 Chapter 5 of Space Hounds of I.P.C. by E. E. Doc Smith. Far out in space, Jupiter, a tiny moon, and its satellites, mere pinpoints of light, Stevens turned to his companion with a grin. Well, Nadia, old golf-shootist, here's where we turn Space Hounds again. Hope you like it better this time, because I'm afraid that we'll have to stay waitless for quite a while. He slowly throttled down the mighty flow of power, and watched the conflicting emotions play over Nadia's face in her purely personal battle against the sickening sensations caused by the decrease in their acceleration. I'm sorry is the dickens, sweetheart. He went on, tenderly, and the grin disappeared. Wish I could take it for you, but... But there are times when we've got to fight our own battles and bury our own dead, she interrupted gamely. Cut off the rest of that power. I'm not going to be sick. I won't be a what do you Space Hounds call us poor earthbound doves who can't stand weightlessness? Weight fiends, isn't it? Yes, but you aren't. I know I'm not, and I'm not going to be one, either. I'm all ex, Steve. It's not so bad now, really. I held myself together that time, anyway, and I feel lots better now. Have you found Cantrell's comet yet? And why so sure all of a sudden that they can't find us? That power beam still connects us to Ganymede, doesn't it? Maybe they can trace it. At a girl, ace, he cheered, I'll tell the world you're no weight fiend. You are a Space Hound, right? Most first trippers, at this stage of the game, would be carrying a whoop whether school kept or not, and here you're taking an interest in all kinds of things already. You'll do, girl of my heart, no fooling. Maybe, and maybe you're trying to kid somebody, she returned, eyeing him intently. Or maybe you just don't want to answer those questions I asked you a minute ago. No, that's the straight data, right on zero across the panel, he assured her. And as for your questions, they're easy. No, I haven't looked for the comet yet, because we'll have to drift for a couple of days before we'll be anywhere near where I think it is. No, they can't trace us, because there is now nothing to trace, unless they can detect the slight power we are using in our lights and so on, which possibility is vanishingly small. Potentially our beam still exists, but since we are drawing no power, it has no actual present existence, see? Uh-uh, she descended. I can't say that I can quite understand how a beam can exist potentially, and yet not be there actually enough to trace. Why, a thing has to be actual, or not exist at all. You can't possibly have something that is nothing. It doesn't make sense. But lay off those integrations of yours, please. As now armed with a slate-pencil, Stevens began to draw a diagram upon a four-foot sheet of smooth slate. You know that your brand of math is over my head like a circus tent, so we'll let it lie. I'll take your word for it. Steve, if you're satisfied, it's all X with me. I think I can straight you out a little by analogy. Here's a rough sketch of a cylinder, with shade and shadow. You've had descriptive geometry, of course, so know that a shadow, being simply a projection of a material object upon a plane, is a two-dimensional thing, or rather, a two-dimensional concept. Now take the shade, which is, of course, this entire figure here, between the cylinder casting the shadow and the plane of projection. You simply imagine that there is a point source of light at your point of projection. It isn't really there. The shade, then, of which I am drawing a picture, has only a potential existence. You know exactly where it is, you can draw it, you can define it, compute it, and work with it. But still, it doesn't exist. There is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from any other volume of air, and it cannot be detected by any physical or mechanical means. If, however, you place a light at the point of projection, the shade becomes actual and can be detected optically. By a sufficient stretch of the imagination, you might compare our beam to that shade. When we turn our power on, the beam is actual. It is a stream of tangible force, and as such, can be detected electrically. When our switches are open, however, it exists only potentially. There is no motion in the ether, nothing whatever to indicate that a beam had ever actually existed there. With me? Floundering pretty badly, but I see it after a fashion. You physicists are peculiar freaks. Where we ordinary mortals see actual, solid, heavy objects, you see only empty space with a few electrons and things floating around in it. And yet, where we see only empty space, you can see things potentially that may never exist at all. You'll be the death of me yet, Steve. But I'm wasting a lot of time. What do we do now? We get busy on the big tube. You might warm up the annealing oven and melt me that pot of glass while I get busy on the filament supports, plate brackets, and so on. Both fell to work with a will, and hours passed rapidly and almost silently, so intent was each upon his own tasks. All, eh, Steve? Not he broke the long silence. The pyrometers on the red and the ovens hot, and the man left his bench. Taking up a long paddle and an even longer blowpipe, he skimmed the melt to a dazzlingly bright surface and deftly formed a bubble. I just love to talk at you when you've got your mouth full of a blowpipe. Nadia eyed him impishly and tucked her feet beneath her, poised weightless as she was. I've got you foul now. I can say anything I want to, and you can't talk back, because your bubble will lose its shape if you do. Oh, isn't that a beauty? I never saw you blow anything that big before—and she felt silent, watching intently. Slowly there was being drawn from the pot a huge tapering bulb of hot, glistening glass. Its cross-section at the molten surface, varying as Stevens changed the rate of draw, or the volume of air blown through the pipe. Soon that section narrowed sharply. The glass blower waved his hand, and Nadia severed the form neatly with a glowing wire, just above the fluid surface of the glass remaining in the pot. Pended from the blowpipe, the bulb was placed over the hot bench, where Stevens, now begoggled, be gloved and armed with a welding torch, proceeded to fuse into the still, almost plastic glass, sundry necks, side tubes, supports, and other attachments of peculiar pattern. Finally, the partially assembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remain at a high and constant temperature until its filaments, grids, and plates had been installed. Eventually, in that same oven, it would be allowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of days. Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done either by automatic machinery or by highly skilled specialists in labor. For these two, thrown upon their own resources, had long since learned how much specialization may be represented by the most commonplace article. Whenever they needed a thing they did not have, which happened every day, they had either to make it, or else, failing in that, to go back and build something that would enable them to manufacture the required item. Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the day's work. They no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two days the two jacks-of-all-trades worked at many lines and with many materials before Stevens called a halt. All ex-Nadia! It's time for us to stop tinkering and turn into astronomers. We've been out for fifty IP hours, and we better begin looking around for our heap of scrap metal. And, the girl at the communicator plate and Stevens at their one small telescope, they began to search the black star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell's Comet. According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours' right ascension and something like plus twenty degrees' declination. My figures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory, so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades. But the directions will change as we go along, won't they? Not unless we pass it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight at it, I think. I don't see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have much tail? Very little. It's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't have much of a tail so far away from the sun. Hope has got some of its tail left, though, or we may miss it entirely. Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into their instruments. Then Stevens left the telescope and went over to his slate. Looks bad, Ace. We should have spotted it before this. Time to eat, too. You'd better. Oh, look here, quick! Nadia interrupted. Here's something. Yes, it IS a comet, and quite close. It's got a little bit of a dim tail. Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and blond head pressed close to brown. The two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer of the void. That's it! I just know it is, Nadia declared. Steve, as a computer, you're a blinding flash and a deafening report. Yeah, missed it only about half a million kilometers or so, he replied, grinning. And I'd fire a whole flock of IP check stations for being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse. I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it. He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh of relief, as her weight returned to her, and her body again became manageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles. Guess I'm kind of a weight fiend at that, Steve. This is much better, she exclaimed. Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times. But you're a space-hound just the same. You'll like it after a while, he prophesied. Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his core sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made careful readings. That's it, all X, he announced, after completing his calculations, and he reduced their negative acceleration by a third. There, we'll be just about travelling with it when we get there, he said. Now, little K.P. of my bosom, my supper's been on minus time for hours. What say we shake it up? I'll check you to nineteen decimals. And the two were soon attacking the savory Ganamedian goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before. Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it? Sleep by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won't arrive before ten o'clock tomorrow IP time. And, tired out by the events of the long day, man and maid sought their beds and plunged into dreamless slumber. While they slept the forlorn hope drove on through the void at a terrific but constantly decreasing velocity, and far off to one side, plunging along a line making a sharp angle with their own course, there loomed larger and larger the masses which made up the nucleus of Cantrell's comet. Upon awakening, Stephen's first thought was for the comet, and he observed it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate fragments, a conglomerate, heterogeneous aggregation of rough and jagged masses varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millions of tons. Prevading the whole nucleus, a slow, indefinite movement was perceptible, a vague writhing and creeping of individual components working and slipping past and around each other, as they all rushed forward in obedience to the immutable cosmic law of gravitation. Oh, isn't that wonderful! Nadia breathed. Think of actually going to visit a comet. It sort of scares me, Steve. It's so creepy and crawly looking. We're awfully close, aren't we? Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just to be on the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and you bring me over something to eat. All ex-chief—and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching closely the ever-increasing bulk of the comet. For many minutes he swung the forlorn hope in a wide curve, approaching the mountain of metal ever and ever more nearly. Then turned to the girl. Hold everything, Nadia. Power's going off in a minute. He shut off the beam. Then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the comet, he applied a small voltage to one dirigible projector. Daring the beam here and there, he so corrected their flight that they were precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his switches and the forlorn hope hurtle on. Apparently motionless, it was now a part of Cantrell's comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated ellipse about the master of our solar system, the Sun. There, Ace, who said anything about weight fiends? I was watching you, and you never turned a hair that time. Why, that's right. I never even thought about it. I was so busy studying that thing out there. I suppose I've got used to it already? Sure, you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go places and do things. You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the airlock and handle the line. They donned the heavily insulated heated suits, and Stephen snapped the locking plugs of the drag line into their sockets upon the helmets. Hear me, he asked. Sound discs, all X? All X. On the radio, all X? All X. I tested your tanks and heaters. They're all X. But you'll have to test. I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the country for the last year. But I didn't know you had to go through it every time you went out of doors. Haves. Number one, all X. Two, all X. Three, all X. Quit it, he snapped. You aren't testing those valves. That check-up is no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute space can't be either simple or foolproof. They've worked on them for years, but they're pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you out in space, it's just too bad. You're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are still out there somewhere because of the sloppy check-ups. Excuse it, please. I'll be good. And the careful checking and testing of every vital part of the spacesuits went on. Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of dragline, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl into the airlock. Heaven, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse than the wreckage of the Arcturus was when I would let you climb up it. Why, I thought comets were little and hardly massive at all, exclaimed the girl. This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite, or even to the asteroids. There's only a few cubic kilometers of matter there, and, as I said before, it's a decidedly unusual comet. You know the game? I've got it, and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster than you can jump over there if any of those lumps start to fall on you. Is this dragline long enough? Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters over there to where I'm going. So long! And with a light thrust of his feet he dove head foremost across the intervening space, a heavy pike held out ahead of him. Straight as a bullet he floated toward his objective, a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the shock of his landing by sliding along the pike handle as its head struck the mass. Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor and under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kept on moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stephen sprang, always watching his line of retreat as well as that of his advance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of apparently solid metal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his weapon and was reassured. That object was not only metal, but it was metal so hard that his pike head of space-tempered alloy steel did not make an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light he swung his heavy hammer repeatedly, but could not break off even a small fragment. Found something, Steve? Naughty as voice came clearly in his ears. I'll say I have a hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size of an office desk. I can't break off any of it, so I guess we'll have to grab the whole chunk. He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that the loops would not slip, and then, as Naughty had tightened the line, he shoved mightily. All ex-Naughty, she's coming! Pull in my drag line, as I said over there, and I'll help you land her. Inside the forlorn hope the mass of metal was urged into the shop where Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor before he took off his spacesuit. Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is getting positively cold, Naughty exclaimed. Sure, anything that comes in from space is cold, even if it's been out only a few minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for nobody knows how many million years. It didn't get much heat from the sun, except at perihelion, you know, so it's probably somewhere around minus 260 degrees now. I'll have to throw a heater on it for half an hour before we can touch it, and since this is more or less new stuff to you, I'll caution you. Don't try to touch anything that has just come in. That hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, even though they've been out only a little while. Before you touch anything, blow on it, like this, see? If your breath frees a solid on it, like that, don't touch it. It's cold. Under the infra beams of the heater the mass of the metal was brought to room temperature, and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools. Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavy goggles he watched the incandescent mass in a refractory crucible in the heart of the induction furnace. What do you think you've got, what you want? I don't know. It was an iron. It wouldn't hold a magnet. It's royal metal of some kind, I think. Base metals mostly melded around 1500, and that crucible is still dry as a bone at better than 17. How are you going to separate out the tantalum and the others you want from the ones that you don't want? I'm afraid that I'm not going to very well replied Stevens with a rye grimace. What I don't know about metallurgy would fill a library, and I'm probably the world's worst chemist. However, by a series of successive equations I hope to separate out fractions that I can use. Platinum melts somewhere around 1750, tantalum about 2900, and tungsten not until way up around 33 or 400. And that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course each fraction will probably be an alloy of one kind or another, but I think maybe I'll be able to make them do. But may the whole chunk be a pure metal? It's conceivable, but not probable. There, she's beginning to separate, at just below 1800. Platinum group coming out now, I think. Platinum, rhodium, iridium, and that gang, you know. While I'm doing this, you might be getting those five coils into exact resonance, if you want to. Sure I want to. And Nadia made her way across to the shortwave oscillator and set to work. After an hour or so, bent over her delicate task, she began to twitch uneasily, then shrugged her shoulders impatiently. What's the idea of staring at me so? She broke out suddenly. How do you expect me to tune these things up, if you—? She stopped abruptly, mouth open in amazement, as she turned toward Stevens. He had not even been looking at her, but he turned a surprised face from his own task at the sound of her voice. Excuse me, please, Steve. I don't know what's the matter with me. Must be getting jumpy, I guess. I wished that was all, but it isn't. Face suddenly grim and hard, Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and shot the beam out into space. There's an answer, but that isn't it. You're a fine-tuned instrument, yourself, Ace, and you've detected something. I thought so. There's the answer—the guy that was looking at you. Plainly there was revealed upon the plate a small, spherical spaceship, very like the one that had attacked and destroyed the Arcturus. After Nadia had taken one glance at it, Steve and shut off the power and leaped out into the shop. He closed all the bulkhead doors and airbrake openings, then closed and secured the massive insulating door of the lifeboat in which they had made their headquarters. Then, after they had again put on the spacesuits they had taken off such a short time before, he extinguished all the lights and hooded the communicator screen before he ventured again to glance out into the void. If I had a brain in my head, instead of the pint of bean soup I've got up there, we'd have worn these when they cut up the Arcturus and saved us a lot of mental wear and tear, he remarked. They were right there in the lockers all the time, and I knew it. Well, we got away anyway. You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once. We didn't have much time, you know. No, but I should have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway. Wonder how they found us. Did they detect us, or did they come out to this comet after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally? However, it all works out the same. They're apparently out to get us. I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting back at a man with a gun. But we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while they're getting a square meal. Here they come! The enemy sphere launched its flaming plane of force, and the forlorn hope shuddered in every plate and member as its apex was severed cleanly under the impact. Instantly Stevens hurled his only weapons. Flaming ultraviolet and duly glowing infrared, the twin beams lashed out. But their utmost force was of slight moment to the enormous power driving the enemy screens. Two circular spots of cherry red in space were the only results of Stevens' attack, and the next fierce cut sheared away the two projectors, and incidentally a full half of the fifty-inch armor of the leading edge. Then we're checking out now, Nadia asked quietly as the man's hands drop from his useless controls. I'm sorry or then I can say, lover, but at least I'm glad I can go out with you, and her glorious eyes were shining with unshed tears. Maybe, but snap out of it, girl. Our hearts are still beating. We're not dead yet, and maybe we won't be. Perhaps they want to capture us alive as they did before. If so, we may be able to hide out on them somewhere and pull off another escape. Things don't look very bright, I know, but we're not checking out until our numbers are actually run up. He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer and stood tense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control room, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening while the air shrieked outward into space and their suits bulged suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While they were in mid-flight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way through the control board and through the spot upon which they had been standing a moment before. As they passed the severed edge en route into open space, Stevens seized a metal brace and clung there, every nerve taught. Something funny here, Nadia, he said after a little in a low tone. They should have made one more cut to make us absolutely blind and helpless. As it is, they've clipped off all our projectors, so we can't move. But I think we've got the whole control compartment of number two lifeboat untouched. If so, we can look around, anyway. Let's go. Floating without effort from fragment to fragment, they made their way toward the section of their cruiser as yet undamaged. They found an airlock in working order and were soon in the second lifeboat, where Stevens hastily turned on a communicator and peered out into space. There they are. There's another stranger out there, too. They're fighting with her now. That's probably why they didn't polish us off. Steel-braced, clumsy helmets touching, the two terrestrials stared spellbound into the plate, watching while the insensitely vicious intelligences within this sphere brought its every force to bear upon another and larger sphere, which was now so close as to be plainly visible. Like a gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globe appeared, its smooth and highly polished surface won enormous, perfect, spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw a flash out that frightful plane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all too familiar, and saw it strike full upon the dazzling ball. This is awful, Ace, Stevens groaned. They haven't got ray screens either, and without them they don't stand a chance. No possible substance can stand up under that beam. When they get done and turn back to us, we'll have to dive back to where we were. But the brilliant mirror was not as vulnerable as Stevens had supposed. The plane of force struck and clung, but could not penetrate it. Broken up into myriads of scintillating crystals of light, intersecting multicolored rays, and cascading flares of sparkling energy, the beam was reflected, thrown back, hurled away in all sides into space in coruscating, blinding torrents. And neither was the monster-globe inoffensive. The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, amid a flame erupting something, and closed as rapidly as it had opened. That something was a projectile, its propelling rockets fiercely aflame. As smoothly brilliant as its mothership, and seemingly as impervious to the lethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, it received the full power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistible plane of force beat upon it. Ultraviolet, infrared, and heat rays enveloped it. There were hurled against it all the forces known to the scientific minds within that fiendishly destructive sphere. Finally, only a scant few hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror was punctured, and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another, boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedoes and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a stupendous acceleration. But the tiny pursuers could not be shaken off. At every dodge and turn, steering rockets burst into a furious activity, and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing that she had at least encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in mad flight. But, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes were faster, and all three of them struck her at once. There ensued an explosion veritably space-wracking in its intensity, a flash of incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding to a vast volume of tenuous gas, which, feebly glowing, flowed about and attached itself to Cantrell's comet, and in the space where had been the enemy's sphere there was nothing. A slow creeping pale-blue rod of tangible force reached out from the great sphere, touched the wreckage of the forlorn hope and pulled, gently, but with enormous power. Tractor beams again, exclaimed Stevens, still at the plate. Everybody's got him but us, it seems. And we can't fight a bit anymore, can we? Not a chance. Bows and arrows wouldn't do us much good. However, we may not need them. Since they fought that other crew, and haven't blown us up, they aren't active enemies of ours, and may be friendly. I haven't any idea who or what they are, since even our communicator ray can't get through that mirror, but it looks as though our best bet is to act peaceable and see if we can't talk to them in some way, right? Right. They stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw that the great sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that an indistinct figure stood in an open door, waving to them an unmistakable invitation to enter the strange vessel. Shall we, Steve? Might as well. They have got us foul, and can take us if they want us. Anyway, we'll need at least a week to fix us up any kind of driving power, so we can't run, and we probably couldn't get away from those folks if we had all our power. They haven't blown us up, and they could have done it easily enough. Besides, they act friendly, so we'd better meet them half way. Dive. Floating toward the open doorway, they were met by another rod of force, brought gently into the airlock, and supported upright, beside the being who had invited them to visit him. Apparently, an empty spacesuit stood there, a peculiarly fitted suit of some partially transparent, flexible, glass-like material, towering fully a foot over the head of the tall terrestrial. Closer inspection, however, revealed that there was something inside that suit, a shadowy, weirdly transparent being, staring at them with large, black eyes. The door clangs shut behind them, they heard the faint hiss of inrushing air, and the inner door opened, but their enveloping suits remained stretched almost as tightly as ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, a little weight was granted them as the spaceship got under way. Stevens waved his arms vigorously at the stranger, pointing backward toward where he supposed their own craft to be. The latter waved an arm reassuringly, pressed to contact, and a section of the wall suddenly became transparent. Through it, Stevens saw with satisfaction that the forlorn hope was not being abandoned. In the grip of powerful tractor-beams, every fragment of the wreckage was following close behind them in their flight through space. Stevens and Nadia followed their guide along a corridor, through several doors, and into a large room, which at first glance seemed empty, but in which several of the peculiarly transparent people of the craft were lying about upon cushions. They were undoubtedly human, but what humans? Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel chests, topped by heads, which, though really large, appeared insignificant because of the prodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears. Their skins were a strikingly livid pale blue, absolutely devoid of hair, and their lidless eyes, without a sign of iris, were chillingly horrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil and ghastly, transparent blue eyeball. As the two terrestrials entered the room, the beings struggled to their feet and hurried laboriously away. Soon one of them returned, dressed in an insulating suit, and carrying three sets of head harnesses, connected by multiplex cables to a large box which he placed upon the floor. He handed the headsets to the first officer, who in turn placed two of them at the feet of the terrestrials, indicating to them that they were to follow his example in placing them upon their heads outside the helmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation, and in spite of the powerful heaters of their suits, they felt a touch of frightful cold. The stranger turned a dial, and the two wanderers from earth were instantly in full mental communication with Barkovis, the commander of a spaceship of Titan, the sixth satellite of Saturn. Well, I'll be! Say, what is this, anyway? Steve exclaimed involuntarily, and Nadia smiled as Barkovis answered with a thought, clearer than any spoken words. It is a thought-exchanger. I do not know its fundamental mechanism since we did not invent it and since I have had little time to study it. The apparatus, practically as you see it here, was discovered but a short time ago, in a small, rocket-propelled spaceship which we found some distance outside the orbit of Jupiter. Its source of power had been destroyed by the cold of outer space, but repowering it was, of course, a small matter. The crew of the vessel were all dead. They were, however, of human stock, and of a type adapted for life upon a satellite. I deduce, from your compact structure, your enormous atmospheric pressure, and your, to us, unbelievably high body temperature, that you must be planet-dwellers. I suppose that you are natives of Jupiter? Not quite. Stephen's had in a measure recovered from his stunned surprise. We are from Telus, the third planet. And he revealed rapidly the events leading up to their present situation, concluding, The people in the other sphere were, we believe, natives of Jupiter or of one of the satellites. We know nothing of them since we could not look through their screens. You rescued us from them. Do you not know them? No. Our visorays also were stopped by their screens of force, screens entirely foreign to our science. This is the first time that any vessel from our Saturnian system has ever succeeded in reaching the neighborhood of Jupiter. We came in peace, but they attacked us at sight, and we were obliged to destroy them. Now we must hurry back to Titan for two reasons. First, because we are already at the extreme limit of our power range, and Jupiter is getting further and further away from Saturn. Second, because our mirrors, which we had thought perfect reflectors of all frequencies possible of generation, are not perfect. Enough of those forces came through the mirrors to volatize half our crew, and in a few minutes more none of us would have been left alive. Why, in some places, our very atmosphere became almost hot enough to melt water. If another of those vessels should attack us, in all probability, we should all be lost. Therefore, we are leaving as rapidly as is possible. You are taking the pieces of our ship along. We do not want to encumber you. It is no encumbrance, since we have ample supplies of power. In fact, we are now employing the highest acceleration we Titanians can endure for any length of time. Stevens pondered long, forgetting that his thoughts were plain as print to the Titanian commander. Thank heaven these strangers had sense enough to be friendly. All intelligent races should be friends for mutual advancement. But it was a mighty long stretch to Saturn, and this acceleration wasn't so much. How long would it take to get there? Could they get back? Wouldn't they save time by casting themselves adrift, making the repairs most urgently needed, and going back to Ganymede under their own power? But would they have enough power left in the wreck to get even that far? And how about the big tube? He was interrupted by an insistent thought from Barcovis. You will save time, Stevens, by coming with us to Titan. There we shall aid you in repairing your vessel and in completing your transmitting tube, in which we shall be deeply interested. Our power plant shall supply you with energy for your return journey until you are close enough to Jupiter to recover your own beam. You are tired. I would suggest that you rest, that you sleep long and peacefully. You seem to be handling the forlorn hope without any trouble. The pieces aren't grinding at all. We'd better live there, hadn't we? Yes, that would be best for all of us. You could not live a minute here without your suits, and, efficiently insulated as those suits are, yet your incandescent body temperature makes our rooms unbearably hot, so hot that any of us must wear a spacesuit while in the same room with you to avoid being burned to death. The incandescently hot terrestrials were wafted into the open airlock of their lifeboat upon a wand of force, and soon had prepared a long overdue supper, over which Stevens cast his infectious boyish grin at Nadia. Sweetheart, you are undoubtedly a warm number, and you have often remarked that I burn you up. Nevertheless, I think that we were both considerably surprised to discover that we are both hot enough actually to consume persons unfortunate enough to be confined in the same room with us. You're funny, Steve, like a crutch, she rebuked him, but smiled back, an elusive dimple playing in one lovely brown cheek. Looking right through anybody is too ghastly for words, but I think they're perfectly all ex anyway, in spite of their being so hideous and so cold blooded. CHAPTER 6 OF FRIDGID CIVILIZATION Hi, Percival Von Schreven dyke Stevens! Nadia strode purposefully into Stevens' room and seized him by the shoulder. Are you going to sleep all the way to Saturn? You answered me when I pounded on the partition with a hammer, but I don't believe that you woke up at all. Get up, you! Breakfast will be all spoiled directly! Ha! Stevens opened one sluggish eye. Then, as the full force of the insult penetrated his consciousness, he came wide awake. Lay off those names, ace, or you'll find yourself walking back home, he threatened. All ex by me, she retorted. I might as well go home if you're going to sleep all the time, and she widened her expressive eyes at him impishly as she danced blythly back into the control room. As she went out, she slammed his door with a resounding clang, and Stevens pried himself out of his bunk one joint at a time, dressed and made himself presentable. Gosh! he yawned mightily as he joined the girl at breakfast. I don't know when I've had such a gorgeous sleep. How do you get by on so little? I don't. I sleep a lot, but I do it every night, instead of working for four days and nights on end and then trying to make up all those four nights sleep at once. I'm going to break you of that too, Steve, if it's the last thing I ever do. There might be certain advantages in it, at that, he conceded, but sometimes you've got to do work when it's got to be done, instead of just between sleeps. However, I'll try to do better. Certainly it is a wonderful relief to get out of that mess, isn't it? I'll say it is, but I wish those folks were more like people. They're nice, I think, really, but they're so—so—well, so ghastly that it simply gives me the blue shivers just to look at one of them. They're pretty gruesome, no fooling, he agreed, but you get used to things like that. I just about threw a fit the first time I ever saw a Martian, and the Vanirians are even worse in some ways. They're so clammy and dead-looking. But now I've got real friends on both planets. One thing, though, gives me the pip. I read a story a while ago, the latest bestseller thing of Thornton's named Interstellar Slush, or some such trick. Cleofora, an Interstellar romance, she corrected him. I thought it was wonderful. I didn't. It's fundamentally unsound. Look at our nearest neighbors, who probably came from the same original stock we did. A Talurian can admire, respect, or like a Vanirian, yes, but for loving one of them, wow, beauty is purely relative, you know. For instance, I think that you are the most perfectly beautiful thing I ever saw. But no Vanirian would think so, far from it. Any Martian that hadn't seen many of us would have to go rest his eyes after taking one good look at you. Considering what love means, it doesn't stand to reason that any Talurian woman could possibly fall in love with any man not of her own breed. Any writer is wrong who indulges in interplanetary love affairs and mad passions. They simply don't exist. They can't exist. They're against all human instincts. Interplanetary, in this solar system, yes, but the decrovos were just like us, only nicer. That's what gives me the pip. If our own cousins of the same solar system are so repulsive to us, how would we be affected by entirely alien forms of intelligence? You may be right, of course, but you may be wrong, too, she insisted. The universe is big enough so that people like the decrovos may possibly exist in it somewhere. Maybe the big three will discover a means of interstellar travel. Then I'll get to see them myself, perhaps. Yes, and if we do, and if you ever see any such people, I'll bet that the side of them will make your hair curl right up into a ball, too. But about Barkovis. Remember how diplomatic the thoughts were that he set us? He described our structure as being compact, but I got the undertone of his real thoughts as well, didn't you? Yes, now that you mention it, I did. He really thought that we were white-hot, undersized, overpowered, warty, hairy, hideously opaque, and generally repulsive little monstrosities, thoroughly unpleasant and distasteful. But he was friendly just the same. Heaven, Steve, do you suppose that he read our real thoughts, too? Sure he did, but he is intelligent enough to make allowances the same as we are doing. He isn't any more insulted than we are. He knows that such feelings are ingrained and cannot be changed. Breakfast over, they experienced a new sensation. For the first time in months they had nothing to do. Used as they were to being surrounded by pressing tasks, they enjoyed their holiday immensely for a few hours. Sitting idly at the communicator plate, they scanned the sparkling heavens with keen interest. Beneath them Jupiter was a brilliant crescent not far from the sun in appearance, which latter had already grown perceptibly smaller and less bright. Above them and to their right Saturn shone refulgently, his spectacular rings plainly visible. All about them were the glories of the firmament which never failed to awe the most seasoned observer. But idleness soon became irksome to those two active spirits and Stevens prowled restlessly about their narrow quarters. I'm going to go to work before I go dippy, he soon declared. They've got lots of power, and we can rig up a transmitter unit to send it over here to our receptor. Then I can start welding the old hope together without waiting until we get to tighten to start it. Think I'll signal Barkovis to come over and see what he thinks about it. The titanium commander approved the idea and the transmitting field was quickly installed. Nadia insisted that she too needed to work and that she was altogether too good a mechanic to waste. Therefore the two again labored mightily together day after day. But the girl limited rigidly their hours of work to those of the working day, and evening after evening Barkovis visited them for hours. Dressed in his heavy spacesuit, and supported by a tractor beam well out of range of what seemed to him terrific heat radiated by the bodies of the terrestrials, he floated along unconcernedly. While over the multiplex cable of the thought exchanger he conversed with the man and woman seated just inside the open outer door of their airlock. The titanium's appetite for information was insatiable, particularly did he relish everything pertaining to the Earth and to the other inner planets, forever barred to him and to his kind. In return, Stevens and Nadia came gradually to know the story of the humanity of Titan. I am glad beyond measure to have known you, Barkovis mused one night. Your existence proves that there is truth in mythology, as some of us have always believed. Your visit to Titan will create a furor in the scientific circles, for you are impossibility incarnate, personifications of the preposterous. In you, wildest fancy, had become commonplace. According to many of our scientists, it is utterly impossible for you to exist. Yet you say, and it must be, that there are millions upon millions of similar beings. Think of it. Venerians, Tullurians, Martians, the satellite dwellers of the lost spaceship, and us. So similar mentally, yet physically, how different. But where does the mythology come in, thought Nadia? We have unthinkably ancient legends which say that once Titan was extremely hot, and that our remote ancestors were beings of fire, in whose veins ran molten water instead of blood. Since our recorded history goes back some tens of thousands of Saturnian years, and since in that long period there has been no measurable change in us, few of us have believed in the legends at all. They have been thought the surviving figments of a barbarous prehistoric worship of the sun. However, such a condition is not in conflict with the known facts of cosmogony, and since there actually exists such a humanity as yours, a humanity whose bodily tissues actually are composed largely of molten water, those ancient legends must indeed have been based upon truth. What an evolution! Century after century of slowly decreasing temperature. One continuous struggle to adapt the physique to a constantly changing environment. First they must have tried to maintain their high temperature by covering and heating their cities. Then, as vegetation died, they must have bred into their plants the ability to use as sap purely chemical liquids, such as our present natural fluids, which also may have been partly synthetic then, instead of the molten water to which they had been accustomed. They must have modified similarly the outer atmosphere, must have made it more reactive, to compensate for the lower temperature at which metabolism must take place. As titan grew colder and colder, they probably dug their cities deeper and even deeper, until humanity came finally to realize that it must itself change completely or perish utterly. Then we may picture them as aiding evolution in changing their body chemistry. For thousands and thousands of years there must have gone on the gradual adaptation of bloodstream and tissue to more and more volatile liquids, and to lower and still lower temperatures. This must have continued until titan arrived at the condition which has now obtained for ages, a condition of thermal equilibrium with space upon one hand and upon the other the sun, which changes appreciably only in millions upon millions of years. In equilibrium at last, with our bodily and atmospheric temperatures finally constant at their present values, which seem as low to you as yours appear high to us. Truly, an evolution astounding to contemplate. But how about power? asked Stevens. You seem to have all you want, yet it doesn't stand a reason that there could be very much generated upon a satellite so old and so cold. You are right. For ages there has been but little power produced upon titan. Many cycles ago, however, our scientists have developed rocket-driven spaceships, with which they explored our neighboring satellites, and even Saturn itself. It is from power plants upon Saturn that we draw energy. Their construction was difficult in the extreme, since the pioneers had to work in braces because of the enormous force of gravity. Then, too, they had to be protected from the overwhelming pressure and poisonous qualities of the air, and insulated from a temperature far above the melting point of water. In such awful heat, of course, our customary building material, water, could not be employed. But all our instruments have indicated that Saturn is cold, Stevens interrupted. Its surface temperature, as read from afar, would be low, conceded Markovis. But the actual surface of the planet is extremely hot, and is highly volcanic. Practically none of its heat is radiated because of the great density and depth of its atmosphere, which extends for many hundreds of your kilometers. It required many thousands of lives and many years of time to build and install those automatic power plants, but once they were in operation we were assured of power for many tens of thousands of years to come. Our system of power transmission is more or less like yours, but we have in anything like your range. Suppose you'd be willing to teach me the computation of your fields. Yes, we shall be glad to give you the formulae. Being an older race, it is perhaps natural that we should have developed certain refinements as yet unknown to you. But I am, I perceived, detaining you from your time of rest. Goodbye." And Markovis was wafted back toward his mirrored globe. "'What do you make of this chemical solution blood of there, Steve?' asked Nadia, watching the placidly floating form of the titanium captain. "'Not much. I may have mentioned before that there are one or two, or perhaps even three men who are better chemists than I am. I gathered that it is something like a polyhydric alcohol, and something like a substituted hydrocarbon, and yet different from either, and that it contains fluorine in loose combination. I think it is something that our Tullurian chemists haven't got yet. But they've got so many organic compounds now that they may have synthesized it at that. Titan's atmosphere isn't nearly as dense as ours, but what there is of it is pure dynamite. Ours is a little oxygen mixed with a lot of inert ingredients. There's is oxygen heavily laced with fluorine. It's reactive, no fooling. However, something pretty violent must be necessary to carry on body reactions at such a temperature as theirs. Probably, but I know even less about that kind of thing than you do. Funny, isn't it, the way he thinks water when he means ice, and always thinks of our real water as being molten? Reasonable enough when you think about it. Temperature differences are logarithmic, you know, not arithmetic. The effective difference between his body temperature and ours is perhaps even greater than that between ours and that of melted iron. We never think of iron as being a liquid, you know. That's right, too. Well, good night, Steve, dear. Bye, little Queen of Space. See you at breakfast. And the Forlorn Hope became dark and silent. Day after day the brilliant sphere flew toward distant Saturn, with the wreckage of the Forlorn Hope in tow. Piece by piece that wreckage was brought together and held in place by the Titanian tractors, and slowly but steadily, under Stephen's terrific welding projector, the stubborn steel flowed together, once more to become a seamless, spaceworthy structure. And Nadia, the electrician, followed close behind the welder. Wielding torch, pliers, and spanner with practiced hand, she repaired, or cut out of circuit, the damaged accumulator cells, and reunited the ends of each severed power lead. Understanding Nadia's work thoroughly, the Titanians were not particularly interested in it. But whenever Stevens made his way along an outside seam, he had a large and thrillingly horrified gallery. Everyone who could possibly secure permission to leave the sphere did so, each upon his own pencil of force, and went over to watch the welder. They did not come close to him to venture within fifty feet of that slow-moving spot of scintillating brilliance, even in a spacesuit, met death. But poised around him in space, they watched with shuddering, incredulous amazement, the monstrous human being in whose veins ran molten water instead of blood, whose body was already so fiercely hot that it could exist unharmed while working practically without protection upon liquefied metal. Finally the welding was done. The insulating space was evacuated and held its vacuum. Outer and inner shells were bottle tight. The two mechanics heaved deep sighs of relief as they discarded their cumbersome armor and began to repair what few of their machine tools had been damaged by the slashing plane of force, which had so neatly sliced the forlorn hope into sections. Say, big fellow, you're the guy that slings the ink, ain't you? Nadia extinguished her torch and swaggered up to Stevens, hands on hips, her walk and exaggerated roll. Write me out a long walk. This job's all played out, so I think I'll get me a good job on Titan. I said, give me my time, you big stiff. You didn't say nothing, growled Stevens in his deepest base, playing up to her lead as he always did. Bounce back, Cub, you've struck a rubber fence. You've signed on for duration, and you'll stick, see? Arm in arm they went over to the nearest communicator plate. Flipping the switch, Stevens turned the dial and Titan shone upon the screen, so close that it no longer resembled a moon, but was a world toward which they were falling within immense velocity. Not close enough to make out much detail yet, let's take another look at Saturn, and Stevens projected the visoray beam out toward the mighty planet. It was now an enormous full moon, almost five degrees in apparent diameter. Its visible surface and expanse of what they knew to be billowing cloud, shining brilliantly white in the pale sunlight, broken only by a dark equatorial band. Those rings were such a gorgeous spectacle a little while ago, Nadia mourned. It's a shame that Titan has to be right in their plane, isn't it? Think of living this close to one of the most wonderful sights in the solar system, and never being able to see it. Think they know what they're missing, Steve? We'll have to ask Barkovis, Stevens replied. He swung the communicator beam back toward Titan, and Nadia shuddered. Oh, it's hideous, she exclaimed. I thought that it would improve as we got closer, but the plainer we can see it, the worse it gets. Just to think of human beings, even such cold-blooded ones as those over there, living upon such a horrible moon and liking it, gives me the blue shivers. It's pretty bleak, no fooling, he admitted, and peered through the eyepiece of the Vizieré telescope, studying minutely the forbidding surface of the satellite they were so rapidly approaching. Larger and larger it loomed, a cratered jagged globe of desolation indescribable, of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable, of stark, sharp contrasts, gigantic craters in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every lofty object cast a sharply outlined shade of impenetrable blackness, beside which the weak light of the sun became a dazzling glare. The ground was either a brilliant white or an intense black, unreleaved by halftones. I can't hand it much either, Nadia, but it's all in the way you've been brought up, you know. This is home to them, and just a look at Telus would give them the pip. Ha! Here's something you'll like, even if it does look so cold that it makes me feel like hugging a couple of heater coils. It's Barcovis City, the one we're heading for, I think. It's close enough now so that we can get it on the plate. And he set the communicator beam upon the metropolis of Titan. Why, I don't see a thing, Steve. Where and what is it? They were dropping vertically downward toward the center of a vast plain of white, featureless and desolate, and Nadia stared in disappointment. You'll see it directly. It's too good to spoil by telling you what to look for. Or wha—oh, there it is, she cried. It is beautiful, Steve, but how frightfully, utterly cold! A flash of prismatic color had caught the girl's eye, and one transparent structure thus revealed to her sight, there had burst into view a city of crystal. Low buildings of hexagonal shape, arranged in irregularly variant hexagonal patterns, extended mile upon mile. From the roofs of the structures Lacy Spire soared heavenward, interconnected by long, slim cantilever bridges whose prodigious spans seemed out of all proportion to the gossamer delicacy of their construction. Building spires and bridges formed fantastic geometric designs, at which Nadia exclaimed in delight. I've just thought of what that reminds me of. It's snowflakes. Sure, I knew it was something familiar. Snowflakes, no two are ever exactly alike, and yet every one is symmetrical and hexagonal. We're going to land on the public square. See the crowds? Let's put on our suits and go out. The forlorn hope lay in a hexagonal park, and near it the titanium globe had also come to rest. All about the little plot towered the glittering buildings of crystal, and in its center played a fountain, a series of clear and sparkling cascades of liquid jewels. Underfoot there spread a thick, soft carpet of whitely brilliant vegetation. Therongs of the grotesque citizens of Titania were massed to greet the spaceships. Therongs clustering close about the globular vessel, but maintaining a respectful distance from the fiercely radiant terrestrial wedge. All were shouting greetings and congratulations, shouts which Stevens found as intelligible as his own native tongue. Why, I can understand every word they say, Steve, Nadia exclaimed in surprise. How come, do you suppose? I can, too. Don't know, must be from using that thought telephone of theirs so much, I guess. Here comes Barkovis, I'll ask him. The titanium commander had been in earnest conversation with a group of fellow creatures and was now walking toward the terrestrials, carrying the multiple headsets. Placing them upon the white sword he backed away, motioning the two visitors to pick them up. It may not be necessary, Barkovis, Stevens said, slowly and clearly. We do not know why, but we can understand what your people are saying, and it may be that you can now understand us. Oh, yes, I can understand your English perfectly. A surprising development, but perhaps, after all, one that should have been expected from the very nature of the device we have been using. I wanted to tell you that I have just received grave news, which makes it impossible for us to help you immediately, as I promised. While we were gone, one of our two power plants upon Saturn failed. In consequence, Titan's power has been cut to a minimum, since maintaining our beam at that great distance required a large fraction of the output of the other plant. Because of this lack, the Sedlor walls were weakened to such a point that in spite of the Guardian's assurances I think trouble is inevitable. In all events it is of the utmost importance that we begin repairing the damaged unit, for that is to be a task indeed. Yes, it will take time, agreed Stevens, remembering what the Titanian Captain had told him concerning the construction of those plants, generators which had been in continuous and automatic operation for thousands of Saturnian years. It will take more than time, it will take lives, replied Barkovis gravely. Scores, perhaps hundreds of us, will never again breathe the clear, pure air of Titan. In spite of all precaution and all possible bracing and insulation, man after man after man will be crushed by his own weight, volatilized by the awful heat, poisoned by the foul atmosphere, or will burst into unthinkable flames at the touch of some flying spark from the inconceivably hot metals with which we shall have to work. A horrible fate, but we shall not lack for volunteers. Sure not, and of course you yourself would go, and I never thought of the effect a spark would have on you. Your tissues would probably be wildly inflammable. But say, I just had a thought. Just how hot is the air at those plants, and just what is the actual pressure? According to the records the temperature is some 40 of your centigrade degrees above the melting point of water, and the pressure is not far short of two of your meters of mercury. I find it almost impossible to think of mercury as a liquid, however. You find it impossible since you use it as a metal, for wires and coils and so on. But plus 40, while pretty warm, isn't impossible by any means. And we could stand double our air pressure for quite a while. Both my partner and I are pretty fair mechanics, and we've got quite a line of machine tools, such as you could not possibly have here. We'll give it a whirl, since we owe you something already. Lead us to it, Ace. But wait a minute, we can't see through the fog, so we couldn't find the plants, and probably your wiring diagrams would explode if I touched them. I never thought of your helping us, mused Barcovis. The idea of any living being existing in that inferno has always been unthinkable, but the difficulties you mention are slight. We have already built in our vessel communicators similar to yours and radio sets. With these we can guide you and explain the plants to you as you work, and our tractor beams will be of assistance to you in moving heavy objects, even at such distances from the surface as we Titanians shall have to maintain. If you will set out a flask of your atmosphere, we will analyze it, for the thought has come to me that, perhaps, being planet dwellers yourselves, the air of Saturn might not be as poisonous to you as it is to us. That's a thought, too, and the news broadcast, and it was not long until the two ships leaped into the air, to the accompaniment of the cheers and plaudits of a watching multitude. In a wide curve they sped towards Saturn, passing so close to the enormous rings that the individual meteoric fragments could almost be seen with the unaided eye. They flashed on and on, slowing down long before they approached the upper surface of the envelope of cloud. The spherical spaceships stopped, and Stevens, staring into his useless screen, drove the forlorn hope downward, mile after mile, solely under Barcovis' direction, changing course and power from time to time as the Titanian's voice came from the speaker at his elbow. Slower and slower became the descent until finally, almost upon the broad, flat roof of the power plant, Stevens saw it in his plate. Breathing deeply in relief, he dropped quickly down upon a flat pavement, neutralized his controls, and turned to Nadia. Well, old golf-shootist, we're here at last. Now we'll go out and see what's gone screwy with the works. Remember that the gravity is about double normal here and conduct yourself accordingly. But it's supposed to be only about nine-tenths, she objected. That's at the outer surface of the atmosphere, he replied, and it's some atmosphere, not like the thin layer we've got on Tellis. They went into the airlock and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his helmet wide. Nadia followed suit, and the man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in disgust as two faint but unmistakable odors smote her olfactory nerves. I never cared particularly for hydrogen sulfide and sulfide dioxide, either, he assured her. But they aren't strong enough to hurt us in the short time we'll be here. Those titanium chemists know their stuff, though. He opened the outer valve slowly, then opened the door and they stepped down upon the smooth, solid floor, which Stevens examined carefully. I thought so, from his story. Solid platinum. This whole planet is built of platinum, iridium, and noble alloys. The only substance is known that will literally last forever. Believe me, ace of my bosom, I don't wonder that it cost them lives to build it, with their conditions I don't see how they ever got it built at all. Before them rose an immense, flat-topped cone of metal, upon the top of which was situated the power-plant. Twelve massive pillars supported a flat roof, but permitted the air to circulate freely throughout the one great room which housed the machinery. They climbed a flight of stairs, passed between two pillars, and stared about them. There was no noise, no motion. There was nothing that could move. Twelve enormous masses of metallic checkerwork, covered with wide cooling fins, almost filled the vast hall. From the center of each mass great leads extended out into a clear space in the middle of the room. They're united in mid-air to form one enormous bus-bar. This bar, thicker than a man's body, had originally curved upward to the base of an immense parabolic structure of lattice bars. Now, however, it was broken in mid-span, and the two ends bent toward the floor. Above their heads a jagged hole gaped in the heavy metal of the roof, and a similar hole had been torn in the floor. The bar had been broken, and these holes had been made by some heavy body, probably a meteorite, falling with terrific velocity. This is it, all right. Stephen spoke to distant Barcovis. Sure there's nothing on this beam? If it should be hot, and I should short-circuit or bridge it with my body, it would be just too bad. We have made sure that nothing is connected to it, the titanium assured him. Do you think you can do anything? Absolutely. We've got jacks that'll bend heavier stuff than that, and after we get it straightened the welding will be easy. But I'll have to have some metal. Shall I cut a piece off the pavement outside? That will not be necessary. You will find ample stores of space metal piled at the base of each pillar. All X. Now we'll get the jack, Nadia. And they went back to their vessel, finding that upon Saturn their combined strength was barely sufficient to drag the heavy tool along the floor. Stand aside, please. We will place it for you. A calm voice sounded in their ears, and a pale blue tractor-beam picked the massive jack lightly from the floor, and as lightly, lifted into its place beneath the broken bus-bar, and held it there while Stevens piled blocks and plates of platinum beneath its base. Well, here's where I peeled down as far as the law allows. This is going to be real work, girl. No fooling. It'd help a lot if this outfit were sending out a few thousand kilofranks instead of standing idle. How would that help? It's a heat engine. You know, works by absorbing heat. The cold air sinks. I imagine it pretty nearly blows a gale down the side of this cone when it's working. And hot air rushes in to take its place. I could use a little cool breeze right now. And Stevens, stripped to the waist, bent to the lever of the powerful hydraulic jack. Beads of sweat gathered upon his broad back, uniting to form tiny rivulets, and the girl became highly concerned about him. Let me help you, Steve. I'm pretty husky, too, you know. Sure you are, Ace, but this is a job for a truck-horse, not a tenderly nurtured maiden of the upper classes. You can help, though, by breaking out that welding outfit and getting it ready while I'm doing this bending to prepare for the welding. Under the urge of that mighty jack the ends of the broken bus-bar rose into place, while far off in space the Titanians clustered about their visoray screens, watching, in almost unbelieving amazement, the supernatural being who labored in that reeking inferno of heat and poisonous vapor, who labored almost naked and entirely unprotected, refreshing himself from time to time with drafts of molten water. All ex-Barkovis! That's high, I guess! Stevens flipped perspiration from his hot forehead with a wet finger and straightened his weary back. Now you can put this jack away where we had it. Then you might trundle me over enough of that spare metal to fill up this hole, and I'll put on my suit and goggles and practice welding on this floor and the roof to get the feel of the metal before I tackle the bar. The hole in the floor was filled with scrap, and soon sparks were flying wildly as the searing beam of Stevens' welding projector bit viciously into the stubborn alloy of noble metals, fashioning a smooth solid floor where the yawning aperture had been. Then, lifted with his tools and plates to the roof, the man repaired that hole also. Now I know enough about it to do a good job on the bar, he decided, and brick after brick of alloy was fused into the crack, until only a smoothly rounded bulge betrayed that a break had ever existed in that mighty rod of metal. Give him the signal to draw power and see if that's all that was the matter, Stevens instructed, as he relaxed in the grateful coolness of their control room. Phew! That was a warm job, Nadia, and this air of ours does smell good. It was a horrible job, and I'm glad it's done, she declared. But say, Steve, that thing looks as little like a power plant as anything I can imagine. How does it work? You said that it worked on heat, but I don't quite see how. But don't draw diagrams, and please don't integrate. No ordinary plant, such as we use, could run for centuries without attention, he replied. This is a highly advanced heat engine, something like a thermocouple, you know. This whole thing is simply the hot end, connected to the cold end on Titan by a beam instead of wires. When it's working, this metal must cool off something fierce. That's what the checker work and fins are for, so that it can absorb the maximum amount of heat from the current of hot, moist air I spoke about. It's a sweet system. We'll have to rig up one between Telus and the Moon. Or, even between the equator and the Arctic Circle, there'd be enough thermal differential to give us a million kilofranks. We haven't got the all X signal yet, but it's working. Look at it sweat as it cools down. I'll say it's sweating. The water is simply streaming off it. In their plate they saw that moisture was already beginning to condense upon the heat absorber, moisture running down the fins in streams and creeping over the dull metal floor in sluggish sheets, moisture which, turning into ice in the colder interior of the checker work, again became fluid at the inrush of hot, wet Saturnian air. There's the signal. All X Barcovas? By the way, it's condensing water. It seems to be functioning again. Perfect! came the Titanian's enthusiastic reply. You, too, planet dwellers have done more in three short hours than the entire force of Titan could have accomplished in months. You have earned, and shall receive, the highest. As you were, ace, Stevens interrupted, embarrassed. This job was just like shooting fish down a well for us. Since you saved our lives, we owe you a lot yet. We're coming out, straight up. The forlorn hope shot upward, through mile after mile of steaming fog, until at last she broke through into the light clear outer atmosphere. Stevens located the Titanian spaceship, and the two vessels, once more hurtling together through the ether toward Titan, he turned to his companion. Take the controls, will you, Nadia? Think I'll finish up the tube. I brought along a piece of platinum from the power plant, and something that I think is tantalum, from Barcova's description of it. With those, and the fractions we melted out, I think I can make everything we'll need. Now that he had comparatively pure metal with which to work, drawing the leads and filaments was relatively a simple task. Working over the hot bench with torch and welding projector, he made short work of running the leads through the almost plastic glass of the great tube, and of sealing them in place. The plates and grids presented more serious problems, but they were solved, and long before Titan was reached, the tube was out in space, supported by a Titanian tractor beam between the two vessels. Stevens came into the shop, holding a modified MacLeod gauge which he had just taken from the interior of the tube. When it had come to equilibrium, he read it carefully, and yelled, Eureka, little fellow! She's down to where I can't read it, even on this big gauge. So hard that it won't need flashing. Harder than any vacuum I ever got on Telus, even with a road-bush, maholic super-pump. But how about occluded and absorbed gas in the filaments and so on when they heat up? demanded Nadia practically. All gone, ace! I outgassed them plenty out there, seven times, almost to fusion. There isn't enough gas left in the whole thing to make a deep breath for a microbe. He took up his welding projector, and a beam carried him back to the tube. There, in the practically absolute vacuum of space, the last openings in the glass were sealed, and man and great transmitting tube were wafted lightly back into the terrestrial cruiser. Hour after hour mirrored Titanian sphere and crude-fashioned terrestrial wedge bore serenely on through space, and it was not until Titan loomed large beneath them that the calm was broken by an insistent call from Titan to the sphere. Barkodar, attention! Barkodar, attention! screamed from the speakers, and they heard Barkovis acknowledge the call. The Sedlor have broken through and are marching upon Titania. The order has gone out for immediate mobilization of every unit. There's that word, Sedlor, again. What are they anyway, Steve? Demanded Nadia. I don't know. I was going to ask him when he sprung it on his first, but he was pretty busy then, and I haven't thought of it since. Something pretty serious, though. They've jumped their acceleration almost to Tullurian gravity, and none of them can live through much of that. Tullurians, came the voice of Barkovis from the speaker. We have just— All X, we were on your wave and heard it, interrupted Stevens. We're with you. What are those Sedlor, anyway? Maybe we can help you dope out something. Perhaps, but whatever you do, do not use your heat projector. That would start a conflagration raging over the whole country, and we shall have enough to do without fighting fire. But it may be that you have other weapons of which we are ignorant, and I can use a little time in explanation before we arrive. The Sedlor are a form of life, something like your— He paused, searching through his scanty store of earthly knowledge, then went on doubtfully. Perhaps something like your insects. They developed a sort of intelligence, and because of their fecundity, adapted themselves to their environment as readily as did man, and for ages they threatened man's supremacy upon Titan. They devoured vegetation, crops, animals, and mankind. After a worldwide campaign, however, they were finally exterminated, save in the neighborhood of one great volcanic crater, which they so honeycombed that it is almost impregnable. All around that district we have erected barriers of force, maintained by a corps of men known as Guardians of the Sedlor. These barriers extend so far into the ground and so high into the air that the Sedlor can neither burrow beneath them nor fly over them. They were being advanced as rapidly as possible, and in a few more years the insects would have been destroyed completely, but now they are again at large. They have probably developed an armor or a natural resistance greater than the Guardians thought possible, so that when the walls were weakened they came through in their millions, underground, and undetected. They are now attacking our nearest city, the one you know, and which you have called Titania. What do you use, those high explosive bombs? The bombs were developed principally for use against them, but proved worse than useless, for we found that when a Sedlor was blown to pieces, each piece forthwith developed into a new, complete creature. Our most efficient weapons are our heat rays, not yours, remember, and poison gas. I must prepare our arms. Would our heat ray actually set them afire, Steve? Nadia asked, as the plate went blank. I'll say it would. I'll show you what heat means to them, showing you will be plainer than any amount of explanation. And he shot the visor a beam down toward the city of Titania, into a low-lying building it went, and Nadia saw a Titanian foundry in full operation. Men clad in asbestos armour were charging, tending, and tapping great electric furnaces and crucibles. Shrinking back and turning their armoured heads away as the hissing, smoking melt crackled into moulds from their long handled ladles. Nadia studied the foundry for a moment, interested, but unimpressed. Of course it's hot there, foundries always are hot, she argued. Yes, but you haven't got the idea yet. Stevens turned again to the controls, following the sphere toward what was evidently a line of battle. That stuff that they are melting and casting, and that is so hot, is not metal, but ice. Remember that the vital fluid of all life here, animal and vegetable, corresponding to our water, is probably more inflammable than gasoline. If they can't work on ice water without wearing suits of five plyosbestos, what would a real heat ray do to them? It'd be about like our taking a dive into the sun. Ice, she exclaimed. Oh, of course, but you couldn't really believe a thing like that without seeing it, could you? Oh, Steve, how utterly horrible! The barcodar had dropped down into a line of sister-ships, and had gone into action in mid-air against a veritable swarm of foes. Winged centipedes they were, centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselves along the ground and through the air in furious hordes. From the flying globes emanated pale beams of force, at the touch of which the said Lord disappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground huge tractors and trucks, manned by massed soldiery, mounted mighty reflectors projecting the same lethal beam. From globes and tanks there sounded a drumming roar, and small capsules broke in thousands among the foe, emitting a red cloud of gas in which the centipedes shriveled and died. But for each one that was destroyed two came up from holes in the ground, and the battle-line fell back toward Titania, back toward a long line of derrick-like structures which were sinking force-rods into the ground in furious haste. Stevens flashed on his ultraviolet projector and swung it into the thickest ranks of the enemy. In the beam many of the monsters died, but the terrestrial ray was impotent compared with the weapons of the Titanians, and Stevens, snapping off the beam with a bitter implication, shot the visoray out toward the bare black cone of the extinct volcano and studied it with care. Barcovus, I've got a thought, he snapped into the microphone. Their stronghold is in that mountain, and there's millions of them in there yet, coming out along their tunnels. They've got all the vegetation eaten away for miles, so there's nothing much left there to spread a fire if I go to work on that hill, and I'll probably melt enough water to put out most of the fires I start. Detail me a couple of ships to drop your fire-foam bombs on any little blazes that may spread, and I'll give them so much to worry about at home that they'll forget all about Titania. The forlorn hope darted toward the crater, followed closely by two of the dazzling globes. They circled the mountain until Stevens found a favorable point of attack, a stupendous vertical cliff of mingled rock and crystal, upon the base of which he trained his terrific infrared projector. I'm going to draw a lot of power, he warned the Titanians then. I'm giving this gun everything she'll take. He drove the massive switches in, and as that dull red beam struck the cliff's base, there was made evident the awful effect of a concentrated beam of real and pure heat upon such an utterly frigid world. Vast columns of fire roared aloft, helping Stevens, melting and destroying the very ground as the bodies of the sedlor in that gigantic ant-heap burst into flames. Clouds of superheated steam roared upward, condensing into a hot rain which descended in destructive torrents upon the fastnesses of the centipedes. As the raging beam ate deeper and deeper into the base of the cliff, the mountain itself began to disintegrate, block after gigantic block breaking off and crashing down into the flaming, boiling, seething cauldron which was the apex of that ravining beam. Hour after hour Stevens drove his intolerable weapon into the great mountain, teeming with sedlorian life, and hour after hour a group of Titanians fear stood by, delusing the surrounding plain with a flood of heavy fumes, through which the holocaust could not spread for lack of oxygen. Not until the mountain was gone, not until in its dead there lay a furiously boiling lake, its flaming surface hundreds of feet below the level of the plain, did Stevens open his power-circuits and point the deformed prow of the forlorn hope toward Titania.