Alan E. Nourse Read online

  "And the Mars job is all finished? Everything done, and you can stay home for a while now?" Tuck's eyes were eager. "Just think, we could spend the whole summer here in New York, and maybe we could get in a fishing trip up North, if you could get away. Remember how we used to fish, Dad?"

  "Yes, I remember. I could never forget." The Colonel's face was suddenly grave, and he started down into the taxi terminal, effectively cutting off further

  conversation. Minutes later they were settling back in the taxi seat, waiting for the little jet car to pull out of the terminal into the broad Middle Level thoroughfare. Finally the Colonel said, "I know a quiet place for supper. You were on your way up to Catskill for the Exhibit, weren't you?"

  Tuck nodded enthusiastically. "That's right. The Forty-Seventh International Rocketry Exhibition. I've heard it's really great this year. They're showing all the latest model Interplanetaries, and I've also heard that they're exhibiting the blueprints of the big Venus converter plant." He looked up at his father. "They're also making formal announcements of the Polytechnic Institute scholarship winners for this year—"

  Colonel Benedict looked up sharply. "Scholarship winners?"

  Tuck nodded. "All tuition and expenses paid for five years of study, and a guaranteed position in mechanics, engineering, or research when you're through. You remember—I wrote you about the competition. I took the qualifying exams in March, and they've already notified the winners informally—"

  The Colonel's eyes were wide. "Do you mean—"

  Tuck handed him the letter, his face glowing. "This came the day before graduation. I got one, Dad. No hitches, nothing to go wrong. I can start with the incoming class in September."

  The Colonel took the letter, and read it very carefully, then reread it. When he finally looked up, his face held a curious expression. "That's great, son—I'm proud of you. I—I really am."

  "Well, you don't sound very proud!"

  "Believe me, I am, even if I don't sound it. I know how much you wanted it." He stared at the letter, and his face suddenly looked very tired.

  "Dad, what's wrong?"

  After a long moment the Colonel looked at Tuck, and grinned. "Let's wait until after supper," he said finally. "Then we can talk it over."

  o ft * ft *

  The dinner was top-rate, but Tuck couldn't enjoy a bite of it. His father valiantly managed to keep the conversation on light subjects, commenting on the problem of keeping the feet warm on Mars, talking about the new plan for extension of the Rolling Roads, inquiring about the summer's baseball line-up, waxing enthusiastic about the plans for an underwater freight conveyer to Europe—talking of a dozen things while Tuck sat silent, a thousand doubts plaguing him and spoiling the taste of the food. Finally he could stand it no longer. "You've got bad news, Dad. Let's have it."

  The Colonel's face was grave. "Oh, not bad news, exactly. Maybe you'd call it disappointing news, is all. I'm not home to stay, son. Not even for a week or so. And I can't take in the Exhibition with you. I'm leaving on assignment day after tomorrow, and I may not be back for a long, long time—"

  Tuck's eyes grew wide. "But, Dad! They promised you a rest when you got through on Mars! You know they did—"

  "I know, but trouble doesn't wait for people to rest. If trouble comes up, someone has to take care of it, and

  the Security Commission thinks I'm the one to handle this. For that matter, that's why the Mars job was finished so quickly. Major Cormack came out to relieve me. There's more important trouble elsewhere that needs attention."

  Tuck's face was stricken. "But where?"

  The Colonel hesitated for a moment. Then he said: "On Titan."

  Tuck let his spoon drop, staring at his father in disbelief. "On Titan! Why, that's clear out to Saturn! Dad, you can't let them send you clear out there—there's nothing out there but one little colony and a half a dozen mines—"

  "They're important mines, son."

  "How could six lousy mines be so important?"

  Colonel Benedict looked at his son for a moment without answering. Then he took a small instrument from his pocket, an old, beaten-up pocket flashlight, pencil-thin, with the bulb shining bravely across the table. "See this? Just a pocket flashlight, the sort that everyone has. As simple a mechanism as you could hope to find, a single bulb and a converter unit. And those lights up there in the ceiling, the bright lights that light the streets—all of them have converter units like this flashlight, drawing their power from the Solar Energy Converters out on Long Island. All the electrical power on the globe, all the heat, all the machinery, all the cars—they all depend on their converter units. Simple power, practically cost-free, power so abundant that the people on Earth can live in luxury. And it's all possible because someone found a way to convert the heat and light of the sun into power to make the world go around—"

  "But what does that have to do with your going to Titan?" Tuck protested.

  The Colonel pointed to the flashlight again. "In that converter unit there's a tiny piece of ruthenium—element number 44, just a little dab of gray metal of the same family as iron and osmium—but an important little dab of metal. It catalyzes the conversion reaction that feeds power to the light. Destroy the ruthenium, and there's no longer any light, no power, no heat. Our whole power supply, our whole civilized world depends on a steady supply of ruthenium." The Colonel looked up at Tuck. "That's what those mines on Titan supply—ruthenium. They take huge quantities of the ore from those mines, and drag out of it tiny amounts of ruthenium. If anything happened to those mines, our entire power supply would collapse. And there's trouble on Titan, trouble in the mines. There's been a great deal of bitterness out there, nasty talk about revolt—oh, nothing that can't be straightened out with a little diplomacy, but it can't wait. It must be done at once, before something really bad breaks loose. That's why the Commission relieved me on Mars."

  Tuck's eyes were wide. "But the people who run those mines, Dad—they're convicts, rebels. They can't expect you to go out to such a hole!"

  "But they do. I'm to leave in two days. I may not be back for years—" The Colonel fumbled for his pipe, his face very tired.

  Tuck watched him for a moment. Then he said,

  "There was something else—in the taxi, something about the letter."

  The Colonel nodded. Carefully, he opened Tuck's acceptance letter, flattened it out on the table. "Yes, I hadn't known about this. When they told me about this mission, I didn't mind the idea of going so very far away, at least not too much—" His eyes caught Tuck's, held them fast. Somewhere a waiter dropped a glass, and the silence clung like a thick, depressing fog. "You see, I was counting on you to go with me."

  Chapter 2 utter

  THERE WAS utter silence for the length of a long breath. The Colonel quietly lighted his pipe with trembling fingers, his eyes avoiding Tuck's. Tuck sat motionless, staring at the sheet of paper on the table top. When he finally spoke, his words caught in his throat. "I—I can't go, Dad. I just can't."

  "I know. I couldn't expect you to, not with a chance like this before you."

  "Oh, they might give me a leave of absence, but—" Tuck shook his head miserably. "If there were anything out there, I could see going—if there were anything at all. But there's nothing—"

  "That's right. Nothing but a cramped, dirty, sealed-in colony, and a few dozen mining tunnels."

  "And the colonists—I've heard about them, Dad. There isn't a soul on Titan worth paying a credit for. They're troublemakers and traitors, the scum of the Solar System. Why, every other year they have to send a patrol ship out there to put down some sort of trouble. They're not worth it, Dad, living like animals out there —why, they're hardly human any more. They can't be trusted, they're selfish and treacherous—"

  "But they keep the mines going," the Colonel interposed quietly, "and I have to see that nothing interferes with the mining. If they want to brawl among themselves, that's up to them. But the mines must keep going."
/>   "Just what kind of 'trouble' is there?"

  "Nothing that could be very dangerous.A few missing supplies to trace down, a few unpleasant rumors to confirm or disprove. I might not have to stay more than a few weeks, just long enough to get a good picture of conditions out there to report to the Commission."

  Tuck frowned in exasperation. "But aren't there troops out there who can make such a report?"

  The Colonel spread his hands. "Not any more. The colonists made it impossible for troops to stay. The last garrison was recalled five years ago."

  Tuck lapsed into silence. Somehow, he had known all along that it had been too much to hope for. So much happiness and excitement—something had to be wrong. And he knew that his dream of the old life with dad was only a dream. Slowly he looked up at his father's grave face. "I know you want me to go, Dad. But I can't. It would mean postponing the scholarship, maybe losing the chance. I just can't do it. Can you see that?"

  "Yes, I can see it." The Colonel knocked out his pipe, a smile crossing his tired face. "I wouldn't expect you to feel otherwise. And after all, I'll be home again-sometime."

  Quite suddenly a waitress appeared at the table with a telephone.

  "Call for you, Colonel. Will you take it here?"

  Colonel Benedict nodded gloomily, and took the receiver. "Benedict speaking—oh, yes, Mac—yes—tonight! No, that's impossible. My boy just arrived from L.A.—yes, yes, I know, they should have had the figures this morning—" The Colonel's face went white, and he slowly set his pipe down on the table. "They couldn't be right—but it's idiotic—" He waited a long moment as the voice on the line talked rapidly. Then he said, "All right, I'll be right over. Get the figures together, and get the man who analyzed them down there. See you."

  He slapped the receiver down with a bang. "Looks like I can't even have an evening off. Funny figures came in on the Titan supply study, and I'll have to be down at the Commission for a couple of hours." He rose and pulled on his jacket, his face heavy with worry. "Come on, son—I'll put you on a car."

  "But is it something serious?"

  "Don't know. But don't worry about it. You go up to the apartment and make yourself comfortable. Maybe we can have time to talk later. After all, we've got a lot to catch up on, and darned little time to do it!"

  Tuck managed a wan smile, and followed his father's tall figure out to the street. It seemed so unfair, he thought bitterly. There were plenty of Security Commission officers—why must they choose his father for a mission like this? A surface car approached as they reached the street, and Tuck climbed aboard, watching his father's taxi speed out into the Middle Level Thoroughfare downtown.

  Ordinarily Tuck would have been excited to be in the city again. He was always thrilled by the tall white towers and the flashing monorails; this was the great business center of the Western World, built to handle the seventeen million people who daily filled the helicopter lanes and Rolling Roads coming into the city. Down on the Lower Level the trucks and busses hummed, the turbines turned, the machinery of the city roared without rest, day and night. Here in the Middle Level were the main highways and monorail trains, and high up above Tuck could glimpse the green terraces and lighted boulevards of the Upper Level, the homes and hotels and apartments, the green parks and the starlighted roofs. Once New York City had been a city of dirt and gloom, of congested traffic and decaying slums. But Solar energy with its great power had made the slums and traffic a thing of the remote past. The city was handsome now, but as the surface car switched to monorail for the Upper Level, Tuck hardly saw the city around him. His mind was filled with anger and bitter disappointment—with a tinge of apprehension thrown in. Titan was a cruel world, so far from Earth, so remote that almost anything might happen. Suppose the trouble was greater than his father suspected? If something went wrong, the Colonel would have little to defend him. And Tuck knew that the laws of common decency would never apply in a sinkhole like the Titan colony.

  The car swung out between the rising buildings, and moved swiftly up the open avenue. After a few miles of swift travel, the car left the ground contact, and moved into a neat spiral curve, rising higher and higher, until the open air was overhead. Then the car settled out on the Upper Level rails, and far ahead Tuck could see their apartment building, one of the great towers rising up from the growing darkness below.

  The doorman recognized him at once, and welcomed him with open arms. The sight of him cheered Tuck a little. Yes, the apartment was just as he had left it, and his bags had been already sent up. And the Colonel had called, leaving a number where he could be reached if necessary. Tuck walked into the foyer he remembered so well, and soon was zooming up in the elevator to the place he had always known as home.

  But happy as he was to see the old familiar places, doubt continued to plague him. The tales he had heard about the mining colony on Titan were hard to forget. He could remember, as a little boy, seeing the crowd of miners and their families, loading aboard one of the great outbound rockets, a drab, surly, mean-looking crew, huddling around their cloth-bound bundles of possessions, their eyes downcast and bitter. His father had explained to him that these people were going out to Titan, the sixth moon of Saturn, and he had been so frightened by their fierce appearance that he had started to cry. He knew now that Titan had not been a penal colony for over a hundred and fifty years, but surely those people must have been desperate. All his life he could remember hearing about the trouble in the mines—murders, piracy, rebellion. And now his father was to go there, to be the only Earthman on the satellite, with the exception of his rocket-ship's crew-He passed down the bright corridor, stopped before the door to the apartment, and placed his hand palm-down on a shiny metal strip. The admittance panel had been activated to his handprint when he was barely tall enough to reach it; presently the door swung open, and he walked into the darkening apartment, forgetting his doubts in the excitement of being home again.

  It was just the same as he remembered it—the entrance, the living-room office, with his father's desk in the corner, complete with visiphone, talkwriter, and the unopened stack of the day's mail, already flooding in, although the Colonel had been home just a day. Tuck crossed the room, and regarded himself in the full-length mirror. He was taller by four inches than he had been the last time he had stood there, and his face was older, more mature, even bearing witness to a somewhat inexpert job of shaving—but the brown hair still stood up in the back, and there was still the wry twinkle in his steady eyes. Not too much change, after all, he thought. He hurried to the window then, threw open the curtains, and stared down at the picture that had always fascinated him, the glowing, beautiful, ever-changing vista of the city at night.

  It was fine to be home. Anytime he wanted, during holidays, or whenever he wanted a weekend of rest from his studies, he could come back here. But once the ship blasted for Titan, his father couldn't return again until the job was done, and he was ready for the long trip home—

  A cold thought passed through Tuck's mind, and he stopped, coat in hand, staring at the pleasant room. It was a horrible thought, but something deep in his mind was saying over and over: Suppose he never comes home again? Suppose he's in real danger, suppose he doesn't realize how dangerous the mission is— Tuck snorted angrily, and hung his coat in the entranceway. It was ridiculous to think such things. Probably the rumors had been exaggerated all out of proportion to the truth. Anyway, there was no sense thinking about it. He had made his decision, and he would stick by it. And above all, he would get his mind off such nasty speculations. In another day he would be on his way to the Exhibition in Catskill, and he'd have a wonderful reunion with his father in the meantime.

  But somehow the prospect of the Exhibition wasn't as exciting as it had been. He walked restlessly about the room, then picked up the pile of letters on his father's desk, and began leafing through them, idly. Possibly some mail had come for him. There was a bill or two, an advertising circular, a large packet from some General, a
letter-Tuck froze, staring at the letter, his heart pounding in his throat. It was an ordinary envelope, small and compact, with the address neatly typed near the center: "Colonel Robert Benedict, 37 West 430th Street,

  Apartment 944B, Upper New York City, New York/' An innocent-looking envelope, just like any one of a dozen his father might receive-But on the return address was Tuck's own name-Tuck sank down in the chair, staring at the envelope. He hadn't written any letter. He hadn't even known that his father would be home. And yet the return read, "Tucker Benedict, Polytechnic Academy School," and the postmark said Palomar, California—

  His heart was thumping wildly, and he held the envelope up to the light, tried to make out its contents, but he could see nothing but a dark, opaque rectangle. On impulse he started to pull the plastic opener-tab; then something screamed a warning in his mind. With trembling fingers he held the letter up, staring closely at the opener-tab, just a little piece of plastic, so simple to pull to open the end of the envelope-Like a cat, Tuck was across the room, fumbling for a razor in his father's desk. In a few seconds he was carefully slitting the envelope down the end opposite the opener, desperately careful not to touch the contents. The end of the envelope fell open, and he stared in horror at the dull green, slightly luminous plaque inside—

  With a cry he carried the envelope at arm's length into the washroom, poured the basin full of water, and dumped the envelope, contents and all, into the water. The green stuff in the envelope crumbled, lost its shape, and became a pasty green-black, evil-looking glob. Tuck ran the water out, and standing as far away as possible, touched a match to the glob.

  It flared a little as it burned, making an acrid white smoke, hissing evilly from the dampness. But it burned slowly, and finally crumbled into a soggy ash in the washbowl. Tuck stared at it, his heart pounding in his ears. He had seen a Murexide bomb only once before, in a demonstration at school, but he knew that there was enough high explosive in that innocent-looking envelope to blow his father's head off when he pulled the opener-tab—