how diplomatic the thoughts were that he sent us ? He described our structure as being
‘compact’, but I got the undertone of his real thoughts, as well—didn’t you ?”
“Yes, now that you mention it, I did. He really thought that we were white-hot,
under-sized, over-powered, warty, hairy, hideously opaque and generally repulsive little
monstrosities—thoroughly unpleasant and distasteful. But he was friendly, just the
same. Heavens, Steve! Do you suppose that he read our real thoughts, too?”
“Sure he did; but he is intelligent enough to make allowances, the same as we
are doing. He isn’t any more insulted than we are. He knows that such feelings are
ingrained and cannot be changed.”
Breakfast over, they experienced a new sensation. For the first time in months
they had nothing to do! Used as they were to being surrounded by pressing tasks, they
enjoyed their holiday immensely for a. few hours. Sitting idly at the communicator plate
they scanned the sparkling heavens with keen interest. Beneath them Jupiter was a
brilliant crescent not far from the sun, which had already grown perceptibly smaller and
less bright. Above them and to their right Saturn shone refulgently, his spectacular rings
plainly visible. All about them were the glories of the firmament, which never fail to awe
the most seasoned observer. But idleness soon became irksome to those two active
spirits, and Stevens prowled restlessly about their narrow quarters.
“I’m going to go to work, before I go dippy,” he soon declared. “They’ve got lots of
power, and we can rig up a transmitter unit to send it over here to our receptor. Then I
can start welding the old Hope together without waiting until we get to Titan to start it.
Think I’ll signal Barkovis to come over, and see what he thinks about it.”
The Titanian commander approved the idea, and the transmitting field was
quickly installed. Nadia insisted that she, too, needed to work, and that she was
altogether too good a mechanic to waste; therefore the two again labored mightily
together, day after day. But the girl limited rigidly their hours of work to those of the
working day; and evening after evening Barkovis visited with them for hours. Dressed in
his heavy space-suit and supported by a tractor beam well out of range of the to him
terrific heat radiated by the bodies of the Terrestrials, he floated along unconcernedly;
while over the multiplex cable of the thought-exchanger he conversed with the man and
woman seated just inside the open outer door of their air-lock. The Titanian’s appetite
for information was insatiable—particularly did he relish everything pertaining to the
Earth and to the other inner planets, forever barred to him and to his kind. In return
Stevens and Nadia came gradually to know the story of the humanity of Titan.
“I am glad beyond measure to have known you,” Barkovis mused one night.
“Your existence proves that there is truth in mythology, as some of us have always
believed. Your visit to Titan will create a furore in scientific circles, for you are
impossibility incarnate—personifications of the preposterous. In you wildest fancy has
become commonplace. According to many of our scientists it is utterly impossible for
you to exist. Yet you say, and it must be, that there are millions upon millions of similar
beings. Think of it! Venerians, Tellurians, Martians, the satellite dwellers of the lost
space-ship, and us—so similar mentally, yet physically how different!”
“But where does the mythology come in ?” thought Nadia.
“We have unthinkably ancient legends which say that once Titan was extremely
hot, and that our remote ancestors were beings of fire, in whose veins ran molten water
instead of blood. Since our recorded history goes back some tens of thousands of
Saturnian years, and since in that long period there has been no measurable change in
us, few of us have believed in the legends at all. They have been thought the surviving
figments of a barbarous, prehistoric worship of the sun. However, such a condition is
not in conflict with the known facts of cosmogony, and since there actually exists such a
humanity as yours—a humanity whose bodily tissues actually are composed largely of
molten water—those ancient legends must indeed have been based upon truth. What
an evolution! Century after century of slowly decreasing temperature—one continuous
struggle to adapt the physique to a constantly changing environment. First they must
have tried to maintain their high temperature by covering and heating their cities. Then,
as vegetation died, they must have bred into their plants the ability to use as sap purely
chemical liquids, such as our present natural fluids—which also may have been partly
synthetic then—instead of the molten water to which they had been accustomed. They
must have modified similarly the outer atmosphere; must have made it more reactive, to
compensate for the lowered temperature at which metabolism must take place. As Titan
grew colder and colder they probably dug their cities deeper and ever deeper; until
humanity came finally to realize that it must itself change completely or perish utterly.
“Then we may picture them as aiding evolution in changing their body chemistry.
For thousands and thousands of years there must have gone on the gradual adaptation
of blood stream and tissue to more and more volatile liquids, and to lower and still lower
temperatures. This must have continued until Titan arrived at the condition which has
now obtained for ages—a condition of thermal equilibrium with space upon one hand
and upon the other the sun, which changes appreciably only in millions upon millions of
years. In equilibrium at last—with our bodily and atmospheric temperatures finally
constant at their present values, which seem as low to you as yours appear high to us.
Truly, an evolution astounding to contemplate!”
“But how about power?” asked Stevens. “You said that you don’t have atomic
energy, and it doesn’t stand to reason that there could be very much power—atomic or
otherwise—generated upon a satellite so old and so cold.”
“You are right. For ages there has been but little power produced upon Titan.
Many cycles ago, however, our scientists had developed rocket driven space-ships, with
which they explored our neighboring satellites, and even Saturn itself. It is from power
plants upon Saturn that we draw our energy. Their construction was difficult in the
extreme, since the pioneers had to work in braces because of the enormous force of
gravity. Then, too, they had to be protected from the overwhelming pressure and
poisonous qualities of the air, and insulated from a temperature far above the melting
point of water. In such awful heat, of course our customary building material, water,
could not be employed . . .”
“But all our instruments have indicated that Saturn is cold!” Stevens interrupted.
“Its surface temperature, as read from afar, would be low,” conceded Barkovis,
“but the actual surface of the planet is extremely hot, and is highly volcanic. Practically
none of its heat is radiated because of the great density and depth of its atmosphere,
which extends for many hundreds of your kilometers. It required many thousands of
lives and many years of time to build and install those automatic power plants, but once
they were in operation we were assured of power for many tens of thousands of years
to come.”
“Our system of power transmission is more or less like yours, but we haven’t
anything like your range. Suppose you’d be willing to teach me the computation of your
fields ?”
“Yes, we shall be glad to give you the formulae. Being an older race, it is perhaps
natural that we should have developed certain refinements as yet unknown to you. But I
am, I perceive, detaining you from your time of rest—goodbye,” and Barkovis was
wafted back toward his mirrored globe.
“What do you make of this chemical solution blood of theirs, Steve?” asked
Nadia, watching the placidly floating form of the Titanian captain.
“Not much. I may have mentioned before that there are one or two, or perhaps
even three men who are better chemists than I am. I gathered that it is something like a
polyhydric alcohol and something like a substituted hydrocarbon, and yet different from
either in that it contains fluorin in loose combination. I think it is something that our
Tellurian chemists haven’t got yet; but they’ve got so many organic compounds now that
they may have synthesized it, at that. You see, Titan’s atmosphere isn’t nearly as dense
as ours, but what there is of it is pure dynamite. Ours is a little oxygen, mixed with a lot
of inert ingredients. Theirs is oxygen, heavily laced with fluorin. It’s reactive, no fooling !
However, something pretty violent must be necessary to carry on body reactions at
such a temperature as theirs.”
“Probably; but I know even less about that kind of thing than you do. As a
chemist I’m an awfully good actress. Funny, isn’t it, the way he thinks ‘water’ when he