PLUTO, THE SOLAR SYSTEM'S COLDEST PLANET

LUTO, the outermost, coldest planet of the Solar

System, was first visited in the year 2002 by Jan

Wenzi, whose name has since been given to the

planet's great north polar sea.

PWenzi was the third of that great triumvirate of

space-pioneers, the other two of whom were the immor-

tal Gorham Johnson and Mark Carew. These three first

trail-blazers of space were men of widely different

type.

The lanky, somber-eyed Gorham Johnson, who

made the initial space-flight to the moon in 1971, and

who led the 1979 expedition to Venus and Mercury and

the 1988 expedition to Mars and Jupiter, is of course

the most famous of that great trio. Johnson was a

dreamer the greatest our race has ever known. It was

the dream of mankind expanding without limit into the

vast universe which spurred him on, even after his frail

body collapsed and he walked on artificial limbs.

Mark Carew, second in command of the Mars-

Jupiter expedition, took the leadership after Johnson's

tragic death on Callisto. He was basically a scientist.

Thirst for knowledge was the driving motive of Carew.

It led him to organize the 1991 expedition which first

visited Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. And it led him, a

few years later, on that last vain attempt to reach Pluto

from which Carew never returned.

MUTINY IN SPACE

But Jan Wenzi, to whom was reserved the glory of

reaching the farthest planet, was neither dreamer nor

scientist. He was of the age-old explorer type that is ob-

sessed by an unceasing desire to push beyond all

known frontiers, and to look upon places never before

seen by man.

Wenzi in his book (My Story, 2005), tells how as a

boy of fourteen he was in the crowd that watched

Gorham Johnson take off on his first epochal flight to

the moon.

"The crowd there on the Colorado plateau was mak-

ing skeptical jokes as Johnson entered the little rocket-

ship," writes Wenzi, "and when the craft roared up and

vanished there was much comment to the effect that a

crazy man had found a unique method of committing

suicide. But I knew, as I looked up into the sky after the

vanished ship, that some day I too was going to go out

there and look on worlds never seen before by Earth-

men."

When Gorham Johnson returned from the moon, and

was greeted by such a wild reception as no hero had

ever before been accorded, Wenzi tried frantically to

enlist in the coming Venus-Mercury expedition. But his

youth, and lack of technical training, prevented this.

Nothing daunted, the intrepid pioneer applied him-

self to technical studies and succeeded in joining the

Mars-Jupiter expedition of 1988. He was one of the few

of the crew who remained loyal to Johnson and Carew

when the crew threatened mutiny at going beyond

Mars. After Johnson's death on Callisto, when the expe-

dition landed on Jupiter, Wenzi was one of the first

Earth-men to step onto that mighty world. And there,

rashly, venturing alone into the jungle, he was attacked

by a Jovian "crawler," and so seriously injured that he

almost died on the way back to Earth.

EXPEDITION TO PLUTO

Wenzi's injuries did not prevent him from joining

Mark Carew in the historic 1991 expedition to Saturn,

Uranus and Neptune. But a fall while exploring on

Uranus so aggravated his old hurts that for four years

he lay in an Earth hospital, apparently hopelessly crip-

pled, and sending innumerable pitiful messages to his

idol. Thus, when Carew rocketed away again in 1994 in

an attempt to reach Pluto, Wenzi could not go and was

forced to lie on a hospital cot in utter misery at not be-

ing able to be along.

By 1999, Carew had been given up for lost, since he

had not returned nor sent back any word. The general

belief was that Pluto was too far to be reachable as yet,

and public attention turned toward the more easily ac-

cessible worlds of Mars and Venus and Jupiter, where

Earthmen were beginning to stream out to build colo-

nial cities and trade with the native races. In this great

fever of colonization, Pluto was more or less forgotten.

But Jan Wenzi had not forgotten. The old fever of

space-exploration gripped him as strongly as ever. He

had been released from hospital by that year, but he

was badly crippled, unable to walk more than a few

steps at a time, his hair graying even at the age of forty-

two from long hardship and suffering. Yet he had deter-

mined to reach Pluto.

There was general criticism when Wenzi began

forming his Pluto Expedition, because of his physical

disabilities and the enormous difficulties of the project.

Armchair space-travelers pointed out the impossibility

of the whole attempt. Scientists weightily listed the

tremendous obstacles to success in such an undertak-

ing, and the public as a whole had no belief whatever in

its soundness. Wenzi was mocked and satirized in car-

toons and on the theatrical stage.

But a few believed in Wenzi. They were old space-

men like himself, men who had rocketed with him in

past years and knew his indomitable spirit better than

the public. They came in answer to his call. With

eleven men, in the ship he had called the Johnson,

Wenzi blasted off for Pluto on January 12, 2000.

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

The brave explorer refueled and restocked supplies

at the new post on Saturn. From there he vanished out

into the vast empty outer spaces of the System. Not one

person in a million expected him ever to return. But re-

turn he did four years later the crippled commander

and four surviving men came roaring back to the inner

planets in their battered ship. He had achieved his great

ambition he bad been first on Pluto.

Wenzi lived only a year after his return to Earth.

The government had decorated him, but refused to per-

mit him to leave the hospital in which he was a virtual

invalid, chafing at the inaction, he wasted away and

soon died. The last words muttered by the indomitable

explorer were, "Blast off!"

Wenzi's expedition had found Pluto a frigid, icy

world, but one where hardy Earthmen could live. Ice-

fields covered almost the whole planet except a narrow

equatorial region of frozen plains, and the great seas

whose salt-content was so high that they remained un-

frozen.

Wenzi had also been the first to discover the March-

ing Mountains, those amazing, titanic glaciers that

move around the planet in a regular path. He had pene-

trated as far southwest as the shores of the Lethe

Ocean, and as far southeast as the curious Ring Sea,

whose whirling tide circled a great central, mountain-

ous island that has never been successfully explored.

None to this day have visited that mysterious island and

returned.

ICE-CITIES OF A FROZEN WORLD

Wenzi had also found the strange ice-cities of the

native Plutonians and had established friendly contact

with that hairy race. He brought back tales of the enor-

mous animals that rove the ice-fields, or biburs and ice-

bears and ice-cats and other huge furred beasts. Also,

he brought back samples of minerals and precious

stones blasted from the frozen plains, which were badly

needed on Earth.

The lure of furs and gems and precious minerals led

further explorers to Pluto, and in 2008 an attempt was

made to establish a colony there. The attempt failed, the

little colony men, women, and two infants being

wiped out by one of the ferocious equatorial blizzards.

It was seen that an Earthman colony would need elabo-

rate protection against the cold and storms of the icy

planet.

So, in 2011, a more ambitious colonizing attempt

was made. A large glassite dome was set up and air-

conditioned by atomic machinery, and inside this dome

was built the city appropriately named Tartarus. The

domed cities of Elysia and Newton were built nearby

soon after, and other Earthmen cities arose shortly on

the other side of the planet.

Cerberus, until then rarely visited, was designated

by the System Government as the site of an Interplane-

tary Prison, in 2012. Charon, was even less often visit-

ed, because of the nightmare ferocity of its animal life.

Styx, the third moon, had been ignored from the first

because it was plain to be seen it was completely water-

covered.

EARTH'S NEW COLONY

The Earthman colony on Pluto has flourished, but

growth has not been fast. The vast distance from the in-

ner planets has necessitated design of a wholly new

type of spaceship with great cruising-radius. Also, dis-

tance from the sun so weakens the ultraviolet and other

necessary solar radiation that Earthmen find it neces-

sary to resort to periodical exposure to artificial thera-

peutic vibrations to counteract this lack. Temperament

and character also, on the outer planets, suffers curious

alterations.

Chief exports from Pluto, beside the furs that are fa-

mous through the whole System, are such valuable met-

als as cadmium, vanadium, tungsten and others. There

are small radium mines north of Lethe Ocean but they

produce but little compared to the great uranium and ra-

dium industry of Jupiter. There is a certain demand

from planetary zoos for the bizarre Plutonian animals,

which must, of course, be kept in refrigerated cages.

It is probable that when more of Pluto's icy surface

is explored, new sources of valuable exports will be

found. One curious feature that must be mentioned in

connection with this distant planet is the strange mental

affliction which the System psychiatrists call "Plutoma-

nia." Earthmen and other people of the inner planets

who stay long on the icy world are liable to develop a

queer psychosis that is manifested as an hysterical crav-

ing for light.

This malady arises, of course, from the eternal dusk

of this world. Venusians, accustomed to more light than

Earthmen, are affected more quickly. Mercurians are so

strongly affected that few of that race have ever visited

the planet.