Alan E. Nourse (3 page)

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

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

Colonel
Benedict looked up sharply.
"Scholarship winners?"

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

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

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

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

"Well, you don't sound
very proud!"

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

"Dad, what's
wrong?"

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

o
      
ft
     
*
     
ft
     
*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They're important
mines, son."

"How could six lousy
mines be so important?"

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

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

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

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

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

Tuck watched him for a moment. Then he said,

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

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

_{Chapter
2
 
utter}

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

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

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

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

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

"But they keep the mines going,"
the Colonel interposed quietly, "and I have to see that nothing interferes
with the mining. If they want to brawl among themselves, that's up to them. But
the mines must keep going."

"Just what kind of
'trouble' is there?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But is it something
serious?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And
they had used
his
name
to booby-trap his own father! The Colonel wouldn't even have had a
chance. Angrily, Tuck snatched up the telephone, started to dial Police
Headquarters; then quite suddenly he set the receiver down again. Someone was
trying to kill his father. There was no other conclusion possible.
Someone who hated him enough, or feared him enough, to use a
vicious trick like that.
Someone had filled the envelope with a
Murexide
plate, rigged the opener-tab to detonate it, and
mailed the letter with Tuck's own name on the return, to make sure the Colonel
would open it quickly. Someone had known that the Colonel would be home, that
he would be leaving again soon. Someone had known everything, except the single
fact that Tuck would be home that night. His father had said that the trouble
on Titan was nothing dangerous, nothing but a few rumors, a little unpleasant
talk. But the assassin had meant to see that the Colonel never boarded the
rocket-Tuck sat thinking for a long time. The police would have little to
offer, for the Colonel would be leaving in just a day, and then all the police
in the world wouldn't be able to help
hirn
. And his
father
couldn't
realize the danger—he would
never have offered to take Tuck with him if he had. And yet, before he even
left Earth there had been an attack on his life, carefully planned. What might
happen on the rocket, on Titan itself?

A
moment later Tuck was on the telephone, waiting for the operator to locate
Colonel Benedict, somewhere in the Security Commission conference rooms. At
last he heard his father's voice, and he tried frantically to keep his own
voice level, to keep his words from choking.
"I
've been thinking about the trip, Dad,"
he said. "When did you say your rocket was leaving?"