Chapter 2

But time had to pass before that metal colossus could drive itself and fall the thousand miles to the bleak, dried-out hills below. And the space ship hurtled on, to leave the point of coming impact far beyond the horizon. This, the Kraskows knew, was fortunate for them. The solid bulk of Titan would be the shield between them and holocaust. No human eyes could have looked directly on such a holocaust, at a range of a mere thousand miles, and not be burned from their sockets.

Bert and Alice noticed that the Space Patrol craft were no longer pursuing them. Alice switched on the radio again but only jangled sounds came through.

"Now for the last half of our job, Allie," Bert said. "First we attach shoulder-pack jets to our spacesuits."

This was accomplished a few seconds before the stupendous flash of the Big Pill's explosion blazed beyond the horizon. The dark curve of Titan's bulk was limned against thin white fire that streamed outward toward the stars like comet's hair. The spectacle looked like a much-enlarged color-photo of a segment of a solar eclipse. The glare on the other side of Titan was so intense and far-reaching that the night-portions of huge Saturn and his other satellites, and the shadowed part of the fabulous, treasure-filled Rings, all hundreds of thousands of miles away, registered an easily perceptible flicker. But in airless space, of course, no sound was transmitted.

Alice's face went pale. Bert did not stop doing what must be done--adjusting the timing system in the black case beside his pilot seat, and looking with a final, intense glance along the cable which led back through the hull of the ship to a silvery, pipelike thing around which the thousands of tons of sinister black ingots were stacked. It was the primer-cap of another kind of subatomic fury.

About the white fire beyond the horizon, hardly dimming at all after its first dazzling flash, neither Alice nor Bert said anything. Maybe their awe and concern were too great. But already long fingers of incandescent gases were jetting and flowing over the hilltops, as if to catch up with the speeding ship.

Bert Kraskow knew pretty well what was going on where the Big Pill had struck the crust of Titan. First, there had been that stupendous blast. Then, inconceivable blue-white incandescence, like the heart of a star, began gnawing more gradually into the walls of the gigantic crater that had been formed. A chain-reacting process was now spreading through the silicates and other components of Titan's crust. It was a blunt and terrible inferno.

But to the scientist's view, chemical compounds were being broken apart; atoms were being shattered, and recast in new forms, as floods of neutrons, and other basic particles raced like bullets through their structure. On a small scale, here was something that was like the birth of the universe.

Bert found his voice at last. "The ship is firm in its orbit around Titan, Allie. The primer is set for thirty minutes from now. And we're approaching position above camp again. So here's where we bail out."

The Kraskow's closed their helmet face-windows and jumped from the airlock together. Flame-propelled by their shoulder-pack jets, they darted downward toward the sad, rolling hills that curved away under the weak light of the distance-shrunken sun. It was hard to believe that eons ago, before most of Titan's air and water had leaked away into space, those hills had been green with life.

Even with an ugly, red-lit vapor pouring and spreading over the arc of Titan's edge, they thought of such things.

* * * * *

Their helmet radiophones were full of static from intense electromagnetic disturbances, so that it was hard to converse.

But presently Alice shouted: "Bert! It's funny that we don't see the ship from camp anywhere in space. They must have gotten our warning to blast off with everybody. Radio reception was clear as a bell, then!... Wait! Somebody's trying to call us now...."

Bert strained his ears to penetrate the scratchy noises thrown up by the atomic holocaust that he had set off, and hear the words spoken blurredly by a familiar voice:

"... Bert ... Alice.... This is Lawler.... Rockets of ship won't function.... So ... can't leave ... camp.... Two Space Patrol boats cleared Titan with some ... women.... Too small ... few passengers.... Most ... stranded here.... Bert--what?... I think ... Lauren...."

The rest of the words were drowned in a cataract of static.

Bert gulped. His mouth tasted suddenly sour with near-panic. "Lauren," he grated, his voice like a file. "Again. It would be a long chance that the ship broke down just by coincidence. He doctored those rockets and probably got clear in his own spaceboat. Leave it to him to make the use of the Big Pill look like disaster. And it can be that, now, with people left in the danger zone, losing their heads, acting foolishly."

Bert felt much more than just bitter, furious chagrin. His fellow colonists might lose their lives. He was responsible. He had launched a gigantic experiment recklessly.

"All we can do is get back to camp as fast as possible," Alice shouted above the static. "Come on, Bert! Bear down on the jets!"

So they hurtled at even greater speed toward the surface of Titan below. Meanwhile, faintly luminous vapors continued to pour over the hills from the direction of the terrible glow that fringed the horizon. Minutes before they reached the ground, hot, dusty murk thickened around them. It blew against them like a devil's wind.

They began to use their jets to brake speed. The camp was all but lost to view in the thickening haze. They landed heavily a mile outside it and went rolling for a few yards after the impact. Dazed, they staggered up.

For a while their impressions were blurred, as if they struggled through some murky, cobwebby nightmare. Once more on Titan, silent as death for unthinkable ages, there were howling wind-sounds that found their way to Alice and Bert dimly through their oxygen helmets. Often the hot blast bowled them over, but they arose and kept on toward camp.

Bert took a Geiger counter, pencil-size from his chest-pouch. In it, flashes of light replaced the ancient clicking. It flickered madly. This meant that outside their shielding spacesuits was radioactive death. The gases of the wind that howled around them, had been in part released from chemical compounds, but more had been transmuted from other elements of the rock and dust in the crust of Titan, in that atomic vortex where the Big Pill had struck. Those gases were so new that they were tainted with the fires of their birth--saturated with radioactivity.

"It's nothing that we didn't expect, Allie," Bert grated into his helmet-phone, as if to reassure himself as well as his wife. "We knew beforehand."

His arm was around Alice, supporting her unsteady steps. Through blowing clouds of dust and gas that had surpassed hurricane force, they reached camp. Through the murk they saw that the wind had flattened and scorched every airdome. But there was no one in sight.

"The people must be inside the ship!" Alice shouted. "Even if it can't fly, it can protect them! There it is, undamaged!..."

"Yeah," Bert agreed, but he knew that her cheerfulness was a little like grabbing at a straw.

Then Alice had another thought, "By now there isn't anymore Space Ship _Prometheus_," she said. "It has melted to a globe of incandescent metal, kept hot by a slow atomic breakdown in its substance. But it's sticking to the same tight orbit around Titan."

They hadn't seen it happen because by then the _Prometheus_ had passed beyond the horizon. But the globe would circle Titan and return.

Alice kept trying to be cheerful. Bert felt a flicker of that same mood when he said, "Sure, Allie." But then his mind dropped the subject of the _Prometheus_. For there was too much terrible uncertainty and human confusion to be dealt with.

Bert led Alice to the small, seldom-used airlock near the stern of the camp ship. He had a logical hunch that Lawler would be waiting just inside to tell them what the situation was on board.

The hunch proved true. The lock's inner door slid aside stiffly and there was Lawler, a finger to his lips.

Quickly the Kraskows removed their radioactivity-tainted spacesuits. Bert spoke softly.

"Well, Lawler, how do the gases that are spreading over Titan test out chemically?"

"As was expected, Bert. Plenty of nitrogen. Some helium. Plenty of hydrogen. A lot more oxygen. So that, as all of the hydrogen burns--combines with it to form water-vapor--there still will be lots of oxygen left over, floating free. Of course these gases are still so radioactive that half a lungful would kill. Only time will tell if Doc figured things straight. By the way, where is he?"

"Dead," Bert answered. "Murdered."

Lawler's lip curled, but he showed no surprise. "Uhunh," he grunted. "We can't prove the sabotage of this ship's rockets, either. When we tried to take off they just fizzled out their insides."

Then Lawler's eyes gleamed. "But," he said, "I foresaw funny business, so I doctored the jets of Lauren's private spaceboat as a precaution. He's still here with a couple of his stooges. He just about had hysterics when the space cops couldn't find room for him. He's been yelling accusations and promises of court action ever since while trying to repair his spaceboat."

"How are the colonists taking what happened?" Bert cut in.

Lawler shrugged. "Not bad. Not good. What you'd expect. Lots of those people are new to space. That was hard to take in itself. Add some messy deaths, and now this. And with Lauren yelling--well--plenty of them don't like us."

"Did anybody get hurt, yet?" Bert demanded.

"Not yet. Want to see the bunch?"

"Sure," Bert answered.

* * * * *

He thrust Alice behind him as they approached the main lounge of the ship where most of the colonists were assembled.

Trenton Lauren's voice burst on his ears. "There he is! Kraskow, I'll see that you spend your life in prison! A Patrol ship is coming out from Mars right now to get you! You may even hang! Out there in camp are ten million dollars' worth of equipment--property of my firm--which has been destroyed by your malicious action. And you've made a whole world useless for colonization for centuries to come! It's poisoned with radioactivity! Maybe we'll all die! Do you hear me, Kraskow? Die!"

Bert Kraskow moved quietly forward, past faces that glowered at him. Then he struck. There was a vicious thud. Lauren went down, drooling blood, his eyes glazed. Bert did not lose a motion as he stepped forward, and laid Lauren's two henchmen low with equal dispatch.

Minutes passed before the trio was awake again. Before Lauren could spout more venom, Bert stopped him with a growl. "Get out of my sight," he said. "Say another word and you'll get more of what you just got."

They went, Lawler following to watch out for possible mischief.

"None of us are hurt, yet," Bert told those near him, "though some things have gone wrong. Let's sit tight and see how matters turn out."

As he looked around him Bert felt that most of the colonists didn't really care to listen to him. Maybe you couldn't blame them. They'd all heard and seen too much. And, in a sense, Bert felt little different than they did. There was fear in him, and tension. He had released a colossus. Calculations and minor tests might call it a genie of benevolence. But this remained still unproven.

Outside, the wind howled, making the ship quiver. The glow from the Big Pill continued to paint the now murky sky. Bert and his wife waited grimly and silently in the lounge with the others. Hours passed without much change. Once, briefly, it was red-lit night. Then this changed for a while to daylight that was blurred, but far stronger than that to which a Saturnine moon was accustomed.

A little later Lawler came back to the lounge. "Trenton and his bums got their spaceboat patched up," he announced. "I watched 'em do it. They went out protected by spacesuits, of course. They did a botch job, but I guess it'll hold. Now they're taking off."

Through the leaded glass of the window-ports, the colonists watched the craft vanish into the steam-filled wind.

A minute later disaster struck the colonists.

The explosion was not heavy against the roar of the storm, but a jagged hole, a yard across, was ripped in the ship's hull. Into the hole rushed the hot, radioactive wind. Automatic safety doors failed to close properly. Maybe they had been sabotaged, too, by Lauren.

Many of the colonists were wearing spacesuits. They were the lucky ones, only having to slam their face-windows shut to be protected sufficiently from radiation. The others had to scramble to armor themselves. Bert and Alice Kraskow, and Lawler, had been outside. The outer surfaces of their suits had been contaminated, so they had had to remove them inside the ship to avoid tainting their surroundings. And in the press of events they hadn't thought to put on other spacesuits.

In the lounge and elsewhere, fastened against the walls, were such armor for emergency use. Bert tried to help his wife get into one. But she ordered sharply: "I can do this! Take care of yourself, Bert."

He didn't do that. Nor did Lawler. They ran down a passage toward the rent in the ship, intent on stopping the gases that were flooding the craft's interior. Seconds were important. The radioactive wind, much cooled during the long journey from its point of origin, but poisoned by invisible emanations, struck their unprotected bodies. Yet they kept on. They dared not breathe or speak; still they worked together with an efficiency of terrible need, stepping over the forms of men who had already fallen.

Bert found a flat sheet of metal to use as a patch. He fitted it over the rent, and, while Lawler piled boxes of supplies against it to hold it in place, sealed the edges with a thick, tarry substance.

When the job was done they staggered back to the lounge. Blotches of color danced before their vision. Many corpuscles in their blood had already been destroyed by radiation. They sank to the deck.

* * * * *

Bert had a jangled impression of Alice, now in a spacesuit, holding his head. He saw her lips mouthing endearments.... Game little Allie.... His mind wandered off. He was going to die. Maybe everyone on the ship was going to die. Lauren's last move had been meant to provide a real disaster, with many deaths! Prove the Big Pill a failure. Make sure that it would be banned for good by the Safe Products Approval Board. Put the stamp of crime on Doc Kramer, the gentle little scientist who had been murdered! And on him, Bert Kraskow. And where was the rat, Lauren? On his way to the colonized moons of Jupiter, or even Mars, yelling and accusing by radio all along the line?

As consciousness faded further, Bert stopped thinking unpleasant things. His mind drifted into Doc Kramer's dream--of the changes which would make the near-dead worlds of space really habitable and homelike, fit for human colonists. It was a beautiful, lost vision.

He was out cold, then, for several Earth-days, and only dimly aware for many days afterward. He knew that he was in the ship's sick-bay, and that Lawler and other men were there, too. He heard their voices, and his own, without remembering what was said. Alice often came to see him. Often he heard roaring, watery sounds, as of vast rains.

Gradually he came out of the dream-like period, learning of what had happened. Until the time when he walked from the sick-bay, unsteadily, but on the mend.

Alice, at his elbow, spoke: "It was like Doc Kramer planned, Bert, solving the hardest problem."

He knew what this meant. Transmutation, or any atomic process, must involve the generation of much radioactivity that can destroy life. In the Big Pill, the problem was to make all the atoms break, and rearrange their components into new elements as cleanly and sharply as possible, so that residual atomic instability--radioactivity, that is--would not linger for years, but would disappear quickly.

"Titan's new atmosphere is clean and breathable, now, Bert," Alice went on. "And likewise the radioactive poisons that made you and Lawler and the others very ill disappeared quickly from your bodies. However, two colonists were beyond saving."

Lawler was with the Kraskows. They went out of the ship without the cumbersome protection of spacesuits. A Space Patrolman hovered like a worried hawk, watching Bert, but the latter seemed not to mind.

Far above, replacing the hard stars and blackness of space, common to the firmaments of all dead and near-dead worlds, were great fleecy clouds and blue sky. The atmosphere, because of Titan's low gravity, was highly expanded and hence thin, but rich in oxygen. The breeze smelled cool and fresh. Overhead was a second sun, seemingly much larger in diameter than the distant central orb of the solar system. It crept with visible motion across the sky. It was the molten globe of what had been the _Prometheus_ and its cargo, locked in its sub-lunar orbit around Titan. But it was calculated to provide sufficient warmth and light to a small world such as this, for ten Earth-years, without renewal.

Colonists were clearing away the wreckage of the now useless airdomes, and putting their cottages in order. But they still looked around in awe at the miracles that ended their space-nostalgia, making them feel truly at home here. Down in the valley there was even a great lake of rainwater from condensed steam--one of the end-products of the process that had gone on in the rocks of the great crater on the other side of Titan. That process had died to a sleepy smoking, now; but all over this moon of Saturn there were many lakes.

Big Lawler chuckled gleefully, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. "Rejuvenation of burnt-out spheres on a really progressive basis," he growled. "No obsolete, jury-rigged junk! Expensive? Sure! But we can pay for it! Out there are Saturn's metal-rich Rings!"

Bert was thinking that the same trick could be used on any world with enough gravity to hold down a respectable atmosphere. Half-dead Mars. Jupiter's four biggest moons. Some of the other satellites of Saturn. Mercury.

"The one thing that burns me is that my brother, Nick, and Doc Kramer, and those two colonists, had to die!" Bert grated. "Poor Doc. He was rich from the atomic engines he invented. And I knew long ago that, by his will, all his stock is to be put in trust for the welfare of spacemen and colonists. Should we feel glad or humble?"

Lawler's grin had become a snarl. "Damn Trenton Lauren!" he said.

Alice didn't exactly smile. "I should have told you before this," she offered seriously, "but death always upsets me. By radio report from a scouting Patrol boat an hour ago, Lauren and his stooges were found, smashed and burned in the crash of their craft a hundred miles from camp. Their half-repaired spaceboat killed them."

Bert and Lawler exchanged glances. Their anger faded.

"What's new from the Safe Products Approval Board, Allie?" Lawler asked at last. "You seem to find things out fast."

"Nothing new," she answered. "The latest messages are much the same as those from a while ago. Guarded enthusiasm, and the statement that an okay for the Kramer Methods must be withheld pending complete and prompt investigation. Can't blame them. Caution is important."

"Maybe, if you played your cards right, you could become the new president of the Prometheus outfit, Bert," Lawler kidded.

But the possibility was certainly there. Bert was proud of what he'd done. Prometheus owed him plenty. Still, looking across camp past cottages and shops to the red mud of the once-dry, frigid hills, and down to the blue lake in the valley, reflecting sky and clouds, he knew that his heart was here in this crescendoing colonial scene. Somewhere a circle-saw screamed. From the metals-shop came the clanging of a mechanical hammer. These were sounds of a great future here.

"Nuts, pal," Bert chuckled to Lawler. "I'll leave the official pencil-pushing to the lab experts. The building and progress are here. You and Allie and I will all be back on Titan very soon."

These three began to be aware that a crowd of still befuddled but happy colonists were gathering around them. Another Space Patrol man approached, and said very officially:

"Mr. and Mrs. Kraskow, and Mr. Lawler: Our large ship leaves for Earth in five hours. Be ready to blast off. As you are aware, certain still valid charges were lodged against you by Trenton Lauren. You used dangerous equipment, not yet legally approved. As you are also aware, you must go to answer these charges. Sorry. But we of the Patrol know the score. In the face of your success I'm sure that this is mere red tape."

Bert scowled until he saw the cop's sly grin.

"Worried?" Alice asked him, smiling. She was pretty. She had courage. She had everything.

"Worried?" Bert echoed. In general he approved the S.P.A.B. "How can we lose on this last gamble with all the cards stacked in our favor. We even win a needed short vacation on Earth!"

"What are you two gonna bring back for me?" an old man, grimed from the forges, demanded, grinning. It was old Stan Kraskow, who had buried his younger son in the camp cemetery.

"Hiyuh, Dad!" Bert greeted happily. "What'll we bring him, Allie?"

"Wildbirds, Pop," Alice answered, her eyes twinkling. "You always liked wildbirds. No world is complete without them."

Bert noticed that the gardens of the camp, planted weeks ago under airdomes that were now being cleared away, were now showing a faint green. The beginning of a new and verdant Titan.

* * * * *