Alan E. Nourse

by Trouble on Titan

  ChUptCt 70 The Wreck of the Snooper

  OR THE NEXT ten minutes the boys inspected the wreckage at close hand. It looked almost hopeless to Tuck, at first, but much of the more obvious damage involved ripped siding, which could be easily replaced. The cockpit was almost intact, except for the long crack in the plastic hood, and the shattered control board. Tuck worked away at the paneling, and finally broke it loose, revealing the masses of wires leading to the pressure, fuel, speed and altitude controls. With a few minutes' work he had straightened or repaired the broken wires, and the panel was replaced, ready for seal-welding.

  But the engines were another story. The rear end of the jet was smashed almost closed; a long crack ran clear back to the engine, and a whole section of wiring had been ripped from its moorings. The two started to work, with crowbar and hammer, slowly breaking and wrenching the little ship from its bed of rock, talking very little as they worked. From time to time Tuck stopped to stare at the engine and the wiring that were exposed. They didn't look at all right, for some reason, and the more he looked the more

  puzzled he became. And then it dawned on him— the whole area where the fuel tanks belonged was filled with large gas bottles, painted green, without the familiar insulating pad around them. Tuck looked up at David, hardly believing his eyes. "Say, what kind of engine have you got in this thing?"

  David stopped prying at the crowbar long enough to grin. "Ordinary jet combustion chamber. Torm modification."

  Tuck looked suspicious. "But those are oxygen bottles in there—"

  "That's right. That's the Torm modification."

  "But what do you use for fuel?"

  "Oxygen." David grinned at his friend's consternation, then burst out laughing. "It's really very simple. When the jet is flying, it doesn't take air into the intakes, the way you're used to. It couldn't—there isn't any air. It takes methane into the air-scoop. So why use a lot of expensive fuel and oxidizer, when all the fuel you could possibly use is free for the asking, all around you?"

  "You mean you use atmospheric methane for your fuel?"

  "Of course. The pumps just feed in a tiny stream of liquid oxygen from those tanks there into the center of the intake of methane. Makes a funny-looking exhaust —just a pencil-thin flame—but it works, delivers plenty of thrust. And all I have to carry is priming fuel and oxygen—"

  Tuck examined the setup excitedly. "You must have been all over the planet with this!"

  "It's been handy. Some other guys here in the colony worked with me on it. We taught ourselves mapping and topography from some books my dad has. We've had a lot of fun, just snooping around with it, and we've made our own maps of the topography within a couple hundred square miles of the colony. Better than Security Patrol maps, too." David stood up from the crowbar and started rolling a large green oxygen bottle over toward the damaged jet. "Let me show you another little trick with oxygen," he said.

  He had been working for a quarter of an hour, driving a wedge into the opening, gradually forcing the squashed tube open again, revealing a long rip in the heavy metal of the exhaust tube. Now he fished in the small bag of little tools and came out with a bit of metal that looked like a small brass hose nozzle, which he carefully fitted to a long aluminum mesh tube that stretched from the neck of the oxygen bottle.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Have to weld, for a while."

  "Weld! What do you use for a generator?"

  "Oh, I don't mean arc-weld. That isn't necessary, and we've got a better method here." He reached for the control gauge at the top of the green bottle, and brought a small automatic flint up near the nozzle; then he carefully opened the gauge until there was the slightest hiss from the nozzle, and struck a spark. To Tuck's amazement a bright white flame sprang from the nozzle of the hose, giving off a brilliant shower of white snow. The snow scattered and drifted to the ground, for all the world like the snow from a carbon-dioxide fire extinguisher. Tuck stood frozen for a moment, then jumped back, his heart pounding. "Are you crazy? That's oxygen in that tank!" "I know."

  "But it's burning—won't it explode in this atmosphere?"

  "Not as long as I keep the gas flowing from the tank." David began pulling the flaming nozzle down toward the metal of the jet, and started heating the edges of the open tear. "There won't be an explosion as long as there's plenty of room for the burning to take place, and the flame can consume the oxygen as fast as it comes out of the tank. Makes a nice hot flame, too." The lips of the rent were beginning to turn pinkish already. "There's no danger at all of welding with oxygen out here—the real danger of explosion is in a confined space, like a mining tunnel. There, if the tunnel springs a leak somewhere, a lot of methane can squeeze in before anyone realizes it, and any little spark can send up the whole works. It's a real hazard in the tunnels. We even have special detecting equipment to set off an alarm as soon as a leak breaks loose."

  "What can they do in the tunnel once the methane gets in?"

  David grinned. "Run in circles, scream and shout. Seal off the leak as fast as they can, close off the tunnel from the rest of the colony, and pump for dear life. So far they've been lucky."

  He bent over, applying the torch to the hot metal of the jet, as though unwilling to think about such horrible possibilities. The metal was white-hot now; David handed the torch to Tuck, had him hold it nearby, bathing the metal in the stream of white flame, while David began hammering, sending up a shower of sparks. The snow that streamed from the torch formed a little pile on the ground; some lit on the hot metal, hissed, and burst into clouds of steam that promptly became snow again as soon as it got away from the heat of the metal. David brought a long strip of gray-looking metal from the supply bag, applied it to the lips of the torn metal, and the boys watched it heat and soften, and then flow as David skillfully applied it down the tear, hammering steadily to smooth out the edge as the rent was filled. In a short while the jet began to take a round, even appearance again, until David finally straightened up, glancing at the sun. "Got another couple of hours—if we can fix that wiring and siding, and pound the landing skid back into place, we might give it a test before dark—"

  They worked even faster. Tuck studied the wiring in the engine while David worked on the siding metal. The wires were twisted almost beyond recognition, but Tuck was familiar with wiring of such engines from years of jet scooter building and racing; he went back to the half-track and selected three spools of wire, ripping down the insulation to examine the fine strands of copper and silver. Then he came back, and slowly began rewiring the torn and shredded masses of wires, squatting down, his hands clumsy in the unaccustomed padded fingers of the suit. He soon found there was no way to grip the wires with his fingers satisfactorily. After some experimentation with pliers, wire and welding rod, he worked out a fair approximation of the remote-control pincers he had seen used in radioactives lab to manipulate the wires and the contacts. He was thoroughly engrossed in his work, so engrossed that he became oblivious of himself, or the ship, or anything but the delicate and demanding task at hand—

  And then, a bolt of fear went through him as he heard a little musical ping in his earphones. His hands froze and he sat staring, listening, almost fascinated— Ping—ping—ping—ping—ping—ping —ping —ping— ping-pingpingpingpingping—

  It was a gentle sound, and a terrifying sound, a sound that meant that horrible death was near, hovering over his shoulder—the sound every spaceman had had conditioned into his very soul—the sound that said better than any words: get inside, fast, your circulation is down, your feet are getting cold, too cold-Tuck jumped up with a cry, tried to run for the halftrack. He could feel the numb coldness around his feet and legs now, and he stumbled and fell heavily. The warmth of the pressure suit was deceptive, it was all too easy to forget that he was working in an atmosphere so cold that his own expired air would freeze into a choking blob in his throat if he were unprotected. He struggled to his feet, shouting to David as he ran, a
nd clambered stiffly into the half-track; then he leaned out to motion David frantically. David stared at him for a moment; then he too came running. Together they frantically slammed down the plastic top, sealed it tight. David snapped on the engine controls and the pumps began to work against the deadly cold, letting the engine heat in once more around their feet. Tuck sat panting, his heart racing, his feet tingling and burning with a strange kind of pain. And then the boys looked at each other, and burst out laughing, more in relief than anything else. "We should have kept an eye on the time," David panted. "Shouldn't have been out there more than two hours at a stretch without warming up. And I forgot you aren't as used to the cold as I am—"

  Tuck clutched his side, still gasping for breath. "Scared me to death," he choked. "They've made movies of the helpless spaceman, marooned on an Asteroid with his engines dead, and that nasty little bell was the sound track."

  "There are lots of spacemen who can thank that little bell for their lives. It doesn't give them much time, but it does give them some."

  Tuck shook his head. "You must have a terrible time in the colony, with the cold."

  "Not too much. We're used to a chillier atmosphere than you. And the heat of the refinery keeps the dome warm."

  "But the mining tunnels—"

  "Forty feet of rock is good insulation."

  "That's true. Still—"

  "There's a lot worse problem than cold, when it comes to living and working in the colony," said David.

  "Something that four generations of colonists haven't been able to find an answer to, completely." "What's that?"

  "It may seem funny to you. Claustrophobia. Morbid fear of being closed in. The men get it every now and then down in the tunnels, especially when there's been a recent cave-in. Works on their minds, and as soon as they get to thinking about it, it really hits them. Sometimes they get violent, can't even stand being inside the bubble—"

  "But can't you send them back to Earth? Rest cure, something like that?"

  "Aw—quit joking."

  Tuck's eyes widened. "I'm dead serious!"

  "Well, we could go back to Earth for vacations, all right—but we couldn't buy food, because nobody would sell us food. We couldn't stay anywhere, because no hotel would take us. And then there's always the risk of being mobbed and lynched—most people don't think a trip to Earth is worth it."

  A core of anger began burning in Tuck's mind. "But you must have some sort of protection. After all, Earth is civilized. There are laws protecting people's rights—"

  David nodded sourly. "If the people know what their rights are. But that involves education. And we don't have much education out here—oh, sure, the kids in the colony go to a school to learn reading and writing, the lucky ones—and there are apprenticeships in technology and mechanics for the older boys, to teach them to run the mining equipment and the refinery. I was taught enough accounting to help dad with the administration work of the colony, and one of my pals is working with Doc Taber, just in case Security doesn't send another doctor out here when Doc is gone. But there hasn't been a colonist boy or girl admitted to an Earth University in over seventy-five years." "Have they tried to get in?"

  David gave him a long look. "Take me, for instance. I wanted to study rocketry—rocket engineering, that was for me. Yes, sir. I wrote the Polytechnic Institute for information. Did they even answer my letter? Ha! They did not. So I wrote Earth Security. They told me I would need a fully accredited high-school education before I could even apply. So I wrote the preparatory schools. Know what they said? They all said, fine, come right along—but you'll have to pay tuition, because you were born and live outside the planetary limits of Earth. Know what the tuition was? More money than my dad's been paid in ten years!"

  Tuck's eyes blazed. "They've admitted Mars colony boys without tuition!"

  David shrugged. "It was only a stall, I know that. If we could have taken it to court, we might have broken the stall, too. But what if we had? My work wouldn't be good enough. My eyes would be the wrong color. They'd find a way to keep me out. Earth Security has seen to that."

  Tuck stared through the plexiglass windshield at the little jet plane across the rocks, feeling sick. "Dad doesn't know what a hornet's nest he's working in—he couldn't know. He just doesn't realize these things, he doesn't know the true picture."

  "He's in a position to do a lot of good for Titan, if he would—"

  Tuck nodded. "If he could be made to understand. Look—you told me you had a plan—"

  "That's right. I've already set it in motion. I've let the Big Secret out of the bag—to you." David scowled, and started to tighten down his helmet. "I think we should get dad and the Colonel together and tell both of them what we've been talking about."

  "It might do some good—"

  David looked worried. "But the Colonel could send the word straight back to Earth if he didn't want to co-operate—"

  "He wouldn't if we made him promise before we told him."

  "Would he keep his promise?"

  Tuck bit his lip. "He's never broken a promise to me before. Never."

  David nodded, his eyes bright again. "It might work. It might at least clear the air. All we've got to do is make them sit across the table from each other and talk. And that's all it would take. Just one hour of straight talk—" He glanced down at Tuck's legs. "How are they feeling?"

  "Warmed up now."

  "Good. Let's give this buggy a trial."

  They climbed out in the dimming light, and worked feverishly. After interminable minutes, Tuck got the last wire in place. He looked at it critically, finding no fault, then waved at David. "I think it's ready on this end."

  David drove the final rivet, and nodded, eying the narrow gully into which the ship was nosing. It was strewn with boulders and jagged rocks. Tuck jerked a thumb at the half-track. "Why don't we bulldoze a take-off path?"

  Together they searched for a large stone with a flat side, and brought the 'track over to it; in a few moments they had it chained securely to the front of the machine, and started the half-track moving down the gully with the rock as a bulldozer blade, shoving rocks and debris to either side with an incredible crashing and flying of rock and snow. The half-track engine whined and roared like a tormented thing, bucking and heaving against the load of rock, but finally they had left behind them a fairly level path, and David studied it, and nodded with satisfaction. "That should do it, if the jet holds, and doesn't warp too much. You stay in the 'track and be ready to duck if I start to spin."

  Slowly David clambered into the cockpit of the Snooper, pulling the patched hood down over his head. Tuck moved back, suddenly tense. He watched with his heart in his throat as the whining sound of the priming engines suddenly began, muffled, as though far in the distance. For almost five minutes the whine remained steady, then suddenly revved up to the familiar earsplitting squeal of the jet motor. If only nothing went wrong! Deep in his heart, Tuck longed to sit at the controls of that little ship, to head out from the colony, flying low, with telescopic scanner searching out and exploring every crack and crevice. He would have to wait until David offered him the controls, but he could almost feel them in his hands, almost feel the nose of the ship lift, slick as a whistle, sliding up into the dark blue sky—

  The jets coughed blue flame, then settled down to a steady pencil-thin streak, so hot Tuck could almost imagine it scorching his eyebrows. With a sudden thrust the little ship jerked, then began sliding down the bulldozed trough, riding the skids smoothly, faster and faster. And then, like magic, it rose in a burst of speed, the nose lifted, and the ship skimmed off the ground, up and up in a slightly weaving course; in an instant it was clear, skimming into the air like a graceful bird, moving up in a wide arc, curving back down overhead with a squeal of thunder, and off again like lightning in the direction of the colony.

  Tuck waited, his heart pounding with excitement. It worked! A little unsteady, a lot that should be done before it was used for an
extensive flight, but it was flying! He leaned back in the half-track seat, waiting impatiently for David to return. The minutes ticked by —five, ten. He shifted in the seat, peering anxiously at the rapidly darkening horizon, a flicker of fear in his mind. Fifteen minutes—and then the ship squealed back overhead again, and slid down in a long arc to land on a level stretch beyond the rocks, just as the sun fell beneath the horizon. The pale light of Saturn threw the rocks into weird relief; Tuck snapped on the emergency lamp, swung it along the dark ground until it picked up David hurrying across the jagged rocks on foot. But it wasn't until David was actually climbing up into the 'track that Tuck saw the paleness of his face, the worried wrinkles around his eyes.

  David slammed down the hood and sealed it without a word, revving the engine at the same time. Then he said, "Better hold on tight, my friend. We're going to run for it—"

  Alarm exploded in Tuck's mind. "What's wrong?"

  "Something inside the dome. It looks like the whole colony is assembling in the main hall—"

  "Cortell?"

  David nodded grimly, and the half-track started with a jerk. "I don't like it. I could see the people coming up to the hall—and they didn't look very peaceful—"

  Chapter 11 The Ultimatum

  f

  iE TRIP back to the colony was a nightmare that Tuck was to remember as long as he lived. The darkness settled like a cloak, blacking out the sky more and more as the glowing, ringed planet that hung in the sky sank farther and farther toward the horizon, throwing a weird, deceptive gloom over the path. The emergency lamp flickered and blinked, hiding the deep crevices in a limbo of shadow and half-light, turning the rocks into indistinguishable black blobs that suddenly resolved into light and shadow only when the half-track was upon them. They tried to follow their tracks; David huddled grimly over the steering bar, panting and struggling, twisting it as the car lurched and shuddered. Once they struck a huge boulder with an earsplitting crash, and a shower of rocks and boulders hailed down on the plastic top. A little later the caterpillar tracks slipped on a steep, angled grade, and the 'track slid crashing down into a crevice, lodging tight at a ridiculous angle. David threw the engine into four-wheel drive; the soft pillow wheels in front spun as though embedded in thick jelly, until the 'track lurched, and lurched, and finally gave the caterpillars