The sky above was almost black, except for a few wisps of ammonia cirrus perhaps twelve miles overhead. It was cold up there, on the fringes of space but both pressure and temperature increased rapidly with depth. At the level where Kon-Tiki was drifting now, it was fifty below zero, and the pressure was five atmospheres. Sixty-five miles farther down, it would be as warm as equatorial Earth, and the pressure about the same as at the bottom of one of the shallower seas. Ideal conditions for life. A quarter of the brief Jovian day had already gone, the sun was halfway up the sky, but the light on the unbroken cloudscape below had a curious mellow quality. That extra three hundred million miles had robbed the Sun of all its power. Though the sky was clear, Falcon found himself continually thinking that it was a heavily overcast day. When night fell, the onset of darkness would be swift indeed; though it was still morning, there was a sense of autumnal twilight in the air. But autumn, of course, was something that never came to Jupiter. There were no seasons here.
Kon-Tiki had come down in the exact centre of the equatorial zone the least colourful part of the planet. The sea of clouds that stretched out to the horizon was tinted a pale salmon, there were none of the yellows and pinks and even reds that banded Jupiter at higher altitudes. The Great Red Spot, itself the most spectacular of all of the planet’s features, lay thousands of miles to the south. It had been a temptation to descend there, but the south topical disturbance was unsually active, with currents reaching over nine undred miles an hour. It would have been asking for trouble to head into at maelstrom of unknown forces. The Great Red Spot and its mysteries would have to wait for future expeditions.