Big Pill by Raymond Z. Gallun (best electronic book reader .txt) 📖

heir helmet radiophones were full of static from intense electromagnetic disturbances, so that it was hard to converse.

But presently Alice shouted: "Bert! It's funny that we don't see the ship from camp anywhere in space. They must have gotten our warning to blast off with everybody. Radio reception was clear as a bell, then!... Wait! Somebody's trying to call us now...."

Bert strained his ears to penetrate the scratchy noises thrown up by the atomic holocaust that he had set off, and hear the words spoken blurredly by a familiar voice:

"... Bert ... Alice.... This is Lawler.... Rockets of ship won't function.... So ... can't leave ... camp.... Two Space Patrol boats cleared Titan with some ... women.... Too small ... few passengers.... Most ... stranded here.... Bert—what?... I think ... Lauren...."

The rest of the words were drowned in a cataract of static.

Bert gulped. His mouth tasted suddenly sour with near-panic. "Lauren," he grated, his voice like a file. "Again. It would be a long chance that the ship broke down just by coincidence. He doctored those rockets and probably got clear in his own spaceboat. Leave it to him to make the use of the Big Pill look like disaster. And it can be that, now, with people left in the danger zone, losing their heads, acting foolishly."

Bert felt much more than just bitter, furious chagrin. His fellow colonists might lose their lives. He was responsible. He had launched a gigantic experiment recklessly.

"All we can do is get back to camp as fast as possible," Alice shouted above the static. "Come on, Bert! Bear down on the jets!"

So they hurtled at even greater speed toward the surface of Titan below. Meanwhile, faintly luminous vapors continued to pour over the hills from the direction of the terrible glow that fringed the horizon. Minutes before they reached the ground, hot, dusty murk thickened around them. It blew against them like a devil's wind.

They began to use their jets to brake speed. The camp was all but lost to view in the thickening haze. They landed heavily a mile outside it and went rolling for a few yards after the impact. Dazed, they staggered up.

For a while their impressions were blurred, as if they struggled through some murky, cobwebby nightmare. Once more on Titan, silent as death for unthinkable ages, there were howling wind-sounds that found their way to Alice and Bert dimly through their oxygen helmets. Often the hot blast bowled them over, but they arose and kept on toward camp.

Bert took a Geiger counter, pencil-size from his chest-pouch. In it, flashes of light replaced the ancient clicking. It flickered madly. This meant that outside their shielding spacesuits was radioactive death. The gases of the wind that howled around them, had been in part released from chemical compounds, but more had been transmuted from other elements of the rock and dust in the crust of Titan, in that atomic vortex where the Big Pill had struck. Those gases were so new that they were tainted with the fires of their birth—saturated with radioactivity.

"It's nothing that we didn't expect, Allie," Bert grated into his helmet-phone, as if to reassure himself as well as his wife. "We knew beforehand."

His arm was around Alice, supporting her unsteady steps. Through blowing clouds of dust and gas that had surpassed hurricane force, they reached camp. Through the murk they saw that the wind had flattened and scorched every airdome. But there was no one in sight.

"The people must be inside the ship!" Alice shouted. "Even if it can't fly, it can protect them! There it is, undamaged!..."

"Yeah," Bert agreed, but he knew that her cheerfulness was a little like grabbing at a straw.

Then Alice had another thought, "By now there isn't anymore Space Ship Prometheus," she said. "It has melted to a globe of incandescent metal, kept hot by a slow atomic breakdown in its substance. But it's sticking to the same tight orbit around Titan."

They hadn't seen it happen because by then the Prometheus had passed beyond the horizon. But the globe would circle Titan and return.

Alice kept trying to be cheerful. Bert felt a flicker of that same mood when he said, "Sure, Allie." But then his mind dropped the subject of the Prometheus. For there was too much terrible uncertainty and human confusion to be dealt with.

Bert led Alice to the small, seldom-used airlock near the stern of the camp ship. He had a logical hunch that Lawler would be waiting just inside to tell them what the situation was on board.

The hunch proved true. The lock's inner door slid aside stiffly and there was Lawler, a finger to his lips.

Quickly the Kraskows removed their radioactivity-tainted spacesuits. Bert spoke softly.

"Well, Lawler, how do the gases that are spreading over Titan test out chemically?"

"As was expected, Bert. Plenty of nitrogen. Some helium. Plenty of hydrogen. A lot more oxygen. So that, as all of the hydrogen burns—combines with it to form water-vapor—there still will be lots of oxygen left over, floating free. Of course these gases are still so radioactive that half a lungful would kill. Only time will tell if Doc figured things straight. By the way, where is he?"

"Dead," Bert answered. "Murdered."

Lawler's lip curled, but he showed no surprise. "Uhunh," he grunted. "We can't prove the sabotage of this ship's rockets, either. When we tried to take off they just fizzled out their insides."

Then Lawler's eyes gleamed. "But," he said, "I foresaw funny business, so I doctored the jets of Lauren's private spaceboat as a precaution. He's still here with a couple of his stooges. He just about had hysterics when the space cops couldn't find room for him. He's been yelling accusations and promises of court action ever since while trying to repair his spaceboat."

"How are the colonists taking what happened?" Bert cut in.

Lawler shrugged. "Not bad. Not good. What you'd expect. Lots of those people are new to space. That was hard to take in itself. Add some messy deaths, and now this. And with Lauren yelling—well—plenty of them don't like us."

"Did anybody get hurt, yet?" Bert demanded.

"Not yet. Want to see the bunch?"

"Sure," Bert answered.

e thrust Alice behind him as they approached the main lounge of the ship where most of the colonists were assembled.

Trenton Lauren's voice burst on his ears. "There he is! Kraskow, I'll see that you spend your life in prison! A Patrol ship is coming out from Mars right now to get you! You may even hang! Out there in camp are ten million dollars' worth of equipment—property of my firm—which has been destroyed by your malicious action. And you've made a whole world useless for colonization for centuries to come! It's poisoned with radioactivity! Maybe we'll all die! Do you hear me, Kraskow? Die!"

Bert Kraskow moved quietly forward, past faces that glowered at him. Then he struck. There was a vicious thud. Lauren went down, drooling blood, his eyes glazed. Bert did not lose a motion as he stepped forward, and laid Lauren's two henchmen low with equal dispatch.

Minutes passed before the trio was awake again. Before Lauren could spout more venom, Bert stopped him with a growl. "Get out of my sight," he said. "Say another word and you'll get more of what you just got."

They went, Lawler following to watch out for possible mischief.

"None of us are hurt, yet," Bert told those near him, "though some things have gone wrong. Let's sit tight and see how matters turn out."

As he looked around him Bert felt that most of the colonists didn't really care to listen to him. Maybe you couldn't blame them. They'd all heard and seen too much. And, in a sense, Bert felt little different than they did. There was fear in him, and tension. He had released a colossus. Calculations and minor tests might call it a genie of benevolence. But this remained still unproven.

Outside, the wind howled, making the ship quiver. The glow from the Big Pill continued to paint the now murky sky. Bert and his wife waited grimly and silently in the lounge with the others. Hours passed without much change. Once, briefly, it was red-lit night. Then this changed for a while to daylight that was blurred, but far stronger than that to which a Saturnine moon was accustomed.

A little later Lawler came back to the lounge. "Trenton and his bums got their spaceboat patched up," he announced. "I watched 'em do it. They went out protected by spacesuits, of course. They did a botch job, but I guess it'll hold. Now they're taking off."

Through the leaded glass of the window-ports, the colonists watched the craft vanish into the steam-filled wind.

A minute later disaster struck the colonists.

The explosion was not heavy against the roar of the storm, but a jagged hole, a yard across, was ripped in the ship's hull. Into the hole rushed the hot, radioactive wind. Automatic safety doors failed to close properly. Maybe they had been sabotaged, too, by Lauren.

Many of the colonists were wearing spacesuits. They were the lucky ones, only having to slam their face-windows shut to be protected sufficiently from radiation. The others had to scramble to armor themselves. Bert and Alice Kraskow, and Lawler, had been outside. The outer surfaces of their suits had been contaminated, so they had had to remove them inside the ship to avoid tainting their surroundings. And in the press of events they hadn't thought to put on other spacesuits.

In the lounge and elsewhere, fastened against the walls, were such armor for emergency use. Bert tried to help his wife get into one. But she ordered sharply: "I can do this! Take care of yourself, Bert."

He didn't do that. Nor did Lawler. They ran down a passage toward the rent in the ship, intent on stopping the gases that were flooding the craft's interior. Seconds were important. The radioactive wind, much cooled during the long journey from its point of origin, but poisoned by invisible emanations, struck their unprotected bodies. Yet they kept on. They dared not breathe or speak; still they worked together with an efficiency of terrible need, stepping over the forms of men who had already fallen.

Bert found a flat sheet of metal to use as a patch. He fitted it over the rent, and, while Lawler piled boxes of supplies against it to hold it in place, sealed the edges with a thick, tarry substance.

When the job was done they staggered back to the lounge. Blotches of color danced before their vision. Many corpuscles in their blood had already been destroyed by radiation. They sank to the deck.

ert had a jangled impression of Alice, now in a spacesuit, holding his head. He saw her lips mouthing endearments.... Game little Allie.... His mind wandered off. He was going to die. Maybe everyone on the ship was going to die. Lauren's last