Spacehounds of IPC by E. E. Smith (read e book .txt) 📕

"Reasonable enough when you think about it. Temperature differences are logarithmic, you know, not arithmetic—the effective difference between his body temperature and ours is perhaps even greater than that between ours and that of melted iron. We never think of iron as being a liquid, you know."

"That's right, too. Well, good night, Steve dear."

"'Bye, little queen of space—see you at breakfast," and the Forlorn Hope became dark and silent.

Day after day the brilliant sphere flew toward distant Saturn, with the wreckage of the Forlorn Hope in tow. Piece by piece that wreckage was brought together and held in place by the Titanian tractors; and slowly but steadily, under Stevens' terrific welding projector, the stubborn steel flowed together, once more to become a seamless, spaceworthy structure. And Nadia, the electrician, followed close behind the welder. Wielding torch, pliers and spanner with practised hand, she repaired or cut out of circuit the damaged accumulator cells and reunited the ends of each severed power lead. Understanding Nadia's work thoroughly, the Titanians were not particularly interested in it; but whenever Stevens made his way along an outside seam, he had a large and thrillingly horrified gallery. Everyone who could possibly secure permission to leave the sphere did so, each upon his own pencil of force, and went over to watch the welder. They did not come close to him—to venture within fifty feet of that slow moving spot of scintillating brilliance, even in a space-suit, meant death—but, poised around him in space, they watched with shuddering, incredulous amazement, the monstrous human being in whose veins ran molten water instead of blood; whose body was already so fiercely hot that it could exist unharmed while working practically without protection, upon liquefied metal!

Finally the welding was done. The insulating space was evacuated and held its vacuum—outer and inner shells were bottle-tight. The two mechanics heaved deep sighs of relief as they discarded their cumbersome armor and began to repair what few of their machine tools had been damaged by the slashing plane of force which had so neatly sliced the Forlorn Hope into sections.

"Say, big fellow, you're the guy that slings the ink, ain't you?" Nadia extinguished her torch and swaggered up to Stevens, hands on hips, her walk an exaggerated roll. "Write me out a long walk. This job's all played out, so I think I'll get me a good job on Titan. I said give me my time, you big stiff!"

"You didn't say nothing!" growled Stevens in his deepest bass, playing up to her lead as he always did. "Bounce back, cub, you've struck a rubber fence! You signed on for duration and you'll stick—see?"

Arm in arm they went over to the nearest communicator plate. Flipping the switch, Stevens turned the dial and Titan shone upon the screen; so close, that it no longer resembled a moon, but was a world toward which they were falling with an immense velocity.

"Not close enough to make out much detail yet—let's take another look at Saturn," and Stevens projected the visiray beam out toward the mighty planet. It was now an enormous full moon, almost five degrees in apparent diameter,1 its visible surface an expanse of what they knew to be billowing cloud, shining brilliantly white in the pale sunlight, broken only by a dark equatorial band.

"Those rings were such a gorgeous spectacle a little while ago!" Nadia mourned. "It's a shame that Titan has to be right in their plane, isn't it? Think of living this close to one of the most wonderful sights in the Solar System, and never being able to see it. Think they know what they're missing, Steve?"

"We'll have to ask Barkovis," Stevens replied. He swung the communicator beam back toward Titan, and Nadia shuddered.

"Oh, it's hideous!" she exclaimed. "I thought that it would improve as we got closer, but the plainer we can see it, the worse it gets. Just to think of human beings, even such cold-blooded ones as those over there, living upon such a horrible moon and liking it, gives me the blue shivers!"

"It's pretty bleak, no fooling," he admitted, and peered through the eyepiece of the visiray telescope, studying minutely the forbidding surface of the satellite they were so rapidly approaching.

Larger and larger it loomed, a cratered, jagged globe of desolation indescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark, sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every lofty object cast a sharply outlined shade of impenetrable blackness, beside which the weak light of the sun became a dazzling glare. The ground was either a brilliant white or an intense black, unrelieved by half-tones.

"I can't hand it much, either, Nadia, but it's all in the way you've been brought up, you know. This is home to them, and just to look at Tellus would give them the pip. Ha! Here's something you'll like, even if it does look so cold that it makes me feel like hugging a couple of heater coils. It's Barkovis' city the one we're heading for, I think. It's close enough now so that we can get it on the plate," and he set the communicator beam upon the metropolis of Titan.

"Why, I don't see a thing, Steve—where and what is it?" They were dropping vertically downward toward the center of a vast plain of white, featureless and desolate; and Nadia stared in disappointment.

"You'll see directly—it's too good to spoil by telling you what to look for or wh...."

"Oh, there it is!" she cried. "It is beautiful, Steve, but how frightfully, utterly cold!"

A flash of prismatic color had caught the girl's eye, and, one transparent structure thus revealed to her sight, there had burst into view a city of crystal. Low buildings of hexagonal shape, arranged in irregularly variant hexagonal patterns, extended mile upon mile. From the roofs of the structures lacy spires soared heavenward; inter-connected by long, slim cantilever bridges whose prodigious spans seemed out of all proportion to the gossamer delicacy of their construction. Buildings, spires, and bridges formed fantastic geometrical designs, at which Nadia exclaimed in delight.

"I've just thought of what that reminds me of—it's snowflakes!"

"Sure—I knew it was something familiar. Snowflakes—no two are ever exactly alike, and yet every one is symmetrical and hexagonal. We're going to land on the public square—see the crowds? Let's put on our suits and go out."

The Forlorn Hope lay in a hexagonal park, and near it the Titanian globe had also come to rest. All about the little plot towered the glittering buildings of crystal, and in its center played a fountain; a series of clear and sparkling cascades of liquid jewels. Under foot there spread a thick, soft carpet of whitely brilliant vegetation. Throngs of the grotesque citizens of Titania were massed to greet the space-ships; throngs clustering close about the globular vessel, but maintaining a respectful distance from the fiercely radiant Terrestrial wedge. All were shouting greetings and congratulations—shouts which Stevens found as intelligible as his own native tongue.

"Why, I can understand every word they say, Steve!" Nadia exclaimed, in surprise. "How come, do you suppose?"

"I can, too. Don't know—must be from using that thought telephone of theirs so much, I guess. Here comes Barkovis—I'll ask him."

The Titanian commander had been in earnest conversation with a group of fellow-creatures and was now walking toward the Terrestrials, carrying the multiple headsets. Placing them upon the white sward, he backed away, motioning the two visitors to pick them up.

"It may not be necessary, Barkovis," Stevens said, slowly and clearly. "We do not know why, but we can understand what your people are saying, and it may be that you can now understand us."

"Oh, yes, I can understand your English perfectly. A surprising development, but perhaps, after all, one that should have been expected, from the very nature of the device we have been using. I wanted to tell you that I have just received grave news, which makes it impossible for us to help you immediately, as I promised. While we were gone, one of our two power-plants upon Saturn failed. In consequence, Titan's power has been cut to a minimum, since maintaining our beam at that great distance required a large fraction of the output of the other plant. Because of this lack, the Sedlor walls were weakened to such a point that in spite of the Guardian's assurances, I think trouble is inevitable. At all events, it is of the utmost importance that we begin repairing the damaged unit, for that is to be a task indeed."

"Yes, it will take time," agreed Stevens, remembering what the Titanian captain had told him concerning the construction of those plants—generators which had been in continuous and automatic operation for thousands of Saturnian years.

"It will take more than time—it will take lives," replied Barkovis, gravely. "Scores, perhaps hundreds, of us will never again breathe the clear, pure air of Titan. In spite of all precaution and all possible bracing and insulation, man after man after man will be crushed by his own weight, volatilized by the awful heat, poisoned by the foul atmosphere, or will burst into unthinkable flames at the touch of some flying spark from the inconceivably hot metals with which we shall have to work. A horrible fate, but we shall not lack for volunteers."

"Sure not; and of course you yourself would go. And I never thought of the effect a spark would have on you—your tissues would probably be wildly inflammable. But say, I just had a thought. Just how hot is the air at those plants and just what is the actual pressure?"

"According to the records, the temperature is some forty of your centigrade degrees above the melting-point of water, and the pressure is not far short of two of your meters of mercury. I find it almost impossible to think of mercury as a liquid, however."

"You find it impossible, since you use it as a metal, for wires in coils and so on. But plus forty, while pretty warm, isn't impossible, by any means; and we could stand double our air pressure for quite a while. Both my partner and I are pretty fair mechanics and we've got quite a line of machine tools, such as you could not possibly have here. We'll give it a whirl, since we owe you something already. Lead us to it, ace—but wait a minute! We can't see through the fog, so couldn't find the plants, and probably your wiring diagrams would explode if I touched them."

"I never thought of your helping us," mused Barkovis. "The idea of any living being existing in that inferno has always been unthinkable, but the difficulties you mention are slight. We have already built in our vessel communicators similar to yours, and radio sets. With these we can guide you and explain the plants to you as you work, and our tractor beams will be of assistance to you in moving heavy objects, even at such distances from the surface as we Titanians shall have to maintain. If you will set out a flask of your atmosphere, we will analyze it, for the thought has come to me that perhaps, being planet-dwellers yourselves, the air of Saturn might not be as poisonous to you as it is to us."

"That's a thought, too," and, the news broadcast, it was not long until the two ships leaped into the air, to the accompaniment of the cheers and plaudits of a watching multitude.

In a wide curve they sped toward Saturn. Passing so close to the enormous rings that the individual meteoric fragments could almost be seen with the unaided eye, they flashed on and on, slowing down long before they approached the upper surface of the envelope of cloud. The spherical space-ship stopped and Stevens, staring into his useless screen, drove the Forlorn Hope downward mile after mile, solely under Barkovis' direction, changing course and power from time to time as the Titanian's voice came from the speaker at his elbow. Slower and slower became the descent, until finally, almost upon the broad, flat roof of the power-plant, Stevens saw it in his plate. Breathing deeply in relief, he dropped quickly down upon a flat pavement, neutralized his controls, and turned to Nadia.

"Well, old golf-shootist, we're here at last—now we'll go out and see what's gone screwy with the works. Remember that gravity is about double normal here, and conduct yourself accordingly."

"But it's supposed to be only about nine-tenths," she objected.

"That's at the outer surface of the atmosphere," he replied. "And it's some atmosphere—not like the thin layer we've got on Tellus."

They went into the airlock, and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his helmet wide.