CHAPTER III
Location Site
Being the sixth satellite of Saturn, Titan is unpleasantly cold. It gets no heat from its major, since Saturn’s average temperature is 180° below zero F. But there are occasional volcanic areas, and in one of these, amid geysers and steaming lakes, is the only settlement of humans on Titan, New Macao, a roaring bordertown.
Most of the moon remains unexplored. There are continents and islands and iron-cold seas whose vast depth as well as the tidal pull of Saturn keep unfrozen. Maps on the satellite are mostly blank, with the outlines of the continents sketched in and a few radar-located landmarks indicated. Perhaps two dozen mining companies work some of the volcanic regions.
Equatoria, a continent as large as Africa, stretches from latitudes 45° north to 32° south. Udell had clearly marked on his chart the position of his Titan camp, a valley near the equator on the outskirts of Devil’s Range, a broad mountainous belt stretching across the equator for three hundred miles.
So Quade brought down his camera ship, a gleaming, transparent-nosed ovoid, in a five-mile-wide shallow basin clearly of volcanic origin. Steaming geyser plumes feathered up from the rocky floor. Towering cliffs of ice ringed the valley.
In the center a few shacks stood, but there was no sign of life. Though the atmosphere was breathable, Quade, remembering the mysterious virus, issued orders for continual wearing of spacesuits outside the ship. Moreover, he installed antiseptic baths in the spacelocks, in which every member of the crew had to dunk himself before reentering the vessel.
“We’re not near New Macao, are we?” Wolfe asked, a wistful gleam in his blue eyes as he peered through the transparent hull.
Quade grinned.
“Nope. We’re on the other side of the satellite. Why? Thirsty?”
“Kind of.”
“Better stay away from New Macao liquor,” Quade said solemnly. “Know what plasmosin is? It’s the fibre that holds the cells, of your body together. One shot of Martian absinthe, New Macao version, and the plasmosin lets go. You fall apart. Very bad.”
“Yeah?” Wolfe said, wide-eyed. “Gee, I’d like to try it.”
Quade chuckled and glanced at the instrument panel. “That’s funny,” he said suddenly.
“Eh?” Wolfe followed the other’s gaze. The needle of a gauge was jumping. “Radiation, eh?”
“Radiation. Dunno what type. The Geiger counters are quiet, so it either doesn’t register or it’s too weak to be dangerous.” Quade fiddled with the instruments. “It’s coming from the south. We passed over a good-sized crater a while back, didn’t we?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t volcanic, either. Meteoric. Suppose there’s a radioactive meteor buried down under it?”
“Possibly. But it doesn’t look like ordinary radioactivity. Let’s see.” Quade tested. “No alpha, beta or gamma types. It’s too weak to bother us, but have one of the men check on it. How about going outside? Get your suit.”
Outside the ship Quade and Wolfe sweated in the protective armor, till the refrigo-thermal systems got hold. Then they felt better. These were light-weight outfits, designed for protection against temperature and poisonous atmospheres, not the bulky, reinforced spacesuits used in pressure-work. Saturn was almost at zenith. Quade looked up at the ringed planet, squinting against the wan, yet curiously intense light.
“Have to use special filters,” he remarked. Diaphragms in the spherical transparent helmets made it possible to converse. In this atmosphere it wasn’t necessary to use radio.
Spongy pumice crackled under their feet. A bellow of crashing ice thundered from the snowy ramparts to the west. It died and there was silence. No movement stirred in the valley. Quade peered from under his palm.
“There’s a lake,” he said. “The Zonals are amphibious. Let’s try it.”
If the surface of Titan seemed a bleak desert, the waters of the satellite provided a strange contrast. The lake was an oval nearly a mile long. Its surface seethed and bubbled with glowing light—no wonder Udell had wanted to experiment with dyes! Plant-life made islands on the surface. There was ceaseless activity in the water and, every few moments, a bulky glistening body would appear briefly and vanish again.
Quade hesitated on the edge. There had been a tribe of dangerous Zonals, he remembered. In fact, there were several, news from Macao had told him—nomadic groups wandering murderously around from sea to lake to river. But most of the Zonals were peaceful enough.
And in this lake—
“Tony!” Wolfe said sharply. “Look there!”
A head broke the water a few dozen feet away. A round, furry head like a seal’s, with staring eyes. The nose was a snout, the mouth broad and loose and lipless. But for all the animalism of the creature, the curve of its head above the eyes, its obvious cranial index, showed that it must possess a brain of some intelligence.
Quade and Wolfe remained motionless. The water broke into a seething rush of bubbles and the Zonal came shoreward. It waded out and stood knee-deep in water, staring blankly.
Its body was thoroughly anthropoid in outline, and curiously graceful in its sleekly furred, streamlined contours. The Zonal was a little more than five feet tall. Its hands and feet were huge and webbed.
The Zonal squirted jets of liquid from its eyes. Then it bent and submerged its head briefly. Wolfe had involuntarily stepped back. Quade spoke softly.
“Take it easy. Its eyeballs are hollow—it’s got an opaque diaphragm stretched over ’em, like a kettle-drum. No lens. There’s a hole in the center of the diaphragm to admit light, and the hollow’s kept filled with water. Acts as a lens. It’s got perfect vision, though. And—look at that thing on its back!”
The Zonal, having filled its hollow eyes with water, stood up again, but Quade and Wolfe had already got a glimpse of the creature’s flight-sac, a great sausage-shaped object that made it look humpbacked. The sac had a gristly projection at one end that suddenly moved and twisted. The Zonal, tiring of the two men’s company, disappeared.
Wolfe was left blinking at the place where it had been. Quade, who knew what to expect, looked up. The creature was shooting through the air like a streamlined spaceship, thirty feet high and going fast. Quade pointed it out to his companion.
“Uh!” Wolfe said. “It’s worse than a flea. How does it do that?”
“Same way a squid does,” Quade explained, watching the Zonal fall like a stone toward the ground. A dozen feet above a mound of gnarled lava the amphibian seemed to halt in the air, then sank down gently, to stand quietly surveying its surroundings.
“A squid?”
“Or a cuttlefish. Squirts water out of a sac—the old repulsion principle. Only the Zonals are a little more scientific about it. Those sacs on their back look soft, but they’re plenty tough.
“They’re filled with gas, continually renewed and manufactured by letting in air and water to mix with the chemicals of their bloodstream. When a Zonal wants to move fast he lets off a blast that has the same effect a rocket-jet has on a spaceship.”
“They don’t have gravity screens, though,” Wolfe said.
Quade smiled.
“Well, no. Here’s this fellow back again.”
The Zonal came flying, bulletlike. Just before he reached the two men a blast of hissing, suddenly-released gas braked it and the creature plumped down easily not a yard away.
“Wonder if Udell taught ’em English?” Quade murmured. He put out his hand gently. “Hello, there. We’re friends—understand? We’re friends.”
The Zonal touched Quade’s flexible-metal glove with a tentative, limber finger. Then, gently gripping it in his webbed hand, he eyed it carefully, lifted it to his mouth, and took a hearty bite.’
Quade yelped, jerked his hand back and nursed a bruised knuckle. The Zonal, seemingly puzzled, lifted its shoulders in something suspiciously like a shrug and rocketed back to the lava mound, where it squatted down to think things over. Meanwhile a dozen new heads had popped up from the lake near the shore.
“I thought you said they weren’t dangerous,” Wolfe observed.
“They’re not,” Quade gulped, moving his fingers experimentally. “Ouch! That was just—ah—curiosity.”
“Well, what now?”
“We’ll unload the equipment. Get the cameras set up. The Zonals can wait a bit. I want to think things over.”
Quade was hoping he didn’t sound as baffled as he felt. He had hoped that Udell might have educated the amphibians somewhat, but apparently the creatures were dumber than apes—a lot dumber. Somehow that didn’t jibe with the sizable brain-cases of the Zonals. Their cranial indices seemed to hint that there was intelligence in those sleek furry heads—and Udell had managed to use that savvy. But how?
How, indeed?