“Yes, it will take time,” agreed Stevens, remembering what the Titanian captain
had told him concerning the construction of those plants—generators which had been in
continuous and automatic operation for thousands of Saturnian years.
“It will take more than time—it will take lives,” replied Barkovis, gravely. “Scores,
perhaps hundreds, of us will never again breathe the clear, pure air of Titan. In spite of
all precaution and all possible bracing and insulation, man after man after man will be
crushed by his own weight, volatilized by the awful heat, poisoned by the foul
atmosphere, or will burst into unthinkable flames at the touch of some flying spark from
the inconceivably hot metals with which we shall have to work. A horrible fate, but we
shall not lack for volunteers.”
“Sure not; and of course you yourself would go. And I never thought of the effect
a spark would have on you— your tissues would probably be wildly inflammable. But
say, I just had a thought. Just how hot is the air at those plants and just what is the
actual pressure?”
“According to the records, the temperature is some forty of your Centigrade
degrees above the melting-point of water, and the pressure is not far short of two of
your meters of mercury. I find it almost impossible to think of mercury as a liquid,
however.”
“You would, since you use it as a metal, for wires in coils and so on. But plus
forty, while pretty warm, isn’t impossible, by any means; and we could stand double our
air-pressure for quite a while. Both my partner and I are pretty fair mechanics and we’ve
got quite a line of machine tools, such as you could not possibly have here. We’ll give it
a whirl, since we owe you something already. Lead us to it, ace—but wait a minute! We
can’t see through the fog, so couldn’t find the plants, and probably your wiring diagrams
would explode if I touched them.”
“I never thought of your helping us,” mused Barkovis. “The idea of any living
being existing in that inferno has always been unthinkable, but the difficulties you
mention are slight. We have already built in our vessel communicators similar to yours,
and radio sets. With these we can guide you and explain the plants to you as you work,
and our tractor beams will be of assistance to you in moving heavy objects, even at
such distances from the surface as we Titanians shall have to maintain. If you will set
out a flask of your atmosphere we will analyze it, for the thought has come to me that
perhaps, being planet-dwellers yourselves, the air of Saturn might not be as poisonous
to you as it is to us.”
“That’s a thought, too,” and, the news broadcast, it was not long until the two
ships leaped into the air, to the accompaniment of the cheers and plaudits of a watching
multitude.
In a wide curve they sped toward Saturn. Passing so close to the enormous rings
that the individual meteoric ••fragments could almost be seen with the unaided eye, they
flashed on and on, slowing down long before they approached the upper surface of the
envelope of cloud. The spherical space-ship stopped and Stevens, staring into his
useless screen, drove the Forlorn Hope downward mile after mile, solely under
Barkovis’ direction, changing course and power from time to time as the Titanian’s voice
came from the speaker at his elbow. Slower and slower became the descent, until
finally, almost upon the broad, flat roof of the power-plant, Stevens saw it in his plate.
Breathing deeply in relief, he dropped quickly down upon a flat pavement, neutralized
his controls, and turned to Nadia.
“So far, so good. We will now go out, check its functions, and ascertain why it
does not function any more. Remember that gravity is about double normal here, and
conduct yourself accordingly.”
“But it’s supposed to be only about nine-tenths,” she objected.
“That’s at the outer surface of the atmosphere,” he replied. “And it’s some
atmosphere—not like the thin layer we’ve got on Tellus.”
They went into the airlock, and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to
collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his
helmet wide. Nadia followed suit, and the man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in
disgust as two faint, but unmistakable odors smote her olfactory nerves.
“I never cared particularly for hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide, either,” he
assured her, “but they aren’t strong enough to hurt us in the short time we’ll be here.
Those Titanian chemists know their stuff, no fooling.”
He opened the outer valves slowly, then opened the door and they stepped down
upon the smooth, solid floor, which Stevens examined carefully.
“I thought so, from his story. Solid platinum! This whole plant is built of platinum,
iridium, and noble alloys— the only substances known that will literally last forever.
Believe me, ace of my bosom, I don’t wonder that it cost them lives to build it—with their
constitutions, I don’t see how they ever got it built at all.”
Before them rose an immense truncated cone of metal, upon the top of which
was situated the power plant. Twelve massive pillars supported a domed roof, but
permitted the air to circulate freely throughout the one great room which housed the
machinery. They climbed a flight of stairs, passed between two pillars, and stared about
them. There was no noise, no motion — there was nothing that could move. Twelve
enormous masses of metallic checkerwork, covered with wide cooling fins, almost filled
the vast hall. From the center of each mass great leads extended out into a clear space
in the middle of the room, there uniting in mid-air to form one enormous bus-bar. This
bar, thicker than a man’s body, had originally curved upward to the base of an immense
parabolic structure of latticed bars. Now, however, it was broken in midspan and the two
ends bent toward the floor. Above their heads, a jagged hole gaped in the heavy metal
of the roof, and a similar hole had been torn in the floor. The bar had been broken and
these holes had been made by some heavy body, probably a meteorite, falling with
terrific velocity.
“This is it, all x,” Stevens spoke to distant Barkovis. “Sure there’s nothing on this
beam ? If it should be hot and I should bridge it, it’d be just too bad.”
“We have made sure that nothing is connected to it,” the Titanian assured him.
“Do you think you can do anything ?”
“Absolutely. We’ve got jacks that’ll bend heavier stuff than that, and after we get it
straightened the welding will be easy, but I’ll have to have some metal. Shall I cut a
piece off the pavement outside ?”
“That will not be necessary. You will find ample stores of spare metal piled at the
base of each pillar.”
“All x. Now we’ll get the jack, Nadia,” and they went back to their vessel, finding
that upon Saturn, their combined strength was barely sufficient to drag the heavy tool
along the floor.
“Stand aside, please. We will place it for you,” a calm voice sounded in their ears,
and a tractor beam picked the massive jack lightly from the floor, and as lightly lifted it to
its place beneath the broken bus-bar and held it there while Stevens piled blocks and
plates of platinum beneath its base.
“Well, here’s where I peel down as far as the law allows. This is going to be real
work, girl—no fooling. It’d help a lot if this outfit were sending out a few thousand kilo-
franks instead of standing idle.”
“How would that help ?”
“It’s a heat-engine, you know——works by absorbing heat. The cold air sinks—I
imagine it pretty nearly blows a gale down the side of this cone when it’s working—and
hot air rushes in to take its place. I could use a little cool breeze right now,” and
Stevens, stripped to the waist, bent to the lever of the powerful hydraulic jack. Beads of
sweat gathered upon his broad back, uniting to form tiny rivulets, and the girl became
highly concerned.
“It was a horrible job, and I’m glad it’s done,” she declared. “But say, Steve, that
thing looks as little like a power-plant as anything I can imagine. How does it work? You
said that it worked on heat, but I don’t quite see how. But don’t draw diagrams and
please don’t integrate!”
“No ordinary plant such as we use could run for centuries without attention,” he
replied. “This is a highly advanced heat-engine — something like a thermocouple, you
know. This whole thing is simply the hot end, connected to the cold end on Titan by a
beam instead of wires. When it’s working this metal must cool off something fierce.
That’s what the checker-work and fins are for—so that it can absorb the maximum