I felt a great inferiority complex while on Ganymede. The other ships laughed at me, “I leaked”, they said. “I was cold”, they said. “You have no atmosphere”, they giggled. I was choc-a-bloc full of equipment and three robots which gave the other ships even more cause for amusement. “Robots don’t go into space by themselves, they need humans to direct them and give them orders”, more cause for giggles and if you’ve never heard a space ship giggle then you’ve never heard a giggle.

Finally it was time for me to leave, the three robots walked on board with their six legs and all I could hear was more giggles and derisive comments. “What robot has six legs? If they’re going into space they’re meant to have two like humans!” The laughter was all mine when we arrived on Jupiter.

I was built for a very specific purpose, I had to get these three robots to Jupiter and then back again, there was nothing in my makeup that said I had to carry humans, so I was built with as much equipment as the robots needed to carry out their mission and nothing for humans. I didn’t need food or water, I needed no heating nor cooling equipment as the robots could heat and cool themselves adequately enough, nor did I need a force field to protect them from the near vacuum in Jovian atmosphere. As we came down onto Jupiter my pressure gauges began creeping skyward but all was well.

The Jovians approached and they began to send many different types of energy our way. The robots and I had been built carefully and while they noticed and recorded the information it didn’t affect them or me. After some hours they were taken away by the Jovians, I sat and waited as was my duty, after their return and our eventual return to space they discussed their events to try and make sense of all they’d seen. It seems ZZ One is rather clumsy and managed to kill one of their overlarge aquatic animals by slapping it gently, afterwards destroying the car the Jovians had kindly provided for their travel requirements; he stepped out of it neglecting to open the door first. Clumsy fellow, the other space ships would have many words to say about opening doors first.