Jupiter's Light

"I didn't realize there would be so much lightning" Mark said as he looked out the small window towards Jupiter. The different bands looked like rivers running past each other all at different speeds. It was an amazing sight even if it wasn't so huge. The planet was tremendous, much bigger than Mark imagined. He always knew it was bigger than Earth but seeing it in person was beyond any picture he had seen in training. "Are you sure you want to fly into that captain?"

"That's the whole point of the mission, I'm not wasting 3 trillion dollars because we were nervous about lightning." Ayn said. "Besides, we need the water ourselves." The purpose of their journey to Mark's understanding was to find ways of getting water while out in space. Lakes and streams were hard to come by in between Mars and Jupiter so far reaching journeys were difficult to pull off without new supplies. What did have a lot of water though was Jupiter's atmosphere. The idea Mark was told in training was ships would dip into its atmosphere, pull out some water and then shoot out to their destination, making much longer trips possible. Mark thought there was an ulterior motive though. There had to be a better reason than water for such an expensive mission to be planned and executed in less than a year, but Ayn became silent if not downright angry whenever asked. Mark was a nuclear scientist, in charge of making sure the engine did not break. Even though he had never heard of a nuclear engine he didn't ask too many questions, he was just excited to go to Jupiter when asked, although he regretted it now.

"Are we ready for our descent into the upper atmosphere?" Ayn asked her crew ignoring Mark's looks.

"Yes captain." Lieutenant Johnson said after checking the computer models one last time.

"Then lets go. Make sure NASA is getting the live stream of data incase anything happens." Jupiter was taking up the entire window now. Mark could not see the edge of the planet. What does she mean in case anything happens? He could feel the gravity starting to pull him down towards the planet. The ship started to shake. Mark could hear metal breaking around him, a bright light, and then nothing.

Back on Earth scientists were watching their computer screens very closely. "Dammit! Get the President on the line, the mission failed."

"Are you sure it didn't work sir?"

"I'm sure, it would have ignited immediately. Operation Phoenix is done. We will have to think of another solution."

"But the Sun only has 5 months of fuel left! If we couldn't make Jupiter into a star what are we going to do next?"

"I don't know and don't let any of that information out or else the riots will start for sure. Just get the President on the line. Let him try to think of a new idea for once."