The Secret of Saturn’s Rings

by Donald A. Wollheim

  In the days to come—for aboard the ship they still continued to measure time by Earth’s twenty-four hours—Bruce learned to know the little world pretty well. They had a long stretch before them, and little enough to do after the initial period of star-charting which Dr. Rhodes had taken over entirely for himself. Bruce spent much of his time, aside from routine duties aboard the ship, in exploring the surface of Hidalgo and studying the changing wonders of the sky around them.

  Aboard ship a certain uneasiness seemed to be everywhere. With so few in the crew and the knowledge that one of the five was a spy with the failure of the expedition at heart, no one felt like getting too friendly with others. Bruce and Dr. Rhodes could trust each other, but the old engineer was usually much too busy with his calculations to offer Bruce any companionship. Doubtless each man in the crew wondered who the Terraluna agent could be. Bruce thought about it a good deal in his wanderings.

  He liked Arpad and found it hard to consider him a traitor. Yet, after all, who knew what another man might feel about things? Arpad Benz, who was of Hungarian birth, was a poor boy in his youth. He had not had many of the advantages that Bruce had enjoyed. He was a good friend, though given to a certain amusement at the actions of others. At first he had been rather patronizing toward Bruce, who wasn’t really very much younger. But he had dropped that attitude as he had learned that Bruce was capable of hard work and good comradeship. Yet, would not the remembered unhappiness of poverty make Arpad open to tempting offers from Terraluna? Bruce turned that over in his mind. Was it not always possible that if a nice big amount of money were offered, money that would assure Arpad a good easy life the rest of his days, that it might make the young spacehand willing to betray the trip?

  In his heart Bruce could not bring himself to believe that, yet someone aboard ship was a spy.

  Garcia, the navigator, was a married man with two children whose pictures he had stuck on the wall over his calculating machines. He was a kindly sort of man, a bit quiet, a man who had been on many trips and who seemed to be passionately interested in the success of this one, which would be his greatest exploit. Bruce couldn’t figure Garcia as the spy.

  Jennings was a brilliant pilot with a wonderful record. He had pioneered a number of space flights in the past, including the first trips to two of Jupiter’s big moons. He was still young, in his late twenties, tall and serious. Bruce knew that this trip would crown his youthful career, make him in line for important posts in the UN space service, probably raise him in standing to the most valuable space pilot in the field. Surely, Bruce thought, he could not and would not sacrifice such a future.

  And that left only his father and himself, two suspects who were out of the question. Could the tampered chart on Apollo just have been some error, some strange accident? Unfortunately, that seemed to have been ruled out.

  He and Arpad went on journeys clear around the little world. Their weight was almost nothing, just as on Apollo, and after a little while they acquired great skill at propelling themselves in huge leaps that would carry them floating along in jumps of many hundreds of yards. They mapped out the surface for the exercise of it.

  Though tiny, Hidalgo had many features that their imaginations could work with. There were miniature ranges of mountains—actually ridges thrown up from meteor scars or shrinkage as the little planetoid cooled over the course of creation. There were several really huge mountains, like great spikes sticking out of the surface, masses of iron that had projected from the surface as other parts had cooled faster. In a number of spots there was evidence of smaller asteroids or large meteors having buried themselves in the ground, leaving various hummocks or depressions. Around the other side of the little world there was one such meteor crater about three or four miles deep and wide enough at the bottom to house a spaceport all its own.

  Speculatively, Bruce and Arpad amused themselves by imagining that this deep pit could serve as a space-pirate hide-out, just like in the stories they had often read. Actually, there were no space pirates—the problems of space flight were much too difficult for such things—but the idea was a thrill.

  The sky above them was a constant source of amazement. They were passing through the bulk of the asteroid belt now and there were always dozens of them in sight. They took every shape and most of them were visibly in motion at differing speeds. Some between Hidalgo and the sun looked like moons of various phases. Others close by loomed large enough to show surface markings. Juno passed fairly closely; this was a big body whose surface was striped almost like one of the big outer planets. Not infrequently a puff of dust on the still surface would indicate the falling of a meteor.

  As the days passed they came clear to the orbit of Jupiter and the bulk of the asteroidal disks disappeared from the sky. Then a new group came into view.

  Garcia, who had gone out with the two spacehands, pointed to a cluster of disks nearly overhead. “See those? They are something really special. They’re what we call the Trojan Asteroids, the Fore-Trojans to be specific, since there is another set of them. They fly around the sun exactly in Jupiter's orbit, at the same speed as Jupiter, but always the same distance ahead of Jupiter. They remain in a cluster fixed forever by the laws of gravity and mathematics.” “Why are they called Trojans?” asked Arpad. “When they were first discovered, astronomers decided to call them all after the heroes of the war between Troy and Athens in very ancient times. So their names are Achilles, Ajax, Agamemnon, Hector, Nestor, and Odysseus. The Aft-Trojans are also named after these ancient heroes.”

  “Any good?” said Arpad, being practical. “I should think maybe they’d make good space stations if we ever develop travel to Saturn as a regular thing.” Garcia chuckled into his space phones. “I imagine you're right. They’ll probably do that in the next hundred years after our trip is a success.” He paused and added:

  “As a matter of fact, I believe there is an astronomical station there now, on Achilles. That would be the biggest one near us. It’ll be passing us by a few hundred miles any minute now. See, you can see the lights and shades of its surface now.”

  They gazed up. It was quite a sight, looming larger for a short time than the moon did in Earth’s sky. They saw patches of brightness and dark spaces. The thought struck Bruce that if indeed there was still an astronomical station up there then it was the nearest they would be getting to other human beings for a long, long time. This lonely Fore-Trojan group would be their farewell point to other human beings. And another memory struck him suddenly.

  “Say,” he murmured, “I seem to remember reading about an asteroid mining base being set up on one of those planets, near the observatory . . . and if I remember right, it was a Terraluna expedition!”

  “Awk!” exclaimed Arpad, while Garcia sucked in his breath. Then the navigator let out a sigh and said, “Perhaps, but I can’t see that that need bother us any. Probably they know nothing about us. Still, I better tell Dr. Rhodes, anyway.”

  He swung off and glided back to the space ship. Bruce and Arpad stood watching the six bodies in the sky above them.

  Arpad nudged Bruce. “A meteor,” he remarked and pointed. A few hundred feet from the space ship there was a small cloud of dust falling back to the surface. Bruce looked. Even as he watched, another such spurt of dust went up in the air about the same distance on the other side of the space ship.

  “That’s strange,” he remarked to Arpad. “Two in succession.”

  “Three,” said Arpad, pointing to a third spurt rising near where the first one had struck.

  Suddenly a cold chill ran through Bruce as it struck him what they were watching. “Those aren’t meteors!” he shouted. “They’re explosions! They’re shells from a cannon! We’re being shot at from Achilles! From the Terraluna base there!”

  They started running wildly back to the ship, calling Dr. Rhodes on their helmet phone. Even as they ran, another shell struck, this time near where they had been standing.

  Bruce shouted the alarm as
they neared the ship. Dr. Rhodes called to them to hurry. They reached the ship, threw themselves through the airlock and slammed the door. Already Dr. Rhodes was buzzing the engines and Garcia was trying to activate the tubes. As the boys came through the lock without bothering to remove their space outfits, Jennings came from his sleeping quarters in a rush to the controls.

  Bruce opened his helmet as he ran to the control room. Once there, he found his father at the controls with the ship already off the ground. “Father,” Bruce yelled, “I know where we can take the ship. They’ll never be able to hit us.”

  As his father shot the ship over the surface, Bruce told him of the deep meteor crater on the other hemisphere. If they put the ship down there, they’d be safe until Achilles was out of range.

  Dr. Rhodes was personally flying the ship to that spot. Bruce had found their map of the surface and if they got to their hiding place in time, no cannon could reach them.

  It was really easy to operate a cannon from an asteroid. If you could line your sights, any simple artillery gun from even hundreds of years before could get enough power to break away from the weak asteroid grip and cross space to strike a visible target. Obviously the Terraluna mining camp had rigged up a cannon, knowing that Hidalgo would pass right in their sight, had awaited their chance, and bombarded the ship which they could see plainly through their telescopes. In a short while longer they’d have corrected their aim sufficiently to hit the ship and put it out of action forever.

  As Garcia and Bruce were discussing this angle, their ship was already crossing over into the side of the asteroid away from the Fore-Trojan view. Bruce noticed that Jennings was standing by the radio, apparently fiddling nervously with the microphone. He watched Jennings’ fingers tapping on the mike, and suddenly he realized that the radio sender was on, the lights lit on the dials. For an instant he was stunned.

  “Stop!” Bruce yelled and made a dash for the radio. He tried to grab the switch but Jennings made a swing for him, Bruce twisted in his grasp, slammed the power control off the radio.

  Garcia had started up in amazement. But Jennings grappled with Bruce. Then Arpad came up the corridor holding a wrench and joined the fight. Bruce was outweighed, but when Arpad raised the tool, Jennings suddenly quit, let go of the boy and stepped back, his hands raised. “O.K., O.K., cut it out. I’m through.”

  By this time Garcia had secured a pistol from their stores and held it on Jennings. “So you were the spy?” Jennings nodded. “I’m the man. You ought to listen to me. You know this trip can’t succeed. The odds are too high. If I could have stopped you, I’d probably have saved your lives.”

  “What if we’d been hit by those shells?” said Arpad. Jennings shrugged. “Even so. We’d probably just lose our air, and have to abandon ship. The Terraluna base on Achilles would have picked us up safely. They have some small ships.”

  Dr. Rhodes glanced around from the controls. “Keep him under guard until we get this ship safely landed. We’ll decide what to do with him then.”

  The ship crossed the asteroid, dropped into the deep meteor crater Bruce had discovered, and in the dark shadow of its bottom, miles beneath the surface, came to a rest.

  They held a discussion. From where they were, the Terraluna guns could never reach them. Jennings admitted that he had not had time to let the enemy cannoneers know, by tapping in code on the side of the live microphone, where they were going.

  But time was precious. In a little while, the asteroid mining ships from Achilles would be on Hidalgo itself searching for them. In time they’d be found.

  Dr. Rhodes and Garcia conferred over their charts and records. They looked up. Rhodes glanced at Arpad and Bruce, then said, “We’ve got a very serious decision to make. We will have to abandon Hidalgo and go on by our own power to Saturn. We figure that since we have already acquired Hidalgo’s own speed and orbital direction by riding on it, we only need to speed up and move ahead on Hidalgo’s own orbit. We have the fuel, though it will leave us very dangerously limited after we reach Saturn. Our only hope of return, if we do this, will be to catch Hidalgo when it arrives near Saturn—at the very point where we had originally intended to leave it. If we delay on Saturn too long, we will miss that call and never return to Earth. I will ask you two to decide. The odds are long. Shall we do it? Shall we go on to Saturn days ahead of Hidalgo by our own power?”

  Arpad was silent. Bruce hesitated. He wanted to say yes, but he felt that as Dr. Rhodes’ son, that would have been expected of him. He’d rather Arpad made the decision. He turned, looked at Arpad. The other’s eyes caught his. They had a merry twinkle, then Arpad’s face broke into a smile.

  “What are we waiting for?” Arpad said. “Let’s get going!”

  Chapter 8 Mimas

  They abandoned Jennings on Hidalgo. This was not as deadly as it seemed. They unloaded and set up on the level plain outside their meteor crater hideout an airtight transparent tent, the type used by asteroid miners for short stays. They installed a small atomic-fueled heater and a spare oxygen purifier from their space-suit stores. Enough food for a couple of days was also placed in the tent.

  Just before they left Hidalgo, they radioed the whereabouts of Jennings to the Terraluna station on Achilles, told them to pick him up. As soon as their call had been received and they knew that it had been noted, they signed off.

  Bruce spoke with Jennings just before they abandoned him, as the task of setting up his tent had been given to him. The pilot was gloomy, but insisted he was right.

  “Really, Bruce, in spite of your faith in your father’s ideas, they are wrong. I tell you that Terraluna’s research staff has proven positively that there would be no danger in their new mining project. I saw the figures myself—that’s what convinced me that this trip to Saturn is very foolhardy, and that you’re taking unnecessary dangers with good men for nothing.”

  Bruce shrugged, went on with his work. Finally he said, “If you felt that way, you had no right to come with us. If it’s our lives that are to be lost, let us take that chance. Even if Terraluna is right—and I don’t believe it—our own discoveries on Saturn’s rings would be the final proof. If were wrong, we’ll find it out and say so. But no one, not even a powerful outfit, has any right to take a chance with all humanity while there’s the slightest possibility of my dad being right.” Jennings looked at him. “I’ll be sorry to see a smart young fellow like yourself get killed so early in life. Even if your father is right, he can’t prove it by this trip. This ship isn’t big enough to make the trip and get back. You haven’t the fuel, and nobody can survive in the rings anyway. I’d have gone along with you if I felt that you had even a fair chance of success. But I don’t. I’m an expert space pioneer—you know my record—believe me, I am sincere.”

  Bruce gritted his teeth but said no more. He felt that Jennings was giving his true views, and he had to respect the pilot’s record. Yet he wouldn’t let himself dwell on the possibility of failure. He refused to discuss any more. Besides, they had no time.

  When they blasted off, Bruce caught a final glimpse of the little bubble of transparent plastic that imprisoned Jennings. He wondered whether he would be rescued in time.

  They were edging just beyond the orbit of Jupiter at the moment of leaving Hidalgo. They blasted along at full tilt for several hours, gaining tremendous acceleration. Garcia had adjusted their direction so that they were taking full advantage of Hidalgo’s momentum, yet directing their ship at a point where Saturn would be long before the tiny asteroid would arrive.

  As before, they tried to conserve fuel. They would turn off the engines and coast along for many hours at a time. Had they been keeping the same distance from the sun, they need never have turned their jets on again—they could maintain the same speed for millions of years since there was nothing in empty space to slow them down. But moving as they were, away from the sun, their speed was still insufficient to break away from the great parent star’s gravity. When they coasted witho
ut power, the sun’s grip fastened on them imperceptibly, and in the course of hours a slow dragging loss of speed was always detectable. When the ship came back to a certain speed, the jets had to be blasted on again and the lost speed regained.

  In answer to a question of Arpad’s as to what would happen if they did not use their jets again, Dr. Rhodes said, from his position at the pilot’s seat: “We would continue to move outward from the sun along our present orbit until we came to a dead stop some distance inside Saturn’s orbit. We would then instantly start falling back toward the sun, following the other half of our same orbit until we fell faster and faster back toward the sun, perhaps as far as Mars’ orbit. At that point we would swing around the sun and hurtle outward again, and we’d simply continue to circle the sun for a million years or so, just like any asteroid, until eventually we would fall into the sun itself and be disintegrated.”

  Bruce overheard that question. It helped make clear why the problem of their store of fuel was so important. He knew they had enough fuel to make Saturn and a little to spare. But any excess or emergency, and they would be lost.

  The trip was long, long and for the most part dull. After the constant changing sights of the asteroid belt, there was little new to see in this vast space between Jupiter and Saturn, a distance of about four hundred million miles. Behind them, in crescent form, they could see Jupiter, a huge glow, visibly striped, with several of its great moons plainly visible as disks. Mars was out of sight behind the sun. The Earth could be seen just at the sun’s rim, between them and that glowing body, which meant that only the night side of his home world was toward the Rhodes ship. To them the Earth was a faint circle of light, a ring around darkness, the ring being the reflection of the sun’s glow through the atmosphere. Venus was invisible, lost in the sun’s glare.

  On the other hand, Saturn was slowly growing day by day.