The Secret of Saturn’s Rings (16 page)

It was only the warning that another tube was in motion. When Arpad looked again to the outside, the signal had vanished. Finally he turned away and bent to his task of watching the steady flow of the engine.

The ship moved ever faster. Garcia, tense, piled on speed, his eye on the clock. He had never driven a space ship of this size entirely under his own direction before, and he wanted to keep the risks down. The fear that he might make deadly mistakes haunted him and he took the ship off the ground, over the mountaintops and into the interplanetary void.

Bruce and his father watched tensely. The space ship was moving across the plain and gathering speed. They were approaching it from the rear and, unless their emergency rocket had been seen, they would not be noticed. The ship lifted off the ground, started to rise steeply upward to clear the tops of mountain rims.

‘‘Oh, no!” Bruce exclaimed. “No! Not after all this!” But Garcia and Benz in the ship could not hear him. There are no moments in space travel as attention consuming as the take-off and the landing. Right now, having failed to spot the little puff of the rocket signal's explosion, their attention was concentrated on the controls and the engines. As the two Rhodeses watched, the ship moved faster and faster, and within a matter of seconds vanished from view into the black airlessness of the sky.

Their little boat swooped down for a landing near the spot the ship had just vacated. Neither father nor son said a word as they skidded to a stop. Both felt a deep empty feeling, felt as acrobats would feel when suddenly the cushioning net is withdrawn.

For a little while they just sat there in their seats, exhausted, feeling let down, unwilling to organize their thoughts. Bruce finally twisted in the cramped seat, looked around. He nudged his father. “They’ve left the tent up,” he said.

Dr. Rhodes looked to where Bruce’s finger was pointing. “Hmm,” he mused, “maybe they mean to return then?”

Bruce had a suspicion that they had been marooned permanently, but he could not allow himself to voice it. “Yes,” he said, “we should have realized they would not abandon us. Maybe they are going to the rings themselves to try to locate us?”

The older man nodded. “Perhaps; we can only hope that some such thing is the case. Let’s go and see if they have left any supplies for us in the tent.”

Shutting their helmets tight again, they slid back the cockpit panel and hoisted themselves wearily out of the little space boat. As they moved toward the airtight plastic tent, Bruce felt the stiffness of his muscles, the body-tiring ache of the long hours without sleep, without proper exercise or good air. They reached the tent, unzipped the side opening, and entered.

Sure enough, there were several cases of condensed food, a cask of water and a portable purifier, and three long tubes of oxygen. The radio had been removed, though a few tools still remained.

“If they planned to return, why did they take the radio?” asked Bruce suddenly.

His father shrugged. “Let’s not think about it now,” he remarked. “Let’s get some food and rest first. We are in no condition to tackle the problems ahead of us. When we’ve had some sleep, we can think this matter through.”

Suiting their actions to their words, they allowed the air pressure in the tent to build up a bit, opened their helmets, and gulped down a meal. Next they spread themselves out as comfortably as they could on the hard rocky floor, and before they knew it they were both in deep sleep.

To Garcia’s surprise the ship made speedier timing than his calculations had called for. They made their take-off from Mimas without any trouble—and also without ever noticing the tiny space boat that came down from the direction of the ever-glowing rings. Headed as they were away from Saturn, they had not thought to look back. Garcia was intent over his dials and over the controls that directed their ship. Benz in the engine room was concentrating on the readings, unwilling to allow his mind to rove elsewhere.

By the time they had cleared the weak gravity field of Mimas and were accelerating to break free of the great field of Saturn itself, it was apparent that the ship was making better time and gaining speed faster than Garcia had figured. He watched the readings with wrinkled brow, wondering whether he had not been too hasty, whether he should not have waited just a few hours longer.

He voiced his thoughts to Benz over the ship’s communication system. Arpad answered, “Wouldn’t your figures be off if the ship were lighter than you had estimated? Wouldn’t we then move faster?”

Garcia was silent a moment. “Yes,” he finally said, “you’re right. But . . .”

Arpad broke in. “But you had been figuring on Bruce and the doctor being with us. Wouldn’t that account for the error in your figures?”

“You’ve hit it,” Garcia said. “Of course I had counted on a load of four men, not two, and also on having at least one of the space boats aboard ship. This way we are considerably lighter than planned, and therefore we are making the trip much more easily. Perhaps we ought to go back?”

“Can we?” asked Arpad excitedly. “If we can, we should!”

But then Garcia’s voice came again, “No, no. It would be impossible to turn back now. Suppose we found them? Then my old calculations would again be right, and with the heavier load we’d have, plus the delay of hours in starting and the lesser fuel reserve due to this start, we could never make it. We shall have to carry on now, whether we like it or not.”

There was silence on the ship as the two men pondered the unpleasant truth. They continued their acceleration, heading for Hidalgo somewhere in the black void beyond the Saturnian system.

Bruce woke up many hours later. For a moment, as he opened his eyes, he could not imagine where he was. Above him the thinly transparent plastic roof of the tent allowed some of the stars to shine through and the great glow in the heavens to cast its weird light on them. Bruce lay quietly for a moment, then turned over and got to his feet.

His father opened his eyes, looked at him. They smiled at each other. “Well, Bruce,” the gray-haired engineer said getting to his feet, “dawn of a new day. What’s for breakfast?”

Bruce laughed. “Powdered eggs, vitamin pills, and wheat concentrates, topped off with a nice cool glass of water, flavored slightly with chlorine and assorted chemicals. Tuck your napkin in and join me.”

They managed to keep their spirits up as they ate. Then, unable any longer to keep their minds off the main problem, they stood. “What now, Robinson Crusoe, Senior?” asked Bruce jokingly.

“Ha!” his father said. “That old shipwreck had it easy. He may have been marooned on a desert island. We are marooned on a desert world.” His face sobered up instantly. “Let’s face it, Bruce. We have only a few days here at best. We’ve got to figure out what little we can do in that time to justify our trip. I don’t see any way out.”

“Well,” Bruce said slowly, “surely there is something that we can do. If we have enough fuel in our little boat, maybe we can at least go to another moon and find frozen water and air there. Maybe we can make it to Titan. Even if the atmosphere is poisonous, perhaps we can distill something out of it to keep ourselves going until the UN can send another expedition?”

Dr. Rhodes shook his head. “In the first place, we simply don’t have the fuel. I doubt if the boat we have could even clear Mimas before it was empty. In the second place, it would probably be years before the UN got around to sending a new expedition. In the third place . . . well, maybe Titan would give us hope, but it’s so very unlikely that it’s no good to dream about it. We have to face it. We’re here on Mimas to stay.”

He walked around the little tent a bit. “As I see it, the only thing we can do now is to write down all our findings so that the next expedition will know. I think I shall do that in the time we have left.”

Bruce nodded slowly. “That is if there is an Earth left to send an expedition, if Terraluna is not stopped.”

Dr. Rhodes nodded silently, sat down at the little folding table and drew his notebook from his space-suit pocket. “I may as well start. Suppose you go out and do some more exploring. May as well make the most of it.”

Bruce watched his father, then sealed the helmet of his own suit, and, taking a couple of tools along to pry aside rocks and poke the ground, he unzipped the tent and quickly stepped out.

Outside, he started walking toward the site of the ancient ruins. As he walked he noticed a depression in the ground and realized that it marked the spot where the space ship had rested. Idly he walked over to the long shallow groove where the ship had slid to a stop and where its weight had gradually pressed the dust of the plain down.

Suddenly Bruce stopped, stared hard. It seemed to him that in the center of the shallow depression there was a slightly rounded bump that seemed to give off a metallic gleam.

Swiftly he made his way there. Sure enough, the ship had pressed away enough of the time-old dust to reveal something. Bruce knelt by it, pushed aside the gray dust with his hands and found himself brushing the top of what seemed like a metallic rounded surface.

Excitedly, he clicked on his helmet phone. “Dad!” he called sharply into it. “Come out here and see what I’ve found. Something very odd!”

His father answered, and in a few minutes Bruce saw the suited figure emerge from the tent and come in his direction. Bruce drew a small crowbar from his belt, one of the tools he had brought along, and tapped the side of the metal bump.

With his second blow, he got a reaction he had never expected. The bump moved! There was a grinding vibration in the ground. The round metal surface seemed to revolve slightly and then started to rise upward. Beneath Bruce’s feet the dust-caked plain started to push away, and the boy barely had time to jump widely to one side.

While his father ran to join him, Bruce stood and watched a metal cylinder rise from the ground. It came up in jerks, hesitantly, clumsily as if motivated by an uncertain and faulty mechanism. Higher and higher it rose, until it assumed the form of a cylindrical ball, several feet in diameter, rising into the air on six long metal stilts that continued to push up from the ground.

Now Dr. Rhodes joined Bruce and the two stood staring up as the mysterious globe rose a couple dozen yards above the surface. It came to a jerky stop, and the globe slowly revolved, moving within the framework of its stationary stilts.

“What is it?” gasped Bruce at last.

“Looks like a watchtower,” said Dr. Rhodes. “From the way it moves, I'd say it was automatic, and very, very old. Probably dates from the ancient city's day. I wonder what it was for?”

“I guess my poking around must have finally nudged its old triggering machinery,” Bruce said.

“That plus the fact that the space ship was sitting on top of it and holding it down,” his father added. “Look, its side is opening up!”

Bruce followed his father's pointing finger. Sure enough, a panel in the side of the metal globe was sliding open. As they watched, a short stubby snout poked through, and suddenly there was a puff of blue flame from its end, after which it receded, and the panel closed.

“Now what was that for?” murmured Dr. Rhodes. “Looked like a shot or a signal.”

Bruce took his eyes off the tower, gazed around. He gasped, grabbed his father's arm. “Look over there, in the mountains on the edge of the plain!”

There was a dust cloud hanging there, a glowing mushroom-shaped cloud that had no business in the airless void of Mimas. Where there had once been a jagged mountaintop, one of the chain on their close horizon, was now just a gap.

“It was an atomic shell!” Bruce yelled. “There’s an atomic cannon up there!”

“That would mean that the cannon was loaded long ago, that maybe the shot was accidentally triggered off,” suggested Bruce.

“I hope so,” said his father. “I can't believe there are beings still living here. I would rather say that this whole tower and gun were automatic, waiting here for countless ages for something to trip it off.” “Our space ship landing on top of it must have started it, and my banging on it afterward finished the job. Sure must have been old and stuck to have been so slow in reacting,” was Bruce’s comment.

Dr. Rhodes walked back to the place where the tower had emerged, was fingering one of the long metal stilts on which the ball housing the cannon was resting. “Yes, from the pitmarks in this metal, I would say it is a miracle that the whole thing has not long ago dissolved into dust. This structure must be as old as the city here, as old as the ruins in the rings!” Bruce looked at the aged-appearing metal rods and saw what was meant. There was no polish on the structure, every bit of the surface seemed pocked and darkened and dead-looking. He expressed this thought to his father, who replied:

“That’s true, Bruce. Back on Earth we know that metal can weaken from time, no matter how hard and how toughened. And in millions of years . . . well, see for yourself.”

Bruce now dropped to his knees and gazed into the space from where the structure had emerged. There was a hole in the ground, below that tower, a pit leading downward into darkness.

“What do you suppose is down there?” he said.

Dr. Rhodes looked down. “Let’s go and see. Get a rope from the tent.”

Bruce got to his feet, raced back. On the way, he said over his helmet phones, “It may be very dangerous. Suppose we find creatures down there, creatures that may be deadly?”

Dr. Rhodes’ voice came over his phone, “What have we got to lose?”

As Bruce scooped up the rope, his father’s remark recalled to him the desperateness of their position. But, down in that hole, underneath the surface, perhaps they might find something that would help them.