IT was the evil spawn of lifeless space,
drifting aimlessly until ITs sinister
birthing place should come. And finding
that abode for life, IT grew, sucking
energy from Terra itself--gathering
strength for that time when all should
flee before ITs malign wrath.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_Out of the darkness It came. Out of the grim, bleak, frore,
incalculable depths of outer space, into the empire of light and
warmth ... and life._
_It was like nothing known to Man. It was round, but not quite round;
It was hard, but not altogether hard; It was cold, but not cold with
the terrible, utter iciness of things which come from Beyond. It was in
motion but It did not move of Its own volition, for It was quiescent,
insensate. It let Itself be carried by the vagrant and unpredictable
whims of a kinetic universe, confident that in a day ... or a
century ... or a thousand, thousand centuries ... the fitful fingers of
chance would find for It a bourne, a resting-place._
_Out of the night It came ... the endless, inpenetrable night which
spans the void between star and star. Out of one cosmos into another;
out of oblivion into waking horror._
_No eye beheld Its coming. None saw Its faint, thin, cool iridescence;
no voice lifted to challenge Its arrival on the sixth satellite of the
sixth solar planet. It dropped to earth unwatched, rolled a brief,
sluggish way, then rested in a deep, soft, sandy pit._
_A gray hoar-frost rimed Its surface as the warmth of a friendly orb
dispelled the frightful chill of space; a pale mist rose from Its
petroid carapace and trembled into the air like a wan and restless
ghost._
_It had found a home, a lair, a birthing-place. With a slow, ecstatic,
burrowing motion It dug Itself still deeper into the nourishing sands.
It had arrived. It grew...._
I
"A dangerous place," said the heavy man with ominous deliberation. "A
most dangerous place!" He raised his glass to his nostrils, passed it
back and forth appreciatively, and rolled a single drop of the liqueur
upon his tongue. A smile creased his full, red lips. "Excellent, my
dear Captain!" he approved. "A most superior brandy. Allow me to
congratulate you. Domrémy-Thol '98, I should judge?"
Captain Burke, skipper of the IPS space-cruiser _Gaea_, basked in the
sunshine of his passenger's approbation.
He swirled the liquor in his frosted glass, glanced about the table
with a self-satisfied complacency that was almost ludicrous. Then he
nodded his head slowly, acknowledging the compliment bestowed upon his
judgment in selecting the after-dinned liquor.
"Allow me," he corrected, "to congratulate you, sir, on a truly
magnificent palate. You have named the exact vine and season. But ...
danger? You spoke of danger?"
The connoisseur glanced at the young lady across the table and
permitted his eyebrows to arch significantly.
"Perhaps it would be better to abandon the subject," he suggested.
"After all, I do not wish to cause Miss Graham undue alarm--"
The girl laughed. She did not seem, noted young Dr. Roswell, occupant
of another seat at the captain's table, the least bit perturbed by
Grossman's shadowy hint of menace. On the contrary, her already vivid
features assumed new color at the scent of danger. Her gray-green
eyes brightened, a flush highlighted the natural golden beauty of her
cheeks; she bent forward interestedly.
"Please, Mister Grossman ... don't stop because of me. I want to learn
everything I can about Titan. It's going to be my home from now on, you
know. I'll learn sooner or later."
"Ye-e-es," acknowledged the heavy man grudgingly, "I suppose that is
true. Your father is Commandant of the Space Patrol post at New Boston,
isn't he? Hasn't _he_ warned you of the dangers you face in coming to
live with him?"
Again the girl laughed.
"Hardly! You see, he doesn't know I'm coming. He'd have conniption fits
if he knew I were aboard the _Gaea_. He's a lamb, really, but terribly
old-fashioned. 'Women belong on Earth,' you know ... that sort of
thing. He thinks I'm safe in a Terra boarding-school right now. If he
_dreamed_ I were less than an hour off Titan--well, I'm afraid he'd be
pale violet with anger."
"And," reproved Grossman sternly, "rightly so. Your father is a wise
man. Titan is no place for a girl of gentle breeding. It is a vile
and treacherous pest-hole. It should never have been opened to Earth
colonists!"
Rockingham Roswell coughed gently. The young savant was taller than any
man present, and but for the conservative cut of his clothing might
have looked his true weight, but he carried himself in such a way as
to seem more fragile than he really was. His lean, close-shaven cheeks
were pale, and his tow-colored hair was meticulously plastered to his
scalp. He wore thick-lensed, tortoise-shell glasses which he removed
and polished nervously as he spoke.
"In ... er ... in that case, Mister Grossman, it strikes me as a bit
odd that you should ... er ... have established business headquarters
on the satellite."
Grossman glanced sharply at the slender man, snapped impatiently,
"A business man cannot always pick and choose his locations, Doctor
Roswell. He must follow the path of empire as it leads. Since there are
Earthmen on Titan, someone must serve them. It is an obligation which
cannot be refused--"
"Er ... quite!" acknowledged Roswell confusedly. "Job of work to be
done ... noble noble sacrifice ... the white man's burden ... all that
sort of rot ... what?"
Unaccountably, Grossman flushed. "If you are trying to imply, sir," he
fumed, "that I have any ulterior motive in establishing a trading post
on Titan--"
"Oh, gracious, no! Nothing of the sort. I wouldn't presume to question
your ... er ... business acumen, Factor. I'm hardly the type, what?"
Roswell smiled a faint, thin, apologetic smile. "I mean I ... er ... I
really don't know much about this sort of thing ... if you know what I
mean...."
* * * * *
Captain Burke stared at the younger man impatiently. A spaceman
toughened in the crucible of action, he had little patience with
such learned young fops as this passenger. His words were polite, as
befitted the skipper of a luxury liner, but his tone was brushed with
acid.
"If you don't mind, Doctor Roswell, Factor Grossman was about to tell
us something about the hazards of Titan. Well, Mister Grossman?"
Grossman took another appreciative sip of his brandy, set down the
tulip-glass, and steepled his fingers.
"Well, the perils of Titan fall into several classes. Geographic,
physiological and racial. In the first place, it is a satellite
approximately the size of Earth's moon ... large enough to sustain
life, but small enough to be influenced by the perturbations not only
of its massive primary, which lies a scant seven hundred and sixty
thousand miles away, but also by the attractive forces of the Ring and
Saturn's eight _other_ satellites.
"Evidence of this is the peculiarity interwoven orbit trajectories of
Titan and its nearest sister, Hyperion, which sometimes approach each
other perilously close. Were Titan a sphere of pumaceous formation,
like Luna, it would long since have burst into a million fragments
under the impact of these conflicting forces. Fortunately, it is of a
basaltic nature, and consequently reasonably stable.
"More immediately hazardous are what might be called the physiological
dangers of Titan. These are multifold. To begin with, there is the
so-called 'water' of the orb--"
"I've read about that," nodded Captain Burke gravely. "Not water at
all, but--"
"But a deadly corrosive acid," finished the speaker, "yes! Happily, the
'seas' of Titan do not cover such a share of the planet's surface as do
those of Earth; if they did, no life--either flora or fauna--would ever
have developed upon the little world."
His heavy shoulders shivered.
"Still ... imagine frothing, tide-swept lakes as large as Lake Erie or
Victoria Nyanza splashing endlessly at shores until inch by inch and
foot by foot those beaches are eroded, rotted, eaten away by the action
of the fluid they contain! These are the 'oceans' of Titan. There are
four of them, fed by subterranean sources we have not yet discovered.
One day they will have completely devoured the parent planet, and Titan
will cease to be."
"But that day, of course," interposed the girl, "is a long way off. Is
this the only physiological danger?"
"There is one even _more_ dreadful. The T-radiation."
"T-radiation? What is that?"
Grossman smiled mirthlessly.
"Were I able to tell you, I should be a greater physicist than any who
have so far visited Titan. Dozens of the wisest have come, probed,
pondered, analyzed ... and left Titan none the wiser for their efforts.
Frankly, they do not know! The very name 'T-radiation' is an admission
of their failure. It is simply an abbreviation for 'Titan-radiation.'
It is an electro-magnetic or radioactive emanation lethal to
humans ... that is all they know about it."
Young Dr. Roswell wiped his spectacles carefully and interrupted,
"But ... er ... but surely, Factor, these physicists were able to
determine the wave-length of the radiation? Did that not tell them--?"
Grossman said bluntly, almost rudely, "The radiation lies in the
Hertzian range, Doctor Roswell. Does that knowledge help you any?
Perhaps now _you_ can tell us why these rays are deadly?"
* * * * *
Roswell flushed and faltered into silence. The girl glanced curiously
at Grossman.
"Hertzian range, Factor?"
"Electrical waves ranging between 1 m. and 1/10 c.m. in length, Miss
Graham. Their place is between the so-called 'short waves' of radio
transmission and the infra-red or heat waves. Their existence has been
known, theoretically, for at least two hundred years. But man has never
been able to find a reason, a place, or use for them. Nor have they
been found to occur freely in nature elsewhere than on Titan."
"And," asked Captain Burke, "you say these waves are deadly to humans?
But how, then, have our colonists managed to win and maintain a
foothold--"
"I should have said," admitted Grossman, "the waves are deadly to
_unshielded_ humans. Lead sheathing protects the wearer from harm;
consequently men in bulgers are quite safe. And one of the first acts
of the Solar Space Patrolmen, upon reaching Titan, was to project
a series of leaden highways or avenues between the cities of the
satellite. Upon these, and _only_ upon these, may Earthmen travel
unprotected by bulgers. To stray from one of these roadbeds means
exposure to the T-radiation. And that, in turn, means death!"
Rockingham Roswell shuddered delicately. "Beastly!" he murmured.
"Deuced unpleasant sort of place, what? But, I say ... how about the
natives? How did they manage to survive before our countrymen built
those jolly old lead roadways?"
Grossman pursed his lips impatiently at the affected young scholar.
"They, Doctor Roswell," he said scornfully, "are immune to the
T-radiation. Certainly you are acquainted with the principles of
selective breeding?"
"Selective--oh, yes! Survival of the fittest ... all that
fiddle-di-diddle? You mean the present Titanians _are_ the present
Titanians simply because they adapted their physiques to the
surroundings, eh? Why, rather! That's clear enough. Still, if they can
stand the radiation, I don't see why other humans--"
"Other _humans_!" Grossman laughed curtly. "My dear Doctor, it is
obvious you have never seen a Titanian. Human, indeed! Why, it is the
dissimilarity between the Titanians and ourselves which led me to name
racial divergence as among the hazards of life on Titan.
"The creatures who rule Titan look less like humans than like those
monsters deranged and alcoholic patients see in their dreams. For some
reason--possibly because of this mysterious T-radiation--the denizens
of the world have never bred true. Consequently, there is no way of
foretelling what the child of any two parents may resemble ... though
one almost certain guess is that it will resemble neither parent.
"Bilateral symmetry is about the only constant human attribute to
be found amongst the Titanians. That and a more or less rudimentary
intelligence ... an instinct which is more akin to animal cunning than
to intellect.
"Some Titanians walk erect on their hind legs. Some crawl on all fours
or squirm on their bellies. Some resemble the humanoid races of our
planet, or Mars, or Venus. Others look like obscene jungle beasts,
ghouls, fabulous monsters.
"I have seen Titanians whose leprous flesh covered bones have no
counterpart in the human skeleton ... others with no faces at all, as
we know the meaning of the word ... others who grope blindly along on
tactile tentacles, 'seeing' with foot-long tongues, 'hearing' through
their fingertips.
"Some there are who look like gigantic, crimson ants; others inch
their way along the streets like hideous, mangled slugs; while yet
again--astonishingly--you may chance upon a Titanian not only similar
in appearance to Earthmen, but as clever and quick in thought as any
terrestrial."
Grossman paused, nodding significantly. "These," he said, "are the most
dangerous of all."
"And--" breathed Lynn Graham--"the nature of this danger, Mister
Grossman? Attack, perhaps?"
"Attack!" The trading-post factor laughed brusquely, harshly. "A mild
word for it. Extermination! The Titanians hate interlopers on their
world--_particularly_ Earthmen--with a smoldering, implacable hatred
inconceivable to a civilized mind. Had they their will, they would hunt
down every Earthman and slaughter him with the most horrible tortures
their warped and twisted minds can devise.
"Your father, Miss Graham--" Grossman bent forward across the table to
lend emphasis to his warning--"maintains a post on Titan by sufference
only. Because the natives have not the strength nor the weapons with
which to rebel. But if ever the day dawns when they find such strength
or weapons--" Grossman drew a deep breath and shook his head--"Then ...
Lord help all like us who dwell on Titan!"