Trouble on Titan/Chapter VII

THE Rotary Moles—there were four in the local family—proved quite a nuisance with their constant burrowing into the mine shaft. When driven out, they sat around staring curiously at the operations like so many sidewalk superintendents watching an excavation. In desperation, Gerry was forced to devise a method of capturing them.

She abhorred the wanton killing of wild life, which rendered useless her high-powered hypodermic rifles. They would destroy any animal as small as the Mole. Also, the anesthetic gas dispersed too quickly in the thin Titanian air to be of much good.

After brooding awhile over a method to catch the things harmlessly, one of the men gave Gerry the clue. To scare the Moles away, he threw a half-empty can at them. They darted off, then came racing back to the splotch where the pineapple juice had soaked into the ground. At once they all up-ended and began to spin, boring madly into the damp spot. Unquestionably they had a passion for fruit juices.

That made it easy. Gerry built a box trap and filled it with soil. Then she set it out the second night and emptied two cans of juice on it. The next morning they had four Rotary Moles in a sadly battered trap. Another hour would have enabled them to win to freedom.

"What a testimonial for the pine-apple people !" Gerry gloated, as she stowed the Rotary Moles out of harm's way. "They ought to be glad to pay plenty for it."

After the boiler-generator-furnace hook-up had begun to function, another interruption occurred. The first batch of neutroxite had been poured into sand molds. The smelting of more ore was proceeding satisfactorily, when the electricity unaccountably weakened. Checking along the wires from the generator to the furnace, Strike found what appeared to be a rather slender copper bar lying across the wires. With the toe of his boot he kicked it aside.

Three minutes later there was another short in the circuit. Tommy again was forced to remove the apparent copper bar from the wires. This time, after kicking it away, he bent down to pick it up. He received a mild electric shock. When he dropped the thing hastily, the copper bar began to walk away.

"So," murmured Strike grimly. "You want to play."

He pursued the perambulating bar. It ducked swiftly into the pile of wood used to fire up the boiler. With one sweep Strike spread the fuel about the landscape, but there was no copper bar to be seen.

He began to swear softly as he peered around. Gerry, fascinated by his antics, came over.

"What goes on now?" she demanded. Strike explained briefly.

"It must be a sort of chameleonlike thing," he concluded. "First it imitated the wires. Now it's imitating the sticks of wood. Probably generates a current within itself like an electric eel. Maybe if we wait around, it'll move again."

Gerry snorted in exasperation.

"And no doubt it amuses and warms itself by shorting our wires at every opportunity. Another monkey-wrench in the machinery that we'll have to dig out."

Carefully they began to sort the woodpile, searching for a stick that would give them a mild jolt. A loud complaint from Baumstark warned them. Behind their backs, the chameleon had sneaked over to absorb the juice from the furnace lead-ins again.

They tried to surround the thing, which now resembled a copper bar. But it scuttled away lizard-fashion much too rapidly to be caught. Thoroughly annoyed by these alarming delays, Gerry said reluctantly

"We've got no time to waste in studying that little beggar, and find out how to capture it. If I don't get an inspiration within an hour or two, we'll just have to kill it outright."

FORTUNATELY the inspiration came. In Gerry's quarters was a large mirror, her one concession to feminine vanity while on expedition. This she carried outside and set up alongside the chameleon's favorite spot—the electric wires—tilting it so it would reflect nothing but the dark-blue sky.

The third brief night passed, and Gerry awoke to the sound of hilarious laughter. Hurrying out, she found Tommy guffawing and pointing inarticulately. The chameleon, in its natural state looked like an ordinary chunk of flesh with legs. It lay twisting futilely before the mirror, sputtering feeble electric sparks. Part of it was blue as the sky, while the rest shaded into a rapidly shifting mottled color.

"The poor devil tried at first to imitate nothing, looking up at space," Strike explained finally. "Then it must've caught sight of its reflection in the mirror and tried to imitate itself! The natural result was a complete nervous breakdown!"

After this interlude, nothing arose to interrupt their work. Metals were smelted, poured into molds. Emery-wheels howled as the little rotors were ground smooth. Before long they were ready to be welded into place in the matrix of the huge centrifuge. That was when they faced the most appalling complication of all. It was found impossible to weld the rotors!

"It's the beryllium, miss," explained Baumstark worriedly. "We used only moderate heat to smelt it. That was okay. We had to use a terrific temperature to smelt the neutroxite. That was okay, too. But now, in order to weld, we have to use enough heat to affect the neutroxite, and it's too much for the beryllium. It just oxidizes away. We need a flux, and it can't be made."

After everything had been going so well, for this apparently unsurmountable obstacle to arise was almost enough to drive even a Gerry Carlyle to tears. Had she finally made the fatal mistake that all adventurers sooner or later commit?

When she had chosen Titan to land upon, rather than the outer satellites, she had made a gamble. By going to Iapetus or Phoebe, it might have been possible to cram the life-boats with rocket fuel, leaving room for only one person to pilot. With skillful navigation and great luck, some of them might have been able to make the Jovian satellites, and the mining outpost on Ganymede, to organize a rescue party for those left on Titan. Instead, Gerry had characteristically decided to shoot for big stakes. It was a wager—complete repair of the Ark and triumph in the race with Kurtt, against annihilation. She had wanted all or nothing.

And for the first time Gerry Carlyle knew the sick, stifling sensation of despair.

But there was one last trump in her hand. Gerry still had the notes in Murray's diary concerning a civilized race on Titan, with remarkable skill in the use of metals. If those people were still on Titan, perhaps they could help. If they were gone, as Strike's report of a deserted city would indicate, perhaps the castaways could read from the ruins something that might be of assistance to them.

There was still fuel left in one lifeboat, so Gerry, Strike, and Lieutenant Barrows piled in. They took off with a roar, heading straight "north" for the city Tommy had seen earlier. After swiftly covering about six miles, they sighted it. Half a mile from its limits was a level plain, and there Strike set the rocket ship down gently.

AT a cautious distance the trio examined the strange city. It appeared to have been built for a population of approximately twenty thousand, by Earthly standards. It had been constructed on the basis of some baffling, alien geometry. The designs resembled the geometry of man, but the patterns just evaded complete comprehension, barricading themselves in the mind just beyond the borderline of full meaning. All around its edges, the city was crumbling to ruin. It was as if some invisible monster of decay were slowly eating toward the center, which was still in excellent repair. And in all that weirdly beautiful expanse, not a single living thing moved. Barrows broke the quiet.

"Isn't it incredible how persistent and unconquerable life is? We find it everywhere, under the most terrible conditions—the inferno of Mercury, the stewpot of Venus, and crawling under tons of pressure on Saturn. Now even on this barren rock, a great civilization evolved. Those Arrhenius spores sure got around, didn't they?"

Gerry smiled. "I doubt if what we see out there actually evolved on this empty ball of stone. Probably it came from some other universe, many eons in the past. Shall we explore it without waiting for reinforcements?"

There was no dissenting voice. Gerry always meted out harsh punishments for infractions of her safety-first rules, but now time was working swiftly against them. Besides, the place looked so deserted, there seemed to be no reason for the usual caution.

So they moved into the city. Their first discovery was that it had been built for a race of beings smaller than humans, making it seem like a large-scale model of a city. Doorways were five feet in height, windows in proportion. Oddly, there were neither doors nor window panes, suggesting utter indifference to temperature changes. Nor were the buildings, save for a few curiously graven towers, more than three stories in height.

As the group walked slowly toward the heart of the city, they found it in a remarkable state of preservation. The streets were clean, totally devoid of rubble or dust. It almost seemed as if the place were waiting patiently for the return of its masters, and was tended daily by some mysterious, invisible presence. The echoes of their booted feet rattled in the emptiness.

Gradually, as Gerry led her scouts into the center of the city, a curious feeling began to oppress them. They felt the gradually increasing certainty that they were not alone. They paused irresolutely, every nerve on the alert. Did they really hear that stealthy rustling in the depths of the mysterious, darkened apartments? A cautious peek within showed strangely malformed furniture, but no living thing.

"I don't like this," said Gerry uncomfortably, one hand on her heat ray gun. "Perhaps—"

The brassy clangor of a mighty gong shattered the stillness with two tremendous, shivering notes. Gerry, Strike, and Barrows raced in a breathless sprint for open country. With wild, awkward bounds that broke Olympic records at every leap, they scrambled and sailed like jumping-jacks running amuck. They didn't stop for breath till they were out of the city and safe beside their little rocket ship.

WHEN they looked back through the grayish daylight, they received an even greater shock. The city was alive! Peopled with bipeds moving about the streets, in and out of buildings, it was just like any normal town. The change was so abrupt, the terrestrial explorers gaped at the city, then at each other. They were too shocked to talk. All they could do was gulp stupidly.

Gerry was first to recover the use of her voice. She used it to get in radio communication with the Ark.

"Listen carefully, Kranz," she ordered. "We've discovered civilized life here. There's not much rocket fuel left. So instead of our coming back in the life-boat, I want you to lead a reinforcement party. Head straight north, through that little pass. But first go to my room and look in the locker behind the door. On the top shelf you'll find a contraption that looks like a half-dozen wired bowls attached to a power unit. Bring it out, and take along a new supply of oxygen bottles."

Instead of settling down to wait, Strike unhooked his binoculars for a long look at the city's inhabitants.

"They're nothing to be afraid of," he decided. "They're less than five feet tall, slender, delicately built. Besides, didn't Murray say they were friendly? They'll probably recognize us as humans, just like Murray. Come on. Let's pay 'em a visit now."

Gerry dubiously agreed, so the trio moved back toward the city. They were met at its edge by a group of four Titanians. As Strike had said, they were frail, uniform in height to the last millimeter, and entirely hairless. They were dressed in a metallic cloth which was wound around them like mummies' wrappings. It was obvious that they dressed for modesty rather than comfort, however, for their flesh was tough and hard.

Their features were generally human. Instead of ears, though, there were four filaments sprouting from each side of the head, and shaped like a lyre.

"Be nice to 'em," Gerry cautioned. "Remember, their good will may be our last hope."