CHAPTER IV
Crackup
Quade had arranged the compact two-man cruiser as a miniature replica of the giant camera ship and carrying identical equipment. It was a complete traveling laboratory, with built-in cameras and searchlights that could stab out from every angle through the transparent nose. During space flights it remained in its cradle within the larger vessel, but now it rested on the lava plain near by, ready for a take-off.
Three days had passed and Quade was still stumped. He couldn’t penetrate the wall of stupidity that shielded the Zonals from all advances. Once or twice he thought he was making some headway with the first Zonal they had encountered—whom Wolfe had irreverently dubbed Speedy. But Speedy, though extremely curious, shot off like a rocket whenever Quade felt he was getting somewhere.
In the great camera-ship Quade was donning his protective armor. He had decided to make a survey of the surrounding terrain in the little cruiser, on the chance that Udell’s trained Zonals might have wandered away. The icy rampart was no barrier to them, for they rocketed over it like birds.
Wolfe, leaning against a table stacked with experimental apparatus, looked tired.
“Want me to go along, Tony?” he asked.
“You’d better stay here and keep things moving,” Quade said.
“What things?”
“Yeah, I know. Everything’s ready for shooting. We could roll any time—except for the Zonals. I’ve got to find some way—”
Quade, struggling into his suit, lurched into a cabinet and deftly caught a small bottle as it fell.
“Neo-curare. Don’t want to smash that. I may use it on myself if I have to face Von Zorn without a picture.”
“Tony,” Wolfe said hastily. “I think I see Kathleen Gregg.”
“What!”
Quade whirled awkwardly, peering through the ship’s nose. A gyroplane had landed and a slim figure in gleaming space-armor was clambering out. It was, indeed, Kathleen.
“Blast!” Quade said, lurching toward a port. Halfway out he remembered the neo-curare and hastily stuck it in one of the self-sealing pockets in his suit. Pumice ground under his heels. The gyroplane, he saw, was already surging up, angling toward the ice barrier. Kathleen was trotting along briskly, but there was a certain hesitancy in the look she gave Quade.
He halted in front of the girl. She smiled.
“Why, hello, Tony.”
“Just what are you doing here?” Quade asked. “Or should I guess?”
“It’s sweet of you to say so,” Kathleen observed, tilting her nose Saturnward. “As a matter of fact, I got rather tired hanging around—”
“So you thought you’d drop in and say hello,” Quade finished for her. “Now you can turn around and say goodbye and go home.”
“How?”
Quade peered after the departed gyroplane.
“How’d you get here?”
“Took a tramp ship to New Macao and hired a pilot to fly me the rest of the way.”
“Okay,” Quade said. “See that two-man camera ship? You’re going to march into it and I’m going to fly you back to New Macao and put you on a Sunward ship. Catch?”
“Won’t,” Kathleen said, starting to run. Quade deftly caught her, lifted her kicking figure, and carried her to the cruiser. He dumped her in it and turned to Wolfe, who had followed.
“Be back as soon as I can. Keep things moving.”
“Right. Hello, Kathleen,” Wolfe said pleasantly. “Goodbye now.”
He shut the port and departed. Quade silently turned to the controls and lifted the ship. Kathleen, standing beside him, was not silent. She finished by saying that her engagement to Quade was off, and that he was a rat.
“Sure I am,” Quade said. “But this is my job and I think it’s a little dangerous. I’m sure I can handle it. Just the same, I don’t want you around. For one thing you distract me and for another I’m still wondering about that virus disease that killed Udell.”
Kathleen sniffed.
“Ha. Hey! We’re being followed.”
Quade threw a magnifying plane on the scanner. A sleek projectile was rocketing along after the camera cruiser.
“Oh, that’s Speedy,” Quade said. “One of the Zonals. He won’t follow us long.”
But this proved inaccurate. Speedy stayed on the trail for twenty miles before he was lost in the distance. Then nothing was visible but the frigid, Cyclopean peaks of the Devil’s Range, icy and alien in the pale light of Saturn.
Things began to happen with alarming suddenness.
There are plenty of safety devices on spacecraft, but these depend on the assurance that you have a skilful and a conscious operator. Quade was skilful enough, but unfortunately he was knocked cold when the vessel sideslipped in a sudden blast of air, powerful as a cyclone, that screamed up from the Devil’s Range. A geyser-heated valley below made a thermal of racing air that created a maelstrom where the icy atmosphere of Titan met it.
The camera cruiser turned sidewise and Quade went spinning into the controls. His head banged against his helmet, which made him lose all interest in the fact that the ship was plunging down.
Kathleen couldn’t do much about it, though she tried hard enough. She was wedged under a tangle of apparatus, which imprisoned her but saved her from serious injury when the ship struck, with a splash that sent water leaping high.
Creamy, luminous liquid crept over the ship’s nose. An oddly-shaped fish came to stare in pop-eyed amazement. Then it swam hastily away.
The ship grounded. Kathleen fought her way free and scrambled up the tilted floor to where Quade lay. There was blood oozing from his head, and Kathleen quickly removed the helmet and used the first-aid kit. But Quade remained stubbornly unconscious.
Two courses were left. Kathleen could fly the ship back to the camp or she could radio for help. She tried both, but without success. The controls were smashed, the gravity plates warped and broken.
The cruiser’s day of usefulness was over. The radio was hash. A telephoto camera was strewn in sections about the room and some of the carboys of concentrate-dye had torn free from their moorings and were broken. The floor was awash with yellow and pink fluid.
Kathleen peered up through the ship’s nose. The surface of the lake beneath which they lay wasn’t far above, she judged. If she could swim up—that would be easy in the airtight suit. But what about Tony?
He wouldn’t drown in ten seconds. She inflated both of the suits with oxygen, dragged Quade into the portal lock and shut the valve behind her with a futile hope that, if the atmosphere stayed in the ship, it might rise of its own accord, or at least that it would be easier to salvage the equipment. She opened the outer door and went head over heels into the rush of water. Somehow she kept hold of Quade’s arm.
Luckily, the lock was angled so that they slid out of their own accord, buoyed up by the oxygen. Quade, still unconscious, blew bubbles. With panic beginning to dry her throat, Kathleen tightened her grip on his suit and they shot up like rockets into clear, cool Saturnlight.
Quade was torn away from the girl’s clutch. She blinked and stared around. He was floating only a few yards away, his face submerged. Lying flat on the surface, Kathleen paddled to him, dragged his head up in the crook of her arm and awkwardly made for the shore.
Several sleek objects appeared above the surface and watched her speculatively. But they were somewhat different from the Zonals Quade had already encountered. Their heads were flattened, their jaws heavier. Altogether they lacked the suggestion of good nature and humanity that the other Zonals had possessed. But they did not attack, for which Kathleen was duly grateful. She finally reached the beach and dragged Quade ashore.
He had swallowed little water, being unconscious, and with a small gasp Kathleen sat down beside him, weak with relief and reaction. She looked around.
They were in a crater perhaps two miles in diameter, surrounded by overhanging peaks and glaciers that seemed to be getting ready to rush down in catastrophic destruction. This lake, a small one, was in the very center. Plumes of steam flared up here and there, indicating geysers.
Underfoot was the eternal lava, rising into a jungle labyrinth of twisted malformations. In the distance Kathleen made out a great black dome, faintly glistening. But she could not guess its nature.
Meanwhile the Zonals were swimming closer, in a semicircle. They emerged from the water, dripping, to reveal another way in which they differed from Quade’s Zonals. The sacs on their backs were shrunken and atrophied.
Kathleen found it difficult to believe that the creatures were harmless. She was eying the long, curved claws on the webbed hands, and the tusklike, capable teeth bared by retracted lips. If she had been alone she would not have waited to face the amphibians. As it was, Quade lay unconscious beside her. Neither of the two was armed.
The Zonals slipped closer. There was, Kathleen thought, unmistakable menace in their attitude. Growls rumbled from their throats. These weren’t Udell’s tame Zonals, that was certain.
Hastily Kathleen looked about for a weapon, but all she could find was a good-sized lava chunk. Hefting this, she stood up, waiting.
The Zonals, emerging from the water, closed in. Their growling was louder now. One amphibian was in the forefront; Kathleen could see him sinking lower as his furry legs bent and he tensed for a spring.
She hurled the rock.
The amphibian dodged easily. He sidled forward, and behind him came the others.
A man’s voice shouted. There was the vicious crack of a whip. Again the harsh voice roared a command. The Zonals hesitated—and Kathleen looked back hastily to see a giant figure, clothed in rags, coming forward. Gray-shot red hair bristled wildly. His face was turned toward the Zonals, but the heavy broad shoulders spoke of enormous strength.
The whip cracked. The man bellowed an order.
Snarling, the Zonals drew back. Suddenly they broke and fled to the lake. The man stood waiting till they had submerged and then turned to Kathleen. He stood quietly facing her, the whip hanging lax.
And something in his face made the girl shiver a little. The features were strong enough, even harshly handsome. But the glacial black eyes were—disturbing. There was no trace of expression in them. They stared like glazed jet marbles, cool and remote.
“My name’s Milo Sherman,” the man said. He glanced at the unconscious Quade.
As Kathleen opened her mouth, Sherman halted her with an upraised palm.
“Better talk as we go. The Zonals are dangerous.” He laughed unpleasantly. “They’re afraid of me, but I take no chances. Come on.” He bent, hoisted Quade to his shoulders and started toward the glistening dome Kathleen had already glimpsed. “Now talk,” he commanded.
Kathleen talked.
“I see,” Sherman said as they rounded a shoulder of lava. “You’re unlucky. However, you’ll be safe for a while. There’s my castle, see?”
Fifty feet away the building loomed, a dome-shaped structure as high as a six-story building. It seemed to be built of some gleaming black substance, broken at intervals by round gaps. Sherman marched forward, straight toward a blank wall.
No—not entirely blank—there was an inch-wide hole in it. And the hole began to broaden as they approached, opening till it was a gaping portal.
They stepped across the threshold. Behind them the hole shrank again, like a sphincter. They were in a large room, bare except for a sloping ramp that led up to a gap in the ceiling. A row of luminous spots glowed in the walls.
Sherman went up the ramp. Kathleen was behind him, a little troubled now, conscious of some unknown danger. Above, the room was larger, lighted by similar lightspots in the walls. It was filled with a clutter of junk—chairs, tables—some of them twisted and broken—most of them rusty.
“Salvage,” Sherman said. He went to a corner, dropped Quade into a shallow depression in the floor and tossed his whip aside. Quade’s body sank down a few inches, as though into an air mattress.
“Well, take off your helmet,” Sherman said coolly. “Make yourself at home. You’ll be here for life—since there’s no way of getting out of this valley!”