Chapter II: Part 2

Steve shook his head to clear it and scrambled to his seat, righting the ship again and putting it on automatic pilot. Then he got up and hurried down the corridor to the garb room. His magnetic shoes clacked along the metal floor. Hurriedly, Steve donned space suit, oxygen tank, and helmet.

The insulated gear momentarily cut out the oppressive heat. But in another few minutes he and Bart would be sizzling like steaks on a griddle, for even the insulation of their suits could not withstand raw heat for long. The only way out, as Steve saw it, was to call on Jim Dennis.

Steve carried another set of gear down the corridor and shook Bart. “Put this on, Bart,” he said. “It’ll protect you from the heat.”

Bart was gasping in the hot air of the compartment, his face scarlet and shining, but he took the gear. Next, Steve went outside onto the skin of the _Condon Comet_. The vault of starlight closed in all about him, and the deep web of midnight space seemed to extend endlessly. There was the sweeping veil of the Milky Way galaxy and here closer the pulsing, blinding sphere of Sol. There was another startling light, a driving streak of firestreams and silvery glow—the _Dennis Meteor_.

Jim and his co-pilot, Pete Rogers, could hardly miss seeing them. Quickly the _Dennis Meteor_ drew abreast of the _Condon Comet_, but then it swept on past overhead!

Steve felt bitterness and disappointment well up in him. He had always thought Jim to be a “right guy.” Could it be that the winning of the race was more important to him than two persons’ lives?

The only hope now was a hasty repair of the refrigerator unit. Steve hustled back into the ship and made his way to the rear where the cooling machinery was located. He found Bart working there, his helmet off. Steve removed his own helmet, for apparently Bart had repaired the trouble. The customary blandness of the atmosphere had been restored.

“What happened to it?” Steve asked.

“The dynamo burned out,” Bart answered. “I just coupled in the spare one. Where have you been?”

“Out on the skin,” Steve said. “I was trying to signal Jim Dennis.”

Bart’s face went red again, and he muttered to himself.

“I didn’t think there was any chance of repairing the trouble,” Steve went on.

“I’d rather burn than take help from Jim Dennis!” Bart snapped. “Did Dennis see you?”

“He must have. He went right overhead.”

“Obviously he didn’t stop, though.”

“No, he didn’t,” Steve said frankly.

“I wouldn’t have believed that of Dennis,” Bart murmured. “I thought he was a better man than that.”

“He may not have seen me, Bart. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“I’ll give him nothing!” Bart rapped. “If Jim Dennis wants a fight to the finish, we’ll give it to him!”

Bart began immediately to battle to regain their lead. It was a frenzied, closely fought contest for many hours, the lead seesawing back and forth. It took the top speed Bart’s craft was capable of to gain the lead he was finally able to maintain.

Only when Jim Dennis appeared content to linger behind again did Bart cut their driving velocity. Once more Steve felt he could breathe easier—for a while at least.

In the days that followed, there were no changes in position. Steve and Bart took turns at the controls during the sleeping periods. They could see the planet Venus at a distance. Their flight had been planned to avoid close proximity with Earth’s twin because of the retarding effect of her gravity.

The sun steadily dominated the sky, an enormous cottony ball of atomic fury with a surface temperature of 6000 degrees centigrade and an interior heat around 20,000,000 degrees. The red leaping flames of the chromosphere were like the mountainous waves of a gigantic cosmic ocean as they lapped millions of miles out into surrounding space. Magnetic storms—sunspots—all of them large enough to swallow the Earth, were seen as whirling dark cyclones in the sea of gas.

As the _Condon Comet_ moved around and behind the star, it began to close in on the planet Mercury. The ship was actually overtaking the miniature world even though it was circling the sun at a rapid thirty miles a second.

On the fifth day away from Earth, the _Condon Comet_ reached its apogee, the farthest point of its orbit from the mother planet. It was “behind” the sun now, the dominant ball eclipsing the Earth. By now Mercury had grown hugely, a big pebbly world that literally shimmered with the frightening heat that poured down upon it. It was a startling sight, halved into hemispheres of darkness and extreme brilliance. The closer side was so hot that streams of molten tin and lead flowed, while that side away from the sun approached the arctic cold of absolute zero.

“I hope we don’t have to land there, Bart,” Steve spoke uncomfortably, looking out the port.

They began to feel the gravitational attraction of the miniature world, and they had to bolster rocket fire to combat it. Unlike Venus, Mercury could not be avoided in this flight.

Steve watched the gauges, especially the refrigerator dial. The latter was holding up well under this maximum barrage of heat from Sol, but there was still an oppressive hotness that reached through the laboring artificial coolness and penetrated Steve’s pores like insidious rays.

“If the _Comet_ isn’t superior to Dennis’s in any other way, it’s made of better heat-resistant alloy,” Bart had said with self-assurance before leaving Earth. Steve wondered now if the proof of this assertion would be settled before both ships were beyond the sun’s reach.

Hours later, when the _Condon Comet_ had passed Mercury, Steve was impelled to check on their rivals behind. For a moment he couldn’t find the ship on the TV screen. When he spotted it at last, by changing the direction of the movable screen, he was amazed to find the craft far below, hovering over the planet.

“Bart!” Steve called. “It looks as if Jim and Pete are in trouble! They’re diving for Mercury and seem to be heading for the terminator line between the dark half and the light!”

Steve wished there were some kind of radio communication between the ships, but electrical interference from the sun made radio impossible on these round-the-sun races.

“We’ve got to go down there, Bart,” Steve said.

“We haven’t won yet, Steve. There’s still the record to beat.”

“Will you stop thinking about records!” Steve retorted. “There are a couple of men down there in trouble!”

“Did they stop for us?” Bart bit out. “It’s probably only a trick to lure us down so that Dennis can make a quick getaway!”

But Steve knew that his brother was not as cold-hearted as he pretended to be. Bart proved it in the next few minutes when he reluctantly turned the _Comet’s_ nose downward with a savage thrust of the upper tail jets.

“You’ll never regret this,” Steve said.

“I wonder,” Bart grunted, without satisfaction.

As the ship moved strongly into Mercury’s gravitation field, Bart lined the automatic pilot up with the tiny speck on the rocky world below that was the _Dennis Meteor_. Then he and Steve strapped down on their protective couches for the grueling landing.

Steve felt as though his chest were crushed under the rapid deceleration. It was the effect of a swiftly dropping elevator multiplied hundreds of times as the _Comet’s_ forward jets thrust against Mercury’s crust to brake the hurtling speed. Steve finally blacked out; he always did. When he came to, they had landed, and through blurry eyes Steve saw his brother struggling to release himself from his straps.

They went to the port. The _Dennis Meteor_ was in bad shape, its prow crumpled into a huge face of rock. Its occupants could have been killed by the concussion, although there was a good chance that they were still alive if they had had time to strap down.

Steve noted their rugged surroundings, where strange rock pillars thrust into the black sky from a shimmering, white-hot plain. Snaky rifts of incalculable depth split the torrid landscape.

“The ship landed on its side,” Bart observed, speaking over his short-range helmet radio. “The escape port is underneath!”

There was no point of exit from the ship for the trapped occupants if they were still alive, Steve observed. Even the rocket tubes had been crushed flat. Actually the _Dennis Meteor_ was a complete ruin, its entire glossy surface warped and corrugated.

“You can see the ship broke down under the heat,” Bart said. “That’s why they had to crash-land.”

“Look here on the other side!” Steve’s voice suddenly crackled in alarm over his helmet radio.

Bart joined him. Only now did they see that the craft had nearly rolled down a precipitous incline into a canyon stream of molten lead far below. The ship was balanced precariously on the ledge. It seemed as if the slightest jar would send it hurtling down the slope.

“We’ve got to get them out of there before the ship falls!” Steve said. “The precipice looks so crumbly it may give way at any minute!”

“I don’t see how we can get them out,” Bart commented.

Steve thought a moment. “The fire drill! We can cut a hole in the top of the ship!”

Bart frowned. “The force of the drill or even our weight on top of it may cause the ship to go. But if you’re game, I am.”

They brought the fire drill out of the _Condon Comet_, and as they climbed up onto the warped hull of the other ship with it, Bart smiled wryly. “I never thought I’d see the day that I’d risk my neck for a Dennis,” he remarked.

A moment later, when Bart was about to start the drill, he asked, “Ever try swimming through molten metal, Steve? You’d better think about it. We may be doing it in a second.”

Steve felt weak in the knees as he looked down into the plunging gulf where the metallic river tossed against blackened rocks. A person flung into that stream would be a cinder in scant moments.

Steve gritted his teeth. “Start it up, Bart.”

The machine whined into action, pouring a thin stream of blue-hot biting energy against the heat-resistant alloy. The rocket shuddered under the drill’s action, and Steve felt waves of fear course through him. The drill moved in an arc that was to be a circle barely large enough for the two men inside to squeeze through in their space suits.

When the job was halfway done, the ship ground forward several feet. Steve saw Bart’s face drain whitely. Steve could almost feel the scorching bite of liquid metal against his body. Yet the ship somehow clung stubbornly to its precarious support.

They renewed their efforts, and the arc grew. Finally the circle was full round. Bart stood up and jammed a foot against the isolated ring, and it dropped inside. Steve held his breath as he looked in, afraid of what he might see. He felt immeasurable relief as Jim and Pete came up to the opening attired in space gear. They shoved a ladder into place and started up. Steve gave Pete a hand, for he seemed to be shaken up. Suddenly the ship rumbled a foot or two. It was going any instant. The four of them carefully walked the length of the craft and made their way down the flattened rocket tubes.

Bart was the last to jump to the ground. His movement affected the delicate balance of the ship, and it slid forward, its stern arching straight up as it dipped over the gulf. The ground shook, and a moment later the _Dennis Meteor_ had thundered to oblivion into the river of lead.

After Jim and Pete had expressed gratitude for their rescue, the four fell into silence as they trooped back to the _Condon Comet_. Although no one spoke, Steve felt that the others, like himself, must be thinking many things. Would this mark the end of the long feud, or would it be only a temporary truce?

Jim Dennis walking with a limp, studied the Condon ship. He circled the rocket completely and closely examined the smooth hull, still undamaged by the abnormal heat bombardment it was taking.

When they were inside, Jim was the first to speak. “This ship is terrific,” he said simply.

“You admit that?” Bart asked incredulously.

“I’ve never seen a craft stand up so perfectly under extreme heat,” Jim continued. “I think you’ve done it, Bart. It’s the finest light space ship ever built.”

“An engineer who started out with Dad made this alloy,” Bart declared. “He told me he thought he had finally come up with the ideal metal.”

“The _Meteor_ rattled like an old freighter the whole way!” Jim complained. “We spent a lot of time in the rear checking on the rocket tubes. We were afraid they’d shake loose. I guess we must have been back there when we passed you, for the last time I looked out you were ahead of us.”

That explained why they hadn’t seen his wave, Steve thought.

“It sure was a lucky break for us that you brought your drill along,” Jim went on. “I had so much confidence in the _Meteor_ I was sure we wouldn’t need it.”

“I felt the same way,” Bart admitted, “but Steve insisted we bring it. That kid brother of mine always did have more practical sense than I.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we crash-landed, Bart,” Jim said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe this feud has gone on long enough and that you must be as sick of it as I am. Together, we could turn out ships that would be just about perfect. What do you say, Bart?”

Bart’s face grew stern and thoughtful. Finally he answered, “I’ll have to think it over first, Dennis.”

“While you’re thinking, we may as well have a look-see,” Jim said. He went over to the panel and checked the readings. “You seem to be way ahead of my old record, Bart. You’re still going to try to beat it, aren’t you?”

Steve knew this remark had broken down the last of Bart’s stubborn pride and reserve. His brother smiled and thrust out his hand to Jim Dennis. “You’re a good loser, Jim,” he said.

“I’m no loser,” Jim answered, grinning. “I’m a winner—we both are.”

Young Steve Condon sighed contentedly. He glanced at Pete Rogers, who winked at him. Jim and Bart sat down side by side at the control panel of the _Condon Comet_. Steve didn’t doubt for a moment that the long feud was finally at an end. He was satisfied that his father would have liked it this way.

FLIGHT OF THE CENTAURUS

Spacemaster Brigger came into the navigation compartment of the _Centaurus_, which was thrusting into the starry night of space far beyond Saturn. Rob Allison, junior officer, looked up from the desk where he sat, wondering at the frown on the skipper’s face.

“It’s just as I feared, Allison,” Mr. Brigger said gravely. “The men are sorry they signed on for Titania and are grumbling already. They think they’ll be ridiculed when they get back.”

“Because of Dr. Franz’s being discredited by all the scientists, I suppose?”

The skipper nodded. “They’re sure they’re on a wild-goose chase. I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree with them.”

“I guess you and the crew, sir, are only reflecting the opinion of almost everyone else on Earth,” Rob mused bitterly.

The spacemaster of the _Centaurus_ dropped onto a plastic bench beside a port that overlooked the star fields of the outer solar system. “Exactly why did your brother Grant authorize this expedition, Allison? Does he really believe we’ll find animal life on Uranus’ satellite or is it something else?”

Grant Allison, an illustrious front-rank explorer of several years before, was now president of Interplanet Exploration, which controlled research space travel.

Rob relaxed as he prepared to answer. “You probably didn’t know, sir, that Dr. Franz put my brother through space school when our father couldn’t afford it. He was Grant’s teacher in space mechanics in high school and thought he showed unusual promise.”

“That would explain President Allison’s interest in Dr. Franz,” Mr. Brigger agreed, “but I can’t understand an intelligent man like your brother falling for a harebrained story such as Dr. Franz told.”

The facts of Dr. Franz’s amazing discovery were known to the whole world. While studying the planet Uranus a distance of two and a half years before, the research ship blew a rocket tube and was forced down on Titania, Uranus’ largest moon. While the crewmen repaired the craft, Dr. Franz went prospecting. After he returned, he reported that he saw fish life swimming beneath Titania’s solid ice sheet, where the temperature was 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The crewmen were too interested in their work and, not having a scientific curiosity anyhow, did not bother to verify the scientist’s claim.

Upon returning to Earth, Dr. Franz, who was in the early stage of a fatal illness, told the scientific world of his remarkable discovery. He was totally unprepared for the rebuff he received from all quarters. No scientist on Earth would admit that Dr. Franz’s preposterous tale could possibly be true. Those people who would not go as far as calling Dr. Franz a dishonest publicity seeker (as some did) were nevertheless agreed that the ordeal he had gone through must have been too much for him. Dr. Franz died six months later of his illness—a brokenhearted man.

“Grant truly believed Dr. Franz found life on Titania,” Rob said to the skipper of the _Centaurus_. “He’s so sure of it that he has risked his own career on this expedition. If this fails, he says public sentiment will force him out of office.”

“Your brother must have a lot of confidence in you, Allison,” Mr. Brigger said, “making you head of this research trip which is so important to him. But from what I hear of your exploits on other planets, he has reason to trust you.”

“Thank you,” Rob murmured. “I couldn’t do a good job, though, if I didn’t believe as whole-heartedly in this as Grant does. I believe, as Grant does, that Dr. Franz spoke the truth.”

“It will certainly be a revolutionary discovery for science if you find and bring back evidence of that,” the skipper admitted.

Before leaving the compartment, Mr. Brigger added, “Let’s hope we don’t have a mutiny on our hands before this thing is over.”

Alone, Rob got up and stared out of the port into the perpetual black deeps where the star points glowed like polished gems.

Some minutes later a young spaceman with sandy, disordered hair that even space regulations could do nothing with, came into the compartment. Jim Hawley was Rob’s best friend and had flighted a number of expeditions with him. There was a sober look on Jim’s customarily jovial face.

“The men are complaining like babies, Rob,” Jim said. “Do you think they’ll be any good to us?”

“They’ll have to be, Jim,” Rob answered grimly. “They’re all we have.”

Jim looked at his stalwart young friend in admiration. “You and Grant are all right, Rob. Not many men would risk their careers on an old man’s whims. Aren’t you scared—just a little bit?”

“I’m plenty scared,” Rob told him, with a nervous smile. “I’m only a subofficer of five months, and here I am in charge of an expedition. Don’t think that isn’t frightening. In a sense, the lives of all men aboard the ship will be in my hands after we land.”

“If you need me,” Jim assured him, “here’s one buddy you can count on.”

Two days later the Centaurus had intercepted the orbit of Titania and was beginning to barrel surfaceward. Rob, looking outside from the officer’s platform up forward, saw a huge rocky world filling the port, its mantle of ice shimmering in the reflected light of the unseen primary body.

The _Centaurus_ dropped lower over a plateau that Rob had pointed out to Mr. Brigger as the spot where Dr. Franz had visited. The underjets threw out pencils of braking power to check the plunge of the space ship.

Finally the _Centaurus_ touched down on its tail fins and then Spacemaster Brigger said to Rob, “It’s all yours now, Allison.”

Looking out over the hoary wilderness, completely airless because of the little world’s inability to retain an atmosphere, Rob felt suddenly incompetent. Only now did he realize fully his youthful inexperience. It was one thing to be an idle witness on a journey; it was another to be in charge of a crew of men.

Rob heard footsteps on the platform and turned to see Jim Hawley walking up. Jim grinned in his engaging fashion, and it was like a tonic to Rob’s spirits.

“What do you say we get started, Rob?” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

Rob had the skipper round up the crew in the orientation compartment as soon as he had made his own plans. Then he laid before them the order of procedure. On a flannel board he tacked an enlarged map he had copied from one owned by Dr. Franz.

“Here’s a sketch of this area,” Rob explained. “Dr. Franz neglected to mark where he had seen the fishlike animal swimming beneath the ice. He did report that he was only able to find one after days of searching. They must be very scarce.”

“So scarce there probably aren’t any at all,” retorted one of the subofficers in a low voice.

Rob ignored the remark and went on with his explanation. “We’ll scatter out over the area and begin searching. It won’t be an easy job because the ice isn’t completely clear but is streaked through with ammonia and other opaque solubles.”

“Just how long will we have to keep up this search?” another crewman demanded. “I don’t want to spend Christmas in this forsaken place.”

Spacemaster Brigger spoke up then. “We can spend seven days on searching and still have enough supplies and fuel to get us home again. If we don’t find anything in that time, we start back just the same. Is that clear, Mr. Allison?”

“Yes, sir,” Rob said. Seven days sounded like ample time, but the area they had to cover was several square miles. From Dr. Franz’s description of the place, the liquid medium beneath the ice was wide and deep, a veritable ocean. Beneath this solution the ice began again and extended into the core of the small planet.

Explanations over, the majority of the crew, about twenty spacemen, climbed into their space gear, Rob and Jim with them. Mr. Brigger and a few key personnel would remain aboard to attend the operational facilities of the ship. The suits were triple-reinforced against the exceeding cold and were electrically heated. The helmets, with inside radio sets, were frost-free types, and the shoes were doubly weighted and spike-soled for navigating over the icy, low-gravity surface.

The men descended to the ground on an escalator dropped from the side of the _Centaurus_. Rob had the men spread out, two by two, as safety buddies. He concentrated on the farther corners of the ice field to begin with, intending to bring the searchers closer and closer to the ship each day.

As the men began hiking over the glacier, Rob and Jim talked together through their helmet radio sets.

“I don’t understand how the water under the ice flows without freezing in this superlow temperature,” Jim remarked.

“It can’t be water,” Rob answered. “It’s something else, probably a liquefied gas with an extremely low freezing point. Wherever it is, it must contain all the elements needed to support its strange life forms.”

“Let’s start looking too, Jim,” Rob suggested.

The first “day” passed without success. Then the second. Night was only a relative term, for Uranus, Titania’s main source of light, was never out of the sky. On the third day, some of the men complained about having to spend ten hours at a time in biting cold weather searching for something they were sure did not even exist. Despite the men’s heavily insulated suits, the ultralow temperature that frosted the suits like mold could not be entirely kept out. Rob sympathized with the men, but there was no other way to do the job.

It was on the fifth day that one of the searchers spotted a small thick-bodied shape several feet beneath the ice. The cordon of searchers had closed in more than halfway to the ship by now.

“Jim, will you supervise operation of the ice saw?” Rob asked, when they had joined the men who had made the discovery.

Jim nodded and left.

“Has it moved yet?” Rob asked one of the crewmen, trying to curb the almost overpowering excitement he felt.

“No,” one of them replied. “It seems to be dead and embedded in the ice.”

Presently the ice saw came trundling up on its ski runners, being pushed along by Jim and two others. It was a boxlike machine, heavily insulated against the cold. Jim dropped the blade and turned on the machine, guiding it along an invisible outline around the imprisoned thing. He went over the cuts several times, lowering the blade each time until a depth of several feet was reached. Then he gave the saw a side-to-side motion, and there was a sharp crack as the block of ice was snapped off beneath the surface.

By now all the searchers had come over. Jim worked the lifters on the machine and the block of ice, containing its inanimate prisoner, was raised and set down. The men crowded close and looked. Then Rob looked, and Jim. Rob felt a sickening disappointment as he realized their failure. There was no creature inside the ice at all. It was nothing but a slab of rock.

One of the men snorted contemptuously. Another laughed openly in scorn.

Rob bit his lips and regretfully ordered the ice saw back to the ship. Then he sent the men back to their positions of search.

The young officer felt little hope. The ring was closing in toward the _Centaurus_. There wasn’t much more area that hadn’t already been examined. Rob, realizing the attitude of the men, knew they hadn’t probed as diligently as they were supposed to have. Very likely large areas had been only carelessly examined. But that couldn’t be helped.

Rob went through the last day with the slow resignation of defeat settling within him. In only a few hours the searchers would have covered the entire area, and their own moment of victory would be at hand.

When the search was finally over and still no one had found anything moving beneath the ice, Rob knew how it felt to taste defeat.

Jim clapped Rob sympathetically on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rob,” he said. “Perhaps later on there will be another expedition.”

“There won’t be any more to this place, you can be sure of that!” Rob blurted. “After this failure, the Space Command certainly won’t send any more good money after bad!”

Later, as all on board the _Centaurus_ slept, Rob tossed restlessly on his cot. He heard the quiet breathing of the crewmen in the adjoining compartments. They were happy; their reluctant job was done and they were going home. The blast-off was scheduled for 0600 the next morning.

Rob could not stand his plaguing thoughts. He got out of bed and pulled on his clothes. He looked across the room at Jim Hawley, breathing deeply in sound slumber. Rob walked down the corridor to the garb room and began tugging on space gear. He realized only then how bone-weary he was, how his head ached from the tension of the past weeks, how heavily his heart throbbed in his breast. He couldn’t relax any place now, he knew, but it would be easier outside, continuing the search to the very end.

Rob tucked an electron gun in the holster of his suit, then left the _Centaurus_. He struck out over the glacier pack, his head lowered. It came to him then how difficult it would have been for the men to detect any moving object in the murky maze below.

Hours passed and Rob found himself far from the ship. He was shivering from the stubborn cold. He turned the heat in his suit to full strength and pushed his aching legs faster to speed up the circulation. His eyes never left the ground, searching, searching....

If he were the only one involved in the failure, it wouldn’t matter so much, but it was his brother’s problem too. Grant hadn’t made many mistakes on research expeditions—that was why he held the highest office in the organization. After this, though, it would go hard with him. Then there was the misunderstood Dr. Franz, who deserved a better fate than being labeled an old man who in his final days seemed to have lost his clear, scientific outlook.

“Maybe, though, the public was right,” Rob thought. “Maybe it was a hoax Dr. Franz pulled in order to gain public recognition he had never quite made.” But even now, in the blackest moment, Rob couldn’t really believe this of the dear friend who had launched his brother’s career.

Rob’s legs were beginning to feel like stumps as the time dragged on. He stumbled often on burls of ice that cluttered the wasteland. Finally he tripped and fell heavily, and it seemed that he did not even have the strength to rise again. His helmet was flat on the ice and his eyes, misted over with sleeplessness, were still looking downward.

_Then he caught a sign of movement in the depths._ He blinked his eyes to clear the glaze out of them.

“There it is again!” he said aloud. “It’s no hallucination either!” It was a long dark shape threading its way sluggishly down below. Now the thing was rising to the surface. Cold, bulging eyes peered into his own.

With numb fingers Rob uncached his electron gun and pressed the barrel against the ice. A moment later the creature was hanging buoyant and lifeless under the submerged edge of the ice layer. Rob struggled to his feet, astounded at the renewed energy he now had. He memorized the spot as best his dazed faculties would allow. Then he laid the pistol on the ice for an additional marker. He began running toward the ship.

From that moment on, Rob’s mind seemed to be in a dream world. He vaguely remembered the long way back to the space ship and then nearly collapsing before reaching it. He dimly remembered Jim, who had missed him, coming outside and assisting him into the warmth of the vessel. And he barely recalled pouring out the story of his find.

Now, much later, he was fully awake and the nightmare was over. He found himself on his cot, fully dressed. Jim Hawley was looking down on him. Rob was aware that the ship was moving. He knew the _Centaurus_ had already blasted off for home.

“Did you find—!” he exclaimed.

Jim soothed him with a smile. “Yeah, we dug out your monster and we’ve got him aboard. If you’re through being a sleepyhead, I’ll take you to see him.”

“How long have I been under?”

“Twelve hours.”

“Wow!”

“Feel rested?”

“Good as new,” Rob answered.

They went down the corridor to one of the cold-storage compartments. Several of the crew were inside, as well as the skipper. But Rob wasn’t noticing the men. He was looking at a dark alien form lying on the floor. Rob went over closer and knelt down. The creature was fishlike, and the strangest thing about it was the glistening dark skin, similar to metal. Rob touched it and it was like stroking cold steel.

“No wonder it can live in such frigid temperatures,” Rob murmured, “with a metallic covering like that! Won’t the scientists back home have a picnic dissecting him?”

He stood up and found his gaze level with Mr. Brigger’s.

“I never believed in your fantastic theory,” the chief officer said, “and I still doubt it after I’ve seen it. But I admired your spirit from the first, Allison. I believe you would have been as good a loser as a winner and I’m proud to have flighted with you.”

He smiled and offered his hand to Rob, who shook it. Then the others came forward, and they too offered congratulations. But Rob’s thoughts weren’t for his own success this day. They were reaching ahead to when Grant Allison would be even more of a fabulous figure in the field of space science, and Dr. Franz would at last have claimed his well-deserved victory.

EXPEDITION PLUTO

“The lieutenant doesn’t think you’ve got your mind on navigation, Rob,” Duff Ford was saying, as he and Rob Allison stood before a port of the rocket ship _Rigel_ looking out over the sea of space.

“Does it show that much?” the lean young spaceman answered.

“We’ll find him, Rob,” the redhead answered. “Stop eating your heart out.”

“You never knew Jim Hawley, did you, Duff?” Rob asked.

“No, but from what I’ve heard of him, he’s quite a guy. Always smiling and bursting with friendliness.”

“That’s Jim,” Rob said, a tightness in his throat. “I sure would like to know what happened to him and the others on Pluto.”

“How come you didn’t get to go along on the first Pluto expedition?” Duff asked. “I thought you and Jim Hawley always went together.”

“I’ve been working with my brother in the States,” Rob replied. “As the new president of Interplanet Exploration, he’s been awfully busy.”

“There’s a real guy,” Duff said with admiration, “your brother Grant. I guess he’s the greatest spaceman who’s been born. And judging by your own record around the solar system, Rob, you’re not far behind him.”

“Thanks for the flattery,” Rob said, grinning.

It felt good to smile again. He hadn’t smiled since he’d learned about the break in communication from the Pluto expedition ship _Capella_. The breakoff had come suddenly after landing, and the source of the trouble was unknown. As soon as Rob had heard that the _Rigel_ was going in search of the missing explorers, he had signed up for the trip as assistant to the navigator. He’d been grateful for the companionship of young Duff Ford, a likeable fellow he’d met in space school. Duff was a regular crewman, an air purifier, on the _Rigel_.

Duff was speaking again. “Think we’ll get by the big boy there with the halo?”

Rob looked at the giant, glowing pearl of Saturn, which had been growing before their eyes for the past couple of days. Though placid and beautiful against the velvet sky, the ringed planet was a real menace to the _Rigel_.

“Lieutenant Stone said it’s going to be a tight squeeze,” Rob answered. “We hope we’ve got enough rocket power to fight off the terrific gravity pull of Saturn and his moons.”

“I can’t understand why we couldn’t go on a beeline to Pluto without even coming close to the other planets,” Duff said. “Pluto is a long ways off the plane of the outer planets, isn’t it?”

“We could,” Rob answered, “if it weren’t for floating clouds of explosive hydrogen which have been found to exist outside of the plane of the ecliptic. That’s why we have to stay in close until we’re past Neptune.”

“Won’t Uranus and Neptune give us trouble?” Duff asked. “They’re pretty big too.”

“Uranus is far around on his orbit, and Neptune is heading away from us. However, we’ll see Neptune at a distance.”

Hours later Rob was in the navigation compartment with Lieutenant Stone, his immediate superior. They were leaning over a level ground-glass screen upon which were a projected television image and a panel of dials. In the middle of the scene was poised the oblate sphere of Saturn and its spinning necklace of millions of meteoric particles. Scattered about were globes of varying sizes, which were Saturn’s moons. The screen surface was roughened to take pencil marks. A tiny dot represented the _Rigel_, and arcs were drawn to show the motions of all the objects.

“Our closest approach to the planet will be here at point ‘X’,” spoke the navigator. Glancing at his watch, he added, “We’ve got about five minutes to go.”

As they waited, Rob went over to the side port where he could watch the luminous planet directly. He thought he had never seen a sight so beautiful. Saturn was banded with color layers something in the manner of Jupiter, only in softer tints. Riotous masses seethed and tossed in the cauldron of fury beneath the apparently paper-thin girdle of shaded bands.

“It’s gorgeous—but deadly too,” Lieutenant Stone commented.

“Yes, sir,” Rob murmured, “and I’m in no mood for a bath of methane and ammonia. We’ve got to get to Pluto; that’s the only thing that’s important!”

At zero hour, all rockets were blowing at full capacity. Rob could feel the _Rigel_ bending to the implacable will of the big world. As the ship’s nose was pulled inward, the young spaceman could see the anxiety on his superior’s face.

“I hope we’ve calculated this thing correctly, Rob,” the lieutenant said tightly. “The ship should begin to turn tail on Saturn in a little while.”

But the _Rigel_ still had not turned after twenty, nor even forty, minutes.

“We’re losing ground!” Lieutenant Stone said, checking a dial on the screen. “Something’s wrong! But that can’t be!”

Rob went over to the screen, where the spectroscope dial showed that the globe was growing closer, although it was not visibly so. If the _Rigel_ were not checked within a short time, the space ship would plunge into Saturn’s poisonous atmosphere! Rob picked up a clipboard of papers and began studying it.

“I’d give anything if we were on the _Procyon_ which took you and your brother to Jupiter!” Lieutenant Stone complained. “The _Rigel_’s built primarily for distance and hasn’t a fraction of the _Procyon_’s rocket thrust!”

“There seems to be something wrong in the figures for Titan!” Rob suddenly spoke.

Lieutenant Stone looked over his shoulder. Silently the two went through the figures, inspecting every equation where the numbers appeared relating to Saturn’s largest satellite.

“The figures are wrong in two places!” the officer exclaimed. “No wonder we miscalculated the total gravity pull! Whoever prepared these notes back at the base will surely catch it! I guess we can’t blame him too much, though. These figures were worked up on extra short notice for us.”

“What’re we going to do, lieutenant?” Rob asked. “The ship’s on top power drive now!”

Lieutenant Stone explained the new development over the intercom phone to Spacemaster O’Leary. The skipper verified the fact that the _Rigel_ was on full thrust. He said that there was no other alternative but to abandon ship and make for the moon Japetus in the two space boats and hope to be picked up later from there.

“We can’t abandon the ship!” Rob burst out uncontrollably.

“And why not, Allison?” came the skipper’s retort over the intercom.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I was thinking of the _Capella_ and her crew!” Rob said. “What will happen to them?”

“That can’t be helped I’m afraid,” the skipper replied. “My first duty is to my ship and men. Both of you prepare to abandon ship.”

When Spacemaster O’Leary had cut off, Lieutenant Stone said, “I’m sorry, Rob. I know how much you thought of Spaceman Hawley, but there’s nothing more to be done. Better get together what stuff you want to take along.”

However, as the officer began getting up his things, Rob remained at the screen, poring over it and a little mathematical machine called an electronic computer.

“Ready to go, Rob?” Lieutenant Stone asked sometime later.

“I think I’ve found something, sir!” Rob said, holding a place on the screen with his finger.

“A die-hard, if I ever saw one,” murmured his superior, with an admiring grin. He came over to see.

“Scylla is known to have a slightly unpredictable orbit,” Rob said. “During the past few minutes I’ve traced it cutting inward toward the planet. I’ve checked the moon’s gravity-and-distance ratio on the computer, and I believe if we delay the abandon-ship for several more minutes we can pull free of Saturn and its family!”

“Let me see,” the lieutenant said. They checked the slight movement of Saturn’s tenth satellite, which had been discovered in 1963. Scylla was tiny, a dense ball of rock only three miles in diameter. But its diminishing gravity pull as it moved away could be enough to swing the balance in favor of the _Rigel_.

Lieutenant Stone agreed with Rob’s finding in general, although in the brief time available there was no opportunity to make a positive measurement. He phoned the skipper, who was ready to send out the first space boat. Lieutenant Stone reported to him Rob’s find.

“If you agree it’s worth a chance, lieutenant, I’ll play ball,” the skipper replied.

As Rob stared apprehensively at the big planet from the side port, he tormented himself about whether he had done the right thing in suggesting what he did. Had the _Rigel_ been abandoned, as was planned, all hands would have been saved. As things stood now, however, the entire crew might perish. Still, Rob could not really regret taking the responsibility. Times before, when there had been lives at stake, he had stuck by his convictions and had never failed to accept danger when that seemed the best move for all concerned.

Rob and Lieutenant Stone kept their eyes glued on the TV screen, particularly the speck that was Scylla and the slight motion it was describing. Rob felt shudders rock the space ship as great powers locked in combat.

Some minutes later, Lieutenant Stone checked the dials and said with a deep sigh of relief, “I think we’ve done it! Thanks, Rob!”

They had done it. The balance was swung in favor of the _Rigel_ as Saturn’s tiny companion continued to move away, giving up the fight. From now on the planet would appear to diminish in size, but it would be many hours before its commanding sphere would be lost among the other millions of lights in the heavens.

For days and days, nothing seemed to change in the endless depths of black space as the _Rigel_ sped toward Pluto. There were the same monotonous patterns of stardust and the eternally broad sweep of the Milky Way and other remote galaxies. Only the distant planets grew and shrank in size. As the space ship neared Neptune, the big green world enlarged importantly. Rob and Duff, in an off-duty hour, watched the frigid, lonely planet.

“Neptune reminds me a little of Earth,” Rob said.

Duff’s brows raised questioningly. “I can’t see _any_ similarity. Why, Neptune is four times Earth’s diameter!”

“But Neptune’s mean surface gravity is the same as Earth’s because of its low density,” Rob replied. “Like Saturn, another big puffball, Neptune has a small rocky core surrounded by huge layers of ice and atmosphere. Both Neptune and Earth have a greenish cast, and each has a satellite of about the same size and at about the same distance away.”

“There’s one big difference, though, Rob,” Duff said. “Neptune’s a zillion times colder.”

“It’s still not as cold as we’re going to find Pluto,” Rob reminded him, “near absolute zero!”

The redhead made a wry face. “Why did you have to say that? It’s so warm and comfortable in here!”

As the _Rigel_ drove onward, thousands of miles a minute, day upon day, Rob grew impatient to reach Pluto. He was thinking of Jim Hawley and the _Capella_ crew undergoing unknown hardship and peril. The radio circuit with the ill-fated space ship had been left open in case she was able to get a message through. But none had come during all this time, and Rob was beginning to doubt that he would ever see his fun-loving friend again.

The day finally came when the _Rigel_ hovered over the little planet, which was not quite as large a world as Mars. Rob and Duff, with some of the other crewmen in the pilots’ compartment, stared down upon trackless wastes of incredible frozen beauty. Ever since the ship had dropped low enough to reveal the dazzling surface features of the solar system’s most distant planet, no one had spoken. The bizarre landscape seemed to have awed everyone into a state of silent fascination.

Suddenly Duff broke the quiet. “Look, what a pretty blue lake!”

Rob saw the small body of water partly surrounded by a canyon of towering ice cliffs. In the twilight glow of stars and the weak sun, the lake and peaks sparkled with a clarity that reminded Rob of great jewels.

“It’s a lake rightly enough,” Spacemaster O’Leary said. “You can see the ripples, but that’s no water.” He checked the thermocouple. “It’s 348 degrees below zero Fahrenheit down there! That’s a lake of _liquid oxygen_. I’ve seen them on the dark side of Mercury.”

Rob gasped in astonishment. He had visited most of the planets, but there was nothing to compare with a wonder such as this.

Lieutenant Stone then spoke. “Those ice cliffs don’t look to be frozen water. Do you think they might be chunks of dry ice, sir?”

“That’s my opinion,” the spacemaster replied, “—solid carbon dioxide. Notice those other crystal peaks off to the right. They are probably ammonia. I’ve seen them on Mercury, too.”

There was a scant, dense atmosphere close to the ground—that had been known. It was a strange-looking substance, Rob thought. It lay like a blanket of gray-blue mist between the space ship, which was several thousands of feet up, and the ground below. The compressed atmosphere was filled with small clouds of icelike particles which floated lazily near the surface like tiny fish in a cosmic ocean. Everything about the scene suggested a terrible coldness almost beyond human realization.

“Our bearings indicate this is approximately the area where the _Capella_ was last heard from,” the skipper declared. “But I see nothing of the ship. Do any of you?”

With the others, Rob strained his eyes to pick out a shiny cigar shape in the bleak stretches below. It seemed an impossible task, and he was reminded of an old analogy of the elusive needle in the haystack. There were broad areas of dark rock between the icebergs, filmed over lightly with rime. Such dark expanses could account for Pluto’s weak solar reflection, Rob decided.

The _Rigel_ cut its power to a low cruising speed and began making a detailed search. Scanning scopes were used to magnify the view, but the job promised to be a long and painstaking one.

Perhaps it would even take too long to be of any service to the _Capella_, Rob thought gloomily, as his scope swept the ground. His speculations then took an even grimmer turn. Perhaps the lake of oxygen had swallowed up the space ship! Or maybe the craft lay buried under layers of frost.

The hours of search, many of them, dragged by. At last the skipper called his crewmen together and make a pronouncement that shocked Rob.

“There’s no purpose in keeping up the search any longer,” he said decisively. “Even if we should find the ship now, we don’t have enough fuel to land and blast off again. I’m afraid the elements have claimed the _Capella_ and that the first expedition to Pluto will have to be written off the books.”

“But, sir,...!” Rob burst out.

The spacemaster looked at him levelly.

“I’m sorry, Rob. I realize you’ve got a more personal interest in the _Capella_ than the rest of us. But we’re simply licked.”

Rob turned away from him in abject despair and stared unseeingly out of the port. Filling his inner eye, to the oblivion of all else, was the sight of a grinning young spaceman, with a perpetually rumpled shock of blond hair. _He’d never see Jim Hawley again._ Knowing this, it was as though a part of himself had suddenly died.

As the Rigel headed away from the area over which it had cruised unsuccessfully for so long a time, a burst of static came over the long-silent, open circuit of the space ship’s radio. Rob’s heart thrilled with hope. Could it really be the _Capella_ trying to make contact?

More static followed, then a muffled voice, barely audible, saying: “_Capella_ to space ship. Can you hear?”

Spacemaster O’Leary scooped up the radio mike, eager as a child. “Yes! Yes! Give your location!”

The communication came over badly, but O’Leary found out that he was speaking to the _Capella_’s skipper, Spacemaster Nielson. Port telescopes were pointed to the spot given as the location of the downed rocket. Rob focused his on the upright craft, which was buried in hoarfrost and situated on the top of a slope leading down into the blue oxygen lake. Rob realized that only the luckiest of glances could have picked up the camouflaged ship.

On the mike again, Spacemaster O’Leary asked, “Are all aboard the ship well?”

“We’re all suffering from the cold,” was the reply. “Remember we’ve been here for weeks, although it seems like years! We had to draw from the atomic reactor to make a heater, but that isn’t adequate. Some of the men have frostbite. The ship is under a foot of frozen matter as you can see. The truth of the matter is we came woefully unprepared to tackle such an icebox!”

“How did you get marooned?” asked O’Leary.

“As soon as we landed, the frost began piling up,” Nielson replied. “It clogged our jets and our aerial, which is the reason we lost contact with Earth. The hull defrosters were a complete failure. We just now got the antenna partially repaired after all these weeks. One of the crewmen, Jim Hawley, had to work outside on it. He’s taken an especially rough beating from the cold.”

“I hate to tell you this,” O’Leary said somberly, “but I don’t know how we can save you.” He explained about the lowered fuel supply. Then he reminded Spacemaster Nielson of the fact that even should the _Rigel_ enter Pluto’s atmosphere, she would most certainly be overcome by the same fate that had been the _Capella_’s.

Rob, hearing this, made a suggestion to Spacemaster O’Leary. “The two space boats may be able to go down there and back before the frost gets them, sir.”

The _Rigel_’s commander looked at him gravely, “I can’t ask a crewman to take a chance like that.”

Rob looked at him steadily. “I’ll pilot one of the boats myself, sir.”

“You Allisons have more courage than sense,” O’Leary retorted gruffly. “But you can try it.”

Lieutenant Stone spoke up. “I’ll take the other boat down, sir. Lieutenant Myers can fill in as navigator if I fail to get back.”

Shortly later, as Rob climbed into one of the rescue craft, Duff Ford followed him, similarly clothed in a cumbersome space suit. “You may need some help, Rob,” he said.

Rob smiled at him. “Thanks, Duff. I guess I would like some company.”

Both youths carried heat guns, as did Lieutenant Stone, for blasting ice. The escape locks of the _Rigel_ opened, and the boats slipped out into the vacuum of space. The life crafts were propelled by jets of compressed air and could seat nine men comfortably. Both boats would thus easily accommodate the sixteen crew members of the _Capella_. The suits worn by Rob and Duff were like those carried by the _Capella_’s crew on the expedition. They were heavily insulated, electrically heated, and contained air spaces for additional prevention of heat loss.

Rob dove quickly toward the planet’s surface. Time was the important element in this venture. He saw the capsule shape of Lieutenant Stone’s boat, which had gotten a head start, just below. Rob felt a steady battering against the hull as he neared the ground. This was caused by the suspended frozen particles in the atmosphere.

Rob opened the forward braking jets, which poured against the big flat area of dry ice beneath. A dense cloud enveloped the craft as the surface of the carbon dioxide was warmed and evaporated into gas.

The landing, therefore, had to be made more through judgment than through vision. When Rob felt a gentle bump under him, he felt immeasurably better.

“That was close!” Duff remarked over his helmet radio.

“I see the lieutenant landed safely too,” Rob said. “He’s getting out.”

“He left his jets idling,” Duff said. “Maybe we ought to do the same.”

“Right,” Rob agreed. Cutting down the engine power, he then jumped out with his heat gun, followed by Duff.

The _Capella_ stood about forty feet away. The flat of dry ice was free of the cloud now, and visibility was good under the glow of the stars and the sun, which resembled a bright arc light. As Lieutenant Stone came over with his gun in hand, Rob was shocked to see a coating of frost growing over the officer’s suit just like a fur covering! The same thing was happening to him and Duff, of course. Rob was grateful for the antifreeze compound which had been rubbed onto the facepiece of his helmet to keep vision clear.

“Let’s get over there,” the lieutenant said over his helmet radio.