MARTIAN NEWS - DATE 11994.0716
All the News around the Solar System from a Martian Viewpoint

COMET MASSACRES LIFE ON JUPITER

The comet designated ("Shoemaker-Levy" - the Martian/Jovian names are untranslateable. E. Herring) has started its inexorable pummelling of the Jovian atmosphere today, and is expected to last for the next few days. (See news item dated 11992.0707

The Jovian colonies received ample warning of this event by Martian astronomers as we always do on these occasions, and started mass-migration into the Northern hemisphere months ago. However, the collisions will still cause massive loss of Jovian life since the planet is simply teeming with it. The main intelligent species on Jupiter are however quite resigned to the whole disaster. "We are quite used to this sort of thing" said a Jovian spokesbeing, "We are grateful as always to the excellent Martian astronomers for the advance warning, as we of course have no means of viewing the oncoming projectiles through the thousands of miles of dense atmospheres that forever cut us off from Space; and thanks to their advice we can nowadays minimise the great loss of life that occurs each time, but this is the price we pay for living on the planetary vacuum-cleaner that is Jupiter. But we still wouldn't move anywhere else even if we could!"

Translated from original Martian by Elwood Herring
See Earth Web version of this story here

© P. Williams 2004

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