Big Pill Page 3
"Doc is gone," she said. "Even with his expert help, using the BigPill would be taking a chance. Bert, do you think we can do it alone?Will it be all right? Are you certain, Bert?"
Her large, dark eyes pleaded for reassurance.
He sighed as the strain plucked at his nerves, in spite of what heknew of Doc Kramer's careful small-scale tests. Maybe what he felt wasjust a normal suspicion of anything so new and so colossal.
"No, Allie, not _absolutely_ certain," he replied. "But how cananybody ever be sure of anything unless they try it? Doc died for anidea that holds tremendous hope for the good of all people who maketheir living in space. He was the principal inventor, and much morethan just the boss of a new company. We aren't going to let him down.What we're going to do is for Nick, and for everybody who ever diedviolently on near-dead worlds. Lauren, and what he stands for, won'tstop us. We can radio another warning and instruct everyone on Titanto blast off for a while."
Alice seemed to draw confidence from her husband's words. She smiled abit wanly. "Okay, Bert," she said. "This is also for the folks whohave gone nuts, or have just gotten terribly homesick from seeing toomuch black sky of space for too long. Let's go!"
They strapped themselves to the seats in the _Prometheus_' controlroom. Bert depressed the throttle. Rocket jets flamed. The rebuiltfreighter lifted heavily and gained momentum toward a speed of milesper second. In the rear-vision screen the Kraskows saw two policespaceboats flashing the blue signal for them to land.
Bert set the _Prometheus_ in an orbit around Titan, about a thousandmiles above the bleak and dried out surface of this Saturniansatellite. Thus the ship became a little moon of a moon.
Alice was shouting into the mike of the large radio transmitter:"Colonists at Camp Titan! Enter your ship! Blast into space forsafety! We are about to use the Big Pill! Colonists at Camp Titan!Blast for safety!... Police boats, give us room! Don't interfere!..."
This was the start of wild drama. When Alice switched fromtransmission to reception, the calls from the patrol craft were stern:"Freighter _Prometheus_, this is the Space Patrol. Proceed to alanding or we blast."
But these calls still seemed secondary, compared to other words alsocoming from the receiver, like another, overlapping radio program. Itwas Trenton Lauren's scared voice that spoke:
"Space Colonists' Supply, Incorporated, calling deep-space units ofpatrol! Send more help to Titan! Maniac named Kraskow amuck withfreighter _Prometheus_, known to contain huge bomb! Destroy on sight:Bomb supposed to be invention of group headed by one, Emil Kramer,renegade scientist believed to have a grudge against S. C. S. Claimsfor invention wholly extravagant and unbased. Hurry, deep-space unitsof Patrol. More help! Or all of Titan will be flooded with heat anddeadly radioactivity! Hurry.... Hurry.... Hurry...."
Just then the _Prometheus_ rocked from the impact of a blaster-beam;and though the Kraskows could not see the effect of the weapon, theyknew that there were glowing spots on their ship's tough hull. If thePatrol boats could bear down with their beams on a particular area fora few seconds, a mighty episode could end violently before it had achance to start.
Alice's small hands were on the complicated aiming and firingmechanism of the heavy blaster, mounted externally on the hull of the_Prometheus_.
"I'll keep the cops at a distance with a few near-misses," she said."Maybe they aren't too anxious to take the chance of setting off theBig Pill, anyway. Let me worry about them, Bert. Just do what you'vegot to do...."
They had shut off their radio. There was no need to listen to thesomewhat hysterical repetitions of what had come through before.
Every few moments there was a burst of humming sound as Alice fired.Bert put additional power into the rockets to surpass fixed orbitalspeed; but he held the ship to a tight curve around Titan. It was bestto cover distance as quickly as possible. In his speeding course, hepassed almost over the camp. But his purpose was to bomb a point atantipodes from it, halfway around this Saturnian moon.
* * * * *
Under full acceleration, the _Prometheus_ was soon nearing thisdestination. To allow for the Big Pill's forward motion, imparted toit by the ship's velocity even after release, he pressed the leverthat opened the bomb-bay doors, and then jabbed the single button thatcontrolled both release, and the firing of the gigantic missile's ownpropulsive jets. Without those jets, considering the centrifugal forceof its vast velocity in a circular path around Titan, muchoverbalancing the feebler gravitational pull of the moon, it could nothave started its fall at all. It needed jets to drive it down.
Bert jabbed the button with his eyes closed since he had no precisetarget to hit. His teeth were gritted.
With the sudden loss of mass, the ship lurched. Bert had to strugglefor a moment to adjust the angle of its flaming stern-jets, and bringit back on course. In another few seconds he cut the stern-jets outentirely, and opened the fore-nozzles wide to check excess speed, andreestablish the _Prometheus_ in a stable orbit around Titan. One thatcould last forever without additional thrust.
"Well, the Big Pill is on its way--for better or worse," Aliceremarked. "Half of our job is done."
But time had to pass before that metal colossus could drive itself andfall the thousand miles to the bleak, dried-out hills below. And thespace ship hurtled on, to leave the point of coming impact far beyondthe horizon. This, the Kraskows knew, was fortunate for them. Thesolid bulk of Titan would be the shield between them and holocaust. Nohuman eyes could have looked directly on such a holocaust, at a rangeof a mere thousand miles, and not be burned from their sockets.
Bert and Alice noticed that the Space Patrol craft were no longerpursuing them. Alice switched on the radio again but only jangledsounds came through.
"Now for the last half of our job, Allie," Bert said. "First we attachshoulder-pack jets to our spacesuits."
This was accomplished a few seconds before the stupendous flash of theBig Pill's explosion blazed beyond the horizon. The dark curve ofTitan's bulk was limned against thin white fire that streamed outwardtoward the stars like comet's hair. The spectacle looked like amuch-enlarged color-photo of a segment of a solar eclipse. The glareon the other side of Titan was so intense and far-reaching that thenight-portions of huge Saturn and his other satellites, and theshadowed part of the fabulous, treasure-filled Rings, all hundreds ofthousands of miles away, registered an easily perceptible flicker.But in airless space, of course, no sound was transmitted.
Alice's face went pale. Bert did not stop doing what must bedone--adjusting the timing system in the black case beside his pilotseat, and looking with a final, intense glance along the cable whichled back through the hull of the ship to a silvery, pipelike thingaround which the thousands of tons of sinister black ingots werestacked. It was the primer-cap of another kind of subatomic fury.
About the white fire beyond the horizon, hardly dimming at all afterits first dazzling flash, neither Alice nor Bert said anything. Maybetheir awe and concern were too great. But already long fingers ofincandescent gases were jetting and flowing over the hilltops, as ifto catch up with the speeding ship.
Bert Kraskow knew pretty well what was going on where the Big Pill hadstruck the crust of Titan. First, there had been that stupendousblast. Then, inconceivable blue-white incandescence, like the heart ofa star, began gnawing more gradually into the walls of the giganticcrater that had been formed. A chain-reacting process was nowspreading through the silicates and other components of Titan's crust.It was a blunt and terrible inferno.
But to the scientist's view, chemical compounds were being brokenapart; atoms were being shattered, and recast in new forms, as floodsof neutrons, and other basic particles raced like bullets throughtheir structure. On a small scale, here was something that was likethe birth of the universe.
Bert found his voice at last. "The ship is firm in its orbit aroundTitan, Allie. The primer is set for thirty minute
s from now. And we'reapproaching position above camp again. So here's where we bail out."
The Kraskow's closed their helmet face-windows and jumped from theairlock together. Flame-propelled by their shoulder-pack jets, theydarted downward toward the sad, rolling hills that curved away underthe weak light of the distance-shrunken sun. It was hard to believethat eons ago, before most of Titan's air and water had leaked awayinto space, those hills had been green with life.
Even with an ugly, red-lit vapor pouring and spreading over the arc ofTitan's edge, they thought of such things.
* * * * *
Their helmet radiophones were full of static from intenseelectromagnetic disturbances, so that it was hard to converse.
But presently Alice shouted: "Bert! It's funny that