Alan E. Nourse (10 page)

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
Secref

ffi
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."

Tuck
gripped the bar tighter. "Do they roll very often?"

David
laughed. "Don't get excited. It doesn't happen often. But if you get
caught after dark, the emergency lights make the crevices look just like more
rock, and then anything can happen. I spent a week in the bottom of a crevice
once, until they came and found me. Why, there was one time—" he jerked
the wheel hard— "when I ran one of these things right up on top of a great
big
clordelkus
before he decided that now was the
time to go somewhere else—"

Tuck
grinned, remembering his first scare at seeing one of those.
The
'track was following a faint path in the snow left by the 'track before them,
and far ahead and to the right Tuck could see the gorge, or what remained of
it, where the explosion had occurred.
The sight drew his mind back to
the things that had happened since the Earth ship had landed —back to the
impending crisis at the colony. He watched the leader's son, thoughtfully, as
the lad fought the steering bar of the half-track. Odd that he should be
sitting here, perfectly confident in the friendship he felt growing between
them—a friendship that was ridiculous by all the standards Tuck had ever
known. He wondered if David had even thought of the strangeness of their
friendship under these circumstances.
Probably not.
And yet David was ready to take him into his confidence, with little more than
his word for security. Quite suddenly, Tuck felt a pang of shame for his
suspiciousness, for his father's stubbornness—above all, for his own reluctance
to admit to himself that Earth Security's position might, conceivably, be
wrong. This was so futile, so needless—

And
yet there was John
Cortell
. The thought sent a chill
down Tuck's spine. "It would be nice if they had caught
Cortell
by the time we get back," he said wistfully.
"That would solve a lot of problems."

David
snorted. "Well, they won't, so don't figure on it. They aren't going to
get near to catching
Cortell
—and dad knows it."

"How
can you be so sure? It seems to me there's just so much of the colony to
search."

David
nodded. "That's right. But it's deceptive. We're right over a part of the
colony now, even though we're three miles away from the dome."

Tuck
glanced down at the black rock path involuntarily.
"Tunnel?"

David
nodded. "They go out in all directions—a regular maze. Down about forty
feet
deep,
and even then we have trouble with cave-ins
and quakes and landslides." He hung onto the bar precariously with one
hand, pointing to a long outcropping of rock to the right. "See that?
That's a rich vein—goes out almost twenty miles. They mine it and run the ore
back to the refinery on railroad tracks laid in there. Got a whole little
supply unit in the mining area-whoops!" The car lurched and dropped about
six feet, jarring their very bones. David spun the steering bar and went right
on talking as Tuck picked himself up from the dashboard. "The tunnels are
all interconnecting, everywhere. Get somebody in there who doesn't know their
plan, and he could starve to death trying to get out. But
Cortell
—"

"I suppose he knows every tunnel,"
Tuck remarked glumly.

"Like the back of his hand. He could
hide
there
till doomsday, and
nobody'd
ever find him. And he's got plenty of friends to help him, too. If a search
party comes close to him,
Cortell
gets the word, and
moves somewhere else. Oh, he's a clever one—"

Tuck
blinked. "Then it seems to me that all this hunting is silly."

David grinned. "Good boy.
Comes the dawn."
He jerked the wheel sharply, avoiding
a huge black outcropping, and plunged the half-track down into a shallow gully
with high, overhanging crags on both sides.

"But
why is your father pretending—" "Not pretending. He's hunting. But he
needs time —he needs time worse than anything. And he needs to keep the men
that are on his side good and busy until he can get your father to see things
the colony's way." He looked soberly at Tuck. "Want to know the facts
of life?"

"Tell me the facts of life."

"Okay,
Bub
. Fact number one: your father is going to have to
give in and go along with dad. If he doesn't, the fat's in the fire.
Cortell
will have enough time to put his plans into
action—"

"But what's holding him up now?"

"Aha! He can't do what he wants to do
now, and dad knows it. That's fact number two—but I'm coming to that. Don't
interrupt. Fact number three: if dad can keep his own boys with him long enough
to make a settlement with your father, he can cut the floor right out from
under
Cortell
. And that's where my little scheme
comes in—"

Tuck scowled, gripping the bar tightly as the
'track climbed back out of a gully, slowly, painfully, like a roller coaster
climbing up for its first big plunge. '"But I still don't see what
Cortell
is planning to do—"

David
slowed the 'track down suddenly, and braked it, snapping the motor off. He
stretched his arms for a moment, then turned to
Tuck
.
"Think about it a minute," he said.
"The whole
picture.
They teach you logic and data evaluation in your Earth schools.
Look at the facts. An angry crowd of people out here, being walked all over for
years and years. I don't care whether you believe that or not—I
know
it's true. They've been kicked for years. No hope of changes-things
getting worse and worse for them as the ruthenium gets more and more important
for Earth. No
end in sight—are
you with me?"

Tuck nodded.
"So far."

"Good. Then the smuggled supplies coming
out here—oh, they've been coming out here, all right. And they've been
smuggled, too. Then your father gets appointed to come out here. Why? To trace
down smuggled supplies. And what happens? They try to clip him—"

"Who
tries to clip him?"

David held up his hand. "Just hold on a
minute.
Somebody—
it doesn't matter who. But the attempt
backfires, you and your father come out here anyway —
tracing
down the supplies. And then
Cortell
moves and
threatens
something—and
my father won't tell your
father what." David looked at Tuck narrowly. "You're the one that's
been to school. Now I ask you —what does all that add up to?"

Tuck
chewed his lip. "
Cortell
is desperate that the
smuggled supplies not be found," he said suddenly. He looked at David.
"And so is your father"

"Huzzah," said
David.

"Why—this begins to make sense!"
Tuck's excitement rose. "You even made a slip about it, that first
morning in the colony—"

David nodded. "The Big
Secret," he said.

"Something
both
Cortell
and your father know about, and your
father doesn't dare tell dad about!"

David
nodded glumly. "It's a plan," he said, his voice almost a whisper.
"There's been a plan for a long, long time, here in the colony. My father
would break my neck if he ever knew I'd told you this. It's been so well
guarded that there aren't more than six or seven in the colony now who know
exactly
what
the plan is, or how it's
supposed to work—"

"But what is it?"

David shook his head. "I don't know. I
mean, I don't know
specifically—"
He saw Tuck's face, and
shook his head again. "No, no—I'm not holding out on you. I honestly
don't
know. Hardly anybody knows, although everybody has his pet theory. It
got started over a hundred years ago, and everyone in the colony has helped
with it, one way or another—but only a few chosen ones have known exactly what
it is." "But when did it start?"

David
spread his hands.
"Years ago.
Back in the very
earliest days, when our leaders began to see what Earth Security was trying to
do. Oh, they were bitter in those days—there were
strikes,
and fighting and protest—it was really gay. But whenever there was an outbreak,
Security just cut off supplies and let the colony starve for a while. It worked
fine—but even a hundred years ago the colony could see what was coming.
Titan was going to end up a slave colony, with no rights of any
kind, and no place to go in the whole Solar System.
It was like the old
horror story I read once about the guy being walled up in a cellar brick by
brick. So the leaders held a council.
Sometime
things
would come to a breaking point. They had to make plans for that time, while
they could, or the Colony would never be free again. So they came up with the
Big Secret."

Tuck
frowned. "I don't see how it could work. How could everyone help if nobody
knew what it was?
Why all the secrecy?"

"Why?
With Security watching us like bugs under a glass? It
had
to be secret. It was a big plan, a plan that would take years to
prepare. And it was to be a last-ditch retreat for the colonists—maybe a huge,
barricaded, carefully hidden underground colony, where the colonists could go
and blockade themselves in, and then blow the mines to smithereens, and all

Earth's precious ruthenium with it.
Oh, it's possible. After all, we're used to
living in cramped quarters, we're used to little food,
we
can even take a lower oxygen concentration for a longer time than you can. They
started it, back in the early days, cutting down their rations, saving little
bits of food under deepfreeze; they got supporters back on Earth, got them
wormed into Security, and started a grand smuggling program to bring out
supplies. And once here, the goods were secretly stored, and then passed on to
the five or six men who were guarding the Secret. And there were clothes, made
out of scraps—clothes to keep 500 people warm, and tools and oxygen—for over a
hundred years every oxygen tank that has been used here has been closed down
for empty when it was only three-quarters gone.
And all this
to prepare the Big Secret for action when the time came."
David
shook his head. "I don't know
what
it
is, or
where
it is—it may be carved out
of rock a hundred miles straight down in the ground—or somewhere on the other
side of the planet."