles a large snowball, reflecting the light of the distant sun with astonishing efficiency. A closer look proves that this is indeed the case; Unlike the dark moon, Europa is crystal white, and most of its surface is covered in shimmering, stranded iceberg-like chunks. It is almost certain that these chunks are made up of ammonia and water that Jupiter's gravitational field has somehow failed to suck out.

Bare stones are visible only along the equator; It's a rugged no-man's land, full of canyons and rocks, forming a black band in a circle. There are craters formed by impact, but there are no signs of eruptions; Europa has clearly never had an intrinsic heat source.

As has been known for a long time, there are traces of the atmosphere here. When the dark edge of the moon streaks in front of the star, the star first darkens for a while before a total eclipse. And, in some areas, there are signs of clouds and fog - perhaps droplets of ammonia condensation, floating in the breeze of methane.

Europa suddenly appeared in the sky ahead, quickly flung behind the tail of the ship; At this time, it is only two hours away from Jupiter. Hal had been very careful to check the ship's orbit again and again, and there was no need to make any further speed corrections until the closest moment came.

Jupiter was now in the sky; It was so large that the eyes could not see the edges, and the mind could not imagine it, so I had to ignore it. If it weren't for the brilliant colors – red and pink, yellow and orange, and even purple – Bowman might have thought he was flying on the low cloud tops of the earth!

At this time, for the first time in their entire journey, the sun was about to be lost. Although the sun is fading and withering, it has been a frequent companion of Discovery in the five months since it left Earth. However, Discovery's orbit is reaching into the shadow of Jupiter and will soon fly to the far side of the planet.

A thousand miles ahead, the vast twilight was approaching; Behind it, the sun is rapidly sinking into the clouds of Jupiter. The sunlight follows the horizon like two upside-down horns with flames, then shrinks and disappears into a flash of colorful firelight. Night has fallen.

The deeper they went into the night of Jupiter, the brighter the light beneath the ground. Bowman once flew through northern Canada at the peak of the aurora's appearance, when the frozen earth was as desolate and bright as it was here. But the wilderness of the Arctic, he reminded himself, was a hundred degrees warmer than the area over which they now flew!

"The Earth signal is weakening rapidly," Hal announced, "and we are entering the first refractive zone." ”

They had expected this for a long time - in fact, it was one of the goals of their trip, because the absorption of radio waves would provide valuable intelligence to Jupiter's atmosphere. But now that they have moved to the far side of Jupiter and are now cut off from Earth, they can't help but suddenly feel unbearable loneliness. The radio outage lasted no more than an hour; Then, they will be freed from Jupiter's obscuration and reconnect with humanity. However, this hour will be the longest they will feel in their lives.

Although they were young, Poole and Bowman were already veterans of a dozen astronautics - but now they both felt like novices. They're making their first attempt; No ship has ever traveled at such a speed and dealt with such a strong gravitational field. At this critical juncture, the slightest misnavigation error would have sent Discovery to the outermost edge of the solar system, with no hope of being saved.

Every minute passed slowly.

(To be continued.) )