"Madam," he drawled, "maybe I know what you mean. You want to defy the law. Someone around here has been hoping for word from Earth that an okay has been granted by the Safe Products Approval Board, for, shall we say, a radically new product? Well, the optimists will wait a long time for such approval at the S.P.A.B. The action of this invention is, to say the least, extremely dangerous. So, if they're that foolish, those optimists might as well go ahead with their alternate course: To bring their deadly and spectacular innovation dramatically into use without the stamp of safety!"
Bert's concern about his wife's outspoken challenge to Lauren was thus suddenly diverted. His jaw hardened further. A nagging suspicion that Trenton Lauren had found things out, was confirmed. It meant, perhaps, that Lauren had already taken counteraction secretly.
Bert Kraskow longed to beat up Lauren in spite of the presence of the two space policemen. But the need for immediate and better action denied him this extravagant luxury. He went to his wife's side and took her arm.
"Lauren," he said. "I've got a brother to bury. So discussions are out, for now. Guys, will you bring Nick's body to my cottage? Come on, Allie...."
* * * * *
Bert was trying very hard to slip away unobtrusively when Lauren grinned mockingly. "Hold on, Kraskow," he snapped. "You're tangled up in this matter, somehow. I've learned that you've already broken a minor law by landing a ship quietly out in the deserts of Titan without declaring its presence; a ship that can be assumed reasonably to be freighted with lethal materials. As a dangerous individual, you can be put under an arrest of restraint. Legal technicalities can be disregarded in a raw colonization project where people are apt to show hysteria, and where something like military law must be enforced for general protection. The say-so of an old and honorable firm like S. C. S. that you are a menace, can, I am sure, be accepted. Patrolmen, take him!"
The cops were puzzled. They offered no immediate objection as Bert, leading his wife, tried to pass them. But Lauren got in Bert's way to prevent him from slipping into the glowering crowd.
Against a man in space-armor, fists weren't very effective; still Bert had the satisfaction of giving Lauren a mighty shove that sent him sprawling. A terrible fury was behind it. The desperation of a last chance. Here was where he had to become completely outlaw.
Alice and he threaded their way through the crowd where the cops could use neither their blasters nor their paralyzers, in spite of Lauren's frantic urging to "Get them!"
Once in the clear, Bert ran with his wife. There was no question of destination. They came to a metal shed. Inside it, beside the small spaceboat, they found Lawler who had anticipated where Bert would go.
The two men spoke to each other with their helmet radios shut off to avoid eaves-dropping. They clasped hands so that the sound-waves of their voices would have a channel over which to pass, in the absence of a sufficiently dense atmosphere.
"All of a sudden I'm a little worried, Bert," Lawler growled. "About the Big Pill. Maybe Lauren is half right about its being so dangerous. After all it has never been tested on a large scale before. And there are two hundred people here on Titan. Well, you know what's got to be done now. When you get to the _Prometheus_, tell Doc Kramer that I'm squeezing my thumbs...."
Lawler sounded almost plaintive at the end.
Bert felt the tweak of that same worry, too, but his course was set. He grinned in the darkness that surrounded them.
"Nuts!" he said. "Even Lauren admits that everything is a gamble, remember? And you can pile all of the people into the space ship here in camp, and blast off with them, and hover at a safe distance from Titan till we're absolutely sure. I'd better hurry now, Lawler. Lauren's cops'll be on my tail any second. Gotta go."
"With your wife along?" Lawler demanded.
"Sure," Bert answered. "Allie's a fine shot with a blaster. Often I wish she wasn't such a good shot with her tongue. But I guess that with Lauren she cleared the atmosphere. Right, Allie?"
With a small hand on the shoulder of each man, Alice had been listening in. "I think so," she answered grimly. "Let's dash."
Ten seconds later Bert Kraskow and his wife went rocketing up into the weird and glorious Titanian night, which was nearing its end. They thought of Doc Kramer, the little physicist, waiting for them out in the desert, in the space ship, _Prometheus_, with its terrible and wonderful cargo. Bert thought, too, of his contact and contract with the new colonists' supply company, which was also called Prometheus. Yeah, Prometheus, the educator, the fire-bringing god of the ancient Greeks. The symbol of progress. At that moment Bert Kraskow felt very right. He'd been hired secretly to help carry the torch against the stiff and smug forces of conservative obstructionism, with its awkward and now antiquated methods.
Alice kept looking behind through the windows of the spaceboat's cabin. She spoke, now, with her helmet face-window open, for there was breathable air around them.
"I was thinking that Lauren might want us to run like this, Bert, so that we'd lead the cops to the hiding place of the _Prometheus_. So far there's no pursuit."
Bert growled, "I'm not worried that the Patrol boys won't be along. What really scares me is that some of Lauren's men may already have found the _Prometheus_. We'll just have to wait and see."
Beneath the spaceboat the desert rolled. Vast Saturn and his multiple moons, hung against the black and all-but-airless star-curtain. Then, all of a sudden, before the eastward hurtling craft, it was daylight, as the tiny sun burst over the horizon. Its wan rays fell on pale, stratified mists of air, all but frozen in the cold of night.
Those mists, cupped between the hills, were the last of Titan's atmosphere. Once, eons ago, when monster Saturn had been hot enough to supplement the far-off sun's heat with radiation of its own, those hills had been, for a few brief ages, verdant with primitive, mossy growths.
Bert followed the dry bed of an ancient river, till he came to the rocky cleft where the _Prometheus_ had been concealed.
Just as they glimpsed the ship, Alice gave a sharp gasp, as they saw another spaceboat dart unhurriedly away. Bert landed in the rocky gorge, and on foot they approached the _Prometheus_ cautiously, the blasters from the cabin of the spaceboat gripped in their gauntleted hands.
They found the ship's airlock securely bolted. But someone had tried to cut through its tough, heat-resistant shell with a blaster for the metal was still hot.
"A break," Bert breathed raggedly. "We got here just in time to scare them off.... Hey!..."
That was when they found Doc Kramer. He lay behind a boulder, a pathetic little figure who seemed to be merely sleeping. There wasn't a mark on him that could be easily discovered. There was no time to figure out how he had died--by poisoned needle, overstrong paralyzer beam, or whatever. His body, within its spacesuit, was just beginning to develop rigor mortis.
Alice's eyes were wet, her small jaw set hard. "Your brother's death was at least an unintentional accident caused by carelessly made equipment, Bert," she said. "But Doc was murdered."
"Yeah," Bert grated thickly. "Only murder is awful hard to prove as far from civilization as this. Come on, we can't do a thing about it right now."
* * * * *
Double rage and grief drove him on toward what he must do with greater insistence than before. With a key from his hip-pouch, he opened the airlock of the _Prometheus_. With great caution they went inside but found no one in the ship.
The mood of its interior was brooding and sullen. Every cubic foot of space not taken up by its machinery and fuel was packed with black ingots of an alloy, a large proportion of which was fissionable metal, quiescent now, and harmless, but under