Trouble on Titan/Chapter II

THE start of the Kurtt-Carlyle race AL was spectacular enough to satisfy the wildest dreams of any publicity man. Staged at the Long Island spaceport, it was carried out in the most hallowed traditions of such events.

The newscasters were there with their three-dimensional color cameras, picking up the ceremony for millions of listeners. Thousands of eager spectators thronged the many galleries of the port. To them, Gerry Carlyle was the epitome of all the heroines of history, adored for her beauty, her courage, her amazing exploits.

Weatherby, through the "papers," had given the affair a tremendous buildup. Notables, as advertised, spoke briefly. Among the foremost was Jan Hallek, the genial Dutch hunter whose fame was second only to Gerry's. He expressed the attitude of all the recognized men of the craft. Ostentatiously he wished Gerry the best of luck and was politely distant toward Professor Kurtt.

The mayor of Greater New York, currently a presidential candidate, dwelt at length upon Gerry's courage and far-sightedness. Somehow he tied them up with the political party he represented.

The Governor of Idaho, the mayor's campaign manager, professed to see in Gerry's expeditionary force a perfect harmony between Capital and Labor. If his party was returned to power at the polls in November, he promised to bring about that ideal condition in the country.

Gerry and Tommy Strike viewed all this uproar somewhat cynically through the telecast set in the Ark itself. They were dog-tired. For one solid week, almost without rest, they had rushed through the tremendous task of outfitting the ship for an extended journey.

The mighty centrifuges were completely checked by expert mechanics, to be certain there would be no failure of motive power in mid-space. An endless stream of supplies—food, medicines, clothing, water, reading matter for the crew's off-duty hours—poured in through the open ports. Weapons of all kinds were stowed away in the arsenal. Space suits and all emergency equipment had to be examined. Scientific instruments were taken aboard.

A course was charted by Lewis, Chief Astronaut, double-checked by Gerry herself. She and Tommy had to call on their last dregs of energy to push through their program to completion in time.

Now Tommy was slumping exhaustedly in an easy chair and puffing the ancient pipe with which he had saved Gerry's life on Venus. That was the memorable occasion when she had determined to obtain the unobtainable murri. For sentimental reasons, he refused to throw it away. Like all organic matter when over-ripe, it smelled evilly.

"It seems to me," he grunted wearily, "that this fellow Kurtt is pretty thoroughly hated for a guy who isn't doing much harm. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?"

Gerry sniffed in disdain.

"Come to the starboard port and look at his ship."

The Kurtt vessel lay in a starting cradle on the far side of the field, apart from the mob milling around the telecast ceremony. It was two-thirds the size of the Ark, plainly a refitted old-style rocket ship. One section, instead of being metal, was composed of glass to permit a spectator to see into the ship. The glass had a greenish tint, indicating a high iron content—the strongest type of glass to resist high pressures.

"SEE that?" Gerry demanded. "This Kurtt fake has made two or three short trips to the Moon, or maybe Mars. On the strength of that, he loads his ship with a conglomeration of sickly beasts from some broken-down zoo. Then he goes hedge-hopping about the country, making one-night stands, collecting nickels and dimes from the yokels. He's just like an old-time medicine showman. He tries to sell copies of his ungrammatical book, which is a dreary account of what he thinks were dramatic incidents in his miserable existence."

Tommy grinned. "I still think it must be that feminine intuition of yours working overtime. I gather you just don't like the guy."

"He's an out-and-out fake. Are you defending him?"

Strike dodged the trap.

"Not me. If you and everybody think he's a phony, that's good enough for me. What worries me is that you're liable to underestimate him. After all, he has plenty of money behind him now. See those rocket tubes? They're lined with the latest super-resistant materials. Which means our friend must have completely new atomic engines, using Uranium Two-thirty-five. That costs. And besides, he's pretty confident, else he'd never have picked Saturn to race to."

"The best rocket ship in the system can't match the Ark for speed. I'll bet we could cut his flying time in half if we had to."

Gerry knew her ship and the almost unlimited power of centrifugal force it utilized. She had no fears for its superiority.

They were interrupted by a messenger who came running in excitedly. The climax of the grand shivaree outside had arrived. The presence of Gerry Carlyle was expected. She sighed, made swift magic with a lipstick, smoothed her shining hair, glanced with poorly concealed satisfaction in a mirror. Then, with a provocative wink at Strike, she hurried before him to the main port.

When Gerry Carlyle and Tommy Strike made their appearance, the cheering was tremendous and prolonged. Candid camera fiends clicked their shutters and fought for unusual angles. Autograph hunters battled one another grimly for "Catch-'em-Alive" Carlyle's signature. The inevitable college youth tried to handcuff himself to Gerry's wrist in a futile effort to achieve fame. For Gerry Carlyle's name was synonymous with glamor—more than the most highly paid star who ever acted for Nine Planets Pictures.

In a swift blitzkrieg, the pair smilingly thrust their way through to the battery of microphones. And there, for the first time, Strike met Professor Erasmus Kurtt. It was a shock.

Strike's innate sense of fair play had him prepared to lean over backward to do the fellow justice. He had already felt sorry for him in view of his universal unpopularity. But Kurtt was a creature not even a mother could love.

He was tall and rather lean, yet had a remarkably rounded little paunch. He looked as if he had just swallowed a whole melon. His hair was thinning on top, and his scalp was greasy from too much of some tonic. As he talked, his single gold tooth gleamed rhythmically in the Sun. He constantly hunched himself in an ingratiating gesture, while regaling bored reporters with his life story. Obviously he was excited with being in the spotlight. In short, he was the sort of character people always avoid for no particular reason, except complete disinterest.

"See what I mean?" whispered Gerry, as she advanced with a dazzling smile toward the mayor.

Strike nodded. He saw all right. Never in his life had he met anyone so thoroughly unlikable. Easy-going though he was, he felt he could really dislike Kurtt with no effort at all.

TOMMY managed to efface himself in the front line of the crowd. This was Gerry's show. He had no desire to intrude or make speeches or shake hands with anyone. He watched with impersonal detachment as the two contestants were introduced for the benefit of the color cameras and televisors.

Gerry, in the name of sportsmanship, had to shake Kurtt's clammy, fishlike paw. She listened patiently while Kurtt's oily, pompous platitudes rolled off his tongue. He called her "charming little lady" and "my dear" and made patronizing reference to her achievements "in spite of the handicap of her sex." Long after that, he concluded with the pious hope that the best man might win.

Strike watched uneasily as the unmistakable signs of rising temper made themselves manifest in Gerry's demeanor. He shrank instinctively before the expected storm. He did not shrink without cause. In the lull following perfunctory applause after Kurtt's speech, Gerry's clear voice rang out.

"Where's Von Zorn?"

Kurtt smiled a pathetic imitation of a smile.

"Er—I beg your pardon?"

"Don't evade me, Professor." She turned directly to the microphones. "Ladies and gentlemen, you are doubtless wondering who is really responsible for this race. There is only one man I know in the entire Solar System who has the shockingly bad taste to try to take my job. Von Zorn, the motion picture person, is backing the professor, hoping to run me out of business. Von Zorn isn't here because he doesn't have that kind of nerve. Or perhaps he realizes that he has overmatched himself again. Or—"

The horrified announcer quickly pushed himself into the scene that was being telecast to millions of delighted listeners. Making smooth small talk, he deftly edged Gerry out of focus and sound before her tirade came to an end.

Strike shook his head. The combination of Gerry's long-standing feud with Von Zorn and Kurtt's unethical behavior had been too much. In spite of rigorous schooling, her famous temper still sometimes got out of hand. But now, of all times! Naturally everyone was rooting for her. Suppose though, after this scene which clearly indicated her contempt for her opponent, something should go wrong. What if Kurtt won? The humiliation, for a proud girl like Gerry, would be unbearable. Yes, the Carlyle neck was definitely stuck out this time.

Strike began to have a nagging little premonition. More closely than ever, he watched the ceremony. Gerry, as had been agreed upon beforehand, was to make public her selection of the monster whose capture was necessary for victory. She named the dermaphos of Saturn, so-called because, according to Murray—the great pioneer explorer whose books were standard texts in every college—the dermaphos' hide glowed with a faint phosphorescence. Kurtt, much to Strike's increasing uneasiness, was not in least taken aback. Not much was known about the dermaphos, except from the writings of Murray and one or two other explorers. They described it as a relatively large creature and rather rare. Confident in the ability of her own crew to surmount any and all obstacles, Gerry had purposely chosen a beast that would be difficult to capture. But Kurtt was nodding and smiling, perfectly agreeable. It was a curious phenomenon, and it gave Strike considerable to think about.

At last the ceremony came to an end. Police firmly herded the crowd off the tarmac, leaving it clear for the two take-offs. Strike, awaiting his fiancee at the main port of the Ark, was too disturbed even to call her down for losing her temper at the microphone. Instead, he asked:

"Has it really occurred to you, kitten, just what's at stake in this silly race? You've deliberately selected a limb, sawed it half-through, and climbed out on it. If it breaks, after your interesting but impolite and boastful remarks, we're washed up. Completely. And Kurtt isn't acting like a man who's convinced he can't win."

Gerry smiled with complete aplomb. "Masculine intuition, my love?" she taunted. "I know I acted like a cat just now, but I simply couldn't help it. Anyhow, I'll be a good girl and attend to business from now on. So you needn't worry about who's going to win this race. That, my brave worrier, is in the bag."

"I wonder," said Strike thoughtfully, as the rocket tubes of Kurtt's ship began to rumble mightily.