oblongs and angles, more crystal than vegetational in form. Flowers there were none. Jovian vegetation, in the main, reproduced itself by fission and lived in the slow, creeping style of the unicell.” (“Penal World”)
“…the trees of the crystalline jungle sprouted branches of much the same pattern as newly woven cobwebs, rings of interlace, glittering crystal, the outermost edges of the rings being octagonal in shape. Here there was weird, fantastic beauty, every atom of it composed of ammonium base. Even the ‘grass’ was composed of fantastic spears of glass-like substance, which cracked to powder as the pair advanced.
“Ever and again, as they stumbled more deeply into the preposterous wilderness, below-zero forms—living by dividing upon themselves in the fission style of a unicell—scudded into safety, looking rather like spiked glass marbles shot through with veins of superb colour.” (Lord of Jupiter)
“Still they watched as the joherc came into complete view—a biped, only two feet tall, with two legs nearly as thick as a man’s body and almost fantastically muscled. Further support was provided by the broad, kangaroo-like tail on which it sat ever and again. Its remaining anatomy was made up of a pear-shaped body, stumpy arms, enormous pectoral muscles and chest—in which, according to description and reconstruction at the settlement bureau, there beat three powerful hearts to create a normal circulation in the enormous drag. On the mighty shoulders was the strange, triple-jointed neck, semi-human face with wide, half-grinning mouth and scaly head. A pure product of ammonia, living in a climate ideally suited to it—a living, thinking creature of superhuman strength and swiftness, mentally active, yet humanly childlike in manner—a veritable cosmic paradox.” (“Penal World”)
“He found himself gazing at an incredible creature. He had the contour of a man standing three feet in height and probably every inch as broad. Short, blocky legs were very powerful. His arms, too, were short and corded with muscles. To this was added a great barrel of a chest, a neck like a pillar and a perfectly round head. He had yellow eyes, broad nose and a fanged mouth. He had neither hair nor raiment, his entire body seeming to be covered in crystalline scales.” (Lord of Jupiter)
Relka also shares the joherc’s passion for consuming crystalline ammonia salts. And like him he has no ears, and is telepathic (“nature’s provision to prevent us being deafened by the vibrations in this heavy atmosphere”) and is highly intelligent. However, Fearn added some new qualities for the purposes of the novel—Relka has a decided sense of humour, and a unique philosophy: “…we are a lazy race. We don’t want to progress. We understand most scientific things but are not interested enough to develop them. Our theory is that the more refined you become the less happiness you have.”
Fearn clearly had great fun with this amazing character, and he provides much light relief, as well as figuring in some key plot developments. He was to feature to even greater advantage in later novels, electing to join forces with the Amazon out of his own, queer sense of loyalty.
“Penal World” by “Thornton Ayre” was submitted to Astounding Stories and accepted by its editor Orlin Tremaine on 23 July 1937. Thus encouraged, Fearn went on to produce more stories in the same vein.
PENAL WORLD
Mad, idiotic world! Air of absolute poison—trees basically ammonium carbonate—creatures living in a temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below zero centigrade—
James Cardew, former American citizen, was on Jupiter through no fault of his own. He was in no way to blame for the fact that he now stood inside his enormously reinforced spacesuit gazing out on a landscape incredibly vast and rugged, stretching to a colossal distance, bounded at remoteness by the boiling horror of the seven-thousand-mile-wide Great Red Spot.
Jupiter was the penal world of the system, last working place of the criminals of Earth, Mars, and Venus. And for a very good reason! Once a space machine landed on Jupiter it was common knowledge that, in the case of the huge convict machines at least, it could never leave. The titanic gravity of the planet claimed large-sized ships absolutely.
James Cardew had been framed by certain jealous officials of the space ways—shipped to Jupiter because he knew too much of graft and corruption in high places. For two years he had worked among the bitter-hearted men at the settlement—a vast underground abode of itanium metal, Periodic No. 187, vastly heavy, and the only known metal capable of withstanding, for six continuous months, the unbelievable pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere and down-drag. By the time the six months were up, this highly radioactive metal began to collapse—
The convicts’ entire life, therefore, consisted of building up the very walls that hemmed them in, And twenty miles away, where the walls were likewise always being repaired by good behavior men, was the underground residence of Governor Mason and his family, voluntarily marooned on this colossal world.
Despite the fact that within the governor’s abode and the settlement there were machines which nullified the crushing gravitation, men did go berserk at times—warders and prisoners alike. Some went to the exterior—a freely permitted act—quite unprotected, to die instantly in an atmosphere of pure ammoniated hydrogen at a frigid temperature of a hundred and twenty degrees below zero centigrade.
Others were smarter. They frisked itanium spacesuits and furtively escaped in them—but they were never heard of again. Either way it was suicide.
James Cardew had done pretty much the same thing. Suicide had been in his mind for months; he’d been on the verge of walking unprotected to the exterior. Then, from the external reflectors in the main machine room, he had seen a spaceship of the private variety—small and easy to handle—fall like a brilliant comet in the dense atmosphere, dropping finally about two hundred miles due east. If he could reach that ship he might, by very reason of its smallness, break the effect of Jupiter’s drag and get back to Earth, square his wrongful conviction.
It was pretty obvious that the vessel had been accidentally caught in the giant world’s enormous attractive field; maybe the pilot had been an amateur, unauthorized by the space flying committees. Whatever it was, James Cardew realized that he had to reach that ship within three weeks before the violent atmosphere and pressure made an end of it.
Three weeks—two hundred miles across Jupiter’s terrible terrain. To escape the prison had not been difficult. It was now that the difficulties began.
Cardew’s gray eyes were grim behind the six-inch, unbreakable glass of his helmet; his lean, powerful face was set in grimly determined lines, the lines of a man accustomed, by now, to bearing inexorable strain. For every step he took he was forced to raise a weight about three times in excess of normal, including his densely heavy spacesuit, so designed as to exclude external and maintain internal pressures.
Even so, being a one hundred and sixty eight-pound man, he weighed four hundred and forty-eight pounds on Jupiter, with his space suit and heavy equipment added to it. It made of his body a vastly heavy, aching machine.
He took stock of his position from behind the protection of two upjutting rocks of tremendously dense material. They afforded him a little shelter from the tycane—technical name for the vast two hundred and fifty mile-per-hour wind forever raging from pole to pole of the giant world. Yet by reason of the enormous gravity the effect of the wind on a human being was about equal to a gale of one hundred miles per hour. Around the Great Red Spot, the one remaining portion of Jupiter still un-solidified, despite the frigid cold of the rest of the surface, the tycane had been known to reach the incredible velocity of over four hundred miles per hour—but then the Spot was recognized by all experts as the fester spot of Jove, seven thousand miles of bubbling, densely heavy materials—
Cardew, moving his arms with enormous effort, studied his compass inside its protective
