Spacehounds of IPC
Page 9
CHAPTER VI
A Frigid Civilization
"Hi, Percival Van Schravendyck Stevens!" Nadia strode purposely intoStevens' room and seized him by the shoulder. "Are you going to sleepall the way to Saturn? You answered me when I pounded on the partitionwith a hammer, but I don't believe that you woke up at all. Get up,you--breakfast will be all spoiled directly!"
"Huh?" Stevens opened one sluggish eye; then, as the full force of theinsult penetrated his consciousness, he came wide awake. "Lay off thosenames, ace, or you'll find yourself walking back home!" he threatened.
"All x by me!" she retorted. "I might as well go home if you're goingto sleep _all_ the time!" and she widened her expressive eyes at himimpishly as she danced blithely back into the control room. As she wentout she slammed his door with a resounding clang, and Stevens priedhimself out of his bunk one joint at a time, dressed, and made himselfpresentable.
"Gosh!" he yawned mightily as he joined the girl at breakfast. "I don'tknow when I've had such a gorgeous sleep. How do you get by on solittle?"
"I don't. I sleep a lot, but I do it every night, instead of working forfour days and nights on end and then trying to make up all those fournights' sleep at once. I'm going to break you of that, too, Steve, ifit's the last thing I ever do."
"There might be certain advantages in it, at that," he conceded, "butsometimes you've got to do work when it's got to be done, instead ofjust between sleeps. However, I'll try to do better. Certainly it isa wonderful relief to get out of that mess, isn't it?"
"I'll say it is! But I wish that those folks were more like people.They're nice, I think, really, but they're so ... so ... well, soghastly that it simply gives me the blue shivers just to look at oneof them!"
"They're pretty gruesome, no fooling," he agreed, "but you get used tothings like that. I just about threw a fit the first time I ever sawa Martian, and the Venerians are even worse in some ways--they're soclammy and dead-looking--but now I've got real friends on both planets.One thing, though, gives me the pip. I read a story a while ago--thelatest best-seller thing of Thornton's named 'Interstellar Slush' orsome such tr...."
"Cleophora--An Interstellar Romance," she corrected him. "I thought itwas wonderful!"
"I didn't. It's fundamentally unsound. Look at our nearest neighbors,who probably came from the same original stock we did. A Telluriancan admire, respect, or like a Venerian, yes. But for _loving_ one ofthem--wow! Beauty is purely relative, you know. For instance, I thinkthat you are the most perfectly beautiful thing I ever saw; but noVenerian would think so. Far from it. Any Martian that hadn't seen manyof us would have to go rest his eyes after taking one good look atyou. Considering what love means, it doesn't stand to reason that anyTellurian woman could possibly fall in love with any man not of her ownbreed. Any writer is wrong who indulges in interplanetary love affairsand mad passions. They simply don't exist. They _can't_ exist--they'reagainst all human instincts."
"Interplanetary--in this solar system--yes. But the Dacrovos were justlike us, only nicer."
"That's what gives me the pip. If our own cousins of the same solarsystem are so repulsive to us, how would we be affected by entirelyalien forms of intelligence?"
"May be you're right, of course--but you may be wrong, too," sheinsisted. "The Universe is big enough, so that people like the Dacrovosmay possibly exist in it somewhere. May be the Big Three will discover ameans of interstellar travel--then I'll get to see them myself, perhaps."
"Yes, and _if_ we do, and _if_ you ever see any such people, I'll betthat the sight of them will make your hair curl right up into a ball,too! But about Barkovis--remember how diplomatic the thoughts were thathe sent us? He described our structure as being 'compact,' but I got theundertone of his real thoughts, as well. Didn't you?"
"Yes, now that you mention it, I did. He really thought that we werewhite-hot, under-sized, overpowered, warty, hairy, hideously opaque andgenerally repulsive little monstrosities--thoroughly unpleasant anddistasteful. But he was friendly, just the same. Heavens, Steve! Do yousuppose that he read our real thoughts, too?"
"Sure he did; but he is intelligent enough to make allowances, the sameas we are doing. He isn't any more insulted than we are. He knows thatsuch feelings are ingrained and cannot be changed."
* * * * *
Breakfast over, they experienced a new sensation. For the first time inmonths they had nothing to do! Used as they were to being surrounded bypressing tasks, they enjoyed their holiday immensely for a few hours.Sitting idly at the communicator plate, they scanned the sparklingheavens with keen interest. Beneath them Jupiter was a brilliantcrescent not far from the sun in appearance, which latter had alreadygrown perceptibly smaller and less bright. Above them, and to theirright, Saturn shone refulgently, his spectacular rings plainly visible.All about them were the glories of the firmament, which never fail toawe the most seasoned observer. But idleness soon became irksome tothose two active spirits, and Stevens prowled restlessly about theirnarrow quarters.
"I'm going to go to work before I go dippy," he soon declared. "They'vegot lots of power, and we can rig up a transmitter unit to send it overhere to our receptor. Then I can start welding the old _Hope_ togetherwithout waiting until we get to Titan to start it. Think I'll signalBarkovis to come over, and see what he thinks about it."
The Titanian commander approved the idea, and the transmitting field wasquickly installed. Nadia insisted that she, too, needed to work, andthat she was altogether too good a mechanic to waste; therefore the twoagain labored mightily together, day after day. But the girl limitedrigidly their hours of work to those of the working day; and eveningafter evening Barkovis visited with them for hours. Dressed in his heavyspace-suit and supported by a tractor beam well out of range of whatseemed to him terrific heat radiated by the bodies of the Terrestrials,he floated along unconcernedly; while over the multiplex cable of thethought-exchanger he conversed with the man and woman seated just insidethe open outer door of their air-lock. The Titanian's appetite forinformation was insatiable--particularly did he relish everythingpertaining to the earth and to the other inner planets, forever barredto him and to his kind. In return Stevens and Nadia came gradually toknow the story of the humanity of Titan.
"I am glad beyond measure to have known you," Barkovis mused, one night."Your existence proves that there is truth in mythology, as some ofus have always believed. Your visit to Titan will create a furor inscientific circles, for you are impossibility incarnate--personificationsof the preposterous. In you, wildest fancy had become commonplace.According to many of our scientists, it is utterly impossible for youto exist. Yet you say, and it must be, that there are millions uponmillions of similar beings. Think of it! Venerians, Tellurians,Martians, the satellite dwellers of the lost space-ship, and us--sosimilar mentally, yet physically how different!"
"But where does the mythology come in?" thought Nadia.
"We have unthinkably ancient legends which say that once Titan wasextremely hot, and that our remote ancestors were beings of fire, inwhose veins ran molten water instead of blood. Since our recordedhistory goes back some tens of thousands of Saturnian years, and sincein that long period there has been no measurable change in us, fewof us have believed in the legends at all. They have been thought thesurviving figments of a barbarous, prehistoric worship of the sun.However, such a condition is not in conflict with the known facts ofcosmogony, and since there actually exists such a humanity as yours--ahumanity whose bodily tissues actually _are_ composed largely of moltenwater--those ancient legends must indeed have been based upon truth.
"What an evolution! Century after century of slowly decreasingtemperature--one continuous struggle to adapt the physique to aconstantly changing environment. First they must have tried to maintaintheir high temperature by covering and heating their cities.--Then,as vegetation died, they must have bred into their plants the abilityto use as sap purely chemical liquids, such as our present naturalfluids--which al
so may have been partly synthetic then--instead of themolten water to which they had been accustomed. They must have modifiedsimilarly the outer atmosphere; must have made it more reactive, tocompensate for the lowered temperature at which metabolism must takeplace. As Titan grew colder and colder they probably dug their citiesdeeper and ever deeper; until humanity came finally to realize that itmust itself change completely or perish utterly.
"Then we may picture them as aiding evolution in changing their bodychemistry. For thousands, and thousands of years there must have goneon the gradual adaptation of blood stream and tissue to more and morevolatile liquids, and to lower and still lower temperatures. This musthave continued until Titan arrived at the condition which has nowobtained for ages--a condition of thermal equilibrium with space uponone hand and upon the other the sun, which changes appreciably only inmillions upon millions of years. In equilibrium at last--with our bodilyand atmospheric temperatures finally constant at their present values,which seem as low to you as yours appear high to us. Truly, an evolutionastounding to contemplate!"
"But how about power?" asked Stevens. "You seem to have all you want,and yet it doesn't stand to reason that there could be very muchgenerated upon a satellite so old and so cold."
"You are right. For ages there has been but little power producedupon Titan. Many cycles ago, however, our scientists had developedrocket-driven space-ships, with which they explored our neighboringsatellites, and even Saturn itself. It is from power plants upon Saturnthat we draw energy. Their construction was difficult in the extreme,since the pioneers had to work in braces because of the enormous forceof gravity. Then, too, they had to be protected from the overwhelmingpressure and poisonous qualities of the air, and insulated from atemperature far above the melting point of water. In such awful heat,of course, our customary building material, water, could not beemployed...."
"But all our instruments have indicated that Saturn is _cold_!" Stevensinterrupted.
"Its surface temperature, as read from afar, would be low," concededBarkovis, "but the actual surface of the planet is extremely hot, andis highly volcanic. Practically none of its heat is radiated because ofthe great density and depth of its atmosphere, which extends for manyhundreds of your kilometers. It required many thousands of lives andmany years of time to build and install those automatic power plants,but once they were in operation, we were assured of power for many tensof thousands of years to come."
"Our system of power transmission is more or less like yours, but wehaven't anything like your range. Suppose you'd be willing to teach methe computation of your fields?"
"Yes, we shall be glad to give you the formulae. Being an older race, itis perhaps natural that we should have developed certain refinements asyet unknown to you. But I am, I perceived, detaining you from your timeof rest--goodbye," and Barkovis was wafted back toward his mirroredglobe.
"What do you make of this chemical solution blood of theirs, Steve?"asked Nadia, watching the placidly floating form of the Titaniancaptain.
"Not much. I may have mentioned before that there are one or two, orperhaps even three men who are better chemists than I am. I gatheredthat it is something like a polyhydric alcohol and something like asubstituted hydrocarbon, and yet different from either in that itcontains flourin in loose combination. I think it is something that ourTellurian chemists haven't got yet; but they've got so many organiccompounds now that they may have synthesized it, at that. You see,Titan's atmosphere isn't nearly as dense as ours, but what there isof it is pure dynamite. Ours is a little oxygen, mixed with a lot ofinert ingredients. Theirs is oxygen, heavily laced with flourin. It's_reactive_, no fooling! However, something pretty violent must benecessary to carry on body reactions at such a temperature as theirs."
"Probably; but I know even less about that kind of thing than you do.Funny, isn't it, the way he thinks 'water' when he means ice, and alwaysthinks of our real water as being molten?"
"Reasonable enough when you think about it. Temperature differences arelogarithmic, you know, not arithmetic--the effective difference betweenhis body temperature and ours is perhaps even greater than that betweenours and that of melted iron. We never think of iron as being a liquid,you know."
"That's right, too. Well, good night, Steve dear."
"'Bye, little queen of space--see you at breakfast," and the _ForlornHope_ became dark and silent.
* * * * *
Day after day the brilliant sphere flew toward distant Saturn, with thewreckage of the _Forlorn Hope_ in tow. Piece by piece that wreckage wasbrought together and held in place by the Titanian tractors; and slowlybut steadily, under Stevens' terrific welding projector, the stubbornsteel flowed together, once more to become a seamless, spaceworthystructure. And Nadia, the electrician, followed close behind the welder.Wielding torch, pliers and spanner with practised hand, she repaired orcut out of circuit the damaged accumulator cells and reunited the endsof each severed power lead. Understanding Nadia's work thoroughly, theTitanians were not particularly interested in it; but whenever Stevensmade his way along an outside seam, he had a large and thrillinglyhorrified gallery. Everyone who could possibly secure permission toleave the sphere did so, each upon his own pencil of force, and wentover to watch the welder. They did not come close to him--to venturewithin fifty feet of that slow moving spot of scintillating brilliance,even in a space-suit, meant death--but, poised around him in space, theywatched with shuddering, incredulous amazement, the monstrous humanbeing in whose veins ran molten water instead of blood; whose body wasalready so fiercely hot that it could exist unharmed while workingpractically without protection, upon _liquefied_ metal!
Finally the welding was done. The insulating space was evacuated andheld its vacuum--outer and inner shells were bottle-tight. The twomechanics heaved deep sighs of relief as they discarded their cumbersomearmor and began to repair what few of their machine tools had beendamaged by the slashing plane of force which had so neatly sliced the_Forlorn Hope_ into sections.
"Say, big fellow, you're the guy that slings the ink, ain't you?" Nadiaextinguished her torch and swaggered up to Stevens, hands on hips, herwalk an exaggerated roll. "Write me out a long walk. This job's allplayed out, so I think I'll get me a good job on Titan. I said give memy time, you big stiff!"
"You didn't say nothing!" growled Stevens in his deepest bass, playingup to her lead as he always did. "Bounce back, cub, you've struck arubber fence! You signed on for duration and you'll stick--see?"
Arm in arm they went over to the nearest communicator plate. Flippingthe switch, Stevens turned the dial and Titan shone upon the screen; soclose, that it no longer resembled a moon, but was a world toward whichthey were falling with an immense velocity.
"Not close enough to make out much detail yet--let's take anotherlook at Saturn," and Stevens projected the visiray beam out toward themighty planet. It was now an enormous full moon, almost five degrees inapparent diameter,[1] its visible surface an expanse of what they knewto be billowing cloud, shining brilliantly white in the pale sunlight,broken only by a dark equatorial band.
[Footnote 1: The moon subtends an angle of about one-half of a degree.]
"Those rings were _such_ a gorgeous spectacle a little while ago!" Nadiamourned. "It's a shame that Titan has to be right in their plane, isn'tit? Think of living this close to one of the most wonderful sights inthe Solar System, and never being able to see it. Think they know whatthey're missing, Steve?"
"We'll have to ask Barkovis," Stevens replied. He swung the communicatorbeam back toward Titan, and Nadia shuddered.
"Oh, it's hideous!" she exclaimed. "I thought that it would improve aswe got closer, but the plainer we can see it, the worse it gets. Just tothink of human beings, even such cold-blooded ones as those over there,living upon such a horrible moon and _liking_ it, gives me the blueshivers!"
"It's pretty bleak, no fooling," he admitted, and peered through theeyepiece of the visiray telescope, studying minutely the forb
iddingsurface of the satellite they were so rapidly approaching.
Larger and larger it loomed, a cratered, jagged globe of desolationindescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark,sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark ofwarmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surroundedby vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every loftyobject cast a sharply outlined shade of impenetrable blackness, besidewhich the weak light of the sun became a dazzling glare. The ground waseither a brilliant white or an intense black, unrelieved by half-tones.
"I can't hand it much, either, Nadia, but it's all in the way you'vebeen brought up, you know. This is home to them, and just to look atTellus would give them the pip. Ha! Here's something you'll like, evenif it does look so cold that it makes me feel like hugging a couple ofheater coils. It's Barkovis' city the one we're heading for, I think.It's close enough now so that we can get it on the plate," and he setthe communicator beam upon the metropolis of Titan.
"Why, I don't see a thing, Steve--where and what is it?" They weredropping vertically downward toward the center of a vast plain of white,featureless and desolate; and Nadia stared in disappointment.
"You'll see directly--it's too good to spoil by telling you what to lookfor or wh...."
"Oh, there it is!" she cried. "It _is_ beautiful, Steve, but howfrightfully, utterly cold!"
* * * * *
A flash of prismatic color had caught the girl's eye, and, onetransparent structure thus revealed to her sight, there had burst intoview a city of crystal. Low buildings of hexagonal shape, arrangedin irregularly variant hexagonal patterns, extended mile upon mile.From the roofs of the structures lacy spires soared heavenward;inter-connected by long, slim cantilever bridges whose prodigiousspans seemed out of all proportion to the gossamer delicacy of theirconstruction. Buildings, spires, and bridges formed fantasticgeometrical designs, at which Nadia exclaimed in delight.
"I've just thought of what that reminds me of--it's snowflakes!"
"Sure--I knew it was something familiar. Snowflakes--no two are everexactly alike, and yet every one is symmetrical and hexagonal. We'regoing to land on the public square--see the crowds? Let's put on oursuits and go out."
The _Forlorn Hope_ lay in a hexagonal park, and near it the Titanianglobe had also come to rest. All about the little plot towered theglittering buildings of crystal, and in its center played a fountain;a series of clear and sparkling cascades of liquid jewels. Under footthere spread a thick, soft carpet of whitely brilliant vegetation.Throngs of the grotesque citizens of Titania were massed to greet thespace-ships; throngs clustering close about the globular vessel, butmaintaining a respectful distance from the fiercely radiant Terrestrialwedge. All were shouting greetings and congratulations--shouts whichStevens found as intelligible as his own native tongue.
"Why, I can understand every word they say, Steve!" Nadia exclaimed, insurprise. "How come, do you suppose?"
"I can, too. Don't know--must be from using that thought telephone oftheirs so much, I guess. Here comes Barkovis--I'll ask him."
The Titanian commander had been in earnest conversation with a group offellow-creatures and was now walking toward the Terrestrials, carryingthe multiple headsets. Placing them upon the white sward, he backedaway, motioning the two visitors to pick them up.
"It may not be necessary, Barkovis," Stevens said, slowly and clearly."We do not know why, but we can understand what your people are saying,and it may be that you can now understand us."
"Oh, yes, I can understand your English perfectly. A surprisingdevelopment, but perhaps, after all, one that should have been expected,from the very nature of the device we have been using. I wanted to tellyou that I have just received grave news, which makes it impossible forus to help you immediately, as I promised. While we were gone, one ofour two power-plants upon Saturn failed. In consequence, Titan's powerhas been cut to a minimum, since maintaining our beam at that greatdistance required a large fraction of the output of the other plant.Because of this lack, the Sedlor walls were weakened to such a pointthat in spite of the Guardian's assurances, I think trouble isinevitable. At all events, it is of the utmost importance that we beginrepairing the damaged unit, for that is to be a task indeed."
"Yes, it will take time," agreed Stevens, remembering what theTitanian captain had told him concerning the construction of thoseplants--generators which had been in continuous and automatic operationfor thousands of Saturnian years.
"It will take more than time--it will take lives," replied Barkovis,gravely. "Scores, perhaps hundreds, of us will never again breathe theclear, pure air of Titan. In spite of all precaution and all possiblebracing and insulation, man after man after man will be crushed byhis own weight, volatilized by the awful heat, poisoned by the foulatmosphere, or will burst into unthinkable flames at the touch of someflying spark from the inconceivably hot metals with which we shall haveto work. A horrible fate, but we shall not lack for volunteers."
"Sure not; and of course you yourself would go. And I never thought ofthe effect a spark would have on you--your tissues would probably bewildly inflammable. But say, I just had a thought. Just how hot is theair at those plants and just what is the actual pressure?"
"According to the records, the temperature is some forty of yourcentigrade degrees above the melting-point of water, and the pressureis not far short of two of your meters of mercury. I find it almostimpossible to think of mercury as a liquid, however."
"You find it impossible, since you use it as a metal, for wires in coilsand so on. But plus forty, while pretty warm, isn't impossible, by anymeans; and we could stand double our air pressure for quite a while.Both my partner and I are pretty fair mechanics and we've got quite aline of machine tools, such as you could not possibly have here. We'llgive it a whirl, since we owe you something already. Lead us to it,ace--but wait a minute! We can't see through the fog, so couldn't findthe plants, and probably your wiring diagrams would explode if I touchedthem."
"I never thought of your helping us," mused Barkovis. "The idea of anyliving being existing in that inferno has always been unthinkable, butthe difficulties you mention are slight. We have already built in ourvessel communicators similar to yours, and radio sets. With these we canguide you and explain the plants to you as you work, and our tractorbeams will be of assistance to you in moving heavy objects, even at suchdistances from the surface as we Titanians shall have to maintain. Ifyou will set out a flask of your atmosphere, we will analyze it, for thethought has come to me that perhaps, being planet-dwellers yourselves,the air of Saturn might not be as poisonous to you as it is to us."
"That's a thought, too," and, the news broadcast, it was not long untilthe two ships leaped into the air, to the accompaniment of the cheersand plaudits of a watching multitude.
* * * * *
In a wide curve they sped toward Saturn. Passing so close to theenormous rings that the individual meteoric fragments could almost beseen with the unaided eye, they flashed on and on, slowing down longbefore they approached the upper surface of the envelope of cloud.The spherical space-ship stopped and Stevens, staring into his uselessscreen, drove the _Forlorn Hope_ downward mile after mile, solely underBarkovis' direction, changing course and power from time to time as theTitanian's voice came from the speaker at his elbow. Slower and slowerbecame the descent, until finally, almost upon the broad, flat roofof the power-plant, Stevens saw it in his plate. Breathing deeply inrelief, he dropped quickly down upon a flat pavement, neutralized hiscontrols, and turned to Nadia.
"Well, old golf-shootist, we're here at last--now we'll go out and seewhat's gone screwy with the works. Remember that gravity is about doublenormal here, and conduct yourself accordingly."
"But it's supposed to be only about nine-tenths," she objected.
"That's at the outer surface of the atmosphere," he replied. "And it's_some_ atmosphere--not like the thin layer we'
ve got on Tellus."
They went into the airlock, and Stevens admitted air until theirsuits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffedcautiously, finally opening his helmet wide. Nadia followed suit andthe man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in disgust as two faint, butunmistakable odors smote her olfactory nerves.
"I never cared particularly for hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide,either," he assured her, "but they aren't strong enough to hurt us inthe short time we'll be here. Those Titanian chemists know their stuff,though."
He opened the outer valves slowly, then opened the door and they steppeddown upon the smooth, solid floor, which Stevens examined carefully.
"I thought so, from his story. Solid platinum! This whole plant isbuilt of platinum, iridium, and noble alloys--the only substances knownthat will literally last forever. Believe me, ace of my bosom, I don'twonder that it cost them lives to build it--with their conditions, Idon't see how they ever got it built at all."
Before them rose an immense, flat-topped cone of metal, upon the top ofwhich was situated the power plant. Twelve massive pillars supported aflat roof, but permitted the air to circulate freely throughout the onegreat room which housed the machinery. They climbed a flight of stairs,passed between two pillars, and stared about them. There was no noise,no motion--there was nothing that _could_ move. Twelve enormous massesof metallic checkerwork, covered with wide cooling fins, almost filledthe vast hall. From the center of each mass great leads extended outinto a clear space in the middle of the room, there uniting in mid-airto form one enormous bus-bar. This bar, thicker than a man's body, hadoriginally curved upward to the base of an immense parabolic structureof latticed bars. Now, however, it was broken in midspan and the twoends bent toward the floor. Above their heads, a jagged hole gaped inthe heavy metal of the roof, and a similar hole had been torn in thefloor. The bar had been broken and these holes had been made by someheavy body, probably a meteorite, falling with terrific velocity.
"This is it, all right," Stevens spoke to distant Barkovis. "Surethere's nothing on this beam? If it should be hot and I should shortcircuit or bridge it with my body, it would be just too bad."
"We have made sure that nothing is connected to it," the Titanianassured him. "Do you think you can do anything?"
"Absolutely. We've got jacks that'll bend heavier stuff than that, andafter we get it straightened the welding will be easy, but I'll haveto have some metal. Shall I cut a piece off the pavement outside?"
"That will not be necessary. You will find ample stores of spare metalpiled at the base of each pillar."
"All x. Now we'll get the jack, Nadia," and they went back to theirvessel, finding that upon Saturn, their combined strength was barelysufficient to drag the heavy tool along the floor.
"Stand aside, please. We will place it for you," a calm voice sounded intheir ears, and a pale blue tractor beam picked the massive jack lightlyfrom the floor, and as lightly lifted it to its place beneath the brokenbus-bar and held it there while Stevens piled blocks and plates ofplatinum beneath its base.
"Well, here's where I peel down as far as the law allows. This is goingto be real work, girl--no fooling. It'd help a lot if this outfit weresending out a few thousand kilo-franks instead of standing idle."
"How would that help?"
"It's a heat-engine, you know--works by absorbing heat. The cold airsinks--I imagine it pretty nearly blows a gale down the side of thiscone when it's working--and hot air rushes in to take its place. I coulduse a little cool breeze right now," and Stevens, stripped to the waist,bent to the lever of the powerful hydraulic jack.
Beads of sweat gathered upon his broad back, uniting to form tinyrivulets, and the girl became highly concerned about him.
"Let me help you, Steve--I'm pretty husky, too, you know."
"Sure you are, ace, but this is a job for a truck-horse, not atenderly-nurtured maiden of the upper classes. You can help, though, bybreaking out that welding outfit and getting it ready while I'm doingthis bending to prepare for the welding."
Under the urge of that mighty jack the ends of the broken bus-bar roseinto place, while far off in space the Titanians clustered about theirvisiray screens, watching, in almost unbelieving amazement, thesupernatural being who labored in that reeking inferno of heat andpoisonous vapor--who labored almost naked and entirely unprotected,refreshing himself from time to time with drafts of molten water!
"All x, Barkovis--that's high, I guess." Stevens flipped perspirationfrom his hot forehead with a wet finger and straightened his weary back."Now you can put this jack away where we had it. Then you might trundleme over enough of that spare metal to fill up this hole, and I'll put onmy suit and goggles and practice welding on this floor and the roof, toget the feel of the metal before I tackle the bar."
The hole in the floor was filled with scrap and soon sparks were flyingwildly as the searing beam of Stevens' welding projector bit viciouslyinto the stubborn alloy of noble metals; fashioning a smooth, solidfloor where the yawning aperture had been. Then, lifted with his toolsand plates to the roof, the man repaired that hole also.
"Now I know enough about it to do a good job on the bar," he decided,and brick after brick of alloy was fused into the crack, until only asmoothly rounded bulge betrayed that a break had ever existed in thatmighty rod of metal.
"Give 'em the signal to draw power, and see if that's all that was thematter," Stevens instructed, as he relaxed in the grateful coolness oftheir control room. "Whew, that was a warm job, Nadia--and this air ofours does smell good!"
* * * * *
"It was a horrible job, and I'm glad it's done," she declared. "But say,Steve, that thing looks as little like a power-plant as anything I canimagine. How does it work? You said that it worked on heat, but I don'tquite see how. But don't draw diagrams and _please_ don't integrate!"
"No ordinary plant such as we use could run for centurieswithout attention," he replied. "This is a highly advancedheat-engine--something like a thermo-couple, you know. This whole thingis simply the hot end, connected to the cold end on Titan by a beaminstead of wires. When it's working, this metal must cool off somethingfierce. That's what the checkerwork and fins are for--so that it canabsorb the maximum amount of heat from the current of hot, moist airI spoke about. It's a sweet system--we'll have to rig up one betweenTellus and the moon. Or even between the Equator and the Arctic Circlethere'd be enough thermal differential to give us a million kilofranks.We haven't got the all x signal yet, but it's working--look at it sweatas it cools down!"
"I'll say it's sweating--the water is simply streaming off it!" In theirplate they saw that moisture was already beginning to condense upon theheat-absorber: moisture running down the fins in streams and creepingover the dull metal floor in sluggish sheets; moisture which, turninginto ice in the colder interior of the checkerwork, again became fluidat the inrush of hot, wet Saturnian air.
"There's the signal--all x, Barkovis? By the way it's condensing water,it seems to be functioning again."
"Perfect!" came the Titanian's enthusiastic reply, "You twoplanet-dwellers have done more in three short hours than the entireforce of Titan could have accomplished in months. You have earned, andshall receive, the highest...."
"As you were, ace!" Stevens interrupted, embarrassed. "This job was justlike shooting fish down a well, for us. Since you saved our lives, weowe you a lot yet. We're coming out--straight up!"
The _Forlorn Hope_ shot upward, through mile after mile of steaming fog,until at last she broke through into the light, clear outer atmosphere.Stevens located the Titanian space-ship, and the two vessels once morehurtling together through the ether toward Titan, he turned to hiscompanion.
"Take the controls, will you, Nadia? Think I'll finish up the tube. Ibrought along a piece of platinum from the power plant, and somethingthat I think is tantalum from Barkovis' description of it. With thoseand the fractions we melted out, I think I can make everything we'llneed."
"Eureka, little fellow! She's down to where I can't read it, even onthis big gauge--so hard that it won't need flashing--harder than anyvacuum I ever got on Tellus, even with a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump!"
"But how about occluded and absorbed gas in the filaments and so on whenthey heat up?" demanded Nadia, practically.
"All gone, ace. I out-gassed 'em plenty out there--seven times, almostto fusion. There isn't enough gas left in the whole thing to make a deepbreath for a microbe."
He took up his welding projector and a beam carried him back to thetube. There, in the practically absolute vacuum of space, the lastopenings in the glass were sealed, and man and great transmitting tubewere wafted lightly back into the Terrestrial cruiser.
Hour after hour mirrored Titanian sphere and crude-fashioned terrestrialwedge bored serenely on through space, and it was not until Titan loomedlarge beneath them that the calm was broken by an insistent call fromTitan to the sphere.
"Barkodar, attention! Barkodar, attention!" screamed from the speakers,and they heard Barkovis acknowledge the call.
"The Sedlor have broken through and are marching upon Titania. The orderhas gone out for immediate mobilization of every unit."
"There's that word 'Sedlor' again--what are they, anyway, Steve?"demanded Nadia.
"I don't know. I was going to ask him when he sprung it on us first, buthe was pretty busy then and I haven't thought of it since. Somethingpretty serious, though--they've jumped their acceleration almost toTellurian gravity, and none of them can live through much of that."
"Tellurians?" came the voice of Barkovis from the speaker. "We havejust...."
"All x--we were on your wave and heard it," interrupted Stevens. "We'rewith you. What are those Sedlor, anyway? Maybe we can help you dope outsomething."
"Perhaps--but whatever you do, do not use your heat-projector. Thatwould start a conflagration raging over the whole country, and we shallhave enough to do without fighting fire. But it may be that you haveother weapons, of which we are ignorant, and I can use a little time inexplanation before we arrive. The Sedlor are a form of life, somethinglike your..." he paused, searching through his scanty store of Earthlyknowledge, then went on, doubtfully, "perhaps some thing like yourinsects. They developed a sort of intelligence, and because of theirfecundity, adapted themselves to their environment as readily as didman; and for ages they threatened man's supremacy upon Titan. Theydevoured vegetation, crops, animals, and mankind. After a world-widecampaign, however, they were finally exterminated, save in theneighborhood of one great volcanic crater, which they so honeycombedthat it is almost impregnable. All around that district we have erectedbarriers of force, maintained by a corps of men known as 'Guardians ofthe Sedlor.' These barriers extend so far into the ground and so highinto the air that the Sedlor can neither burrow beneath them nor flyover them. They were being advanced as rapidly as possible, and in afew more years the insects would have been destroyed completely--butnow they are again at large. They have probably developed an armor ora natural resistance greater than the Guardians thought possible, sothat when the walls were weakened, they came through in their millions,underground and undetected. They are now attacking our nearest city--theone you know, and which you have called Titania."
"What do you use--those high-explosive bombs?"
"The bombs were developed principally for use against them, but provedworse than useless, for we found that when a Sedlor was blown to pieces,each piece forthwith developed into a new, complete creature. Our mostefficient weapons are our heat rays--not yours remember--and poison gas.I must prepare our arms."
"Would our heat-ray actually set them afire, Steve?" Nadia asked, as theplate went blank.
"I'll say it would. I'll show you what heat means to them--showingyou will be plainer than any amount of explanation," and he shot thevisiray beam down toward the city of Titania. Into a low-lying buildingit went, and Nadia saw a Titanian foundry in full operation. Men cladin asbestos armor were charging, tending, and tapping great electricfurnaces and crucibles; shrinking back and turning their armored headsaway as the hissing, smoking melt crackled into the molds from theirlong-handled ladles. Nadia studied the foundry for a moment, interested,but unimpressed.
"Of course it's hot there--foundries always _are_ hot," she argued.
"Yes, but you haven't got the idea yet." Stevens turned again to thecontrols, following the sphere toward what was evidently a line ofbattle. "That stuff that they are melting and casting and that is sohot, is not metal, but _ice!_ Remember that the vital fluid of all lifehere, animal and vegetable, corresponding to our water, is probablymore inflammable than gasoline. If they can't work on ice-water withoutwearing suits of five-ply asbestos, what would a real heat-ray do tothem? It'd be about like our taking a dive into the sun!"
"_Ice_!" she exclaimed. "Oh of course--but you couldn't really believea thing like that without seeing it, could you? Oh, Steve--how utterlyhorrible!"
* * * * *
The "Barkodar" had dropped down into a line of sister ships, and hadgone into action in midair against a veritable swarm of foes. Wingedcentipedes they were--centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselvesalong the ground and through the air in furious hordes. From the flyingglobes emanated pale beams of force, at the touch of which the Sedlordisappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground huge tractors and trucks,manned by masked soldiery, mounted mighty reflectors projecting the samelethal beam. From globes and tanks there sounded a drumming roar andsmall capsules broke in thousands among the foe; emitting a red cloud ofgas in which the centipedes shriveled and died. But for each one thatwas destroyed two came up from holes in the ground and the battle-linefell back toward Titania, back toward a long line of derrick-likestructures which were sinking force-rods into the ground in furioushaste.
Stevens flashed on his ultra-violet projector and swung it into thethickest ranks of the enemy. In the beam many of the monsters died,but the Terrestrial ray was impotent compared with the weapons of theTitanians, and Stevens, snapping off the beam with a bitter imprecation,shot the visiray out toward the bare, black cone of the extinct volcanoand studied it with care.
"Barkovis, I've got a thought!" he snapped into the microphone. "Theirstronghold is in that mountain, and there's millions of them in thereyet, coming out along their tunnels. They've got all the vegetationeaten away for miles, so there's nothing much left there to spread afire if I go to work on that hill, and, I'll probably melt enough waterto put out most of the fires I start. Detail me a couple of ships todrop your fire-foam bombs on any little blazes that may spread, and I'llgive them so much to worry about at home, that they'll forget all aboutTitania."
The _Forlorn Hope_ darted toward the crater, followed closely by two ofthe dazzling globes. They circled the mountain until Stevens found afavorable point of attack--a stupendous vertical cliff of mingled rockand crystal, upon the base of which he trained his terrific infra-redprojector.
"I'm going to draw a lot of power," he warned the Titanians then. "I'mgiving this gun everything she'll take."
He drove the massive switches in, and as that dull red beam struck thecliff's base there was made evident the awful effect of a concentratedbeam of real and pure heat upon such an utterly frigid world. Vastcolumns of fire roared aloft, helping Stevens, melting and destroyingthe very ground as the bodies of the Sedl
or in that gigantic ant-heapburst into flames. Clouds of superheated steam roared upward, condensinginto a hot rain which descended in destructive torrents upon thefastnesses of the centipedes. As the raging beam ate deeper and deeperinto the base of the cliff, the mountain itself began to disintegrate;block after gigantic block breaking off and crashing down into theflaming, boiling, seething cauldron which was the apex of that raveningbeam.
Hour after hour Stevens drove his intolerable weapon into the greatmountain, teeming with Sedlorean life; and hour after hour a group ofTitanian spheres stood by, deluging the surrounding plain with a floodof heavy fumes, through which the holocaust could not spread for lack ofoxygen. Not until the mountain was gone--not until in its stead therelay a furiously boiling lake, its flaming surface hundreds of feet belowthe level of the plain--did Stevens open his power circuits and pointthe deformed prow of the _Forlorn Hope_ toward Titania.