Big Pill, Page 2
Raymond Z. Gallun
dangerous. So, if they're thatfoolish, those optimists might as well go ahead with their alternatecourse: To bring their deadly and spectacular innovation dramaticallyinto use without the stamp of safety!"
Bert's concern about his wife's outspoken challenge to Lauren was thussuddenly diverted. His jaw hardened further. A nagging suspicion thatTrenton Lauren had found things out, was confirmed. It meant, perhaps,that Lauren had already taken counteraction secretly.
Bert Kraskow longed to beat up Lauren in spite of the presence of thetwo space policemen. But the need for immediate and better actiondenied him this extravagant luxury. He went to his wife's side andtook her arm.
"Lauren," he said. "I've got a brother to bury. So discussions areout, for now. Guys, will you bring Nick's body to my cottage? Come on,Allie...."
* * * * *
Bert was trying very hard to slip away unobtrusively when Laurengrinned mockingly. "Hold on, Kraskow," he snapped. "You're tangled upin this matter, somehow. I've learned that you've already broken aminor law by landing a ship quietly out in the deserts of Titanwithout declaring its presence; a ship that can be assumed reasonablyto be freighted with lethal materials. As a dangerous individual, youcan be put under an arrest of restraint. Legal technicalities can bedisregarded in a raw colonization project where people are apt to showhysteria, and where something like military law must be enforced forgeneral protection. The say-so of an old and honorable firm like S. C.S. that you are a menace, can, I am sure, be accepted. Patrolmen, takehim!"
The cops were puzzled. They offered no immediate objection as Bert,leading his wife, tried to pass them. But Lauren got in Bert's way toprevent him from slipping into the glowering crowd.
Against a man in space-armor, fists weren't very effective; still Berthad the satisfaction of giving Lauren a mighty shove that sent himsprawling. A terrible fury was behind it. The desperation of a lastchance. Here was where he had to become completely outlaw.
Alice and he threaded their way through the crowd where the cops coulduse neither their blasters nor their paralyzers, in spite of Lauren'sfrantic urging to "Get them!"
Once in the clear, Bert ran with his wife. There was no question ofdestination. They came to a metal shed. Inside it, beside the smallspaceboat, they found Lawler who had anticipated where Bert would go.
The two men spoke to each other with their helmet radios shut off toavoid eaves-dropping. They clasped hands so that the sound-waves oftheir voices would have a channel over which to pass, in the absenceof a sufficiently dense atmosphere.
"All of a sudden I'm a little worried, Bert," Lawler growled. "Aboutthe Big Pill. Maybe Lauren is half right about its being so dangerous.After all it has never been tested on a large scale before. And thereare two hundred people here on Titan. Well, you know what's got to bedone now. When you get to the _Prometheus_, tell Doc Kramer that I'msqueezing my thumbs...."
Lawler sounded almost plaintive at the end.
Bert felt the tweak of that same worry, too, but his course was set.He grinned in the darkness that surrounded them.
"Nuts!" he said. "Even Lauren admits that everything is a gamble,remember? And you can pile all of the people into the space ship herein camp, and blast off with them, and hover at a safe distance fromTitan till we're absolutely sure. I'd better hurry now, Lawler.Lauren's cops'll be on my tail any second. Gotta go."
"With your wife along?" Lawler demanded.
"Sure," Bert answered. "Allie's a fine shot with a blaster. Often Iwish she wasn't such a good shot with her tongue. But I guess thatwith Lauren she cleared the atmosphere. Right, Allie?"
With a small hand on the shoulder of each man, Alice had beenlistening in. "I think so," she answered grimly. "Let's dash."
Ten seconds later Bert Kraskow and his wife went rocketing up into theweird and glorious Titanian night, which was nearing its end. Theythought of Doc Kramer, the little physicist, waiting for them out inthe desert, in the space ship, _Prometheus_, with its terrible andwonderful cargo. Bert thought, too, of his contact and contract withthe new colonists' supply company, which was also called Prometheus.Yeah, Prometheus, the educator, the fire-bringing god of the ancientGreeks. The symbol of progress. At that moment Bert Kraskow felt veryright. He'd been hired secretly to help carry the torch against thestiff and smug forces of conservative obstructionism, with its awkwardand now antiquated methods.
Alice kept looking behind through the windows of the spaceboat'scabin. She spoke, now, with her helmet face-window open, for there wasbreathable air around them.
"I was thinking that Lauren might want us to run like this, Bert, sothat we'd lead the cops to the hiding place of the _Prometheus_. Sofar there's no pursuit."
Bert growled, "I'm not worried that the Patrol boys won't be along.What really scares me is that some of Lauren's men may already havefound the _Prometheus_. We'll just have to wait and see."
Beneath the spaceboat the desert rolled. Vast Saturn and his multiplemoons, hung against the black and all-but-airless star-curtain. Then,all of a sudden, before the eastward hurtling craft, it was daylight,as the tiny sun burst over the horizon. Its wan rays fell on pale,stratified mists of air, all but frozen in the cold of night.
Those mists, cupped between the hills, were the last of Titan'satmosphere. Once, eons ago, when monster Saturn had been hot enough tosupplement the far-off sun's heat with radiation of its own, thosehills had been, for a few brief ages, verdant with primitive, mossygrowths.
Bert followed the dry bed of an ancient river, till he came to therocky cleft where the _Prometheus_ had been concealed.
Just as they glimpsed the ship, Alice gave a sharp gasp, as they sawanother spaceboat dart unhurriedly away. Bert landed in the rockygorge, and on foot they approached the _Prometheus_ cautiously, theblasters from the cabin of the spaceboat gripped in their gauntletedhands.
They found the ship's airlock securely bolted. But someone had triedto cut through its tough, heat-resistant shell with a blaster for themetal was still hot.
"A break," Bert breathed raggedly. "We got here just in time to scarethem off.... Hey!..."
That was when they found Doc Kramer. He lay behind a boulder, apathetic little figure who seemed to be merely sleeping. There wasn'ta mark on him that could be easily discovered. There was no time tofigure out how he had died--by poisoned needle, overstrong paralyzerbeam, or whatever. His body, within its spacesuit, was just beginningto develop rigor mortis.
Alice's eyes were wet, her small jaw set hard. "Your brother's deathwas at least an unintentional accident caused by carelessly madeequipment, Bert," she said. "But Doc was murdered."
"Yeah," Bert grated thickly. "Only murder is awful hard to prove asfar from civilization as this. Come on, we can't do a thing about itright now."
* * * * *
Double rage and grief drove him on toward what he must do with greaterinsistence than before. With a key from his hip-pouch, he opened theairlock of the _Prometheus_. With great caution they went inside butfound no one in the ship.
The mood of its interior was brooding and sullen. Every cubic foot ofspace not taken up by its machinery and fuel was packed with blackingots of an alloy, a large proportion of which was fissionable metal,quiescent now, and harmless, but under the right kind of primer,capable of bursting into a specialized hell of energy. Five thousandtons of the stuff, Earth-weight!
But even all this was the secondary part of the purpose for which the_Prometheus_ had been fitted. Bert and Alice followed a narrow catwalkto a compartment along the keel of the ship which was fitted like ahuge bomb-bay. And the monster that rested there, gripped bymechanically operated claws, would certainly have fitted thedefinition of a bomb as well as anything that had ever been made byEarth-science. Child, it was, of the now ancient H-bomb.
It was a tapered cylinder, a hundred feet long and thirty feet thick.For one grim, devilish moment Bert Kraskow paused to pat its flank, tofeel the solid metallic slap of its tremendous s
hellcase under hispalm, to be aware of the intricacies of its hidden parts: The forklikemasses of fissionable metals that could dovetail and join instantly;the heavy-water, the lead, the steel, the beryllium.
Here was watchlike perfection and delicacy of mechanism--precisionmeant to function faultlessly for but a fragment of a second, and thento perish in a mighty and furious fulfillment. Here was the thought ofman crystallized--trying to tread a hairline past inconceivabledisaster, to the realization of a dream that was splendid.
In that moment this thing seemed the answer to all the fury of wrongand sorrow that burned in Bert Kraskow. And the vision soared in hismind like a legend of green fields and light. For a few seconds he wassure, until doubt crept up
Bert's concern about his wife's outspoken challenge to Lauren was thussuddenly diverted. His jaw hardened further. A nagging suspicion thatTrenton Lauren had found things out, was confirmed. It meant, perhaps,that Lauren had already taken counteraction secretly.
Bert Kraskow longed to beat up Lauren in spite of the presence of thetwo space policemen. But the need for immediate and better actiondenied him this extravagant luxury. He went to his wife's side andtook her arm.
"Lauren," he said. "I've got a brother to bury. So discussions areout, for now. Guys, will you bring Nick's body to my cottage? Come on,Allie...."
* * * * *
Bert was trying very hard to slip away unobtrusively when Laurengrinned mockingly. "Hold on, Kraskow," he snapped. "You're tangled upin this matter, somehow. I've learned that you've already broken aminor law by landing a ship quietly out in the deserts of Titanwithout declaring its presence; a ship that can be assumed reasonablyto be freighted with lethal materials. As a dangerous individual, youcan be put under an arrest of restraint. Legal technicalities can bedisregarded in a raw colonization project where people are apt to showhysteria, and where something like military law must be enforced forgeneral protection. The say-so of an old and honorable firm like S. C.S. that you are a menace, can, I am sure, be accepted. Patrolmen, takehim!"
The cops were puzzled. They offered no immediate objection as Bert,leading his wife, tried to pass them. But Lauren got in Bert's way toprevent him from slipping into the glowering crowd.
Against a man in space-armor, fists weren't very effective; still Berthad the satisfaction of giving Lauren a mighty shove that sent himsprawling. A terrible fury was behind it. The desperation of a lastchance. Here was where he had to become completely outlaw.
Alice and he threaded their way through the crowd where the cops coulduse neither their blasters nor their paralyzers, in spite of Lauren'sfrantic urging to "Get them!"
Once in the clear, Bert ran with his wife. There was no question ofdestination. They came to a metal shed. Inside it, beside the smallspaceboat, they found Lawler who had anticipated where Bert would go.
The two men spoke to each other with their helmet radios shut off toavoid eaves-dropping. They clasped hands so that the sound-waves oftheir voices would have a channel over which to pass, in the absenceof a sufficiently dense atmosphere.
"All of a sudden I'm a little worried, Bert," Lawler growled. "Aboutthe Big Pill. Maybe Lauren is half right about its being so dangerous.After all it has never been tested on a large scale before. And thereare two hundred people here on Titan. Well, you know what's got to bedone now. When you get to the _Prometheus_, tell Doc Kramer that I'msqueezing my thumbs...."
Lawler sounded almost plaintive at the end.
Bert felt the tweak of that same worry, too, but his course was set.He grinned in the darkness that surrounded them.
"Nuts!" he said. "Even Lauren admits that everything is a gamble,remember? And you can pile all of the people into the space ship herein camp, and blast off with them, and hover at a safe distance fromTitan till we're absolutely sure. I'd better hurry now, Lawler.Lauren's cops'll be on my tail any second. Gotta go."
"With your wife along?" Lawler demanded.
"Sure," Bert answered. "Allie's a fine shot with a blaster. Often Iwish she wasn't such a good shot with her tongue. But I guess thatwith Lauren she cleared the atmosphere. Right, Allie?"
With a small hand on the shoulder of each man, Alice had beenlistening in. "I think so," she answered grimly. "Let's dash."
Ten seconds later Bert Kraskow and his wife went rocketing up into theweird and glorious Titanian night, which was nearing its end. Theythought of Doc Kramer, the little physicist, waiting for them out inthe desert, in the space ship, _Prometheus_, with its terrible andwonderful cargo. Bert thought, too, of his contact and contract withthe new colonists' supply company, which was also called Prometheus.Yeah, Prometheus, the educator, the fire-bringing god of the ancientGreeks. The symbol of progress. At that moment Bert Kraskow felt veryright. He'd been hired secretly to help carry the torch against thestiff and smug forces of conservative obstructionism, with its awkwardand now antiquated methods.
Alice kept looking behind through the windows of the spaceboat'scabin. She spoke, now, with her helmet face-window open, for there wasbreathable air around them.
"I was thinking that Lauren might want us to run like this, Bert, sothat we'd lead the cops to the hiding place of the _Prometheus_. Sofar there's no pursuit."
Bert growled, "I'm not worried that the Patrol boys won't be along.What really scares me is that some of Lauren's men may already havefound the _Prometheus_. We'll just have to wait and see."
Beneath the spaceboat the desert rolled. Vast Saturn and his multiplemoons, hung against the black and all-but-airless star-curtain. Then,all of a sudden, before the eastward hurtling craft, it was daylight,as the tiny sun burst over the horizon. Its wan rays fell on pale,stratified mists of air, all but frozen in the cold of night.
Those mists, cupped between the hills, were the last of Titan'satmosphere. Once, eons ago, when monster Saturn had been hot enough tosupplement the far-off sun's heat with radiation of its own, thosehills had been, for a few brief ages, verdant with primitive, mossygrowths.
Bert followed the dry bed of an ancient river, till he came to therocky cleft where the _Prometheus_ had been concealed.
Just as they glimpsed the ship, Alice gave a sharp gasp, as they sawanother spaceboat dart unhurriedly away. Bert landed in the rockygorge, and on foot they approached the _Prometheus_ cautiously, theblasters from the cabin of the spaceboat gripped in their gauntletedhands.
They found the ship's airlock securely bolted. But someone had triedto cut through its tough, heat-resistant shell with a blaster for themetal was still hot.
"A break," Bert breathed raggedly. "We got here just in time to scarethem off.... Hey!..."
That was when they found Doc Kramer. He lay behind a boulder, apathetic little figure who seemed to be merely sleeping. There wasn'ta mark on him that could be easily discovered. There was no time tofigure out how he had died--by poisoned needle, overstrong paralyzerbeam, or whatever. His body, within its spacesuit, was just beginningto develop rigor mortis.
Alice's eyes were wet, her small jaw set hard. "Your brother's deathwas at least an unintentional accident caused by carelessly madeequipment, Bert," she said. "But Doc was murdered."
"Yeah," Bert grated thickly. "Only murder is awful hard to prove asfar from civilization as this. Come on, we can't do a thing about itright now."
* * * * *
Double rage and grief drove him on toward what he must do with greaterinsistence than before. With a key from his hip-pouch, he opened theairlock of the _Prometheus_. With great caution they went inside butfound no one in the ship.
The mood of its interior was brooding and sullen. Every cubic foot ofspace not taken up by its machinery and fuel was packed with blackingots of an alloy, a large proportion of which was fissionable metal,quiescent now, and harmless, but under the right kind of primer,capable of bursting into a specialized hell of energy. Five thousandtons of the stuff, Earth-weight!
But even all this was the secondary part of the purpose for which the_Prometheus_ had been fitted. Bert and Alice followed a narrow catwalkto a compartment along the keel of the ship which was fitted like ahuge bomb-bay. And the monster that rested there, gripped bymechanically operated claws, would certainly have fitted thedefinition of a bomb as well as anything that had ever been made byEarth-science. Child, it was, of the now ancient H-bomb.
It was a tapered cylinder, a hundred feet long and thirty feet thick.For one grim, devilish moment Bert Kraskow paused to pat its flank, tofeel the solid metallic slap of its tremendous s
hellcase under hispalm, to be aware of the intricacies of its hidden parts: The forklikemasses of fissionable metals that could dovetail and join instantly;the heavy-water, the lead, the steel, the beryllium.
Here was watchlike perfection and delicacy of mechanism--precisionmeant to function faultlessly for but a fragment of a second, and thento perish in a mighty and furious fulfillment. Here was the thought ofman crystallized--trying to tread a hairline past inconceivabledisaster, to the realization of a dream that was splendid.
In that moment this thing seemed the answer to all the fury of wrongand sorrow that burned in Bert Kraskow. And the vision soared in hismind like a legend of green fields and light. For a few seconds he wassure, until doubt crept up
