WHAT THE CAMERA SHOWED A half hour later we had our recordings. Joan sat facing me on the elevated pilot dais, her head swathed in bandages. Dawson and the two other members of our crew stood just beneath us, their faces sombre in the cube-light. They had miraculously escaped injury, although Dawson had a badly shaken up look. His hair was tousled and his jaw muscles twitched. Dawson was fifty-three years old, but the others were still in their early twenties--stout lads who could take it. The fuel unit control pilot, James Darnel, was standing with his shoulders squared, as though awaiting orders. I didn't want to take off. I had fought Joan all the way, but now that we were actually on Jupiter I wanted to go out with her into the unknown, and stand with her under the swirling, star-concealing mist. I wanted to be the first man to set foot on Jupiter. But I knew now that the first man would be the last. The atmospheric recordings had revealed that there were poisons in Jupiter's lethal cloud envelope which would have corroded our flesh through our space suits and burned out our eyes. Joan had been compelled to bow to the inevitable. Bitterly she sat waiting for me to give the word to take off. I was holding a portable horizon camera in my hand. It was about the smallest, most incidental article of equipment we had brought along. The huge, electro-shuttered horizon camera which we had intended to use on Ganymede had been so badly damaged by the jar of our descent that it was useless now. We had projected the little camera by a horizontal extension tripod through a vacuum suction lock and let it swing about. I didn't expect much from it. It was equipped with infra-red and ultra-violet ray filters, but the atmosphere was so dense outside I didn't think the sensitive plates would depict anything but swirling spirals of mist. I was waiting for the developing fluid to do its work before I broke the camera open and removed the plates. We had perhaps one chance in ten of getting a pictorial record of Jupiter's topographical features. I knew that one clear print would ease Joan's frustration and bitterness, and give her a sense of accomplishment. But I didn't expect anything sensational. Venus is a frozen wasteland from pole to pole, and the dust-bowl deserts of Mars are exactly like the more arid landscapes of Earth. Most of Earth is sea and desert and I felt sure that Jupiter would exhibit uniform surface features over nine-tenths of its crust. Its rugged or picturesque regions would be dispersed amidst vast, dun wastes. The law of averages was dead against our having landed on the rim of some blue-lit, mysterious cavern measureless to man, or by the shores of an inland sea. But Joan's eyes were shining again, so I didn't voice my misgivings. Joan's eyes were fastened on the little camera as though all her life were centered there. "Well, Richard," she urged. My hands were shaking. "A few pictures won't give _me_ a lift," I said. "Even if they show mountains and crater-pits and five hundred million people gape at them on Earth." "Don't be such a pessimist, Richard. We'll be back in a month with impermeable space suits, and a helmet filter of the Silo type. You're forgetting we've accomplished a lot. It's something to know that the temperature outside isn't anything like as ghastly as the cold of space, and that the pebbles we've siphoned up show Widman-statten lines and contain microscopic diamonds. That means Jupiter's crust isn't all volcanic ash. There'll be something more interesting than tumbled mounds of lava awaiting us when we come back. If we can back our geological findings with prints--" "You bet we can," I scoffed. "I haven't a doubt of it. What do you want to see? Flame-tongued flowers or gyroscopic porcupines? Take your choice. Richard the Great never fails." "Richard, you're talking like that to hide something inside you that's all wonder and surmise." Scowling, I broke open the camera and the plates fell out into my hand. They were small three by four inch positive transparencies, coated on one side with a iridescent emulsion which was still slightly damp. Joan's eyes were riveted on my face. She seemed unaware of the presence of the crewmen below us. She sat calmly watching me as I picked up the top-most plate and held it up in the cube-light. I stared at it intently. It depicted--a spiral of mist. Simply that, and nothing more. The spiral hung in blackness like a wisp of smoke, tapering from a narrow base. "Well?" said Joan. "Nothing on this one," I said, and picked up another. The spiral was still there, but behind it was something that looked like an ant-hill. "Thick mist getting thinner," I said. The third plate gave me a jolt. The spiral had become a weaving ghost shroud above a distinct elevation that could have been either a mountain or an ant-hill. It would have been impossible to even guess at the elevation's distance from the ship if something hadn't seemed to be crouching upon it. The mist coiled down over the thing and partly obscured it. But enough of it was visible to startle me profoundly. It seemed to be crouching on the summit of the elevation, a wasplike thing with wiry legs and gauzy wings standing straight out from its body. My fingers were trembling so I nearly dropped the fourth plate. On the fourth plate the thing was clearly visible. The spiral was a dispersing ribbon of mist high up on the plate and the mound was etched in sharp outlines on the emulsion. The crouching shape was unmistakably wasplike. It stood poised on the edge of the mound, its wings a vibrating blur against the amorphously swirling mist. From within the mound a companion shape was emerging. The second "wasp" was similar to the poised creature in all respects, but its wings did not appear to be vibrating and from its curving mouth-parts there dangled threadlike filaments of some whitish substance which was faintly discernible against the mist. The fifth and last plate showed both creatures poised as though for flight, while something that looked like the head of still another wasp was protruding from the summit of the mound. I passed the plates to Joan without comment. Wonder and exaltation came into her face as she examined them, first in sequence and then haphazardly, as though unable to believe her eyes. "_Life_," she murmured at last, her voice tremulous with awe. "_Life on Jupiter._ Richard, it's--unbelievable. This great planet that we thought was a seething cauldron is actually inhabited by--_insects_." "I don't think they're insects, Joan," I said. "We've got to suspend judgment until we can secure a specimen and study it at close range. It's an obligation we owe to our sponsors and--to ourselves. We're here on a mission of scientific exploration. We didn't inveigle funds from the Smithsonian so that we could rush to snap conclusions five hundred million miles from Earth. "_Insectlike_ would be a safer word. I've always believed that life would evolve along parallel lines throughout the entire solar system, assuming that it could exist at all on Venus, Mars, or on one of the outer planets. I've always believed that any life sustaining environment would produce forms familiar to us. On Earth you have the same adaptations occurring again and again in widely divergent species. "There are lizards that resemble fish and fish that are lizardlike. The dinosaur Triceratops resembled a rhinoceros, the duck-billed platypus a colossal. Porpoises and whales are so fishlike that no visitor from space would ever suspect that they were mammals wearing evolutionary grease paint. And some of the insects look just like crustaceans, as you know. "These creatures _look_ like insects, but they may not even be protoplasmic in structure. They may be composed of some energy-absorbing mineral that has acquired the properties of life." Joan's eyes were shining. "I don't care what they're composed of, Richard. We've got to capture one of those creatures alive." I shook my head. "Impossible, Joan. If the air outside wasn't poisonous I'd be out there with a net. But there are limits to what we can hope to accomplish on this trip." "We've siphoned up specimens of the soil," Joan protested. "What's to stop us from trying to catch up one of them in a suction cup?" "You're forgetting that suction cups have a diameter of scarcely nine inches," I said. "These creatures may be as huge as the dragonflies of the Carboniferous Age." "Richard, we'll project a traveling suction cup through one of the vacuum locks and try to--" Her teeth came together with a little click. Startled, I turned and stared at her. Despite her elation she had been sitting in a relaxed attitude, with her back to the control panel and her latex taped legs extended out over the dais. Now she was sitting up straight, her face deathly pale in the cube-light. The creatures were standing a little to the right of the rigidly staring crewmen, their swiftly vibrating wings enveloped in a pale bluish radiance which swirled upward toward the ribbed metal ceiling of the pilot chamber. Enormous they were--and unutterably terrifying with their great, many-faceted eyes fastened in brooding malignance upon us. Joan and I arose simultaneously, drawn to our feet by a horror such as we had never known. A sense of sickening unreality gripped me, so that I could neither move nor cry out. Dawson alone remained articulate. He raised his arm and pointed, his voice a shrill bleat. "Look out, sir! Look out! There's another one coming through the wall directly behind you." The warning came too late. As I swung toward the quartz port I saw Joan's arm go out, her body quiver. Towering above her was a third gigantic shape, the tip of its abdomen resting on her shoulders, its spindly legs spread out over the pilot dais. As I stared at it aghast it shifted its bulk, and a darkly gleaming object that looked like a shrunken bean-pod emerged from between Joan's shoulder blades. Joan moaned and sagged on the dais, her hands going to her throat. Instantly the wasp swooped over me, its abdomen descending. For an awful instant I could see only a blurred shapelessness hovering over me. Then a white-hot shaft of pain lanced through me and the blur receded. But I was unable to get up. I was unable to move or think clearly. My limbs seemed weighted. I couldn't get up or help Joan or even roll over. My head was bursting and my spine was a board. I must have tried to summon help, for I seem to remember Dawson sobbing: "I'm paralyzed too, sir," just before my senses left me and I slumped unconscious on the dais. How long I remained in blackness I had no way of knowing. But when I opened my eyes again I was no longer on the dais. I was up under the ceiling of the pilot chamber, staring down at the corrugated floor through what looked like a glimmering, whitish haze. Something white and translucent wavered between my vision and the floor, obscuring the outlines of the great wasps standing there. There were five wasps standing directly beneath me in the center of the pilot chamber, their wings a luminous blur in the cube-light. My perceptions were surprisingly acute. I wasn't confused mentally, although my mouth felt parched and there was a dull, throbbing ache in my temples. The position in which I found myself and the whitish haze bewildered me for only an instant. I knew that the "haze" was a web the instant I studied its texture. And when I tried to move and couldn't the truth dawned in all its horror. I was suspended beneath the ceiling of the chamber in a translucent, hammock-like web. I was lying on my stomach, my limbs bound by fibrous strands as resistant as whipcords. Minutes which seemed like eternities passed as I lay there with fear clutching at my heart. I could only gaze downward. The crewmen had vanished and the wasps were standing like grim sentinels in front of the control panel. I was almost sure that Joan and the crewmen were suspended in similar webs close to me. I thought I knew what the wasps had done to us. I had talked to Joan about life evolving along parallel lines throughout the Solar System, but I hadn't expected to encounter life as strange and frightening as this--insectlike, and yet composed of some radiant substance that could penetrate solid metal and flow at will through the walls of a ship. Some radiant substance that had weight and substance and could touch human flesh without searing it. Nothing so ghastly strange and yet--indisputably the creatures were wasplike. And being wasplike their habit patterns were similar to those of so-called social wasps on Earth. Social wasps sting caterpillars into insensibility, and deposit eggs in their paralyzed flesh. When the wasp-grubs hatch they become ghoulish parasites, gruesomely feasting until the caterpillars dwindle to repulsive, desiccated husks.