Tuck and David sat side by side, watching the Colonel. He sat for a long time in silence, his face looking older than Tuck had ever seen it before. Then he slammed his fist down on the table with a groan. “The fool!” he grated. “The stubborn fool! Security will never accept a deal. What does he think he can get with this kind of blackmail? All Security wants is to have the trouble stopped and production continued smoothly—and thanks to him were in the middle of the worst trouble there’s been in years.”
“Dad—” Tuck looked up at his father. “Dad, Torm is right. You have to trust him.”
“How can I trust him?” the Colonel exploded. “Why won’t he come clean? Why won’t he tell me what Cortell has up his sleeve?”
“I don’t know—but does it really matter? I mean, if you could take Torm at his word, and start negotiating—”
“But how could I ever sell Security on it? How could I tell them to trust the colonists when I’m not even convinced myself?” He shook his head tiredly, and stood up. “No, it won’t work. There’ll be no deals until Torm lays the truth on the line. Until then, he’s just another colonist rebel, I’m afraid.” He started for the stairs.
“Dad, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wait, I guess. I just don’t know.” His shoulders sagged as he walked up the stairs.
Tuck turned to David Torm, and made a hopeless gesture. “They can’t see each other. Every time they talk, they get farther apart. Dad is so sure that anything anybody does out here is aimed against Earth that he won’t even listen.”
David’s eyes were wide. “But he’s got to see,” he said excitedly. “Does he realize what’s happening? That man Cortell is dangerous, and he’s ruthless.”
Tuck nodded. “Yes—but your father isn’t coming halfway, either—”
“I know it.” David flopped dejectedly down in the chair. “Why are people so stupid? Dad doesn’t hate Earthmen—he just distrusts them. He’s seen too many back-stabbing tricks to trust them. But Cortell isn’t made like dad. He’s all hate—he lives on it. He hates Earth and everything about Earth.”
Tuck looked at David. “Yet he’s in contact with people on Earth. That’s one reason dad won’t co-operate. They tried to kill him, back home, before he even started out here.” David’s eyes widened as Tuck told him about the Murexide bomb in the strange letter. When Tuck was finished, David whistled softly.
“My father doesn’t know about that, does he?”
“No.”
The lad paced back and forth like a caged animal. “It must have been Cortell who arranged it. Yet, I don’t see—” He scowled and paced some more. “There must be something we can do—” He grinned at the Earth boy. “At least we can talk without going for each other’s throats. And Cortell has got to be stopped. He can carry the whole colony to suicide if he wins—”
Tuck turned slowly to David. “Suicide? What do you mean?”
The leader’s son looked at Tuck queerly, a sudden light of excitement on his broad face. “Listen,” he said. “I—I think I know an answer.”
“Answer?”
“To the whole problem—a way out, a way to stop Cortell, and to make dad and the Colonel see things eye to eye—” He looked straight at Tuck. “I’d have to count on you completely not to spill it too early—”
“You can count on it.”
“And—I hate to say it, but you’ll have to trust me.”
Tuck hesitated just a moment. Then he looked up at David and nodded.
“Then come on!” David was on his feet, half running for the stairs. “I’ve got something to tell you, but I think we’d better get away from the colony before we talk. Dad would break my neck if he caught on before we had a chance—”
“But where can we go?”
“They’re busy hunting for Cortell—they’d be glad to have us out of the way if some shooting starts. Let’s go out and see what shape the Snooper is in—right now!
The guard at the gate was not co-operative. Orders were, nobody went out. For a while prospects looked gloomy, but as Tuck had seen before, his companion had a gift of gab. In two minutes the guard was so completely confused with the barrage released upon him that he broke down, muttering darkly about little wise guys and the penalties for disobeying orders, and opened the inner lock. With a grin from ear to ear David slammed down the top on the half-track. Five minutes later they were rolling through the lock into the open atmosphere of Titan, heading away from the colony at top speed, in the direction of the wreck of the Snooper.
Chapter 9
The Big Secret
The trip out was wild. There was nothing in David Torm’s nature to allow for caution and comfort; he rode the half-track like a bucking bronco, whirling the steering bar with gleeful abandon as the car tossed and tumbled across the uneven rocky terrain away from the dome of the colony. The soft pillow wheels absorbed some of the shock, but Tuck strapped himself down and clung to the safety bar for dear life, as they lurched from side to side. David whistled cheerfully to himself above the engine’s tortured roar, peering ahead at the path, swerving wildly to the left or right as boulders too large to climb over came into the path of the vehicle. Up in the sky the sun was just at the meridian, and little swirls of snow, white and powdery, spun up in the dead, still atmosphere as the half-track plunged along like some strange, half-possessed monster.
David swerved suddenly, as the wheels of the ’track slipped into an almost invisible crevice, and the machine gave a bone-crushing lurch to one side.
“Yi!” said Tuck, feeling slightly green.
“Yi, yourself,” said David, throwing the car into reverse and jerking loose from the crevice. The motor responded with a grating of gears, and started climbing again. “Me and this ’track, we understand each other.”
“So it seems,” said Tuck, weakly. “You try to kill it, and it tries to kill you. Nice and cozy—”
David grinned. “Keep your eyes open now. Seems to me the Snooper should be a couple of miles over to the left of the main road to the rocket landing—isn’t that right? I hit pretty fast after the explosion, but I came in nearly three point, so I must have had a couple of miles of skimming.”
Tuck shook his head. “It looked to me as if you were barrel rolling all the way.”
“Me? Barrel roll? Never!”
“Well, you didn’t have much to say about it.”
“That’s for sure. Felt like somebody came up behind and whacked me with a large stone wall.” He braked the machine, and peered out in the strange, gloomy light. “There, now. See the tracks? That must be where dad’s ’track came back onto the path after he picked me up.” David jerked the steering rod again, and this time the ’track moved sharply to the right, mounted a rocky rise, and tumbled down, jerking from side to side as the caterpillar tracks bit the unfamiliar coarse terrain. Tuck gritted his teeth, and felt his hands clench the gripping bar. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he growled. “That felt like we were going to roll—”
“So we turn it over—so what? This plastic on the top will take a lot of punishment. There are even fancy jacks in the back to turn it back right side up if it rolls.”