"We'll take that. You're the only one capable of repairing it. We'll
save them in spite of themselves. If we can."
Sparks said, "Aye, sir! Come on, Tommy. 'Tina." He started toward the
crashed skiff. Greg hesitated, feeling the desire to say something,
to make one final plea, not knowing what to say or how to say it,
restrained by the yet cold anger etched on his heart by Crystal's
scorn. Then he too turned to help. A strident voice halted him.
"Just a moment, young man!"
"Yes, Miss Andrews?"
Maud Andrews, Cuddles firmly cradled to her ample bosom, left her
brother's side and marched toward the life-skiff.
"Tell Sparks to make that a fifty-fifty division," she said. "There
will be five of us in the hills."
* * * * *
Enid Andrews bleated faintly. Crystal, still kneeling, stared at her
aunt incredulously. J. Foster Andrews vented his indignation in a
sudden, blustering roar. "Maud! Don't be a blasted idiot! Come back
here this minute!"
Maud Andrews continued to surge inexorably forward.
"I'm not," she grunted, "being an idiot! It's you who are, my dear,
fat, dimwitted brother! I'm a selfish, pampered old fool, but I
know common-sense when I hear it, and I know a man when I see one.
Furthermore, silly as you may think it, I have a ridiculous desire to
keep on living. I may have to _work_ to do that, and I'm not overly
fond of work, but if Mr. Malcolm will have me--?"
"Just plain 'Malcolm,' Miss Andrews," said Greg gravely, gratefully.
"And I'm happy you see it my way."
"Tut! I'm not doing you a favor, Malcolm! I'm just looking out for
myself, as I always do. Well, Sparks, don't stand there yawping like my
thick-pated brother! What can I do to help?"
She waddled away. Greg glanced hopefully at those still waiting,
immobile.
"Won't you--" he began, "Won't the rest of you--"
The eyes that met his were glacial. Bert Andrews, thick-lipped and
bridling, snarled disdain. "The hell with you, Malcolm! The sooner you
get out of here, the better!"
Greg said, "We'll let you know where to find us. If you should--should
need us, just call."
"We won't need you." That was Crystal, coldly.
"I hope you won't," said Greg. "I sincerely hope you won't...."
V
Sparks Hannigan came out grinning. He said, "This one looks like the
business, Greg. Plenty of room. Dry and warm. It's even got a natural
fluevent so's we can have a fireplace inside."
Greg nodded, pleased.
"Sounds good. I was beginning to think we'd never find a suitable cave.
This one's within easy reach of that spring, too; that solves the fresh
water problem. Well, we might as well get settled. Getting toward
evening."
'Tina glanced at the sky, surprised. "So soon? I didn't know it had
taken us so long. It seems as if only a few hours ago it was noon."
"It was," grinned Greg. "Titan's days are shorter than Earth's. Its
diameter is only about 3,000 miles. By Earth measurements you'd say
Titan had a sixteen hour day."
"And the 'day,'" grumbled Sparks, "ain't none too bright at that. On
account of we're so far from the Sun."
"You haven't seen the worst of it. Right now we're on the Sun side
of Saturn. We revolve about our primary once every 500-odd hours.
Since Saturn is so large, when we are to the lee of it, it eclipses
us entirely. So for about five days every Titan 'month' we suffer a
complete blackout.
"And that--" Greg sobered. "That is another reason the others should
dig into a good warm cave. It gets plenty cold during that eclipse
period. An open camp on an exposed plain--" He shook his head.
Maud Andrews said, "I can't understand why this satellite is habitable
at all. I was under the impression that Saturn is a frozen planet."
"It is. Its surface temperature is approximately 300° below zero,
Fahrenheit. But the warmth of its numerous satellites is one of the
astonishing discoveries made by the early space explorers, fifty
or sixty years ago. Scientists have not yet explained the matter
satisfactorily. Some say the tremendous mass of Saturn, the waves of
atmospherics set up by its swirling motion and the 'grindstone' of
its ring, form an electronic barrier-shield for the satellites. Still
others believe that frigid Saturn acts as a gigantic mirror or solar
reflector for its children."
"But Greg--" That was Tommy O'Doul. "Why ain't there any colonies
here if the climate's O.Q.? Men live on Venus, where it's hot as
billy-be-hanged, and on Uranus, which is nothing but a ball of ice, and
on a bunch of cold, airless asteroids--"
"Economics, Tommy. The simple, single dictator of mankind's every
venture. Venus has valuable vegetation, Uranus and the asteroids have
important metals that can't be duplicated in Earth's laboratories,
the asteroids have rare ore deposits. There is not--or at least there
has not as yet been discovered--anything native to Titan that cannot
be mined or made elsewhere more cheaply, more easily. Some day man's
ever-expanding frontiers will claim this satellite as a colony, too.
But now that the entire universe is open to man, the human race can
increase a millionfold and _still_ allow every soul more _lebensraum_
than he can possibly use."
Sparks Hannigan gazed at him admiringly.
"It's stoo-pendous!" he said.
"Titan? Not any more so than--"
"Not Titan. You. You know everything, don't you? Pal--" Sparks
shook his head. "I sure had you figgered wrong. I thought you was a
soft-soaping dope. So then you got us off the _Carefree_ onto the
skiff, cooled Breadon like a herring, declared yourself _It_ and made
us like it--"
Greg said, "Nonsense! I just happened to--Oh, nonsense! Shall we go
into our new home?" But he flushed.
By evening--Titan's short, grey shadowed evening, the only logical
unit of duration by which they could live so long as they remained
captive here--their new cave home began to take on some semblance of
lived-inness.
Vegetation was abundant on the hillsides. Sparks and Tommy had
gathered heaps of dry faggots while Greg built a crude stone fireplace
underneath the fluevent Sparks had reported; shortly thereafter the
women had a cheerful blaze crackling on the hearth, and mingled with
its grateful warmth was the odor of a savory stew, welcome scent to
the nostrils of five who had worked long and hard in gathering the
vegetables that had gone into that potage.
"Eat nothing," Greg had warned, "dig nothing that does not show signs
of having been eaten, dug or picked by wild animals. Later we can make
chemical analysis of dubious foods to determine their edibility. For
the present we will depend on the most certain test, the acceptance by
other flesh-and-blood creatures."
He had also permitted that a single can of bouillon concentrate be used
in the stew. "For flavoring. There is so little food in reserve that
we must save it against the cold, dark days when we can't get out to
gather supplies. Later on we'll have fresh meat."
He looked thoughtfully at Cuddles, sniffing, yapping excitedly by the
fireplace, and Maud Andrews, with a swift, maternal gesture, swept the
poodle into her arms and glared at him belligerently.
"Oh, no you don't! You'll eat _me_ first!"
"I wasn't thinking of that," said Greg indignantly. "I had something
else in mind. A poodle, eh? Hmmm!"
'Tina and young Tommy came into the cave, arms full of fresh and
fragrant ferns which they dumped beside a wall. Greg, glancing at
them, could not curb his astonishment at the overwhelmingly sudden
change that had come over 'Tina. During the _Carefree's_ cruise, during
the years he had worked for old J. Foster, he had seen the girl a
thousand times--but never, he discovered now, really _seen_ her before!
Always she had been a dim, dusty figure in the background. A foil for
the spoiled, immaculate perfection of Enid Andrews, the glittering,
heart-stopping beauty of Crystal.
Now, viewed as a woman and a comrade, he was aware that she was
lovely herself. Slim as a rush, and yielding-strong as that same wild
water-flower; dark-eyed; hair as the Martian midnight with live lights
glinting in it, too, as the stars glinted over the Martian deserts;
soft, white hands, graceful but capable--
But here! he thought, what nonsense was this? He had work to do. And
this was no time for weaving poetic cadences about a girl who was
practically a total stranger!
Now she laughed, gaily, her very laughter seeming to burst from a heart
happy with newfound freedom. And she said, "It was just as you said,
Greg. We found the ferns down by the spring. Did we bring enough of
them?"
Greg said, "Enough for tonight. They'll make comfortable beds. Later on
Sparks and I will build real beds for all of us. Thank goodness there
was a tool-chest on the skiff. You folks ready to eat?"
Hannigan lifted his nose from the fireplace.
"Ready! _I_ been ready for a half hour, and my stummick's been ready
for a week!"
And somehow it didn't seem at all surprising to Greg that Maud
Andrews should be the one who, sleeves rolled up, face flushed with
hearth-heat, warmth and good fellowship, seized the ladle, beat on the
side of the pot vigorously and bawled, in what was far from a wealthy
socialite's cultured tone, "Come and get it! Come and get it!"
* * * * *
So, somehow, the first day was over ... and the second day, too ...
and a week of Titan's sixteen hour days slid past so quickly that Greg
could not truly say where they had disappeared.
Duties, chores, at first chaotic became matters of mere routine as
one or another of the little band took them on his own shoulders.
Maud Andrews, who on the second day bluntly and surprisingly startled
everyone with the pronunciamento that henceforth there would be, "--no
more of this 'Miss Andrews' stuff; call me 'Aunt Maud'; I'm old enough
to have mothered every last one of you!", set herself up as cook, thus
freeing 'Tina to take care of the multitude of other household--or
cave-hold--duties. And an excellent cook she turned out to be,
performing miracles with the odd, variegated samples of produce brought
to her by the rest of the group.
Her once-aroused suspicion flared again when Greg casually requested,
one day, permission to take Cuddles for a little run in the woods. She
clucked to her pet, turned him over to Greg, but watchfully.
"I don't know what you have in mind, Greg Malcolm. But if you come back
here with any sinister looking pieces of meat and no Cuddles--"
"I'm hoping to come back," confessed Greg, "with both meat _and_
Cuddles. He's a poodle, isn't he? Well, he's always been a lap-dog
to you, but I have an idea maybe his heritage will overcome his
habits when I get him out into the woods. The poodle, in its earliest
beginnings, used to be a hunting dog, you know. It was bred and trained
especially for that purpose. Of course his nose may have been ruined by
being pampered, but--"
"My Cuddles," exclaimed Aunt Maud, "a hunting dog!" She looked
horrified.
Greg said slyly, "I hope so. He wouldn't be the first member of this
party to prove his true worth beneath a thin veneer of civilization."
Aunt Maud's cheeks were red, but it might have been the warmth of the
fire. And maybe the wood-smoke made her eyes shine like that, too. She
pushed Greg roughly.
"Oh, run along!" she ordered. "But mind you bring him back unchanged!"
"Okay, Auntie," Greg said.
Greg brought him back, but not unchanged. For the poodle had,
amazingly, reverted to type, once set on the trail of wild game. Greg
carried back to the dinner table two small creatures, one vaguely
resembling a squirrel, one definitely allied to the rabbit family,
plunked them proudly before his companions.
"Don't give me credit. It was the pup. He's a humdinger. You should
have seen him tree that squirrel--or whatever it is! And that
rabbit-thing--he went scrambling halfway down a warren after it! Didn't
you, Slewfoot?"
The dog yerped happily. Aunt Maud moaned.
"Slewfoot! Oh, my gracious! Cuddles, come here to momsy-womsy wight
away! Did nassy-mans call him--"
Cuddles made no move to obey. Greg whistled, and the dog looked up.
"Okay, Slewfoot. Go to momma!" And the dog pranced over to Aunt Maud.
Greg grinned. "I think he likes his new name better," he said.
Slewfoot yerped again in an ecstasy of approval.
* * * * *
And so, gradually, life became easier and smoother and happier for
the quintet of cave-dwellers. Beds took the place of piled ferns, the
woodpile towered toward the cave roof against the days of dark and cold
which, according to Greg's computations, might be expected within the
next week or so, food was varied and plentiful, and a needed food was
supplied when Tommy O'Doul marched triumphantly home with a bawling kid
in his arms.
Sparks glared at him.
"Hey, youngster, what did you tote that home for? We ain't got no room
for pets. And that thing ain't ripe to be et yet."
Tommy said, "I had to bring it. It was the only way I could make its
mom follow me. See?"
And sure enough, a few yards away, anxiously eying its captive
offspring, was a mother goat. Or something like a goat, anyway. Sparks
caught on them. A flying tackle and the camp had corraled its first
head of livestock. And from then on there was milk.
And there were songs in the evening, and card games and stories and
compensations for the long, hard tasks of the daytime. Sparks labored
on his radio set, though without too much hope. "Smashed to hell and
gone, Greg. The tubes is the wust part. I could jockey the wires
around. But glass--"
Greg looked thoughtful. "I wonder," he said. "I wonder? Well--do what
you can with the metallic parts."
So they waited and worked, and in some dim corner of their minds
continued to hope for the release which all in some vague fashion
expected might come "some day." And their camaraderie was great and
wholesome, but there was a single subject they never mentioned. The
other quintet on the plain below. From their hillside eyrie they
could see the other camp, but by common consent they made no effort to
approach Breadon's followers. They had offered assistance and it had
been refused. They could do nothing more, now, unless--
The unless came sooner than they expected. In the still of the night
it came in the dark, multi-mooned Saturnian night, when Greg and his
comrades were all asleep in their bunks.
Greg woke with a strained feeling that he could not at first identify.
He only knew, as a newly awakened sleeper dimly knows, that something
was amiss.
Then, as he listened, he heard it again. The sound of a firing rifle.
And the thin, muted whisper of a cry from the clearing below. A voice
lifted in dismay.
With a start he was on his feet.
"Sparks!"
Hannigan bounced from his blankets like a redheaded ball of rubber. He
was on his feet, scrubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, even
before he knew he was awake.
"Smatta? Whuzzup, Greg? Smatta?"
"Below!" roared Greg. "The party in the valley--they're in trouble of
some kind! Get your gun and come on!"