Bruce pushed his father toward the space boat, and without the necessity of words, they both got in, closed and sealed the cockpit. Unloading the food he had brought with him, Bruce would not permit his father to attempt anything until he had first eaten.
Dr. Rhodes swallowed the last crumbs of a sandwich, and said, “We’ve got to move fast, Bruce. Our air is limited. No more time-wasting now. Let’s get that engine fixed.”
They closed their helmets, and climbed out of the rocket boat. Dr. Rhodes took the fuel distributor that his son had brought with him, and got to work replacing his defective one with it. Meanwhile, Bruce stowed away the samples he had taken with him in the space beneath the ship’s seat and behind the seat.
“Why don’t you go and take a look at that tomb, while I’m finishing this job?” said Dr. Rhodes over their helmet phones. “It may be the last chance for anyone to see that in many years—maybe ever.”
“Why’s that?” said Bruce, picking his way over the marble surface of the strange little moonlet toward the depression and the metal-gleaming door he could see.
“The chances of any future explorers finding it again are very slight. Even with an atomic buzzer, they may never be able to pick it out among the countless millions of other moonlets. So you take a look too.”
Bruce made his way down through the opened metal covering and stood with his space-suit flashlight gazing around. It was as his father described, a tomb that had been old when the Earth was but a steaming jungle and cave men were still a thing of the far, far future. The emptiness of space, the cold of a sunless darkness, had preserved much, but the very disintegration of elements alone had served to destroy most of the tomb.
Bruce saw the weird coffin, realized as his father had, that no human form could have fitted it. And then his father called to him to hurry back, the ship was ready to go.
He made his way out of the tomb, then turned and carefully closed the round thick metal disk that sealed it. When he saw it was tight again, he paused, and in a moment of boyishness, drew a small tool from his belt and scratched his initials in a comer of it, along with the date. Then he straightened up and moved across to join his father.
He climbed into the cockpit, pulled the transparent cowling tight. They were cramped, elbow to elbow in the narrow space. Bruce thrust his helmet visor up as soon as the air-pressure gauge registered safety.
The air was already rather stale and he could smell oil and ozone. “Let’s go,” said Dr. Rhodes, and, switching on the activators, pushed the throttle. They were off!
They swept away from the ring-particle easily, swung around, away from the mass of the parading particles, moonlets, and fragments. Being on the edge, they simply turned tail to Saturn’s glowing bulk and swung out into Cassini’s Divide.
This time Dr. Rhodes turned the ship outward over the rings, piling on speed, drew them upward at a slant from it. “Locate Mimas, Bruce,” he ordered, his attention on the problem of clearing the rings and any stray meteors that may have been on their way to crash into Saturn.
Bruce scanned the sky. One glowing disk he recognized as Titan by the fuzziness that surrounded its outline against the black sky—this was the atmosphere of that largest moon. For a moment Bruce wished they could visit that strange world, a place almost as large as a planet, whose air was poison, whose lakes and rivers were ammonia, whose polar caps were frozen oxygen, whose life, if any, would be beyond any conception of biology.
He spotted other moons in various positions on this side and beyond. Rhea following Titan closely. Enceladus emerging from eclipse on the other side. Tethys off to one side, a narrow crescent. Mimas was at an angle from them, downward from where they were, beneath the ring, whereas they were above it.
He directed his father. They swung further upward. “It’s the wrong side we’ve come out on,” his father said. “We’ll have to jump the hoop to make it. I don’t know if our fuel will hold out.”
He increased their speed. They passed over the shining flat surface of the outer ring, a thousand miles high. Really quite close. For a period they seemed to be flying over what could almost be thought of as an ice field, strangely partly transparent, for they could see the brighter stars through it, so considerable were the spaces between the myriad fragments that made it so seemingly solid. The sun, a small but still terribly bright ball, shone upon it and sometimes caused dazzling reflections.
At last they crossed the width of the outer ring. Below them they could see the shining globe of Mimas, a white and gray mottled moon. The ship swung toward it, moved past the still thick-appearing edge of the ring, and headed for its home base.
Bruce switched on the radio. “Calling Mimas. Rhodes’ boat calling Mimas. Garcia, Benz, answer."
He switched to reception. The rings now past, there was but a faint humming. Reception was clear, but he could hear nothing. Dr. Rhodes muttered under his breath.
“They should have been on watch.”
Bruce said quietly, “Don't hold it against them. After all, I did desert them, you know. It’s hard for only two men to keep the watch by themselves. It would be lonely, it would be something that would make each man gloomy and upset. Besides, by this time they may not be on watch all the time. Perhaps they have work to do.”
He could see his father was impatient and tired. It was understandable why he should be easy to anger now. “I suppose so, my boy,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t expect too much. It’s just as hard to wait without word as it is to be active.”
Bruce stole a glance at him. He knew what his father meant, for surely Dr. Rhodes had waited in near hopelessness himself. “We’ll probably find them too busy playing chess to pay attention to our call,” he joked.
They neared Mimas, the small moon growing larger and larger. Its mountains and plains became visible. Bruce kept up their radio calls, but still there was no reply. He was becoming very uneasy himself, but he said nothing about that.
Their air was becoming distinctly bad now. He felt a drowsiness stealing over him, remembered that he still had oxygen in his suit tanks, and reached a hand over his shoulder and switched that on. The faint hissing of his reserve supply came into the cabin. In a few moments their heads cleared.
His father said slowly, “That was a timely thing. I think we’d have been asleep by now if you hadn’t thought of that. But I think we don’t have much more reserve.”
They were nearing Mimas now, coming down over the wide hemisphere of it, searching for the particular plain and mountains where their ship had landed. Finally Bruce thought he recognized the spot. “Over there, beyond that chain of saw-toothed mountains. I think that circular-shaped plain is the place where we landed.”
The little rocket boat soared over the tops of the sharp-edged mountain chain, passed over the lower, gentler mountains that ringed the plain, and came down over the flat wide surface.
“Look!” shouted Bruce suddenly. “There’s the ship —and it’s moving!”
They saw it at the same time. The space ship was there, on the plain where they had left it. And the ship was moving slowly on its runners, a stream of fire pouring from its rear jets.
Bruce yelled into the radio, “Stop! Stop! Garcia, were here. We’re coming! Don’t take off now! Don’t leave without us!”
His father reached out, his face taut, and a hand flicked a little button marked Emergency Signal. Ahead of them, on the nose of the little speeding rocket boat, there was a puff of smoke, and a tiny rocket shot forward to explode in space a half-mile away beyond the moving space ship on the plain, and leave a shower of brilliant sparks and a cloud of blazing gas.
On the plain, the space ship continued to move forward, slowly gathering speed for the take-off, a stream of atomic rocket fire growing wider behind it as it accelerated.
When Bruce had taken off after his father in the second rocket boat, Arpad had been napping in his hammock aboard the ship and Garcia had been at the calculators in the control room working out the prob
lem of their return.
The sound of Garcia's running feet in the corridor had aroused Arpad and in a few minutes he was outside too, gazing upward, although the tiny boat was long out of view.
They had gone to the radio tent then, and had tried to make contact with Bruce. Eventually they did, and they stuck with him until the moment when the ring static and the radioactive interference blanked out their reception and Bruce had switched off. For a while they stayed, then decided they could not afford to keep on watch, now that there were only the two of them.
They returned to the space ship, arranging with each other for one of them to step out every hour and check the radio for any messages.
“My calculations of our return course are not entirely complete,” Garcia said, “and I’ve got to finish them without any more delay. Meanwhile, you had better check the fuel tanks and let me know exactly where we stand. With both rocket boats gone, there’s a lighter load and this may cause new figures to be set up.”
“Well, surely you can wait a couple days at least before we decide,” Arpad argued.
“I hope so, but I will know definitely when I finish these figures. Frankly, the outlook is not too good.” With this reply, Garcia went back to his charts and his machines.
Arpad went on to the rear, clambered about the tanks checking their capacity, tracing the wiring, putting everything in shape for a return voyage. He felt very ill at ease, dreading the moment they would have to make a decision. Although he had often kidded Bruce during the trip, he had come to like him a lot, and he felt that Bruce’s action in going off to the rings was the kind of thing that he wished he could have done.
As they ate a meal together, Garcia and Arpad discussed the decision facing them.
“I’m sure they’re going to return,” Arpad said. “We’ve got to have patience.”
“I’m afraid that’s just what we can’t afford to have, Arpad,” said Garcia slowly. “I completed my figures just a few minutes ago.”
He waited. Arpad put his fork down, stared a moment at Garcia’s sober face. “And?” he prompted.
“We’ve exactly three hours and twenty minutes more, before we must take off. If they don’t return in that time, we’ve got to leave without them. Otherwise our next chance will be in five weeks. We haven’t the fuel for the longer journey then, and the risk will be far greater, perhaps much too great.”
The three hours having passed, Arpad stood outside one last time and looked for a sign of a rocket boat. Against the awesome display of Saturn in the sky, he still saw nothing. Stepping inside, he closed the outer door, went on, sealed the inner lock door. Taking the post Bruce had held by the side port viewer, he called to Garcia. “Ready!”
Seated at the forward controls, Garcia glanced over his dials. He moved a switch, then another. There was a subdued humming as the generators started up. He gave a nudge to one of the blaster buttons.
The ship jolted as a puff of atomic vapor burst from one rear tube. Another such and the ship swung around slightly, then more until it was facing the longer plain, Saturn to its rear.
Garcia looked at his clock. He was early by about three minutes, but he preferred to take no chances on split-second timings. He pushed several buttons.
Its atomic jets blasting, the ship moved slowly forward, began to gain speed. For an instant Garcia noticed a puff of smoke and a burst of stars in the sky in front of his ship. His mind, intent on his keys, dismissed it as a meteor explosion.
Arpad, hoping against hope, had stood with his face pressed against the viewer gazing after the rings, at the section of the sky where he had hoped to see the missing men appear. A split second before the burst of the emergency signal rocket, a buzz on the board in his engine room caused him to turn his head away.
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.
Chapter 16 Sentinel from Below
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 w
hether 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.”
The Secret of Saturn’s Rings Page 12
