Part 3 (1/2)

”Sure,” Bert answered.

He thrust Alice behind him as they approached the main lounge of the s.h.i.+p where most of the colonists were a.s.sembled.

Trenton Lauren's voice burst on his ears. ”There he is! Kraskow, I'll see that you spend your life in prison! A Patrol s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.ms got their s.p.a.ceboat patched up,” he announced. ”I watched 'em do it.

They went out protected by s.p.a.cesuits, of course. They did a botch job, but I guess it'll hold. Now they're taking off.”

Through the leaded gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.p.a.cesuits. 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 s.h.i.+p to avoid tainting their surroundings.

And in the press of events they hadn't thought to put on other s.p.a.cesuits.

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 pa.s.sage toward the rent in the s.h.i.+p, 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.

Bert had a jangled impression of Alice, now in a s.p.a.cesuit, 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 s.h.i.+p was going to die. Lauren's last move had been meant to provide a real disaster, with many deaths! Prove the Big Pill a failure. Make sure that it would be banned for good by the Safe Products Approval Board. Put the stamp of crime on Doc Kramer, the gentle little scientist who had been murdered! And on him, Bert Kraskow. And where was the rat, Lauren? On his way to the colonized moons of Jupiter, or even Mars, yelling and accusing by radio all along the line?

As consciousness faded further, Bert stopped thinking unpleasant things. His mind drifted into Doc Kramer's dream--of the changes which would make the near-dead worlds of s.p.a.ce really habitable and homelike, fit for human colonists. It was a beautiful, lost vision.

He was out cold, then, for several Earth-days, and only dimly aware for many days afterward. He knew that he was in the s.h.i.+p's sick-bay, and that Lawler and other men were there, too. He heard their voices, and his own, without remembering what was said. Alice often came to see him. Often he heard roaring, watery sounds, as of vast rains.

Gradually he came out of the dream-like period, learning of what had happened. Until the time when he walked from the sick-bay, unsteadily, but on the mend.

Alice, at his elbow, spoke: ”It was like Doc Kramer planned, Bert, solving the hardest problem.”

He knew what this meant. Trans.m.u.tation, or any atomic process, must involve the generation of much radioactivity that can destroy life. In the Big Pill, the problem was to make all the atoms break, and rearrange their components into new elements as cleanly and sharply as possible, so that residual atomic instability--radioactivity, that is--would not linger for years, but would disappear quickly.