Big Lawler chuckled gleefully, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. "Rejuvenation of burnt-out spheres on a really progressive basis," he growled. "No obsolete, jury-rigged junk! Expensive? Sure! But we can pay for it! Out there are Saturn's metal-rich Rings!"
Bert was thinking that the same trick could be used on any world with enough gravity to hold down a respectable atmosphere. Half-dead Mars. Jupiter's four biggest moons. Some of the other satellites of Saturn. Mercury.
"The one thing that burns me is that my brother, Nick, and Doc Kramer, and those two colonists, had to die!" Bert grated. "Poor Doc. He was rich from the atomic engines he invented. And I knew long ago that, by his will, all his stock is to be put in trust for the welfare of spacemen and colonists. Should we feel glad or humble?"
Lawler's grin had become a snarl. "Damn Trenton Lauren!" he said.
Alice didn't exactly smile. "I should have told you before this," she offered seriously, "but death always upsets me. By radio report from a scouting Patrol boat an hour ago, Lauren and his stooges were found, smashed and burned in the crash of their craft a hundred miles from camp. Their half-repaired spaceboat killed them."
Bert and Lawler exchanged glances. Their anger faded.
"What's new from the Safe Products Approval Board, Allie?" Lawler asked at last. "You seem to find things out fast."
"Nothing new," she answered. "The latest messages are much the same as those from a while ago. Guarded enthusiasm, and the statement that an okay for the Kramer Methods must be withheld pending complete and prompt investigation. Can't blame them. Caution is important."
"Maybe, if you played your cards right, you could become the new president of the Prometheus outfit, Bert," Lawler kidded.
But the possibility was certainly there. Bert was proud of what he'd done. Prometheus owed him plenty. Still, looking across camp past cottages and shops to the red mud of the once-dry, frigid hills, and down to the blue lake in the valley, reflecting sky and clouds, he knew that his heart was here in this crescendoing colonial scene. Somewhere a circle-saw screamed. From the metals-shop came the clanging of a mechanical hammer. These were sounds of a great future here.
"Nuts, pal," Bert chuckled to Lawler. "I'll leave the official pencil-pushing to the lab experts. The building and progress are here. You and Allie and I will all be back on Titan very soon."
These three began to be aware that a crowd of still befuddled but happy colonists were gathering around them. Another Space Patrol man approached, and said very officially:
"Mr. and Mrs. Kraskow, and Mr. Lawler: Our large ship leaves for Earth in five hours. Be ready to blast off. As you are aware, certain still valid charges were lodged against you by Trenton Lauren. You used dangerous equipment, not yet legally approved. As you are also aware, you must go to answer these charges. Sorry. But we of the Patrol know the score. In the face of your success I'm sure that this is mere red tape."
Bert scowled until he saw the cop's sly grin.
"Worried?" Alice asked him, smiling. She was pretty. She had courage. She had everything.
"Worried?" Bert echoed. In general he approved the S.P.A.B. "How can we lose on this last gamble with all the cards stacked in our favor. We even win a needed short vacation on Earth!"
"What are you two gonna bring back for me?" an old man, grimed from the forges, demanded, grinning. It was old Stan Kraskow, who had buried his younger son in the camp cemetery.
"Hiyuh, Dad!" Bert greeted happily. "What'll we bring him, Allie?"
"Wildbirds, Pop," Alice answered, her eyes twinkling. "You always liked wildbirds. No world is complete without them."
Bert noticed that the gardens of the camp, planted weeks ago under airdomes that were now being cleared away, were now showing a faint green. The beginning of a new and verdant Titan.
* * * * *
The Eternal Wall
By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
_A scream of brakes, the splash into icy waters, a long descent into alkaline depths ... it was death. But Ned Vince lived again--a million years later!_
"See you in half an hour, Betty," said Ned Vince over the party telephone. "We'll be out at the Silver Basket before ten-thirty...."
Ned Vince was eager for the company of the girl he loved. That was why he was in a hurry to get to the neighboring town of Hurley, where she lived. His old car rattled and roared as he swung it recklessly around Pit Bend.
There was where Death tapped him on the shoulder. Another car leaped suddenly into view, its lights glaring blindingly past a high, up-jutting mass of Jurassic rock at the turn of the road.
Dazzled, and befuddled by his own rash speed, Ned Vince had only swift young reflexes to rely on to avoid a fearful, telescoping collision. He flicked his wheel smoothly to the right; but the County Highway Commission hadn't yet tarred the traffic-loosened gravel at the Bend.
Ned could scarcely have chosen a worse place to start sliding and spinning. His car hit the white-painted wooden rail sideways, crashed through, tumbled down a steep slope, struck a huge boulder, bounced up a little, and arced outward, falling as gracefully as a swan-diver toward the inky waters of the Pit, fifty feet beneath....
Ned Vince was still dimly conscious when that black, quiet pool geysered around him in a mighty splash. He had only a dazing welt on his forehead, and a gag of terror in his throat.
Movement was slower now, as he began to sink, trapped inside his wrecked car. Nothing that he could imagine could mean doom more certainly than this. The Pit was a tremendously deep pocket in the ground, spring-fed. The edges of that almost bottomless pool were caked with a rim of white--for the water, on which dead birds so often floated, was surcharged with alkali. As that heavy, natronous liquid rushed up through the openings and cracks beneath his feet, Ned Vince knew that his friends and his family would never see his body again, lost beyond recovery in this abyss.
The car was deeply submerged. The light had blinked out on the dash-panel, leaving Ned in absolute darkness. A flood rushed in at the shattered window. He clawed at the door, trying to open it, but it was jammed in the crash-bent frame, and he couldn't fight against the force of that incoming water. The welt, left by the blow he had received on his forehead, put a thickening mist over his brain, so that he could not think clearly. Presently, when he could no longer hold his breath, bitter liquid was sucked into his lungs.
His last thoughts were those of a drowning man. The machine-shop he and his dad had had in Harwich. Betty Moore, with the smiling Irish eyes--like in the song. Betty and he had planned to go to the State University this Fall. They'd planned to be married sometime.... Goodbye, Betty ...
The ripples that had ruffled the surface waters in the Pit, quieted again to glassy smoothness. The eternal stars shone calmly. The geologic Dakota hills, which might have seen the dinosaurs, still bulked along the highway. Time, the Brother of Death, and the Father of Change, seemed to wait....
* * * * *
"Kaalleee! Tik!... Tik, tik, tik!... Kaalleee!..."
The excited cry, which no human throat could quite have duplicated accurately, arose thinly from the depths of a powder-dry gulch, water-scarred from an inconceivable antiquity. The noon-day Sun was red and huge. The air was tenuous, dehydrated, chill.
"Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, tik!..."
At first