Russell Clyde was confined to his bunk during the next four days, his feet wrapped in bandages and ointment. Fortunately the digestive juices of the Venusian amoeba had only just begun their attack upon the skin after eating through the footgear. Except for some painful blisters and rawness, his condition was not serious.
The little stateroom was cramped, containing as it did two bunks, one above the other, like the cabin of a liner. What with a couple of built-in lockers for clothes, and a bolted-down chair and a reading lamp, it was not a place to spend any more time than necessary. The lack of a window added to the inhospitality of the room. But Burl had accepted long ago the fact that a spaceship could not yet be considered a luxury liner. In time, the A-G drive would permit such things, but theMagellanwas an experimental vessel turned by emergency into a warship.
During those four days, Burl spent most of his time with Russ, getting to know him better, and talking about the trip. The young astronomer was not at all chagrined by his misadventure. In fact, the whole experience had him quite buoyed up.
"What a wonderful place for biologists to study! Venus will be a Mecca for scientific learning!"
"But not for anything else, I don't think," said Burl. "Anyway, we're in for another experience now. Mars is our next goal. What's it like?"
Russ put his hands behind his head and looked up at the bottom of the bunk above him. "We can see Mars well enough; there's no cloud blanket and the atmosphere is thin but clear. You've seen the photos and the colored sketches?"
"I've seen it from our viewplates, but so far it's just a tiny, red disc. We're about at Earth's orbit now, even though Earth is many millions of miles away from us. Mars is still about fifty million miles further, but we're gaining speed quite rapidly and Lockhart thinks we'll make it soon enough." Burl picked up one of the books from the ship's library and started to thumb through it to locate a color chart of the planet.
Russ waved a hand. "You don't have to show me. I've studied Mars by telescope so often I know it by heart. It's mostly a sort of light, reddish-tan, a kind of pale russet. We think that's desert. There are some fairly large sections that are bluish-green—at least in the Martian summers. In their winters these sections fade very greatly."
"That's vegetation," Burl broke in. "It must be! Everybody agrees it acts like it. And there are the white polar caps, too."
"You can tell which season is which by the size of the polar ice caps. When one is big, the other is almost gone. Then there's the problem of the canals...."
"Do you believe in them?" asked Burl. "The books disagree. Some think they're real—even say they look as if they had been built by intelligent beings as irrigation channels to take the melting waters of the poles down to the fertile lands. But other astronomers claim they can't see them—or that they're illusions, series of cracks, or lines of dark dust blown by winds."
"Personally, I've come to believe in them," Russ argued. "They've been photographed—something is there. They're very faint, spidery lines, but they certainly are straight and regular. We'll find out soon enough."
Find out they did. Russ was up and about and the normal life of the ship resumed. During their passage of Earth's orbit, they had managed to raise the United States on the ship's radio. For three days they were able to converse with their home base. They exchanged news and data, transmitted back all they had learned and eagerly asked for news.
The men of the crew had the chance to send messages home, and Burl even talked briefly with his father. There had been an important discovery made on Earth.
The lines of force had finally been traced. The distortions visible on Mars, as well as the one from Mercury before its cutoff, had been worked out directionally. There was no doubt that a line of force had been channeled outward to a point in space that now proved to be that of a planet. The planet was Pluto.
"Pluto!" That was the shocked word uttered by everyone within hearing distance when the radio voice said it.
"Pluto! Why, that's the end of the line! The most distant planet," said Oberfield, shocked. "We'll have to go there—all the way!"
That fact sobered everyone. It meant the trip must last many times longer than anyone had expected. But they were a band of men who had achieved great things—they had managed so far to work together in harmony, and they felt that since they had conquered two planets—what were a few more?
Mars gradually grew larger on their telescopic viewers as theMagellanfell onward through space, riding the beam of gravity that was like a pulling rope to them. The slow down and reverse was made in good order—the sphere swinging around, readjusting, and the great, driving Zeta-ring generators now pushing and braking.
Then one wake period, Russ and Burl went to the telescope and trained it again on the oncoming planet. The now large disc of the ruddy world swung onto the screen. It looked strange, not at all like the drawings.
Burl had never seen it through Terrestrial telescopes, but he sensed something was wrong. He realized suddenly, "Both poles are enlarged! It's winter onbothhemispheres! And that's impossible!"
Yet it was so. Both the Martian ice caps were present and both extended down the northern and southern hemispheres of the world. The men stared in silence.
Slowly Russ tried to figure it out, "The greenish-blue areas can scarcely be seen. Where they should be, there're darker patches of brown, against the yellowish-red that now seems to be the desert areas. It seems to be winter on both sides and it looks bad. It looks to me as if Mars were a fast-dying world."
Burl squinted his eyes. "Yet I see the canals. The straight lines are still visible—see?"
Russ nodded. "They're real. But what's happened?"
Indeed, the planet seemed blighted. "It's the Sun-tap," Burl decided. "We should have realized what it would do."
"Remember Earth the week it was working? The temperature fell several degrees, began to damage crops? Remember how it snowed in places where snow had never fallen in July? Remember the predictions of disaster for crops, of danger from winter snows if the drop continued?"
Russ went on in his careful, explanatory way. "And for Mars it has continued. Mars was always colder than Earth; life there must have been far more precariously balanced. During the day, on the Martian equator in midsummer, the highest temperature is not likely to be more than 70° or 80°; and at night, even then, it would fall below freezing. Vegetation on Mars must have been hardy in the best of times, and life carried on under great difficulties.
"Now the margin of warmth and light has been cut. It has been just enough to keep both polar caps frozen, to prevent water from reaching the fertile regions, and the cold has advanced enough to bar the growth and regeneration of plant life. If the Sun-tapping on Mars is not stopped, all life there will die out, and it will be a permanently dead world forever."
The news spread throughout the crew and there was a feeling of anger and urgency. Nobody knew what lived on Mars, yet the subject of Mars and Martians had always intrigued the imaginations of people on Earth. Now, to hear that the unknown enemy had nearly slain a neighboring world brought home vividly just what would also have been the fate of Earth.
The day finally came when the big spaceship slid into an orbit about the ruddy planet. It circled just outside the atmospheric level while the men aboard studied the surface for its secrets.
Mars was indeed inhabited. This fact was borne home by the canals and the very evident artificial nature of their construction. They could see clearly through their telescopes that there was an intricate global network of pipelines, pumping stations, and irrigation viaducts from pole to pole. They also saw that at the intersections of the canals were dark sections crisscrossed with thin blobs of gray and black which proved under the telescopes to be clusters of buildings. There were cities on Mars, linked by the waterways.
They saw no aircraft. They detected no railroad lines or roadways beyond the canalways themselves. The many regions of darker, better ground, intersected by the canals which no longer fulfilled their purposes, were covered with thick vegetation—forests of dying, wintery stalks. Only a flicker of dark green here and there showed where some faint irrigation still got through.
They saw also that there were lines of white, which had not been visible before. Snow was gathering in low spots, and the planet was freezing up.
The lines of solar distortion were strong, and they traced them to their point of concentration. The point was not some isolated spot far in a desert, away from Martian investigation. To the amazement of the men, the location of the Sun-tap station was actually within a Martian city!
"Do you suppose," Lockhart queried the others, "that the Martians themselves are the builders of this setup—that this is their project—that they are the criminals and not the victims?"
There was no answer. The evidence was apparent, but it made no sense. If the Martians had created this thing, it was destroying them. And yet, if they had not created it, why did they—so clearly a race that had attained a high level of engineering ability—tolerate its continual existence?
As the ship descended, they saw the city emerge. It consisted of hundreds of gray mounds—buildings laid out in the form of neat hemispherical structures, like skyscraper igloos, with rows of circular windows. Each building was like the next, and they fitted together in a series of great circles, radiating outward from the meeting spot of the canals.
The explorer crew waited at the ship's rocket launchers for an attack. The tail of the teardrop housed the built-in armament—the rocket tubes which could send forth destruction to an enemy. But though Haines sat with his finger on the launcher button, no aircraft rose to meet them from the city below. No guns barked at them. No panic started in the streets.
They could see tiny dots of living beings moving about, but no sign of alarm, no evidence that they had been noticed.
Even here, at the equator, there were streaks of white snow in the streets and rings of rime along the bases of the buildings.
Directly below them lay the Sun-tap station. The lines converged here, and the rings of distortion could be seen in the atmosphere, causing the city to flicker as if from the presence of invisible waves.
Then they saw the masts and their shining accumulators projecting about a cleared spot near the outskirts of the city. The customary walled ring and the open machinery were not visible.
"The Sun-tap station is under the city!" said Lockhart, shocked. "It's been built beneath the streets somewhere, and the Martians walk around above it and let the masts alone! They must be the builders!"
"If so, why are they killing themselves?" Burl couldn't see the sense of it. "And if they have reasons, then why don't they defend it? They were alerted while we were on Mercury. They must have spaceships if they are the enemy. Where are they?"
The ground was now but a few hundred feet below them, and still no one paid the strange ship hanging in the sky any attention. While the crew stood with bated breath, Lockhart brought the ship down and down, until it came to rest barely fifty feet above an intersection. There it hung, nearly touching the roofs, and was ignored.
The shining masts of the Sun-tap station continued to gleam, following the tiny bright Sun in its course through the dark blue of the sky. One of the two small Martian moons was climbing upward along the horizon. The canals beyond were dark lines of conduit, through which no life-giving waters flowed. And the Martians did nothing.
"I don't like the looks of this at all," said Lockhart finally. "I suspect a trap. Yet we've got to land and get at that base. I'm going to take the ship out into the desert beyond the city and let a scouting squad go in first."
TheMagellanlifted back into the sky, then moved out over the ocher wasteland that was the barren desert of the red planet. Slowly the ship dropped again until its pointed nether end hung about twenty feet above the cold shale and time-worn sand.
Captain Boulton and Ferrati were selected to do the initial survey. Burl and Haines helped them climb through the packed spaces of the outer hold. The jeep was swung out to the lowermost cargo port, and the spaceship's cargo derrick lowered the compact army vehicle to the ground.
The two scouts then put on altitude suits with oxygen masks, slung walkie-talkies about their chests, took light carbines in hand and pistols in belts and went down the rope ladder from the cargo port. They climbed into the sturdy jeep with its specially-designed carburetor and pressurized engine. The vehicle had been prepared to operate in the light atmosphere of Mars, as thin as the air on a Himalayan mountaintop, and low in free oxygen.
Burl and Haines, clad in pressure suits themselves, sat in the open port and watched the jeep set off. The engine kicked over and barked a few times in the strange air. Then Boulton at the wheel threw in the clutch, stepped on the gas, and the squat little car, painted in Air Force blue, rolled off over the flat rocky surface, kicking up a light cloud of sand as it went.
On Haines's lap sat a walkie-talkie. Boulton and Ferrati kept up a running commentary as they approached the city. Ferrati described the ground and the appearance of the oncoming city.
The jeep was now a small object merging with the dark mounds of the city's outermost buildings. "We haven't met any Martians yet," came Ferrari's voice. "Apparently they aren't interested in investigating us even now. And here we are rolling right up to the city limits." There was a pause.
The walkie-talkie emitted a series of squeaks and squawks, and Ferrati's voice came through now with distortion. "We're crossing the city limits—there's a sort of hard, plastic pavement that begins at the very edge. Now we're going down an intersection between the buildings."
The squawks became increasingly louder. They could hear only a word or two. Haines asked whether he was getting through to them, but he could not make out an answer because of the racket.
"It's the Sun-tap station. It's generating distortion. We'll have to wait until they return," said Burl.
Haines nodded and turned off the set which had begun to utter ear-piercing howls. The two men waited quietly for about half an hour. Only a phone call from the curious men in the control room interrupted their vigil.
Then finally Burl spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon. "There they are!"
The two men stood up as the little jeep made its way back over the desert to the ship. As it drew closer, they saw a third occupant sitting in the back with Ferrati. Haines opened the walkie-talkie. "Wait till you see this fellow," Ferrati's comment came through.
The jeep drew up to the ship and stopped. Ferrati waved them down. A few seconds later they were joined by Lockhart and Clyde, also in pressure suits.
The creature in the back of the jeep was a Martian. They stared in fascination. It was about three feet long with a small, oval-shaped head and two very large, many-faceted eyes. A small, beaklike mouth and short, stubby antennae completed its face. The head was attached by a short neck to a body that consisted of three oval masses joined together by narrow belts, much like the joints of an insect. A pair of arms, ending in long three-fingered hands, grew from the first segment. A set of long, thin legs grew out of each of the two other segments. A glistening grayish-blue shell, its skin, covered it from head to foot.
At the moment, this particular Martian was tightly restrained by a strong nylon net, and was obviously the captive of the two explorers.
"Why, it looks like a giant insect!" exclaimed Burl.
"More like a kind of lobster," was Ferrati's answer. "But this is it. This is one of the city dwellers."
Lockhart shook his head. "I don't like this. We shouldn't do anything to antagonize the Martians. Taking one prisoner like this may be a bad first move."
Boulton stepped out of the jeep. "There wasn't anything else we could do. Besides, who said that Martians were ever our friends?"
"We got into the city," he went on, "and drove around the streets. There were plenty of these fellows around, going about their business. Hundreds of 'em. Do you think they stopped to look at us? Do you think they were curious? Do you think they talked to us? Called the police? Did anything at all?
"No," he answered himself. "They just walked around us as if we were a stick of something in the way. They don't say anything to each other. They just go on about their affairs, dragging things, carrying food, herding young ones, and not a darn word.
"They looked at us, and didn't even act as if they saw us. When we stopped one, it squirmed out of our grasp and walked away. Finally we took this fellow, simply grabbed him off the street, tied him up, stuffed him in the jeep and kidnaped him. And do you think anybody cared or turned in an alarm or tried to help him? No!"
Lockhart looked at the prisoner a moment. The Martian stared at him out of his unwinking multiple eyes. "Are you sure these are the engineers of the canals, the builders?"
Boulton nodded. "Definitely. We saw some of them at work. They were repairing a house and they used tools and fire. They have machines, and they use them. They've got their city working and well laid out, but I don't know how they do it. They must communicate in some way, but they act as if they had been drilled in their jobs and were going through an elaborate and complicated pantomime. Even the young don't utter a peep."
Lockhart stepped back a bit. "Untie this fellow. Let's see what he does."
When the Martian had been released from the enveloping net, it made no effort to communicate. It turned slowly around, a little wobbly at first, and wandered off, paying no attention to the men, the ship, or the jeep. Then it started walking at a rapid pace. The men watched as it trotted into the desert—away from the city!
It seemed to wander around as if lost, and then set out in another direction, but still one that would not take it to the city which was quite plainly in view.
The Martian disappeared from view behind a series of small hummocks, still bound for nowhere.
The men were lost in amazement. Russell Clyde uttered a low whistle. "Burl's right. It must be a sort of insect."
"This whole civilization seems to be insectlike, if you ask me," said Burl. "It's like a huge anthill, or a big bee-hive. It seems complicated, and the creatures go through complex activities, and all the time it's something they were born with."
Ferrati nodded. "Now that you mention it, that's exactly what the city was like. Nobody gave orders—everybody just did what they were supposed to do. Nobody was curious about us because it wasn't their business."
"And, individually, they haven't intelligence," Clyde added. "That one—the one you took away from his work—plainly is lost. He doesn't know how to go about getting back. He has no curiosity about us ... he may not even have much of a brain. Individual ants have no brain—only a sort of central nerve center. Collectively, they perform wonders; individually, they are quite helpless."
Lockhart interrupted the discussion. "Well, then, let's get on with it. Obviously, the Sun-tap builders placed their station in this city because it was a safe spot, protected by the Martians themselves, and because the Martians would never think to interfere with them. So you men can go back, take your stuff, dig out the station and put it out of commission. Get going."
Haines and Burl climbed into the jeep with Boulton and Ferrati. Russell Clyde insisted on joining them, and Lockhart gave his consent. Off they went, rumbling over the sand toward the city of instinct.
Burl was excited and curious about the Martians. They presented a strange mixture of contradictions. "How," he asked Russ, "could they have built a world-wide network of canals, set up pumping stations, laid out plantations, mastered hydraulic and power engineering, if they are mere creatures of instinct? Surely there must be brainy ones somewhere? A thinker species?"
"Not necessarily," said Russ. "Remember, these creatures are operating without opposition—they are really the highest type of life here. The need to conserve water and continue their hive life forced them to learn a practical kind of engineering. Nobody knows how the ants and bees formed their complex societies—there are none among them with any larger brains than the rest, and they do not talk. But somehow ants and bees communicate and somehow they act as a mass. Figure it on a world-wide scale, driven by the threat of their world drying up, and these creatures built up a mechanical civilization to meet it. But it also accounts for why they have never flown, not through the air and not through space, why they haven't attempted radio communication with Earth, and why they don't understand what the Sun-tap station is doing to them. Their world is being killed, and they literally haven't the brains to understand it."
They reached the city. All about was a silent hustle and bustle of enigmatic, shining, shelled creatures. Superficially, it looked like an intelligent civilization. There were wheeled carts driven by some sort of steam generator. Steam-driven engines ran factories.
The Martians made way for the jeep with unconcern. Never had they seen creatures as large as themselves that were not of their own kind on hive business. Hence, none such could exist. This was a world totally without individualism, a civilization without a spoken language, without names, without banners. Wherever or however the mass knowledge was located or transmitted, no individual of another species could ever hope to know. It would be forever as remote from human explorers as the farthest star on the farthest galaxy.
They drove to where the Sun-tap masts rose from the ground. The men parked the jeep out of the way of the silent traffic, climbed out and walked into the rounded door of a building. Its architecture was not like that of the other buildings. Inside the chambers were dark.
"These creatures have no lights," remarked Boulton. "They must use their feelers indoors."
"Ah, but look," said Burl, reaching out a hand to a little globe set on a pole in the floor. He touched it and the globe lighted up. "The Sun-tap builders needed light and put in their own fixtures here. I recognize their style."
The five men followed a hallway that sloped down into the ground, and came out into a large underground cellar—several hundred feet wide. It was the Sun-tap station. There were the now-familiar globes and rods, the force fields, the controls, the pedestals and the ends of the rotating masts.
They made their recordings, and Burl got ready to turn off the station. Ferrati and Haines uncrated a small, tactical atomic bomb they had carried with them—one of the smallest perfected by the Army during the past half dozen years. They laid it down in the center of the equipment and set the timer for a half hour away.
Boulton found the alarm globe and prepared to blow it up. Then Burl took the control panel and switched off the station. They heard the thud of a crumbling mast. Boulton fired a shot into the alarm globe which had begun to turn red. It smashed.
"All right, men," snapped Haines, "let's go!"
As they moved toward the exit, Boulton hesitated. "Hey," he said, "there's one globe still in action!"
The others turned in time to see Boulton stride over to a very small globe which was glowing pale yellow against the wall near the doorway.
The Marine captain drew his pistol, aimed and fired. The globe burst, but as it did so, a level bolt of yellow light shot back along the path of the bullet. For a split second, Boulton was outlined in yellow fire. There was a flash like lightning.
Each man reached for his weapons, but the underground station remained dark and dead. Their flashlights turned on Boulton. The stocky Marine was lying on the ground.
They ran to him. "He's alive!" cried Haines, as he saw that Boulton was still breathing, his breath whistling back and forth through the oxygen mask. Quickly Haines examined him. "His heart's all right. He's just been knocked unconscious."
Ferrati and Haines picked up the captain by his arms and legs. Though he would have been heavy on Earth, his weight on Mars was very slight, and each man knew he was capable of carrying great loads with his Earth-attuned muscles. Then, in single file, they left the cellar and came out of the doorway of the building.
As they emerged they were stopped short. Surrounding them was a tremendous and growing crowd of Martians. A solid wall of shell-like faces stared at them, and a small forest of short antennae waved and flickered in great agitation.
As they pushed their way with great difficulty toward the jeep, the crowd began to sway, as if in anger. Now, for the first time, they heard the creatures make a noise—a sort of humming and buzzing like angered bees.
"They see us now," muttered Haines. "I don't like it."
"The Sun-tap builders did it," said Burl. "They must have booby-trapped the place against intruders. The globe that got Boulton must have set off some sort of vibration that enrages these creatures. And it looks as if we're the victims."
As they reached their jeep, the encircling mass of Martians moved forward. The humming rose to a higher pitch, and then the mob, with the berserk ferocity of a swarm of bees, lunged toward them.
With Boulton lying across the back seat, the four men acted simultaneously. Thinking only of self-defense, they drew their pistols and fired point-blank into the monsters attacking them. As the men emptied their guns, the Martians in front stumbled, fell, rolled over, or began to run aimlessly as the heavy slugs tore through them.
They were not easy to kill—which was to be expected of creatures without much of a central consciousness—but on the other hand, once struck or injured, they seemed to lose contact with their fellows and to act wholly without direction. They plunged wildly into each other, and before the men in the jeep had finished their barrage, the clearing was a milling, confused mob. Body clashed against body, legs scrambled under legs, and the angry buzz was now lost amid the clattering and banging of shell against shell.
Haines slid into the front seat behind the steering wheel, stepped on the gas, and drove toward a momentary gap in the mob. The jeep tore through, raced around the corner, and headed down an empty street. Crouching in the back, Burl, Russ, and Ferrati hastily reloaded.
"We can't let ourselves get stopped, or even hole up. That A-bomb's going to go off in about twenty minutes, and we'd better be back at the ship before then," cried Russ.
As they bumped along, they noticed that the Martians who came within fifty feet of their jeep suddenly stopped whatever they were doing and turned toward them, hostile. They were like a stick drawn along among bees—as they traveled they left fury in their wake.
"It must be Boulton," Russ yelled to Burl above the roar of their passage. "He must be charged with the irritating vibration."
Burl nodded as he looked back. The Martians had started after them on foot, and could lope fast when they wanted to. "They've got some sort of organized action going," he called to Haines. "I think it's steam carts!"
"The mass mind caught on fast," said Russ. "And look! They're warned in advance now!"
They were nearing the edge of the city, and looming before them, blocking their right-of-way, were two steam carts—big ones carrying a large number of Martians. They were holding metallic rods and instruments in their hand-members.
Ferrati opened a chest built against the back of the seat and took out a light machine gun. Climbing into the front, next to Haines, he kneeled down behind the windshield, raised the gun, and blazed away.
The steam carts suddenly swerved, one after the other, ran wildly into the side of a building, and turned over. The jeep roared past them, raced across the last hundred feet of city paving and out onto the desert. Haines had to slow down to navigate safely the uneven layers of barren soil, rock and sand. Burl holstered his gun and reached across for one of the abandoned walkie-talkies.
In the excitement of their exit, none had noticed the change in the Martian scenery. But now it occurred to Burl that the day was distinctly lighter, and he fancied the Sun—small though it was—felt warmer. The Sun-tap demolished, this was to be expected, and by the same token, radio communication should now be practical.
Sure enough, he got Lockhart's voice at once. Hastily, he warned the commander of what had happened.
As they drew nearer theMagellan, the great spaceship lowered toward the ground and let down its grapples and ladders. Burl saw that there was no time to be lost. A stream of Martians and steam carts was pouring out of the city on their trail.
They reached the spaceship and slammed to a halt. The men leaped out. Burl and Russ lifted Boulton's unconscious body from the jeep and, between them, managed to hoist him awkwardly up the dangling rope ladder.
The others hooked grapples onto the jeep, and when it was secure, leaped for safety themselves.
As the first of the Martian steam carts was almost on them, theMagellanlifted into the air. It rose high above the surface and swung off into the desert. The Martians drew to a halt. Burl, looking down from the doorway of the cargo hatch, could see them milling aimlessly around. None, he noticed, ever glanced up. Air flight, apparently, was an inconceivable phenomenon to them.
After the jeep had been pulled into the cargo hold and secured, the outer ports were sealed. When everyone was safely in the inner sphere, theMagellandrew away from Mars and started on the next lap of its long mission.
Boulton was carefully examined. Nothing could be made of his condition. He seemed to bear no physical hurt, although he slept on. He was placed in his bunk, and there he rested, breathing slowly, temperature normal, dormant.
The life of the spaceship resumed, for the time being, without him. The next port of call was Jupiter, and that presented problems of its own. Between Mars and Jupiter was the great asteroid belt, a region of many thousands of tiny planetoids, ranging in size from worldlets of two or three hundred miles in diameter down to rocks the size of footballs. "The debris of an exploded planet," was the comment Russ made to Burl. "That's the most likely explanation. Anyway," he added, "there seems to be no Sun-tap station on any of them. The next one is beyond the asteroids, in Jupiter's orbit."
During the next few days, Lockhart and the two astrogators were busy working out a rather complex maneuver, which consisted of having the ship jump over the asteroid belt rather than travel directly through it. While the orbits of thousands of the larger asteroids had been charted, there were thousands more that consisted of just chunks of rock too small to notice. They could not chance a collision with one of these—yet to work out the whereabouts of all of them was impossibly time-consuming.
What theMagellandid was to depart from the plane of the ecliptic, that level around the Sun to which all the planets generally adhere, and to draw outward so as to avoid the path of the asteroids, then to come back in onto the orbit and plane of Jupiter. This involved some tricky work with the various gravitational lines, using Mars and the Sun for repulsion and certain stars for attraction.
There were quite a number of gravity shifts, and during this period no one could be quite sure what his weight would be from one moment to another. There were several periods of zero gravity, when the crew members would float and face the complex annoyances of a steady feeling of free fall. Burl, after a couple of such sessions, got the hang of it rather comfortably.
Lockhart looked at him oddly and smiled. "Glad to know it. I may have a task for you soon, then."
Others found the weightless conditions not so bearable. One of the engineering crew, Detmar, had to be hospitalized. What he had resembled severe seasickness. Oberfield also experienced moments of acute upset.
Boulton's condition did not change. Once or twice he stirred slightly in his sleep, and seemed to murmur something, but then he would lapse back into his coma. Fortunately he did not resist food, and did swallow liquids forced into his mouth.
Except for one or two rare intervals, communication with Earth had ceased. Besides, the mother world was now moving away from them and would pass behind the Sun. Efforts to obtain medical advice for Boulton proved futile.
After they had passed the orbital line of the asteroids and had rearranged their drive so that they were falling freely toward Jupiter, Lockhart called the exploring crew together. "I've got a job for you men," he announced.
Haines, Ferrati, and Burl gathered about the control board to listen. They were restless for something to do—plans for the Jupiter landing could not be made until they knew what the situation was going to be, for it would be one thing if the station were located on that giant planet itself, another if on one of its satellites.
The colonel wasted no time. "While you were on Mars and we were waiting for you, I took the opportunity to examine the outer shell of this ship. You know, of course, that we are constantly being bombarded by cosmic dust, the micrometeorites that always prove troublesome to the Earth satellites and space platforms. The ship has been fortunate in that it has not been struck by any meteoric matter of size, but we have been peppered heavily by dust particles. As a result, the outer shell of our ship is pitted in some spots, and in several places worn perhaps dangerously thin. I don't mean to imply that there are going to be any holes very soon, but I think that there are some parts which we should reinforce or patch."
When he stopped for breath, Burl broke in. "You mean you want us to work on the outer shell?"
Lockhart nodded. "Someone has to do it, and during flights you men are the deck crew. So it's going to be your baby. I am going to keep the ship on free fall for the next several periods and this should make it simpler for you to go outside, in space suits, and do the job."
The next hour saw all three hard at work. Dressed in heavy, sealed, warmed outer-space outfits, wearing metal bowl-like helmets with sealed glass fronts, and drawing oxygen from tanks strapped on their backs, the three men left the inner sphere and emerged on the outer surface of theMagellan.
Burl found it a weird and awesome experience. There was no gravitational drag, so that even as he stepped through the exit port, the scene shifted until he seemed to be standing on metal ground, looking upward at thousands and tens of thousands of silent white stars. Nothing moved—except, of course, the space-suited bodies of the two men already half out of sight and looking not quite human. There was no sound save that of his own breath and the faint hum of the radio phone tucked in his helmet.
He was firmly attached to the ship by a long nylon rope which he hooked to rings set on the outer shell. He made his way toward the wide rounded nose of the ship. In one hand he carried a bucket of a liquid plastic resembling tar in thickness and consistency. With a brush in the other hand he would stop—held to the surface by magnetic soles—and smear the plastic protective surfacing over the little pits and pockmarks that now marred the surface of the once spotless ship. The work was not hard, and shortly became a routine which he found did not require much concentration.
It was dip and smear, in a steady rhythmic motion. Haines was working out of sight on a more complex repair job which involved welding a sheet of metal over a badly beaten and sprung section. Ferrati was on the opposite side of the ship.
As he worked, Burl watched the stars, and every now and then was rewarded by the sight of a moving spark of light—an asteroid or meteor. He could see mighty Jupiter ahead—a wide disc of white and yellow, faintly belted with gray and pale blue bands. The famous red spot was not visible. Four of the planet's twelve attendant satellites strung out alongside it, and he recognized them as the big ones discovered by Galileo with his first telescope: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The other eight were tiny, and probably would not be visible until they were right on top of Jupiter, though he supposed that Russell Clyde could probably pick them out now by telescopic sightings.
Burl could hear in his radio the sound of someone whistling softly, and supposed it was Ferrati. There was a short cut-in as Lockhart called a time-shift on the general intercom. A brief exchange followed between Caton in the Zeta-ring chamber of the ship's nose and the colonel, with the information that Caton was coming down into the living section.
Then, after a brief period of silence, Burl heard a series of odd noises on his phones, something went bump, and the sound faded. He was now on the nose of the ship itself, the wide mushrooming surface beneath his feet, and Jupiter high over his head. Bending over, about to smear a dab of plastic on a tiny pitted mark, he suddenly felt himself gripped and pulled.
Caught by surprise, he jerked upward, the brush flying from his hand and sailing into the sky. His shoes clung momentarily to the surface, but their magnetic grip was too weak, and they loosened. He kicked out wildly, falling away into the emptiness of outer space—a space which had a moment ago been a sky and had suddenly turned into a bottomless pit.
He fell backward, seized momentarily by terror. He was brought up short by his rope. It held, and he grabbed it and hung on.
Something had changed. Somebody had altered the ship's drive. The ship was no longer on free fall; it was on gravity drive—and going backward! Not driving toward Jupiter under added acceleration, but fighting to reduce its fall, to stop its drive, to fly away from Jupiter!
In his earphones there was a jumble of sounds. He heard Ferrati yelling and realized that he, too, must be falling away from the ship, saved only by a rope. And the voice of Haines—plastered flat against the surface, the ship driving upward against him.
Vague noises emanated from the control room. Evidently no one was at the commander's mike. He called into it, adding his voice to those of his comrades.
After several agonizing minutes, a voice came over the radio. It was Russell Clyde's and it was excited and angry. "Hold on out there as long as you can! Lockhart's been knocked unconscious! We're trying to get into the engine room and take back control!"
Perplexed, Burl shouted, "Who's in the engine room? Take control from whom?"
There was another pause as he heard sounds of pounding, as if someone were trying to hammer open a metal panel. Then Russ's voice came on again. "Its Boulton! He came to suddenly, sneaked up here, knocked out the commander, and climbed up into the Zeta-ring chamber! Caton was down below—and Boulton's locked the trap door and is running the drive. He's reversed our route, away from Jupiter, and into outer space! Boulton's apparently gone crazy! And we can't get in to stop him!"
Burl, suspended over an abyss, clung to the end of the taut, thin nylon line, as the ship pulled him helplessly along into the uncharted depths of infinity, with a mad-man at the controls.
Burl surveyed his position. Judging from the apparent weight of his body, Boulton was decelerating the ship at a little less than one gravity. The nylon cord was hooked into a bolt near the center of the ship. It would be possible for Burl to climb up it and reach a firmer grip on the outside shell.
There was no time to be lost. An increase in the ship's speed might increase his weight several times over. He began to climb back, reeling in the rope, pulling himself up hand over hand, just as he had done many times in the gymnasium of his high school back home.
Halfway up, Clyde's voice came on his helmet phones. "Will all members of the crew report their present positions to me? Haines?"
He called each man's name, beginning with the three outside. Haines and Ferrati were clinging to the surface, on the far—now forward—end of the ship. The rest of the crew was somewhere in the living sphere. Lockhart was still unconscious. Burl could hear the faint sounds of a discussion in the control room, and also thumps as Caton and Shea continued to try to break open the entry to the generator chambers.
Then Russ spoke again. "Burl, it looks as if you're elected. You seem to be the only one in the right place. There's a hatchway into the nose of the ship from the outside. It's just below the central circle. Can you see it? How close are you to it?"
Burl was almost at the surface now. The circular inset ring that marked the hatchway entry port was a few feet from where his rope was hooked. He described it to Russ.
"Can you reach it without losing your grip? If you can, do you think you can open it?" came the radio voice quickly.
Burl reached the surface and grasped the hook. He studied the circular panel carefully. "I can reach it all right. There's a holder hook alongside it. But what will I do when I get there?"
"Open it," Russ ordered brusquely. "It unscrews from either side. There's a short lock space between the outer shell and the inner shielding of the generator chamber. Get inside and seal the door after you. From there you can work your way into the emergency nose door to the engines. Keep your suit on. While the generators are shielded, there's no telling what Boulton may have done. The suit will give you some protection.
"After you go through the door, it's up to you. Boulton will be there. You'll have to stop him, somehow. Caton says if you can find the tool kit you may be able to get a wrench to use as a weapon. If you can get through without his seeing you and open the trap door to us, we'll do the rest. But it depends on you."
Burl bit his lip. "Okay. Here I go." There was no question of argument. Everyone's life was at stake, and he happened to be in the strategic position.
He swung over to the panel, hooked his foot under the handgrip and grasped the lever inset in the surface. He twisted it. After a brief moment of resistance, the panel turned slowly. There was a sudden puff as the air within escaped, and then the hatchway stood open. Burl climbed inside.
He caught at the open plug, pulled it back and screwed it tightly from the inside. Now he was in a dark, narrow space. He could feel the flow of air automatically being pumped back in and heard the humming of the generators through his suit.
Working his way along the inner wall in darkness, he finally felt the edge of the metal door that opened into the Zeta-ring chamber itself. He leaned against it, listening, but there was no sound. He turned the handle and threw his shoulder against the door.
It gave, then swung open. He stepped cautiously into the engine room.
It was large and circular, fitting neatly within the nose of the ship. The wide tubes of the A-G generator ring ran around the outside. The reactors were heavy blocks of ceiling-high metal, shielded, and showing only the dials that registered their output. Other machines—the rod storage units and the condensers—were all carefully hidden behind clean metal shielding.
The panel that controlled the engines was unattended in the center of the room. Standing by one of the shielded reactors was Boulton, his back to Burl. He was hammering at the reactor with a bar, evidently trying to tear away the shielding to get at the guts.
Stealthily, the boy made his way to the locker where the tools were kept. Just as he opened it, his hand slipped. The door of the locker clanged against the wall. The burly Marine captain whirled, saw Burl, and gave a yell of rage.
Burl grabbed a wrench and swung it threateningly. Boulton drew back. His face was pale, with an odd expression on it, as if he did not recognize Burl or understand what Burl said. Burl tried to reason with him, but the glaring eyes were those of a total stranger, or, as it seemed then, an alien beast.
Boulton cried in anger, dropped his bar, and charged Burl with his hands outstretched.
Burl swung the wrench, but the strength of the older man tore it from his grasp, hurling it away. The boy tried to dodge, and then the two bodies collided.
The instant the two men touched there was a violent flash of light. Burl felt a shock that left him stunned and reeling. Boulton collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Burl steadied himself, keeping a wary eye on the captain. Boulton sat up slowly, putting a hand to his head. "Boy, that was some kickback," he muttered. He looked at Burl. "Give me a hand up. We've got to get back to the jeep and scram out of here fast. The A-bomb's already set."
Burl was startled. He realized in a moment, though, that Boulton recalled nothing of the past few days—his last memory seemed to be of the blast in the Martian basement. But now, the captain was apparently himself again.
Boulton got shakily to his feet. He seemed confused. "How'd I get here, son?" he asked in surprise.
Burl gave a sigh of relief. "I guess you're all right now. But let's get the trap door to the control room open. Clyde and Caton have got to get the ship back on course. There'll be time to explain afterward."
Half an hour later, when Lockhart had recovered and resumed command, the ship was restored to its proper course. Russ filled Boulton in on what had happened and ventured a guess as to why.
"You must have been given some sort of charge by that globe in the Mars Sun-tap station," Russ said. "It turned you into a sort of robot—a human body running on a charge of alien energy that responded to the commands of the Sun-tap outfit. Apparently, it took a long time before the charge had complete control of your body. Obviously, it then could act only in some general way—telling you to wreck the ship.
"Now, Burl, your body received a charge a long time ago. Whatever its nature, it counteracted or shorted Boulton's when you came into contact."
Both Boulton and Burl thought that made sense. "But," Burl conjectured, "isn't it possible that the charge in my own body has also been shorted?"
Russ shrugged. "Maybe. We'll find out at the next stop. And, incidentally, that's not going to be on Jupiter itself, but on its moon Callisto. We've traced the line of distortions."
"That's good news," said Burl. "I had the feeling you were worried about Jupiter. The planet's so huge it would have meant real trouble trying to land. The books say its atmosphere is thick, unbreathable, and moves in gale velocity around it."
Russ nodded. "With Jupiter almost 89,000 miles in diameter, it would have been a tough problem to maneuver outside this ship ... in fact, impossible, not to mention the fact that the atmosphere, mostly ammonia and other frigid gases, moves in several independent belts. However, Callisto should be okay."
"That's something we know about our opponents, anyway," said Burl, "They must have physical limitations enough like ours to rule out places where we couldn't move, either."
Boulton showed no further effects from his experience. In time, theMagellandrew near Jupiter. Callisto, its fifth satellite outward, moved about the mighty planet at a distance of 1,170,000 miles. It was a large satellite as they go, 3,220 miles in diameter, larger, in fact, than Mercury. But, as Russ explained, it was a queer place in its own fashion.
For despite its size, Callisto was apparently not a solid body as we think of it. Its density totaled only a little more than that of water, its mass half that of the Earth's Moon—a notoriously porous body.
They bore down on Callisto, matching their speed to its, and swung close to its surface. It had almost no atmosphere, just a thin layer of the heavier gases. It was a belted world, without clearly defined continents or surface markings. Its equatorial zone was one vast, featureless belt of darkish-gray. Its temperate zones were white, with patches of yellow here and there. But its poles were gray again.
"The satellite's like a huge ball of thin mud that's never hardened," said Burl as they studied the strange terrain.
"The equator's the softest—it seems to be a river of muddy water, hundreds of miles wide—only it can't be water. Probably semisolidified gases holding dust and grains of matter in suspension," said Russ. "The temperate zones are the same stuff, only colder, and therefore more stable. A thin crust of frozen gases over a planet-wide ocean of semiliquid substance."
"The Sun-tap station's on the southern pole," said Burl. "That must be solid."
It was. The poles of Callisto were actually two continent-sized islands of shell. Dry, mudlike stuff, hard as rock, floating on the endless seas of the semiliquid planet.
The station, a ringed setup quite like the one on Earth, stood in the geographic center of the south pole. TheMagellanhovered over it while a landing party went down in the four-man rocket plane.
Clyde, Haines and Burl were the landing party. This time, only Burl entered the station after a hole had been blasted in the outer shell. While the redheaded astronomer took samples and made observations, Haines kept watch. Nobody knew what type of defense awaited them here.
Burl found the controls easily enough. He was afraid that he might have lost his physical charge, but it was not so. The controls functioned, the Sun-tap station died. The effect was not very noticeable, for Callisto was already far from the Sun and the thin atmosphere could not diminish the dark sky of outer space. What the great masts caught must have been only the relay from other stations—or perhaps the invisible rays of the distant Sun.
Burl saw no reason to linger, and the three of them gathered up their equipment. As they started back toward the rocket plane, they heard an ominous rumble in the ground.
A sudden spurt of blazing gas shot up from the center of the station. "Duck!" yelled Haines, and they fell flat on the ground. Burl held his hands protectively over his head, as an explosion shook the building.
There was no rain of rocks. Whatever the blast, Callisto's gravity was too weak to attract the debris that flew high above the station.
"It was an atomic explosion!" Haines shouted into his helmet mike. "They mined the station. Run for it!"
They raced for the rocket plane. As they ran, Burl felt the ground quiver beneath him, and huge cracks began to spread, rippling through the hard ground.
They reached the plane and piled in. Russ took off just as the surface cracked open in a thousand places like an ice sheet breaking in an Arctic thaw.
As they rocketed back to theMagellan, the whole polar cap, an area hundreds of miles around the Sun-tap station, split apart. Great spurts of liquid magma, the liquid gas-dust from the heart of the planet, shot up like fountains. Parts of the shell-like polar continent were disappearing beneath this new ocean.
"Their little atomic bomb shattered the thin crust. The whole polar island will probably sink," said Russ. "It was a clever trap. They knew what would happen."
"Saturn next," said Burl. "What'll they have set up there?"
They reached theMagellan, loaded the rocket plane aboard, and pulled out, setting their course for the ringed planet. But even as they did so, something was coming from Saturn to meet them.
The next lap of their journey was uneventful. Saturn, the next outward planet from the Sun, and the second largest, would present the same problem as Jupiter. This world, famous for its mysterious rings, was about 71,000 miles in diameter and had a large family of satellites—nine in all. The Sun-tap station would be on one of these, Burl thought.
Saturn was also almost as far out from Jupiter as Jupiter itself had been from the Sun. This meant that the trip would be as long for theMagellanas the distance they had already traveled to get to Jupiter. Fortunately the A-G drive was a remarkable thing—it was possible to accelerate to fantastic speeds—in theory, probably right up to the speed of light. And so, where great distances were concerned, the ship simply rushed its fall through on Saturn's line of gravitation.
Boulton had fully recovered and showed no lingering signs of the strange electronic charge. Because of the limited size of the crew, Lockhart put the Marine captain back on full duty—he would participate in future landings as if nothing had ever happened.
At the same time, Lockhart cautioned Haines, Burl and Ferrati to keep their eyes on him. It was always possible that the foe's weapon had made some more lasting mark.
Haines had his group make a new inventory of their weapons. Burl, working with them in a space suit, in the partially protected region of the cargo hull, was surprised at the variety. There was a second rocket plane, a two-man outfit. In addition, they had a large store of offensive weapons, including a small but formidable supply of atomic explosives.
Haines gave Burl and Ferrati—who were new to military weapons—brief introductory lectures on their use. Burl saw just what a hand-sized, tactical atomic shell looked like and how it worked. He learned how to operate the heavy-caliber rocket gun which hurled this tiniest of atomic bombs.
And so the time passed, and the amazing disc of Saturn began to grow in their viewplates. It was banded, much like Jupiter, and its brilliant rings surrounded it with a mystic halo that set it apart from all the other worlds of the Sun's family.
Burl was watching Saturn through the largest of the nose viewplates when he thought that he saw a black dot crossing its face. He had located the known moons of Saturn and this was not one of them. Excited, he called Russell Clyde. "Could it be a tenth satellite?" he asked, pointing out the tiny dot.
Russ squinted his eyes; then, calculating mentally, he shook his head, "I don't think so. It looks to me more like something that's in space between us and Saturn. In fact—it must be fairly close to us for us to see it at all." He turned to Lockhart who was at the control panel with Oberfield.
"You'd better have a look. Could be a giant meteor coming in our direction."
"We're moving mighty fast," commented Oberfield. "It should have passed us already if it were a meteor. Instead, it seems to be maintaining the same distance—neither growing larger nor smaller. Acts very odd for a natural body."
"Uh, uh," said Lockhart. "This calls for caution." He quickly went back to the controls, pressed the general alarm button, then called into the intercom. "All hands to emergency stations. Haines and party, please prepare defensive positions."
"This means me," gulped Burl, and scooted down the central hatch, almost colliding with Caton and Shea on their way to the engine room. He met Haines, and, with neat dispatch, all four slipped into space suits. Then out through the cargo hold to posts by escape hatches.
Burl and Haines, at the main entry port, unlimbered the long rocket launcher that had been set up in the passageway. Haines placed three shells of differing strength in position.
They heard through their helmet phones that the mysterious dot was drawing closer. Haines set up one of the launching racks, which was equipped with a telescopic sighter, and peered through the eyepiece. Apparently he caught it, for he grunted, then motioned to Burl to take a look.
It was no natural object. It was the shape of a dumbbell—two spheres joined together by a short middle bar. One sphere was a deep, golden color, the other a bluish-silver, the connecting rod a coppery metal.
"The pattern of spheres certainly suggests the Sun-tappers to me," said Burl. Haines murmured his agreement.
Lockhart's voice came on the phones. "We've decided it's one of the Sun-tapper ships. We're not going to wait to make sure. Before we left Earth, I can now inform you, I received a directive from the President to regard the builders of these Sun-tap stations as active enemies. My orders are that we are not to attempt to undertake peaceful contact, but are to treat them on sight as armed foes in the field. To do otherwise is to risk Earth's last active defense—this ship.
"I think I don't have to argue this further, considering our recent experiences." His voice hesitated, then rang out firmly, "Haines, you can commence firing at will!"
Haines clicked his tongue and reached for one of the shells. "Okay, Burl, aim at her direct. This one's got a proximity nose that'll beam at her and drive itself where ever she ducks."
He slid the rocket shell into the launcher, Burl sighted, and then Haines pressed the trigger. There was a whoosh of fire and a flare from the launcher's nose. A minute spark winged into the darkness toward the spot, still many miles away, where the strange ship hung.
They watched with bated breath. Suddenly there was a flash of light from the other ship—a vivid lightning bolt which leaped out and flared up briefly in space. Then darkness again.
"They fired a burst of energy at us. It hit the rocket shell instead," said Haines. "Well, now we know. They use bolts of pure energy—something like the one they fired at Boulton."
He fitted another shell into the launcher, and fired again. Again a spark winged its way, and the bolt of energy burst out to detonate the shell. Burl whistled. "How did they spot it so fast?" he asked.
"I don't think they did. They're firing at us—the rocket shell only happened to be between," snapped Haines.
"Ferrati," he called into his mike, "fire a shrapnel shell at them when I say the word. Advise me when ready!"
Ferrati's voice snapped back. "Right you are, sir. Here it is now, one minute—okay, on target!"
While Ferrati and Boulton were readying their shot from the lower cargo port near the tail of the ship, Haines and Burl had been fitting the largest of their shells into their own launcher. They aimed it carefully at the front-most sphere of the enemy.
"Ferrati, fire!" cried Haines, and then slowly counted to five and pressed the stud of his own launcher.
There was a momentary flicker as Ferrati's rocket shell raced forth below. Then, after a definite time lapse, the exhaust of Haines' heavy shell appeared.
"The shrapnel shell is segmented and doesn't have a proximity guide," Haines explained. "As soon as it's on its way, the nose comes apart into a dozen small shells, each with a standard explosive charge. The shell we used has an atomic bomb warhead and is on proximity guide. It'll chase that ship to the ends of the system if they don't blast it first."
He paused. There was another bolt of raw energy from the dumbbell-shaped craft, and this time a series of flares in the space between—the shrapnel charges had been touched off. Burl held his breath.
"I figure it takes them a while to recharge their gun," said Haines. "Our own blockbuster should get there before they fire again."
Then suddenly there came a sharper flare of brilliant light. For an instant Burl was blinded by the glare. When he recovered, he peered avidly through the telescopic sighter. He saw the ship, but where there had been a golden sphere there was now only a shattered fragment of twisted metal.
The enemy ship changed before his eyes. The remaining silvery sphere glowed brighter, and took on a golden hue. Then it seemed as if the ship were growing smaller. He realized finally that it was retreating.
Burl gave an involuntary shout, and in his earphones he heard the same shouts of triumph from every voice on the ship.
Although it might have been possible to pursue the battered enemy ship, theMagellandid not try. They were still on course for Saturn and were not going to deviate.
They reached Saturn after several more days. Matching their great speed with that of the ringed world in its orbit took time, and then they began their survey.
As they had suspected, the Sun-tap station was on one of the moons. The moon was called Iapetus, the third largest of Saturn's family. It was about eight hundred miles in diameter and the next to the farthest satellite from Saturn. Russ was disappointed that they hadn't picked Titan, the biggest moon of all. Titan was over two thousand miles wide and appeared to have an atmosphere of methane.
The view of Saturn was awesome, even from Iapetus' orbit two million miles away. Burl knew it would be a sight unparalleled in the system. The great broad rings, composed of innumerable tiny particles of metal, stone, and possibly ice, encircled it as if held there by an invisible hand. They were, he knew, the particles of a moon that had either come too close to Saturn's great gravitational pull to hold its shape, or else had never escaped far enough to congeal as one solid mass.
Iapetus was a solid world, though. A rocky body, it had a dull gleam, and was streaked here and there with layers of white and yellow, where veins of frozen gases lay forever upon the frigid surface. No atmosphere veiled the surface nor softened the harsh, jagged mountains and clefts of this forbidding little subplanet.
The Sun-tap station stood in plain sight on a high plateau near a polar region. TheMagellanhovered over it while Lockhart held a council of war.
"I don't see what's to be gained by attempting a landing party," he said. "We've taken all the readings and pictures of the other stations—and we've had a couple of narrow escapes. They've probably mined this one, and they have had plenty of time to prepare a trap. I'm in favor of simply dropping an H-bomb on it and leaving."
After a brief discussion, with only perfunctory objections from Clyde and Oberfield who, as astronomers, wanted to land to take other readings, the decision was carried.
TheMagellanswung up a couple of hundred miles above the Sun-tappers' plateau. Haines and his crew loaded the bulky H-bomb into the main launcher in the tail of the ship. Then theMagellanaimed itself at the target, and the rocket-driven bomb roared out.
Down it sped, zeroing in on the wall of the station. There was a blinding flash, a glare as brilliant as that of the Sun itself, as it hit square on the mark. This time Burl watched through carefully shielded viewscreens. The scene was obscured by a wide-flung cloud of white—tens of thousands of cubic feet of satellite rock turned instantaneously into dust particles. After the dust cleared away, they saw only a gaping crater where the plateau had been—a volcanic hole, miles wide and glowing red, from which spread vast, deep cracks throughout the entire visible hemisphere of the moon.
The men on theMagellanwere awed and silent. The thought occurred to each of them, beyond his capacity to deny it: what if this had happened on Earth?
"Of course," said Ferrati slowly, "the low gravity of Iapetus accounts for the greater extent of the disaster. If this had been Bikini or...." But under the glares of the rest of the crew, his sentence trailed off weakly.
Lockhart turned away from the viewer. "Mr. Oberfield," he said, unexpectedly formal and official, "you may chart our course for Uranus."
"Aye, aye, sir," said that usually dour personage, with alacrity.
With forced smiles, the rest of the crew drifted away to their duties. TheMagellanpulled away from Saturn, heading out again toward the limits of the solar system, but it was several days before everyone had quite managed to dismiss the vision of the H-bomb from his mind.