The Secret of Saturn’s Rings

by Donald A. Wollheim

  It was at first a tiny ball of yellow with a thin, sharp line of white cleaving it at both sides. This line was the rings seen head-on. As they neared it and changed position, this line widened out, until it assumed the familiar form of the rings, circling the glowing golden ball like a wide halo.

  As they neared Saturn, Bruce could see that it was belted like Jupiter. It had no surface markings, such as continents and water areas; instead, it was banded along its equator and upward with several wide areas of different colors. Some were near-white, others yellowish, or approaching orange or even bluish tinges.

  All around the ship was the blackness of empty space, the stars of the galaxy glowing in the distance. Once, just once, a glowing sphere passed their view—a comet, Dr. Rhodes explained, that had not developed a tail and wouldn’t until it came much closer to the sun.

  Bruce spent most of the time in study, his father having insisted that he master the elements of star navigation and continue his mathematical studies that were so necessary to space flight. Garcia and Dr. Rhodes took turns, in their off moments, in drilling him in the various problems. They were hard and complex, but, as Garcia put it, “No harder and no more complex than the universe itself. If you want to play among the stars, you must learn the rules they play by.”

  In the passage of time, they approached Saturn. Its moon system was visible and quite impressive, even if you overlooked the ever-amazing rings. They held a brief conference as to where to establish their base.

  Garcia was in favor of landing on Titan, the largest moon. “It’s got an atmosphere of sorts, it's the biggest of the moons, almost half again bigger than Luna, and we’ll be able to stand and walk fairly comfortably. We can probably find frozen water and oxygen around and build up our stores.”

  Dr. Rhodes, however, insisted on making their base the innermost moon, called Mimas. “It’s only about a hundred thousand miles from Saturn, almost on top of the rings. It’s tiny, about three hundred and seventy miles in diameter. This means that it won’t take much fuel to go to the rings from there, whereas it will take a lot of fuel to get off Titan. Since Mimas has no atmosphere, our observations will not be clouded and will be absolutely clear. In every way, we should make for Mimas. It may be less comfortable, but it will be best for us.”

  So it was decided. Saturn had ten moons in all, three of them impressively large. But Mimas was the one they had selected.

  By this time Saturn loomed large in their view-plates. Bruce watched as they narrowed in, under jet drive, for the landing. They passed Titan close enough to see that it had a soft glow around it, proving the presence of an atmosphere. Bruce knew from the astronomical records that this atmosphere was nothing that he could breathe. Any oxygen would probably be in frozen form, the air that it was composed of would be thin, mainly ammonia and swamp gas. But he could see that Titan had mountain ranges and glistening blue-white areas that would have been oceans and lakes if they had melted.

  Mimas was a small crescent against the great glowing surface of Saturn as they closed in. Bruce had the strange feeling that they were falling to the surface, that they would brush against the rings, so close to these the little moon was floating.

  Now, however, they came up to the outer side of Mimas, and it filled their view, a black circle covering more and more of the sky. They swung around it, circling down, and the ship was bathed in the soft golden glow of Saturn. Down over rocky plains and sharp jagged mountains until finally with great skill Dr. Rhodes set the ship down on its runners on a flat plain. They skidded over loose rocks, bumped wildly, and Bruce could hear the thud of loose stones against the metal hull. Finally they were stopped, and the engines brought to rest.

  For a moment nobody had anything to say. There was a feeling of relief at the completion of the hardest part of their journey, a feeling of suspense at the ordeals to come. Bruce never forgot that moment. His father was still seated at the pilot’s chair, leaning forward on his elbows, staring through the center port, tired, his gray hair shining in the soft glow from outside. Garcia sat next to him, his hand still resting on the power controls, leaning back in his seat as if about to fall asleep, his eyes relaxed and closed. Arpad was just visible down the corridor at the feed dials outside the storage tanks, slumped down, one hand holding to a leather grip. Bruce stood in a posture of tension near the airlock, face close to the side port.

  Then Dr. Rhodes straightened up, shoved away from his seat, turned around and said, “Congratulations, men. This is a new record for mankind. If nothing else, there’s always that.”

  Garcia jumped up, grabbed Dr. Rhodes’ hand. “Let us congratulate you, sir. It’s your work and your glory.”

  Rhodes smiled briefly, then his face sobered. “Perhaps we re all a bit premature. The time for slapping each other on the back is not yet. The worst part of the job is coming.”

  Arpad came up the corridor to Bruce. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get out and get our feet wet.”

  Rhodes and Garcia crowded around. “Let’s all go out together this time. We’ll all pioneer a new planet.”

  All four got into space suits, attached helmets, set their headphones. Bruce twirled the braces on the airlock, they all crowded into the tiny closet-like chamber, and the air pumped out. Then they opened the front port, and, throwing down the short nylon ladder, they climbed down onto the surface of Mimas, Saturn’s nearest moon.

  They grouped around outside the ship. Bruce looked about.

  The ship and men were in a small plain, rather flat but with many loose rocks lying about, those which Bruce remembered the ship had struck in landing. He noticed that their landing runners were rather chipped and scarred, even bent in one place.

  A series of low but sharp and bare red mountains bordered one edge of the plain. At the other edge an extremely close horizon gave the effect of a falling off into space only a quarter of a mile or so away.

  The men were light, weighing not more than a couple of pounds each, which gave them heady feelings and made all of them lighthearted.

  There was no air. The sky above them was black and they could see, Bruce remembered later, two or three large moons shining in the black part of the sky.

  But that was afterward. For the moment all they had eyes for was the immense and fantastic vision that filled two-thirds of the great sky bowl above them. That was Saturn.

  Chapter 9 Into the Rings!

  Looming over the horizon, stretching far into the sky, over their heads, and glowing down greater than a second sun—though milder and muted, was the giant bulk of the planet Saturn. All four stood silent, staring at the magnificent vision, a sight more awesome than any they had ever seen.

  Saturn was larger than Earth, something like ten times larger, and Mimas was closer to Saturn than Luna is to Earth. From its surface, at the point where they stood, it was like hanging over the Earth a few thousand miles up, when most of the sky would be filled with the view from below.

  Indeed, for a moment, all the men had a curious feeling, that of looking downward, rather than looking up. The pull of Mimas was light, very light, and the bulk of the great ball above them so vast that it was like looking down from some ever-hanging cloud.

  Arpad broke the silence, “Gosh, it’s spinning! You can see it spin.”

  This was true, though not as dramatic as it might have seemed. But the surface of the great ball was indeed in visible motion. The surface of Saturn did not have continents and oceans and mountains like that of Earth or Luna or Mars. Instead, it gave the impression of a mass of clouds, of stuff lacking in solidity, missing in substance. There were bands of these clouds over the surface from end to end, from wide equator to the visibly flattened pole. Some bands were lighter, some darker; they varied from an almost white, a glowing cloudy white, to light yellows, and pulsing oranges and even here and there streaks of red and green and blue. In one part was a round white blotch. And because the great belts were irregular, had odd markings and colorings, it could be seen that
they were moving. The planet was visibly rotating, and the more you looked, the faster it would seem.

  Bruce said, “It is spinning, fast, too. Much faster than Earth looked from space.”

  Dr. Rhodes answered, “That’s right. Its day is slightly more than ten hours long, and when you consider it is so much larger than good old Terra, its surface has to move terribly faster than what we are accustomed to.”

  “But is that the surface?” asked Arpad. “It looks more like clouds to me. Where is the surface?”

  Bruce kicked a pebble without taking his eyes off the sight in the heavens. “Ill bet it hasn’t got one. The spaceman’s handbook says it’s very thin stuff, and a very light planet for its size.”

  Dr. Rhodes answered, “That’s right. The stuff of which Saturn is composed is even lighter than water. It very probably has no solid surface anywhere. There may be many meteors or chunks of iron and stuff floating about in its center, but I doubt if there is anything like a true crust anywhere beneath that cloudy surface.”

  “Ha,” said Arpad, “why, you mean it’s all mush clear through!”

  Garcia spoke for the first time. “You know, I believe he’s right, Doc. That’s the word for it—mush!” There was silence, and then suddenly something struck Bruce oddly. “Why, Father, where are the rings? They’ve vanished!”

  Sure enough, the famous rings were not present. But then Garcia raised a hand, pointed out a thin white line that cut the planet in half and extended outward on both sides. “There are your rings. We’re seeing them edge on.”

  “Yes,” interjected Dr. Rhodes, “and that brings us back to the subject of this trip. Those are the rings edge on, and that’s why I picked this particular spot. Because, do you know exactly how close we are to the outer edge of the outermost ring?”

  No one answered, and he went on, “We are now only about thirty-one thousand miles from them. A short trip which we can make in one of our space boats—if we ever get the time to unload them and stop rubbernecking.”

  Bruce and Arpad took the hint. Reluctantly they took their eyes from the view above them, gazed at each other a bit foolishly, and then turned back to the ship. Garcia and the doctor followed them.

  There was work to be done and they fell to. Because of the extreme lightness of everything, it was possible for them to move things that would have required cranes and crews of workmen back home. Bruce and Arpad themselves unlatched the rear hold plates, and carried outside the two space boats stored there, setting them up on the cleared plain.

  The space boats were small rocket ships, hardly big enough to carry two men crowded into the small cockpit and a little cargo. They were designed as possible lifeboats, and also as exploration vessels. They were streamlined, bullet-nosed, all-glassine fronted, and they rested on large light wheels so that their noses pointed skyward. Bruce and Arpad fueled them from the ship’s own tanks.

  While they were doing this, Garcia and Dr. Rhodes set up a space tent, like the one they had left Jennings in on Hidalgo. To this tent they transferred their observation equipment, directional radio speaker, and other explorational devices.

  Dr. Rhodes called the four together after a couple of hours had seen their tasks accomplished. “I’m not going to waste any more time. We can’t afford it. So I am going to take off now in one of our boats to cross to the rings themselves.”

  He paused, but no one said anything. Bruce felt a pounding in his chest. Now that they were here, he realized what his father was daring.

  “I shall take the boat across the space between, adjust myself to the outermost ring and work my way in among them. I plan to ride along, attaching myself to one of the larger particles that make it up, and there make my observations. I shall be as quick as possible and I shall return as soon as I have confirmed my discoveries. Ill keep in touch with you all the time by radio beam.”

  “You can’t stay out too long,” said Garcia. “These boats can’t carry much food and water and their air purification system won’t last more than two or three days.”

  “I understand that. But I don’t expect to have to take too long. I want it understood that if I ... if I fail to return or lose contact for over forty-eight hours, you are not to wait for me. You are to return home. These are my orders.”

  There was silence again. Bruce’s heart pounded harder, but he said nothing.

  Dr. Rhodes nodded at him and Arpad. “You two load my equipment aboard one of the boats. I’ll take along two days’ supply of sandwiches and fresh water.”

  They did this, while Rhodes and Garcia conferred. Then, finally, all was loaded. Dr. Rhodes, still wearing his space suit, got into the little rocket boat, waved a hand to them, slid the glassine covering shut, sealed it, and turned to the controls before him. The other three stepped out of range of the rear jets.

  There was a brief moment, then puffs of smoke from the jets, and the tiny boat soared off on a tail of fire, shot into the sky, and rapidly disappeared in the direction of the glowing golden sphere and the thin white line of its rings.

  They stared until it vanished. Then Garcia snapped, “O.K., boys, let’s get to it. I’ll take the first shift at the radio tent. You two get busy. Arpad, fix something to eat for the rest of us. Bruce, close up that rear hatchway, and stow away the spare junk and containers.”

  After his chore was done and he and Arpad had eaten—even though he felt too excited to want to eat— they both joined Garcia at the radio.

  In spite of the distance, Dr. Rhodes was making good progress. He had gained a high speed very rapidly and now told them that he was simply letting Saturn’s greater gravity do the rest of the work. His little boat was heading for the rings at free fall. He expected to be there in a couple more hours.

  His voice came over the beam fairly well, quite clearly in fact, since their beam was directional and there was no atmospheric interference.

  It was possible for a while to follow his tiny ship in their telescope—a contraption of reflecting mirrors set up on an open frame; an advantage that an airless world has over an atmospheric one is the wonderful ease of telescopic construction and vision. But so small was the ship that it showed only as a tiny glistening speck. As it neared the rim of the rings, it was soon lost. For seen through the scope, the rings were glistening and shimmering like the scales of a bright fish or like a flickering neon sign.

  They worked and kept coming back to the radio. Dr. Rhodes was now rising above the outermost ring, he said, to effect a landing in the middle from above. His voice was tired, but elated. Bruce remembered that he had taken pills with him to keep himself awake for two days—and he took over the microphone from Garcia to remind his father to take one of the pills. Dr. Rhodes instantly responded, thanked him for reminding him.

  Had he forgotten to do so in the excitement of his voyage, he might suddenly fall asleep from exhaustion —and risk total destruction.

  In the tent, Garcia was hunched over the radio mike. Arpad sat on the floor, his head in his hands, listening. Bruce was slumped against the record table, taking notes on what was said. The floor was that of the satellite Mimas, flat, stony, pebbly. The sides of the glassine tent came down to them, stuck airtight by the nature of their plastic gummed edges, an invention in improved molecular self-adhesion that was one of the wonders of atomic plastics.

  Now the old engineer’s voice could be heard telling them that he was angling down among the tiny moonlets and meteors which composed the outer ring. He described what he saw and they could picture him drawing down closer and closer to the moving mass.

  Now they began to notice static on the beam. A constant humming in the background, now and then a sharp squeal. Garcia kept touching the radio controls to try to clear them, but the noise was not on their end. He told the doctor about it, and Rhodes reported that their voices, too, were reaching him with interference and noise.

  They could hear him talking about his near contact now. But the closer he got to his destination, the more the static how
led. Now his voice was wavering, sometimes soft, sometimes loud, and they could not always make out what he was saying.

  There were squeals and groans and growling sounds coming from their receiver. They heard Dr. Rhodes clearly for a moment, saying he could no longer make out what Garcia wras telling him. Another louder series of screeches and ticking sounds came from the set. The noises grew louder and louder, until the little tent was roaring with the sound of eerie screams and ear-splitting hammerings.

  By this time, they all knew that Dr. Rhodes must have begun to enter the ring itself. But the static was thunderous and they couldn’t hear themselves talk. Then, suddenly, the tent was silent.

  For a moment they were stunned. Garcia bent over the radio. He listened. There was nothing. “Not even a hum, not even his sending beam,” he muttered to himself.

  Arpad looked up. “Maybe he cut off his radio. If he got the same noises we did, he’d probably cut it off.”

  Garcia nodded slowly. “Yes, yes. I suppose that’s the answer. I guess so.”

  “It has to be the answer,” Bruce said sharply. “Has to be.”

  They looked at him, but said nothing. Suddenly he felt a cold horror reach into his heart. “It has to be the answer,” he said to himself. He tried hard to shut out the horrible alternative.

  Overhead the glowing ball of Saturn sped on, turning steadily, and shedding its soft cold light over their little tent. From the radio, there was only silence.

  Chapter 10 The Stolen Space Boat

  “We'll keep a regular watch at the radio here,” said Garcia. “If he comes on again, someone will be on hand at all times. We’ll take it in shifts, three hours each.”

  The two younger men nodded. Somehow, now that they had lost contact, they felt helpless. Garcia was accepted in command, but they knew without asking that nobody would make any decisions not approved by the other two.

  “Come, come,” said Garcia, forcing a smile. “Let's not get down in the mouth about this. We had to expect some setbacks. I rather suppose it was nothing, just radio trouble. Probably the Doc will come back safe and sound in a half-day more and laugh at us for our worries.”