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The captain was a broad-bodied, heavy-shouldered man with the veined red nose and cheeks of a heavy drinker. The cold-eyed way he looked at Boone, low-lidded, told how he felt.
"Don't think I've turned you loose because I like you, Boone," he clipped. "I don't. But we're coming into Saturn's orbit, and that means we need a biologist on duty. Prisoner or not, you qualify, so you're elected."
Boone stared. "Miss Rey—"
"Her temperature hit 104 an hour ago."
A chill ran through Boone. "You mean—"
"That's right. Titan fever."
Boone caught his breath as the door swung open to admit a thin-faced young ensign. "Another down, Captain," the man reported grimly. "Verdov, converter crew."
"That makes four. Thank the good Lord we've got plenty of chandak extract." The captain hunched forward, his thick forearms heavy on the desk. "You see where it puts us, Boone. From here on in it's monster country; we'll pass Japetus any minute. So the quicker you check the ship, the better."
"Right." Dry-lipped, Boone pivoted and strode towards the door, gesturing to the ensign. "Come on."
The other nodded and fell in beside him. "Where do you want to start?"
"Top live cargo section."
Together they rode the lift to the highest level, then walked to the end of the "A" passage.
Boone kicked the hatch of the first bunker. "Open it up."
"Open it—?" The ensign's eyes widened. "You mean you're going to check inside, too?"
Boone nodded curtly. "That's right."
"Well, if you say so...." Frowning, the ensign broke the seal; swung back the hatch.
Cold air washed over them. Light glinted on the seven-foot synthice slabs stacked floor to ceiling, each casing a contract worker stiff in frozen sleep.
Narrow-eyed, Boone probed each nook and crevice with his light-rod, then stepped back. "All right. Let's have the next one."
The ensign slammed shut the hatch. He studied Boone curiously. "Just what are you looking for?"
Boone shrugged. "Monsters don't come out of nowhere; not really. My bet is that they get aboard our ships at the Titan base—in embryo, maybe, or as a virus. If we can spot one before it's grown to a full-scale nightmare, it may give us a hint as to how to beat them."
"But they say they're human, sometimes—"
"Maybe. But no man I know can appear and disappear at will, and so far we're the only humanoid race we've found anywhere in the system. Till I see more proof, I'll put my money on alien life-forms plus optical illusion."
"Oh." The ensign's brows drew together. He opened the next hatch.
Another blank.
It went on like that, section after section. They checked supply storage, power receptors, converters.
Still nothing.
In the control room, when they got there, Japetus was already fading from the visiscreen. Hyperion loomed ahead, a bead-like dot hovering in the shadow of the Rings.
Beyond it, dim and distant, lay Titan.
Titan, greatest satellite of Saturn, nearly half the size of Earth itself. Titan, that had given Man mekronal, the precious, mysterious catalyst that cut loose the human race from the need for the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere of its homeland.
Titan, world of lost sphere-ships and phantasmic monsters.
Bleakly, Boone wondered if he'd ever reach it.
Or even if he did, would Eileen Rey live to see it with him? What were the odds against a woman struck down by Titan fever?
Those were questions without answers.
Weary, tight-lipped, he turned from the screen. "Nothing here. Let's try the crew quarters."
"Good enough." Once again, the ensign fell in beside him.
Overhead, the alarm bell clanged.
Boone went rigid; spun about as the com-box crackled, raw and ragged: "Top level calling! There's something in "A" passage—something awful! Get the biologist—Oh, my God—!"
A scream: the scream of a soul in torment.
The com-box went dead.
The ensign at his heels, Boone raced for the lift-shaft.
The top level, "A" passage. The lights at the far end were out.
Boone snatched the ensign's nerve-gun. Cat-footed, he moved forward.
Ahead, something shifted in the shadows. He became aware of a vague, phosphorescent glow.
A whisper of sound. A floundering wallow of movement.
Raw-nerved, Boone flicked on his light-rod.
Its beam sprayed out across a creature like nothing ever seen before in earth or heaven. A bulbous thing, a nightmare of pseudopodal horror.
But before he could fire, it began to change.
First it drew together, a bubbling mass like green calf-slobber shot with blood. A rank stench of musty death curled to him from it.
Then, while he watched, a shape began to rise out of the slime; a shape—
He caught his breath. His blood froze.
It was a woman!
Now she stood erect and naked, shrouded from the hips down in the slime-mass. Her hands caressed her high, proud breasts. She laughed and stretched her arms out toward Boone.
In spite of himself, he took a dragging step forward. Then another, and another.
As from afar, the ensign's shout dinned in his ears. He half turned.
As one, woman and slime-mass lunged towards him. And now, incredibly, Boone saw that there were fangs beneath the laughing lips; that, like Medusa, the woman was crowned not with rippling hair, but writhing serpents.
He screamed as the voice on the com-box had screamed; blazed point-blank at the naked belly with his nerve-gun.
The soft flesh shimmered, darkened. Great scales took form. The smooth body distorted into the plated, cartilaginous torso of a dragon.
Boone hurled himself aside as its great horned head lanced forward. With all his might, he threw the nerve-gun into the yawning mouth.
The mighty jaws clamped down. The metal crumpled.
Behind Boone, thunder crashed in the passage. A fire-bolt from a blaster smashed into the monster.
Dragon and slime-mass alike exploded into spattering fragments. Half-stunned, Boone felt the ensign's fingers dig into his shoulders and drag him back towards the lift-shaft.
But he shook them off. "No. I've got to see—" Even as he spoke, he knew that the words were coming out an incoherent mumble.
He staggered back anyhow ... clawed amid the smoke and debris.
His hands came up green and stinking with viscous slime.
Numbly, he stared down at them. "Then—it was real—no optical illusion—"
"Real? Of course it was real!" This from the half-hysterical ensign. "I saw it all—the woman, the dragon! If I'd been two seconds later with the blaster, it would have got you!"
Boone slumped against the wall. "That thing—"
A muffled crash of sound from the lift-shaft cut in on him. Red lights flashed on the call-board.
"Third level—!" The ensign's voice rang raw with tension.
"Come on!" Boone lunged for the lift.
Together they plummeted downward ... stumbled out into a murky, smoke-eddying third level passage.
More slime, purple this time, and a man with a blaster.
Only he hadn't fired quite quick enough. He sprawled dead on the floor-plates, his chest torn wide open as if by talons.
Red lights were flashing all over the call-board now. Alarm bells jangled wildly.
The captain's voice rasped from the com-box: "All hands! Make for your closest emergency carrier and stand by to abandon ship! Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes! Repeat, Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes, so get aboard fast! All hands...."
Stiff-lipped, Boone stared up at the call-board. "Seven levels signalling! It's an attack in force, then...."
The ensign clutched his arm. "Let's go! There's a carrier at the end of the passage!"
Boone started to turn, then stopped short. "Eileen—!"
"What?"
"The other biologist—the girl with Titan fever."
"Let the medmen worry about her! They'll take her off if she's not too sick to move!"
"No!" Spasmodically, Boone jerked free. "We can't leave her!"
"But there's no time!"
"I can't help that." Boone shoved the other away. "You go ahead...."
The ensign threw him one last taut, frustrated glance, then wheeled and ran off down the passage towards the carrier lock. A score of steps he ran....
Only then, out of the murk, a primordial horror rose before him—a thing of tentacles and feelers massed about a hideous white skull-face.
It happened too fast for shouts or screaming. The ensign's head jerked back and sidewise. He tried to veer.
Too late. With a sound that came straight from hell, the skull-thing lurched forward. The tentacles engulfed him.
Convulsively, Boone clawed the blaster from the dead hands of the man beside the lift-shaft ... lanced a fire-bolt into the monster's leering face.
Face and monster vanished in a blaze of ear-shattering sound and blue-white flame.
Then the echoes died and Boone was alone again—shaking, retching. Of the ensign, no trace remained.
Numbly, Boone stumbled back into the lift and dropped it fullspeed down the shaft to the tenth level, the very heart of the great sphere-ship.
There was another monster waiting for him when he came out—a creature that looked for all the world like a huge, iridescent coffin whose lid came up to bare rows of razor-edged shark-teeth.
Raw-nerved, he blasted it to atoms; then, belly churning, waded through stench and putrescent fragments towards the tech quarters where Eileen lay.
As he did so, the ship rocked sharply.
For an instant Boone went rigid, then cursed aloud. That jolt—it could have been only the impact of the carriers' departure.
Now, truly, he was alone—alone in the void on a sphere of death, where nightmare monsters roamed lusting for his blood.
Alone with Eileen, perhaps. If she were still alive.
If....
He quickened his pace, moving along the corridor cold-eyed and wary, his finger taut on the blaster's trigger.
The last door to the right. A card that said, "Miss Rey."
Palm slick with sweat, Boone tried the handle.
The door was unlocked. He opened it a fraction.
A voice rose high and incoherent, ranting. The voice of delirium.
Boone stepped inside; flicked on the light.
Eileen lay in the bunk, held there by the broad straps of a safety pack. A flush-faced Eileen with wild, fever-blinded eyes. Her lips moved in ceaseless, garbled speech. Thin fingers tugged and twisted at the sheets as if it were not in them to be still.
A knot drew tight in Boone's midriff. Grimly, he studied the chart on the stand, then glanced at his chronox.
Time for more chandak extract.
Stiff-fingered, he prepared the aerojet; sprayed the precious drops into Eileen's jugular vein. Then, barring the door against invading monsters, he settled down to wait and hope.
The hours dragged by till he lost track, a blur of time broken only by the routine with the aerojet. Once he thought Eileen recognized him. Twice he fell asleep. A dozen times, in his mind's eye, the monsters came, only to fade away again as he fought his way up from the depths of his fatigue. Hunger, thirst—they were words only....
Then, the crash.
It threw him clear across the cabin, to land with stunning force against the farthest wall. The whole room hung tilted at a thirty-degree angle.
Dragging himself up, he clambered to the bunk.
Eileen's eyes were closed, her tongue and fingers still at last. To Boone, it seemed as if her forehead were less feverish—as if she might even be asleep.
But again, she might have slipped into a coma. In his own state, he couldn't be sure.
As for the crash, the room—Blinking, he looked around.
The cabin's angle was still the same. Thirty degrees, at least.
Only the room couldn't stay this way, tilted. Not with the sphere floating free in space. That was what the orientational gyroscopes were designed to prevent.
In the same instant, he caught the first faint whiff of ammonia.
A chill ran through him. Scrambling erect, he snatched up the blaster, fumbled open the door, and peered out into the corridor.
No monsters—but something worse. For here the ammonia-smell hung even stronger.
Dragging the door shut behind him, Boone half-ran, half-fell along the crazily-tilted passage to the administrative center at the ship's core.
The door to the medical office was locked. Cursing savagely, Boone drew back and to one side and fired a glancing bolt.
The door swung wide, the lock and half the panel shattered.
Inside, Boone pawed the supply chest into chaos, then turned to the wall cabinets.
A case of mekronal ampules stood on the first shelf.
Coughing as a new eddy of ammonia fumes curled round him, Boone snatched down the carton and an extra aerojet injector, then ran from the room and back along the passage to Eileen's cabin.
The air inside was a little better. Slamming shut the door, he tossed down the ampules and began wadding the first of Eileen's garments to come to hand into the wall vent.
A faint voice whispered, "Fred...."
Boone spun around. "Eileen—!"
She smiled, the pale wraith of a smile. But her eyes had lost their fever-wildness. Her cheeks were no longer quite so flushed.
"What's ... the matter, Fred?"
"Nothing. Nothing." Futilely, Boone groped for some convincing fable. "It's just—you've been down with Titan fever—"
"Don't ... lie to me, Fred. Please tell me." And then: "Were there ... monsters—?"
Of a sudden Boone could no longer face her. "Yes, there were monsters." He pivoted; stuffed more clothing into the air vent. "All hands took off in carriers. Now the ship's crashed—on Hyperion, maybe; someplace with an ammonia-and-methane atmosphere, anyhow. The plates must have sprung when we hit. The smudge outside is leaking in."
"Then—what—?"
Boone finished with the vent. Sliding down to the bunk, he tore open the mekronal case with unsteady fingers; drew out an ampule.
"We'll try it on mekronal," he answered in a voice gone flat in spite of him. "If we can last three hours till it takes effect, we still may make it."
He readied the injector and sprayed the ampule's contents into Eileen's bloodstream, then shot a second into his own.
The girl's hand touched his; held it. "I'm ... so tired...." Her eyes closed.
She slept.
Seconds dragging by, melding into minutes. The cabin growing uncomfortably warm, the air stale and stuffy.
A half-hour gone. Time for another ampule.
Again and again, Boone read the legend on the carton:
Mekronal is an unanalyzed catalyst derived from the skeletal structure of the non-carbon chemistry life-form
Helgae
found on Titan. When injected into the human bloodstream, it enables man to breathe all known atmospheres, regardless of content, without toxic effect. Dosage: One ampule every thirty minutes till three ampules have been injected. Repeat weekly until return to normal oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Takes effect within approximately three hours after first injection though an additional one-hour safety factor is recommended
.
"Takes effect within approximately three hours after first injection...."
Three endless hours.
Or the other line—"Enables man to breathe all known atmospheres, regardless of content, without toxic effect."
Did that include carbon dioxide atmospheres like the one now forming in this cabin?
Bleakly, Boone wondered. He checked his chronox.
Time for the third injection.
Maybe it would be better to take no chances—move Eileen to a lower point, where the air was clearer.
Besides, the heat here by the bunk was becoming almost unbearable. Already, both of them were drenched with sweat.
Sweat! Heat—!
Boone went rigid.
There shouldn't be any heat to speak of—not if they lay in a plate-sprung ship on Hyperion's frigid surface!
Then what—?
Boone could find no ready answer.
The air grew thicker, thicker. Eileen's breathing steadily became more labored.
Freeing her from the safety pack, Boone carried her to the room's lowest corner. She roused a little, then sank back once more, as if even consciousness had become an effort.
More seconds. More minutes.
Then, slowly, the pressure on Boone's lungs seemed to lift. Depression and weariness fell away. New energy flowed through him.
He dared a look at his chronox.
Three hours and seventeen minutes!
Of a sudden he was giddy with exaltation. He wanted to shout, to laugh and leap.
From the corner, Eileen whispered, "Fred, have we made it?"
Wordless, he stumbled to her.
Her eyes were open, cool and steady. The last flushed traces of fever had vanished.
"Eileen—!" he choked, "Eileen...." and strained her to him.
Then, because he could not trust his own emotions further, he rose and took up the blaster. "I'll go take a look around, get you something to eat."
The corridor outside was thick with the alien atmosphere. But though it stung his eyes a little, his lungs now accepted it without protest.
Watchful, wary of monsters, he made his way to the galleys and gathered up a sack of food, wolfing down a whole can of meat synthetic in the process.
Eileen was up and dressed when he returned. Grinning, he watched her eat with the eager hunger of the fever-famished.
When she had finished and he got up to leave again, she rose also. "Fred, I'm going with you."
He shook his head. "You're too weak. You need to take it easy."
"Please, Fred."
For an instant his eyes met hers and he knew again that now, as always, he never could deny her. "All right. Just for a little way."
Together, his arm about her, they left the cabin ... turned down the corridor that led to the nearest carrier lock.
The hatch hung free, sprung from its hinges. Bracing himself, Boone levered it open.
Eileen caught her breath. "Fred—!"
He twisted; stared out past her.
The sight that met his eyes set his senses reeling.
For here lay no frozen wastes, no icy crags and barrens.
Instead, a blaze of living color spread before him, kaleidoscopic in its brilliance. Huge flowers like none that he had ever seen carpeted the foreground in clumps of yellow, red, green, purple—every color of the rainbow. Strange trees stretched upward towards the shining blue vault of the sky, rustling and swaying in the gentle breeze.
"Fred—!" Eileen's hand rested on his shoulder. "Fred, it's beautiful!"
Her words broke the spell. "Beautiful? Yes, of course it is," Boone nodded, frowning. "But the question is, where are we? There's no planet like this anywhere in our whole solar system, so far as I know—"
He broke off; moved out into the carrier-cradle proper, where he could get a broader field of vision.
To the right, the flowerland stretched away to rolling hills that spread as far as he could see.
To the left—
He went rigid.
Beyond the flower-fields, strange, low domes rose—grey-silver domes whose very lines and curves bespoke an alien pattern. One atop the other they piled in a jumbled, sprawling mass like bubbles trapped in cooling lava. Boone could only guess how many miles of ground they covered.
Yet it was a scene of a kind he'd seen before, once, on microreels in IC's confidential archives.
Behind him, Eileen caught her breath. "Those things—Fred, are they buildings?"
"Buildings?" Boone hesitated; fumbled. "I don't know. I guess that you might call them that."
"You guess—? Then you recognize them!" Eileen's blue eyes were suddenly worry-shadowed. "Tell me, Fred. Don't hold back. Is something wrong? Where are we?"
For a long, long moment Boone stared away at the distant dome-pile. "No, nothing's wrong," he said at last. "Maybe it's even better luck than we could hope for." And then: "But wherever we are, Eileen, one thing's for certain: That place is a Helgae city!"
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