They managed to keep their spirits up as they ate. Then, unable any longer to keep their minds off the main problem, they stood. “What now, Robinson Crusoe, Senior?” asked Bruce jokingly.
“Ha!” his father said. “That old shipwreck had it easy. He may have been marooned on a desert island. We are marooned on a desert world.” His face sobered up instantly. “Let’s face it, Bruce. We have only a few days here at best. We’ve got to figure out what little we can do in that time to justify our trip. I don’t see any way out.”
“Well,” Bruce said slowly, “surely there is something that we can do. If we have enough fuel in our little boat, maybe we can at least go to another moon and find frozen water and air there. Maybe we can make it to Titan. Even if the atmosphere is poisonous, perhaps we can distill something out of it to keep ourselves going until the UN can send another expedition?”
Dr. Rhodes shook his head. “In the first place, we simply don’t have the fuel. I doubt if the boat we have could even clear Mimas before it was empty. In the second place, it would probably be years before the UN got around to sending a new expedition. In the third place . . . well, maybe Titan would give us hope, but it’s so very unlikely that it’s no good to dream about it. We have to face it. We’re here on Mimas to stay.”
He walked around the little tent a bit. “As I see it, the only thing we can do now is to write down all our findings so that the next expedition will know. I think I shall do that in the time we have left.”
Bruce nodded slowly. “That is if there is an Earth left to send an expedition, if Terraluna is not stopped.”
Dr. Rhodes nodded silently, sat down at the little folding table and drew his notebook from his space-suit pocket. “I may as well start. Suppose you go out and do some more exploring. May as well make the most of it.”
Bruce watched his father, then sealed the helmet of his own suit, and, taking a couple of tools along to pry aside rocks and poke the ground, he unzipped the tent and quickly stepped out.
Outside, he started walking toward the site of the ancient ruins. As he walked he noticed a depression in the ground and realized that it marked the spot where the space ship had rested. Idly he walked over to the long shallow groove where the ship had slid to a stop and where its weight had gradually pressed the dust of the plain down.
Suddenly Bruce stopped, stared hard. It seemed to him that in the center of the shallow depression there was a slightly rounded bump that seemed to give off a metallic gleam.
Swiftly he made his way there. Sure enough, the ship had pressed away enough of the time-old dust to reveal something. Bruce knelt by it, pushed aside the gray dust with his hands and found himself brushing the top of what seemed like a metallic rounded surface.
Excitedly, he clicked on his helmet phone. “Dad!” he called sharply into it. “Come out here and see what I’ve found. Something very odd!”
His father answered, and in a few minutes Bruce saw the suited figure emerge from the tent and come in his direction. Bruce drew a small crowbar from his belt, one of the tools he had brought along, and tapped the side of the metal bump.
With his second blow, he got a reaction he had never expected. The bump moved! There was a grinding vibration in the ground. The round metal surface seemed to revolve slightly and then started to rise upward. Beneath Bruce’s feet the dust-caked plain started to push away, and the boy barely had time to jump widely to one side.
While his father ran to join him, Bruce stood and watched a metal cylinder rise from the ground. It came up in jerks, hesitantly, clumsily as if motivated by an uncertain and faulty mechanism. Higher and higher it rose, until it assumed the form of a cylindrical ball, several feet in diameter, rising into the air on six long metal stilts that continued to push up from the ground.
Now Dr. Rhodes joined Bruce and the two stood staring up as the mysterious globe rose a couple dozen yards above the surface. It came to a jerky stop, and the globe slowly revolved, moving within the framework of its stationary stilts.
“What is it?” gasped Bruce at last.
“Looks like a watchtower,” said Dr. Rhodes. “From the way it moves, I'd say it was automatic, and very, very old. Probably dates from the ancient city's day. I wonder what it was for?”
“I guess my poking around must have finally nudged its old triggering machinery,” Bruce said.
“That plus the fact that the space ship was sitting on top of it and holding it down,” his father added. “Look, its side is opening up!”
Bruce followed his father's pointing finger. Sure enough, a panel in the side of the metal globe was sliding open. As they watched, a short stubby snout poked through, and suddenly there was a puff of blue flame from its end, after which it receded, and the panel closed.
“Now what was that for?” murmured Dr. Rhodes. “Looked like a shot or a signal.”
Bruce took his eyes off the tower, gazed around. He gasped, grabbed his father's arm. “Look over there, in the mountains on the edge of the plain!”
There was a dust cloud hanging there, a glowing mushroom-shaped cloud that had no business in the airless void of Mimas. Where there had once been a jagged mountaintop, one of the chain on their close horizon, was now just a gap.
“It was an atomic shell!” Bruce yelled. “There’s an atomic cannon up there!”
CHAPTER 17 The Eternal Watchman
They stood and watched the faraway cloud vanish rapidly in the airlessness of Mimas. A few seconds afterward they felt a slight vibration in the ground as the shock finally reached them. “It was a very mild atomic explosion,” said Dr. Rhodes finally. “Very mild. I would say that it was unusually weak. After all, with the low gravity here, a really high-powered A-bomb would have blown much more than that mountaintop to pieces.”
“That would mean that the cannon was loaded long ago, that maybe the shot was accidentally triggered off,” suggested Bruce.
“I hope so,” said his father. “I can't believe there are beings still living here. I would rather say that this whole tower and gun were automatic, waiting here for countless ages for something to trip it off.” “Our space ship landing on top of it must have started it, and my banging on it afterward finished the job. Sure must have been old and stuck to have been so slow in reacting,” was Bruce’s comment.
Dr. Rhodes walked back to the place where the tower had emerged, was fingering one of the long metal stilts on which the ball housing the cannon was resting. “Yes, from the pitmarks in this metal, I would say it is a miracle that the whole thing has not long ago dissolved into dust. This structure must be as old as the city here, as old as the ruins in the rings!” Bruce looked at the aged-appearing metal rods and saw what was meant. There was no polish on the structure, every bit of the surface seemed pocked and darkened and dead-looking. He expressed this thought to his father, who replied:
“That’s true, Bruce. Back on Earth we know that metal can weaken from time, no matter how hard and how toughened. And in millions of years . . . well, see for yourself.”
Bruce now dropped to his knees and gazed into the space from where the structure had emerged. There was a hole in the ground, below that tower, a pit leading downward into darkness.
“What do you suppose is down there?” he said.
Dr. Rhodes looked down. “Let’s go and see. Get a rope from the tent.”
Bruce got to his feet, raced back. On the way, he said over his helmet phones, “It may be very dangerous. Suppose we find creatures down there, creatures that may be deadly?”
Dr. Rhodes’ voice came over his phone, “What have we got to lose?”
As Bruce scooped up the rope, his father’s remark recalled to him the desperateness of their position. But, down in that hole, underneath the surface, perhaps they might find something that would help them.
Back at the pit beneath the guard tower, they tied one end of the rope to a boulder sticking from the ground and then dropped the other end down the pit. Bruce switched on the lamp that swung
from his space-suit's belt, and then slipped into the hole and down into the darkness. His father followed him closely.
The hole was no deeper than the height of the tower that had arisen from it. At the bottom, they stood on a pockmarked metal slab and looked about. To one side a door-sized gap opened upon blackness.
Bruce flashed his light. It shone down a long corridor, at the end of which he seemed to see a cavern-like space. He mentally shrugged off the chill that struck him, remembered that they had nothing at all to lose, and started off down the corridor, followed by Dr. Rhodes.
The walls of the place seemed to have been cut out of rock with no markings. When they reached the entry to the area at the end, they stood and flashed their lights.
It was a wide chamber, very wide, and stretched into the darkness beyond the reach of their beams.
All about them they could see odd-shaped boxes of stone. When Bruce looked closely at the nearest one he realized that it was the same size and form as the unearthly coffin in the tomb on the ring-moonlet. These were coffins containing the bodies of the last inhabitants of the Saturnian moons.
They walked on, side by side, through this hall of the dead. At one place, part of the wall had fallen through and tumbled a number of the odd boxes. Several had been broken open and Bruce could not help but glance inside.
There was nothing there, nothing but some fine gray dust. Of the appearance of the bodies, time had erased everything.
They walked on. Gradually the array of coffins came to an end and was replaced by various boxes and containers and piles of things. This was evidently a storeroom, but nothing could be made of what had been stored there. Vague outlines that seemed to suggest things such as clothing and perhaps food, but all, all was gray dust. When they touched anything, it simply shifted apart and flowed gently onto the ground. Some parts made of plastic remained intact and fell in shards and splinters. Here and there a bit of metal failed to fall apart.
Dr. Rhodes sighed. “I had hoped we could find something of use to us, but I am greatly afraid there will be only dust.”
“We must keep looking, Dad,” said Bruce. “Maybe something was intended to last . . . Hello, here’s the end.”
They had come to what was apparently the end of the cavern hall. Before them was a flat, polished, black surface. “Looks like a coating of something on this wall,” observed the old engineer. “Notice that the other walls are rough and unfinished.”
He reached out a hand, touched the wall, noted its smoothness, its absence of pocks and time scars. He took his short explorer-pick and tapped the wall. Instantly there was a crack and wide rays of breaking spread along the flat surface. “Ah, ha!” said Dr. Rhodes, and hit the wall sharply.
It broke apart like thin glass. As it fell, there was a sudden swoosh of air past their helmets, a brief but hard wind as imprisoned air escaped from beyond the cracked wall into the airlessness of Mimas. When the blowing stopped, they flashed their lights beyond.
They saw a second cavern hall before them. But this was different. This was shiny and bright as if almost new. Dust there was, but it did not conceal the state of preservation of what they saw.
It was machinery, metal objects standing on platforms, objects standing on rollers, devices that must have been used to make things. They walked into the new cavern and looked with wonder.
There was no storeroom of clothing or food here; it was a deposit of scientific achievement. Some of the devices seemed to be understandable. There were several that looked as if they could be used for digging, others obviously made things, for it could be seen where there were spaces for inserting raw materials and chutes for discharging a finished product. A number of devices seemed designed to serve as cars, for they had series of interlocking wheels that probably were used to roll the vehicle.
They walked on, examining, speculating. Dr. Rhodes paused before one device, studied it a minute and then reached out and pulled a lever, one of the few instances where something like an identifiable starting mechanism appeared.
For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a grinding sound as if some hidden wheels inside the thing were moving. A chugging was apparent in the vibrations in the floor. There was a little flare of electricity, and the sound stopped and the machine lapsed into silence again.
“Hmm,” said Dr. Rhodes, “that was very interesting. These things still have some power left in them—but not enough apparently to do too much. I suppose some sort of atomic battery powered them, and even after all this time, a charge remained.”
“What do you suppose the thing did?” asked Bruce.
His father shook his head. “Heaven alone knows now,” he said. “I’m afraid that a civilization of nonhumans would have needs we might never guess. It will take Earth’s engineers a long time to work it out, for they’ll have to take it apart. You and I will probably never know.”
Bruce said sharply, “Let’s not talk like that. Maybe there’s something here we can use to help us. Perhaps there’s atomic fuel here or something?”
“Very unlikely, in fact almost impossible,” said his father. “You see, even the most powerful radioactive substances have a definite lifetime, and die out . . .” He stopped short, exclaimed, “What was that?”
Bruce had heard it too—or rather felt it. A grinding noise in the ground, a sound as if something were rolling in the darkness, rolling toward them!
They turned to the source of the sound, but a number of bulky machines blocked their light. They felt the sound coming nearer, echoing through the stone floor and the soles of their metal shoes.
Then, around the comer of darkness there appeared a beam of reddish light, and behind it the metal front of a tall cylinder. As it came closer, they saw that the cylinder was mounted on a series of flat rollers. The light came from a spot somewhere in the cylinder’s center. Sprouting from the top and sides were a number of snakelike metallic arms waving toward them.
“Run!” Bruce shouted. “The thing’s a robot watchman! Don’t let it touch us!” He grabbed his father, and they started to run into the further darkness of the hall, while behind them the robot cylinder chugged and swung, its speed increasing slightly.
The two ran on into the darkness, past machines and exhibits that seemed to be gaining in size as they went deeper into the cavern. Behind them the red light of the pursuing robot was gaining slowly and its blood-colored glow cast a frightening light on the huge machines that stood in age-old silence in this lost cavern.
They had run for perhaps several hundred yards, and now only tremendous pieces of machinery stood around them. Bruce saw what looked like a huge construction machine, a towering device that seemed, as he ran past, to combine the qualities of a steam shovel with those of a concrete mixer. He caught glimpses of spouts on others, and big sweepers, and a device that looked like a tremendous land-boat mounted on dozens of giant rollers.
Now the robot was very close to them, and Bruce imagined they could almost feel the waving tips of its tentacles. They came at last to a tremendous thing that stretched across the cavern and blocked any further view. They dashed up to it breathlessly and turned, their backs to it, determined to make a desperate effort to beat off the guard robot with their bars and picks.
But Bruce was surprised to see that it was not as close to them as he had imagined. In fact, it was several yards behind and moving more slowly than when they had first sighted it.
As he watched, the robot rocked slowly toward them, seemed to move hesitantly, uncertainly. Its tentacles stopped waving, began to droop, its light flickered.
Then the robot came to a complete halt only a few more feet away. A tentacle waved uncertainly in their direction, the red beam flared up a bit sharply and then unexpectedly cut off.
For a moment they stood in darkness and in silence. In the whole mysterious cavern nothing moved.
CHAPTER 18 The Golden Ship
Bruce stood and waited. Over his earphones came only the sound of his father breathi
ng. In the cavern before them there was pitch darkness. He reached a hand down and switched on his belt light.
The beam shot out. Instantly they saw the robot. It was only a few feet away from them, apparently staring at them, motionless.
For a few seconds they stared back at it silently. Bruce whispered, “Its light is out. It isn’t moving. It looks sort of dead to me.”
“Maybe it’s a trick,” was his father’s whispered reply.
Bruce lifted a hand slowly. There was no response from the robot. Then he lifted his crowbar, reached out with it slowly and finally touched the metal surface of the cylinder body. There was no response.
Emboldened, he reached out further, poked at the thing, nudged its tentacles, which were hanging lifeless. He got no response. “I think it’s run down,” he said, “just like a toy with a spring engine.”
His father moved, walked slowly toward it, reached out a hand and grabbed a tentacle. The limp, metallic, hoselike thing was lifeless in his grip. Bruce tentatively tapped the light socket in the creature’s “head.” But still nothing.
“You’re right,” Dr. Rhodes finally explained. “It has actually run down! I never thought to live to see such a thing. Do you know what this means?”
“Why, Dad? What’s so remarkable about that?” Bruce said, walking around the creature to examine it on all sides.
“We’ve actually seen an atomic battery reach its end, Brace! Don’t you remember your lessons on radioactivity and the tables on the half-life of various substances?”
“So?” Bruce asked, still mystified.
“Atomically activated material remains charged and active for various periods of time. Some substances when so charged lose half their charge in a few hours or a few days, but all the heavy elements that go into our atomic batteries have their half-life period over thousands and even millions of years! You’ve seen the so-called perpetual lights and clocks on the market, advertised as good forever. Well, of course, nothing can go on forever, but those lights and clocks —like the battery in your space suit—actually do go on discharging their current for millions of years. That’s one of the real miracles of our twenty-first century Atomic Age.
The Secret of Saturn’s Rings Page 13