“Why not Japetus? It’s big enough.”
The Colonel chuckled. “You’ll also notice that it’s half gone. They’ve never landed on Japetus—the Geiger counters wouldn’t let them. The whole moon is radioactive, too hot to toy around with. But when the moons were explored, the explorers spotted a tremendous vein of ruthenium ore running close to the surface on Titan, so they chose that as a likely starting place. And then, Titan is the largest of the nine, the closest to Earth-size of all Saturn’s satellites. It’s probably as ideal for establishing a permanent colony as any. That’s not to say that any of them are particularly cozy. Maybe you can’t blame people too much for making trouble when they get out there.”
Tuck nodded, his conscience giving him a sudden sharp jab. Half a dozen times he had almost blurted out to his father the whole story of the booby trap in the apartment, and then at the last moment held off. It disturbed him greatly; he had always been straightforward with dad before, and he knew how hurt the Colonel would be. Sometimes Tuck almost wondered if it had really happened, if he had not made up the whole thing to give himself an excuse to come, but then he would smell that acrid smoke again, see in his mind’s eye the sputtering, evil-smelling bomb, stripped of its explosive power, burning in the washbasin. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to reveal it, until one day the Colonel had made the overture himself.
It was during one of the observation sessions, near the end of the third week out. It seemed that the Colonel had been watching him that afternoon with far more interest than he watched the stars, and Tuck was becoming increasingly nervous. Finally the Colonel said, “When are you going to tell me about it, son?”
Tuck started, his eyes wide. “What do you mean?”
A smile touched the Colonel’s lips. “You know what I mean. Your sudden decision to come along with me. Something happened to change your mind. I was hoping you’d tell me—”
“Aw, Dad—you wouldn’t have let me come, and I had to come, after what I found!” Almost tearfully Tuck blurted out the whole story—his worry, the spurious return address, the bomb in the envelope. When he had finished, the Colonel sat still for a long, long time. Then he said, “I wish you’d told me this before.”
“I couldn’t, Dad, I just couldn’t—”
“I know. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world.” He stared into the darkness. “That puts a different complexion on things, all right. And it begins to make things add up.” The Colonel’s eyes were grave. “You remember that call I got the evening you came home?”
Tuck nodded unhappily.
“We’d had men checking the invoices on supplies that have been coming out to the Titan colony. We suspected that there had been some funny business—extra supplies, misplaced consignments, ‘lost’ invoices—but there had never been a double Security Commission check before—”
“You mean there’s been smuggling?”
The Colonel nodded. “Food, equipment—tremendous quantities over their quota.”
Tuck’s eyes widened. “But I thought Security controlled shipments very carefully.”
“They’re supposed to. But this has been going on for years. All neatly hidden behind such a screen of confusion and inefficiency and red tape that even regular FBI checks couldn’t spot it.” He shook his head and knocked out his pipe. “Yes, you should have told me about the booby trap—it’s bad. The leader of the colony, a man named Anson Torm, knows we’re coming. According to the reports, he’s one of the biggest troublemakers. And hell probably be out to meet us when we land.” He looked up at Tuck, his eyes filled with concern. “You bit off a mouthful, son. It looks like were in trouble—real trouble. I only hope it wasn’t too big a mouthful.”
For a moment Tuck lay still, almost stunned by the terrific jolt. The ship shook from stem to stern, then settled down on its tail in the shallow, rocky crater where supply ships had been landing for over a hundred and fifty years. Carefully Tuck stripped away the straps, examining himself for bruises, and moved forward into the observation bay. Slowly he walked to the great plexiglass window and stared out, hardly daring to breathe.
The sky was dark blue, the darkest, coldest, most hostile blue Tuck had ever seen in his life. The stars stood out like brilliant gems against that blue, and hanging low near the horizon was the huge, luminous globe of Saturn, six times the size of Earth’s moon, her rings forming a razor-sharp line around her silvery middle. She was tilted slightly, so that she looked like a huge, off-center top, hanging in the sky. But it wasn’t the immense, luminous beauty of Saturn that made Tuck gasp. It was the utter, unbroken desolation of Titan that sent a chill down his back. The surface of the planetoid looked utterly dead.
If there had been a howling wind swirling around the ship, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But there was no sound, no motion. The ship’s silvery nose rose high above the ground, but on three sides of her were huge black crags jutting up sheer and barren against the cold blue sky. The ground was covered with a blanket of glistening white, covering the jagged rocks, giving way to crevices that sliced deep into the black crater floor. As far as Tuck’s eyes could see there was no change, no difference—only the endless succession of jagged rocks, sheer cliffs, and vast gorges, reflecting the pale bluish sunlight from their harsh faces. “It looks so cold,” Tuck murmured. “It is cold,” replied the Colonel, at his elbow. “It’s incredibly cold. There aren’t words to describe how horribly cold it is, and the cold goes right down to the core of the planetoid.”
“But what temperature is it out there? That looks like fresh-fallen snow—”
“Well—it is snow, in a way. And it might have been fresh-fallen ten million years ago—we don’t have any way of telling. Part of it is water vapor, frozen before it ever became water. Part of it is carbon dioxide, and part is frozen ammonia. And the atmosphere is almost all methane, with a little ammonia and cyanogen mixed in. It’s more than 250° below zero out there—”
Tuck stared, hardly believing his eyes. “Is the whole planet like this?” He pointed to the ragged, impossible tumult of rocks and crevices. “It’s—amazing.”
“The geologists have had a field day studying the surface. They say some of those crevices go down for miles. They’re probably volcanic in origin, judging from the type of rock. Or maybe there were Titan-quakes, millions of years ago.”
Tuck shook his head, still scanning the jagged horizon. “Gee,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“Suppose a ship crashed out here somewhere. It would be lost for good.”
The Colonel nodded. “It happened, once.”
“You re kidding!” Tuck looked horrified.
“No such thing. Back in the days before the colony, it happened. Exploratory ship, instruments fouled. It crashed out in that wilderness, somewhere, and they never found it. Probably smashed to smithereens on the rocks. They’re more careful, nowadays—”
The navigator popped into the room. “Something for you to see, Colonel.” He handed the Colonel a pair of binoculars. “Over there to the left.”
The Colonel stared through the binoculars for a moment. “Well, well,” he murmured, handing Tuck the glasses. “See what you see.”
At first Tuck saw the same picture he had seen before—great black rocks, gorges, sheer cliffs. Then his eyes caught something moving, far in the distance, something that looked like a small black bug, crawling up through one of the gorges, slowly but steadily moving toward the ship. Tuck blinked, stared closer, then looked up in alarm. “That’s a half-track, or I’ll eat my shirt.”