Webster had certainly done his homework. But that, of course, was why he was head of Long-Range Planning.

“There’s very little saving when you allow for the extra distance and the logistics problems. For Jupiter, we can use the facilities of Ganymede. Beyond Saturn, we’d have to establish a new supply base.”

Logical, thought Webster, but he was sure that it was not the important reason. Jupiter was lord of the solar system, Falcon would be interested in no lesser challenge.

“Besides,” Falcon continued, “Jupiter is a major scientific scandal. It’s more than a hundred years since its radio storms were discovered, but we still don’t know what causes them and the Great Red Spot is as big a mystery as ever. That’s why I can get matching funds from the Bureau of Astronautics. Do you know how many probes they have dropped into that atmosphere?”

“A couple of hundred, I believe.”

“Three hundred and twenty-six, over the last fifty years, about a quarter of them total failures. Of course, they’ve learned a hell of a lot, but they’ve barely scratched the planet. Do you realise how big it is?”

“More than ten times the size of Earth.”

“Yes, yes, but do you know what that really means?”

Falcon pointed to the large globe in the corner of Webster’s office.

“Look at India, how small it seems. Well, if you skinned Earth and spread it out on the surface of Jupiter, it would look about as big as India does here.”

There was a long silence while Webster contemplated the equation:

Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India. Falcon had deliberately, of course, chosen the best possible example…

Was it already ten years ago? Yes, it must have been. The crash lay seven years in the past (that date was engraved on his heart), and those initial tests had taken place three years before the first and last flight of the Queen Elizabeth.