Alan E. Nourse (11 page)

Tuck
stared numbly at the leader's son. "It would be suicide," he whispered.
"They'd—they'd be sealing themselves up forever. They could
never
come out! And they'd have every patrol soldier in the Solar System here
on Titan, hunting them down—"

David
shrugged. "Back in Earth legend, a guy named Horatio guarded a bridge
against a whole army. They could do the same—and they could hold out for years,
even if their location were found."

"And
after years—then what?"

David nodded unhappily. "That's the big
hitch. They could last for twenty, thirty, fifty years—but they'd be dead men,
in the long run. That's what dad believes. He thinks the Big Secret, whatever
it is, is sure suicide for the colony. That's why he fought against it, tried
to slow down its completion as much as he could, for fear the colony would
reach the breaking point while there was still a chance of peaceful change and
negotiation. But
Cortell
has been leading his group
to believe that the breaking point has passed, that the time has come, that
they should start the Big Secret into action right now, whatever it is. Oh, dad
is no fool, he
knows
what the Big Secret is—but
Cortell
has a lot of the colonists believing that dad is a
weakling and a traitor, that it's too late ever to establish peace with
Earth—"

"But your father is
still strong in the colony—"

"He
was—until now. He's losing strength fast. A lot of people believed that he
would
be able to negotiate with the Colonel. But the important thing is that
the Big Secret just isn't ready to put into operation yet. It's nearly ready,
but not quite."

Tuck nodded. "Five hundred people are a
lot to take care of—for a long period of time."

"And how!
And dad is trying to make the people see
that they're choosing suicide if they follow
Cortell
."
The leader's son started the motor again. "Dad doesn't dare spill the
whole story to the Colonel, because he thinks the Colonel would clamp down and
report it to Security—which he probably would,
considering
the state he's in. Dad's hogtied. Earthmen and Titan colonists have hated each
other for so long that they can't imagine trusting each other. They're from
different ends of the Universe."

The
half-track started again with a lurch, and reached the top of the gully,
started lumbering down the side. Both boys peered eagerly ahead; then suddenly
Tuck let out a shout. "Over to the right—see it?"

David
squinted against the sun. "I think—yes! That's it!" The half-track
bounced forward with renewed speed as they approached the glinting metal that
had been the
Snooper.
At first all they could see
was the tail, sticking out from behind an outcropping of rock; then the 'track
moved around the rock, and they saw the wreck-It had skimmed on its belly,
ripping off one of its sled tracks, and the sharp rocks had ripped long, curling
strips of the
underfuselage
away from the braces. The
nose had burrowed a ten-foot-long ditch, and one of the little stabilizer wings
had been ripped almost completely off. But worst of all, the exhaust tube
showed a long, crooked split that ran right back its length toward the jet
engines-Tuck felt his heart sink. They would need tools, welding—they'd
practically need a machine shop to put the little scooter back into the air. He
turned to David, all his excited hopes of exploration on the rugged planet
surface dashed into the black rocks just like the
Snooper
itself.
"Looks like
we're out of luck."

David
eyed the wreckage critically. "Hmmm—" he said. "Have to weld the
exhaust tube—may even have wrecked the combustion chamber—I don't know. But the
thing was in a lot worse shape when I first put it together." He looked at
Tuck. "Are you game to try?"

"Well, we can't do it any
harm—"

"Then
come on!" David checked the helmet to his pressure suit, and started to
open the half-track top. "Between the two of us, we should be able to get
the thing back into shape—maybe it won't take as much work as it looks."
He was out of the half-track, moving toward the back of it when Tuck got his
suit heater controls readjusted and clambered out, wondering just what they
were going to work
with.
And then he saw the whole
rear casing of the half-track peel away to reveal a huge tool case, complete
with three or four large gas bottles, welding torches, metal siding, and a
dozen different types of wiring on neat spools along the top.

It
would be work, but there was lots of daylight
left,
and
there were emergency lights on the 'track if they couldn't finish by dark. In a
few moments both boys were struggling with the gas bottles, dragging them over
toward the
Snooper,
and David was clambering up into the cockpit
gleefully, disappearing into the broken fuselage.

But
even as he moved toward the little ship, Tuck was mulling over David's words.
A secret, a wild, hopeless plan that would destroy Earth's power
source, utterly and irreparably.
A single word, a flick of the wrist,
and everything could be lost. And neither Colonel Benedict nor Anson
Torm
could cross the barrier of hatred and distrust that
had built up between their peoples over the years. Tuck's heart sank gloomily.
It was too much to expect. Nobody could cast aside a lifetime of teaching, and
trust someone he had been drilled and drilled so carefully to distrust and
hate. Not even a fine and wise man like his father could cross a barrier like
that.
Nobody
could do it-He stopped cold in his tracks,
and stared at the little ship below him, stared at the suited and
hel
-meted figure now climbing out of the cockpit and waving
at him.
Nobody?

He
was Tuck Benedict, an Earthman—and that was David
Torm
,
a Titan miner's son and a colonist, a rebel, a traitor, a sneak, a murderer, by
everything Tuck had ever been taught—and they were working together for
something they both wanted badly—

And
they were friends, and they trusted each other—

Suddenly
a great weight lifted from Tuck's chest.
Nobody?
He hoisted up the gas bottle and started for the ship as fast as he
could go, his heart tearing in his chest, his pulse pounding.
They
were somebody, and somehow, insidiously, without even giving it a
thought, they had succeeded in doing the unheard of, the very thing that had
never been achieved since the earliest days of the Titan colony. He reached the
ship, gasping for breath just as David got to the ground, took the bottle and
set it alongside the others. "Not bad up there," he said.
"There's a lot of outside tearing, but if we can seal up the cockpit and
the engines, it might just work." David grinned at Tuck.
"How about it?
Ready to start?"

Tuck
grinned back, feeling happier than he had ever felt in his life. "Ready?
Buddy,
we re
going to make this wreck run like it
never ran before. And when we have it running, you and I have a job to
do!"

"You mean—"

"I
mean
we're going to teach our respective fathers the facts of life, or know the
reason why!"

_{ChUptCt
70
The
Wreck
of
the
Snooper}

or
the
next
ten
minutes the boys inspected the wreckage at close hand. It looked almost
hopeless to
Tuck
, at first, but much of the more
obvious damage involved ripped siding, which could be easily replaced. The
cockpit was almost intact, except for the long crack in the plastic hood, and
the shattered control board. Tuck worked away at the paneling, and finally
broke it loose, revealing the masses of wires leading to the pressure, fuel,
speed and altitude controls. With a few minutes' work he had straightened or
repaired the broken wires, and the panel was replaced, ready for seal-welding.

But
the engines were another story. The rear end of the jet was smashed almost
closed; a long crack ran clear back to the engine, and a whole section of
wiring had been ripped from its moorings. The two started to work, with crowbar
and hammer, slowly breaking and wrenching the little ship from its bed of rock,
talking very little as they worked. From time to time Tuck stopped to stare at
the engine and the wiring that were exposed. They didn't look at all right, for
some reason, and the more he looked the more

puzzled
he became. And then it dawned on him— the
whole area where the fuel tanks belonged was filled with large gas bottles,
painted green, without the familiar insulating pad around them. Tuck looked up
at David, hardly believing his eyes. "Say, what kind of engine have you
got in this thing?"

David stopped prying at the crowbar long
enough to grin.
"Ordinary jet combustion chamber.
Torm
modification."

Tuck
looked suspicious. "But those are
oxygen
bottles
in there—"

"That's right. That's
the
Torm
modification."

"But what do you use
for fuel?"

"Oxygen."
David grinned at his friend's
consternation,
then burst out laughing. "It's really
very simple. When the jet is flying, it doesn't take
air
into the intakes, the way you're used to. It couldn't—there isn't any
air. It takes
methane
into the air-scoop. So why
use a lot of expensive fuel and oxidizer, when all the fuel you could possibly
use is free for the asking, all around you?"

"You mean you use atmospheric methane
for your fuel?"

"Of course.
The pumps just feed in a tiny stream of
liquid oxygen from those tanks there into the center of the intake of methane.
Makes a funny-looking exhaust —just a pencil-thin flame—but it works, delivers
plenty of thrust. And all I have to carry is priming fuel and oxygen—"

Tuck examined the setup excitedly. "You
must have been all over the planet with this!"

"It's been handy. Some other guys here
in the colony worked with me on it. We taught ourselves mapping and topography
from some books my dad has. We've had a lot of fun, just snooping around with
it, and we've made our own maps of the topography within a couple hundred
square miles of the colony. Better than Security Patrol maps, too." David
stood up from the crowbar and started rolling a large green oxygen bottle over
toward the damaged jet. "Let me show you another little trick with
oxygen," he said.

He
had been working for a quarter of an hour, driving a wedge into the opening,
gradually forcing the squashed tube open again, revealing a long
rip
in the heavy metal of the exhaust tube. Now he fished
in the small bag of little tools and came out with a bit of metal that looked
like a small brass hose nozzle, which he carefully fitted to a long aluminum
mesh tube that stretched from the neck of the oxygen bottle.

"What are you going to
do?"

"Have to weld, for a
while."

"Weld!
What do you use for a generator?"

"Oh,
I don't mean arc-weld. That isn't necessary, and we've got a better method
here." He reached for the control gauge at the top of the green bottle,
and brought a small automatic flint up near the nozzle; then he carefully
opened the gauge until there was the slightest hiss from the nozzle, and struck
a spark. To
Tuck's
amazement a bright white flame
sprang from the nozzle of the hose, giving off a brilliant shower of white
snow. The snow scattered and drifted to the ground, for
all
the
world like the snow from a carbon-dioxide fire extinguisher. Tuck
stood frozen for a moment,
then
jumped back, his heart
pounding. "Are you crazy? That's
oxygen
in
that tank!" "I know."

"But
it's
burning—
won't it explode in this atmosphere?"

"Not
as long as I keep the gas flowing from the tank." David began pulling the
flaming nozzle down toward the metal of the jet, and started heating the edges
of the open tear. "There won't be an explosion as long as there's plenty
of room for the burning to take place, and the flame can consume the oxygen as
fast as it comes out of the tank.
Makes a nice hot flame,
too."
The lips of the rent were beginning to turn pinkish already.
"There's no danger at all of welding with oxygen out here—the real danger
of explosion is in a confined space, like a mining tunnel. There, if the tunnel
springs a leak somewhere, a lot of methane can squeeze in before anyone
realizes it, and any little spark can send up the whole works. It's a real
hazard in the tunnels. We even have special detecting equipment to set off an
alarm as soon as a leak breaks loose."

"What
can they do in the tunnel once the methane gets in?"

David
grinned. "Run in circles, scream and shout. Seal off the leak as fast as
they can, close off the tunnel from the rest of the colony, and pump for dear
life. So far they've been lucky."

He bent over, applying the torch to the hot
metal of the jet, as though unwilling to think about such horrible
possibilities. The metal was white-hot now; David handed the torch to Tuck, had
him hold it nearby, bathing the metal in the stream of white flame, while David
began hammering, sending up a shower of sparks. The snow that streamed from the
torch formed a little pile on the ground; some lit on the hot metal, hissed,
and burst into clouds of steam that promptly became snow again as soon as it
got away from the heat of the metal. David brought a long strip of gray-looking
metal from the supply bag, applied it to the lips of the torn metal, and the
boys watched it heat and soften, and then flow as David skillfully applied it
down the tear, hammering steadily to smooth out the edge as the rent was
filled. In a short while the jet began to take a round, even appearance again,
until David finally straightened up, glancing at the sun. "Got another
couple of hours—if we can fix that wiring and siding, and pound the landing
skid back into place, we might give it a test before dark—"

They
worked even faster. Tuck studied the wiring in the engine while David worked on
the siding metal. The wires were twisted almost beyond recognition, but Tuck
was familiar with wiring of such engines from years of jet scooter building and
racing; he went back to the half-track and selected three spools of wire,
ripping down the insulation to examine the fine strands of copper and silver.
Then he came back, and slowly began rewiring the torn and shredded masses of
wires, squatting down,
his
hands clumsy in the unaccustomed
padded fingers of the suit. He soon found there was no way to grip the wires
with his fingers satisfactorily. After some experimentation with pliers, wire
and welding rod, he worked out a fair approximation of the remote-control
pincers he had seen used in
radioactives
lab to
manipulate the wires and the contacts. He was thoroughly engrossed in his work,
so engrossed that he became oblivious of himself, or the ship, or anything but
the delicate and demanding task at hand—

And
then, a bolt of fear went through him as he heard a little musical
ping
in his earphones. His hands froze and he sat staring, listening, almost
fascinated—
Ping—ping—ping—ping—ping—ping
—ping —ping— ping-
pingpingpingpingping
—

It
was a gentle sound, and a terrifying sound, a sound that meant that horrible
death was near, hovering over his shoulder—the sound every spaceman had had
conditioned into his very soul—the sound that said better than any words:
get inside, fast, your circulation is down,
your feet are getting cold, too cold-Tuck
jumped up with a cry, tried to run for the
halftrack. He could feel the numb coldness around his feet and legs now, and
he stumbled and fell heavily. The warmth of the pressure suit was
deceptive,
it was all too easy to forget that he was working
in an atmosphere so cold that his own expired air would freeze into a choking
blob in his throat if he were unprotected. He struggled to his feet, shouting
to David as he ran, and clambered stiffly into the half-track; then he leaned
out to motion David frantically. David stared at him for a moment; then he too
came running. Together they frantically slammed down the plastic top, sealed
it tight. David snapped on the engine controls and the pumps began to work
against the deadly cold, letting the engine heat in once more around their
feet. Tuck sat panting, his heart racing, his feet tingling and burning with a
strange kind of pain. And then the boys looked at each other, and burst out
laughing, more in relief than anything else. "We should have kept an eye
on the time," David panted.
"Shouldn't have been
out there more than two hours at a stretch without warming up.
And I
forgot you aren't as used to the cold as I am—"

Tuck
clutched his side, still gasping for breath. "Scared me to death," he
choked. "They've made movies of the helpless spaceman, marooned on an
Asteroid with his engines dead, and that nasty little bell was the sound
track."

"There are lots of spacemen who can
thank that little bell for their lives. It doesn't give them much time, but it
does give them
some."

Tuck shook his head. "You must have a
terrible time in the colony, with the cold."

"Not
too much. We're used to a chillier atmosphere than you. And the heat of the
refinery keeps the dome warm."

"But the mining
tunnels—"

"Forty feet of rock is
good insulation."

"That's true.
Still—"

"There's
a lot worse problem than cold, when it comes to living and working in the
colony," said David.

"Something
that
four generations of colonists haven't been able
to find an answer to, completely." "What's that?"

"It
may seem funny to you.
Claustrophobia.
Morbid fear of
being closed in. The men get it every now and then down in the tunnels,
especially when there's been a recent cave-in. Works on their minds, and as
soon as they get to thinking about it, it really hits them. Sometimes they get
violent, can't even stand being inside the bubble—"

"But
can't you send them back to Earth?
Rest cure, something like
that?"

"Aw—quit joking."

Tuck's eyes widened.
"I'm dead serious!"

"Well,
we
could
go back to Earth for vacations, all right—but we couldn't buy food,
because nobody would sell us food. We couldn't stay anywhere, because no hotel
would take us. And then there's always the risk of being mobbed and
lynched—most people don't think a trip to Earth is worth it."

A
core of anger began burning in Tuck's mind. "But you must have some sort
of protection. After all, Earth is civilized. There are laws protecting
people's rights—"

David
nodded sourly. "If the people know what their rights are. But that
involves education. And we don't have much education out here—oh, sure, the
kids in the colony go to a school to learn reading and writing, the lucky
ones—and there are apprenticeships in technology and mechanics for the older
boys, to teach them to run the mining equipment and the refinery. I was taught
enough accounting to help dad with the administration work of the colony, and
one of my pals is working with Doc Taber, just in case Security doesn't send
another doctor out here when Doc is gone. But there hasn't been a colonist boy
or girl admitted to an Earth University in over seventy-five years."
"Have they tried to get in?"

David
gave him a long look. "Take me, for instance. I wanted to study
rocketry—rocket
engineering, that
was for me. Yes,
sir. I wrote the Polytechnic Institute for information. Did they even answer my
letter? Ha! They did not. So I wrote Earth Security. They told me I would need
a fully accredited high-school education before I could even apply. So I wrote
the preparatory schools. Know what they said? They all said, fine, come right
along—but you'll have to pay tuition, because you were born and live outside
the planetary limits of Earth. Know what the tuition was? More money than my
dad's been paid in ten years!"

Tuck's
eyes blazed. "They've admitted Mars colony boys without tuition!"

David
shrugged. "It was only a stall, I know that. If we could have taken it to
court, we might have broken the stall, too. But what if we had? My work
wouldn't be good enough. My eyes would be the wrong color. They'd find a way to
keep me out. Earth Security has seen to that."

Tuck
stared through the
plexiglass
windshield at the
little jet plane across the rocks, feeling sick. "Dad doesn't know what a
hornet's nest he's working in—he
couldn't
know.
He just doesn't realize these
things,
he doesn't know
the true picture."