CHAPTER 1Jay Bruce’s deceptively mild face was grimly alert as he piloted the small 100-jet ship through the murk of Jupiter’s thick, stormy atmosphere.
Muscles trigger-tense for any emergency, he kept his trained fingers poised over the jet keyboard. Cruising over Jupiter was the most hazardous undertaking in the Solar System. Up above, the sky was simply an impenetrable blanket of opaque gases, 8,000 miles deep. Down below, the ground was barely visible.
Bruce did not dare cruise closer, because of the treacherous pull of the huge planet’s gravity.
Damn, but this was a strain. Give him the wide-open spaces anytime. Or even the hell-hot comet run around the sun, where for six days your eyes ached with glare and sweat bubbled from your skin. Here he sweated, too, but from sheer mental a
