Ghosts of Ganymede

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Meteor miners live a hard, lonely life. In their little cargo tugs they lurk about the outer precincts of the atmospheres of the giant planets, Jupiter or Saturn, waiting for the immensely powerful gravity fields of those enormous worlds to draw into their embrace the countless swarms of meteors that wander endlessly in the void.

When this occurs, the miners are glued to their ’scopes. Meteors largely composed of ice or frozen methane or stone behave differently than do those with cores of heavy metals, which the miners prize. And when they observe meteors which fall shrieking into the upper atmosphere of one of the giant worlds, fluttering in that characteristic manner, they know they have their prize.

Then comes the long, dangerous, often futile struggle to lock their grappling beams on the metal meteors, as their stubborn, little tugs battle grimly against the measureless power of the giant planet's gravitational field. More than one little tug has lost that struggle, and fallen to a fiery doom ...

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