Failure on Titan by Robert Abernathy

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A powerful man on a lonely saturnian moon

believes he has found the key to ruling the solar system.

But when control slips for a single moment,

the most obedient servant on Phoebe

may decide the fate of them all.

Failure on Titan by Robert Abernathy.

That's next on the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

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Robert Abernathy made his debut on the podcast about a week ago with strange exodus.

I enjoyed that once so much I had to find another story by Abernathy.

From the winter 1947 issue of Planet Stories magazine, on page 56,

Failure on Titan by Robert Abernathy.

That big bill lumbered swiftly forward across the frozen ground.

And behind him came the rest of the work-gang, a score of bent and mighty man-like shapes,

draped like big bill from head to foot and long white hair.

They moved in a straggling group, but the rhythmic side sway of the great bodies was more

uniform than the tread of marching men.

The red eyes peered ahead through the noon-day twilight toward the landing strip, 200 yards

away, slashed clean and straight across the ragged low-gravity terrain.

There were human figures, free of them, moving along the edge of the strip that was nearer

to the cluster of lighted company buildings.

At the distance they all looked alike, big headed and thick-waisted in their vacuum suits.

But even so, big bill identified them with ease.

Behind those dull red eyes were perceptions wholly alien to man's, senses to which the distinctive

personalities of the man were things as obvious as our apples or oranges to eyes and fingers.

Brilliant lights flashed on all along the landing strip, then dictating membranes descended

over the eyes of the approaching willies.

The gang came to a simultaneous halt.

They sank slowly to their haunches on the iron-hard fire-cold surface, and in the act became less

like fur-clad men and more like crouching hairy beasts.

Big bill hunkered unmoving in his place, but his peculiar senses were probing with an

unusual curiosity at the familiar minds of the three men.

The one who had just risen from bending over the switchbox that controlled the lights

was name-page, and when big bill's mind touched his, the woolly felt an odd apathy behind

which something tense and secret, smoldered like a fire, banked under ashes, and the fire

was hate.

The second who stood stiffly near-page was called Doc.

When his brain too burned hate, a dense and palpable thing to big bill, mixed with a

fear which turned the hatred inward on the mind that had given it birth.

The third man was Paul Gettner.

He stood a little apart from the others, gazing into the starry sky from which the rocket

would come.

For the watching willies his tall figure was clothed in a tangible aura of power, commanding

all their inborn robot-like obedience.

He towered like a sublime and terrible God between the narrow horizons of Phoebe over

the desolate landscape of weird lights and shadows cast by Saturn and the distant sun.

And in his thoughts the woolly's glimpse dimly something beyond their understanding, a plan

worthy of Godhead in its cosmic vastness, leading toward some unguessable triumph.

And it was that plan which the other man hated and feared.

There was still a fourth human on Phoebe, but that man's mind had gone where not even

a woolly's perceptions could follow it.

A abruptly Gettner gestured, and though the furry watchers could not hear what he said

into his helmet radio, they turned as one to stare eastward.

High up in the dusky sky a white star was moving.

In seconds it grew through magnitudes, it became a fiery, on-rushing comet, then a polished

hurtling cylinder of steel lit up by the glare that went on before it.

Swiftly the rocket descended.

Its underdrive flared briefly out, flattening its trajectory, and it came in over the jagged

horizon on a long slant toward the landing strip.

The flame of the drive perished, and then instant later the face of a little moon vibrated

to the shriek of steel runners on fire glazed rock.

The ship sletted forward in a shower of red sparks for five hundred yards before friction

slowed it to a stop.

The men were running toward the ship, even as it was still sliding, their little top-heavy

figures increasingly dwarfed by the great gleaming hull, though they were coming near to

the slope on which the woolly squatted.

Big Bill watched intently, as a forward port swung slowly open in the smooth side of

the rocket.

His mind was still attuned to that of the tall gethner, and beneath his flat skull stirred

an excitement, utterly strange to the woolly, yet in some way pleasant.

The feeling was not big bills, yet for the moment it was as much a part of him as it

was of the man whose thoughts imprinted themselves upon his.

Big Bill was a complete extrovert.

His mind, like those of all his race, was a sensitive instrument attuned to the mental

atmosphere around him, and almost incapable of independent ideation.

By that token the woolly's were willing slaves of the introverted insensitive earth men.

The metal gangway had descended to great against the rocky ground.

Two vacuum-suited silhouettes appeared in the lighted airlock and began to clamber

down.

The first, with a self-possessed, leisurely poise, the other showing signs of a jerky

impatience.

Behind them came another, grotesquely burdened with a weight of luggage which would have

given trouble to half a dozen men under earth gravity.

But Big Bill's mounting interest was focused on the first of the new arrivals.

He sensed clearly that this was the visitor expected, with various and puzzling reactions

by the three waiting men.

And also that the coming of this strange, great rocket, long before the scheduled arrival

of the little freighter, which stopped at long intervals to load the Phoebe and Jade,

had something to do with the fourth man, the one who now lay out on the frigid rock outside

the dwelling of the humans.

Without a vacuum-suited, a tarpaulin pulled up over what had been his face.

All these things, Big Bill knew, had one meaning.

The fruition of the great plan was close at hand.

Abruptly the woolly rose from his squatting position, disregarding the others who remain

motionless, and rolled silently forward on his great-splade feet, to within a short distance

of the knot of humans.

His telepathic sense groped curiously at the mind of the visitor, but told him little,

since he was on a custom to the interpretation of its vibrations.

But his vision served him better.

The figure turned to give some order to the porter, who was still on the gangway, and

the combined light of Saturn and the sun fell on the face behind the transparent mask,

a feeble illumination that was yet enough for the great red eyes of Big Bill.

He saw that the face was suddenly different from any he had known before, more rounded,

with less prominent feature, smaller bones better sheathed than flesh, and more spectacularly

and superficially.

It was framed in long soft hair, which gleamed with almost metallic brightness at the edges

of the faceplate.

It was Big Bill's first glimpse of an earthly woman, and the sight of this alien being set

up a queer unease in his little heteroplasmic brain.

Lila Frey gazed round her, at the ill-lit Fabian landscape, with a look of no great rapture.

She said flatly, I think if I were in charge of Saturn Colonial, I'd give this rock back

to the Indians.

The tallest of the company, man, said, shrugging, that's probably what they'll do before another

years out.

May it won't be that long before the market for genuine Fabian Jade has worked down a

couple more income levels.

To the point where it can't compete with the Justice Genuine Synthetic Product, that's

a preeminently dirty trick, said Lila Frey, with sudden heat.

Some of my friends bought your Jade when you were holding production down, and the price

was just about out of reach.

Now you start flooding the market with the stuff, and she had turned to look directly at

the tall earth man, and the Saturn light was on his face.

Her lips parted in surprise, and for a moment she was quite dumb.

Then she essayed a laugh of, please, surprise, which rang hollow inside her air-helmet.

Why, Paul?

Fancy meeting you here?

Get in her smile showed strong white teeth.

What would life be without coincidences?

But this one is rather too good to be true, insisted the girl on a false note of gady.

Gady knew you'd buried yourself somewhere in the wilds, but imagine me stumbling onto

your grave.

Paul Gedner's grin tightened.

Not so surprising, Lila darling.

You're royally paid to go around the system digging things up, aren't you?

Captain Monoli of the Zodiac broke in, his voice betraying his irritation.

I believe Miss Fry's luggage has all been landed.

Nine, said Gedner, glancing toward where Mark Page was already wrestling with an assortment

of trunks and cases, far too expensive and extensive to be appropriate on the little

mining moon.

You must have thought this was another society assignment, Lila.

You're in a hurry, lift, Captain?

That's right.

Snap the space, man.

I've got a schedule to keep up.

But neither his schedule nor the unhappy fact that he was seeing none of the impressive

sum, which Lila phrase syndicate had paid to persuade the managers of the line to allow

a troublesome unscheduled stop could have warranted his obvious nervousness.

He had already cast more than one apprehensive glance into the twilight beyond the little

group of humans.

Now Lila caught the movement of his helmet and followed the look.

She could not suppress a gasp.

Lila, a dozen yards away, crouched a huge white shape, somewhat like a man, more like

a gorilla, a strange albino gorilla, with a fell of hair like a musk ox, covering all

its face, saved the expressionless crimson eyes.

Its great three-fingered hands rested on the ground as it coward and stared.

Lila recovered her composure.

Is this one of your renowned killer willies?

He asked coolly of Gettner, not him, big bills my right hand man, Gettner beckoned

and the creature rose and patted toward him, carried the lady's luggage-bill, Paige relinquished

his task with alacrity, the great woolly embrace the entire load with ease, and moved toward

the lighted buildings.

Lila's eyes followed him, and a custom as she was to the sight of woolly's, a faint shudder

shukker, the news which had brought her to Phoebe was responsible for that shudder.

Two days before, the message from the lonely moan had shaken the whole saternion system,

a woolly has killed a man.

Now on all the moons of Saturn, the human colonists paled in terror before their familiar and

trusted slaves.

These trembled behind locked doors, streets were deserted, industry at a standstill.

On the earth and Mars exchanges, the stocks of Saturn colonial dropped sickeningly and continued

to drop.

The whole thriving economy of the subsystem, based on woolly slave labor, far cheaper than

human workers, cheaper even than robots, rocked on its foundations.

It was impossible, unbelievable, but frightened millions believed, all experience and all psychological

tests pointed to the complete robot-like reliability of the woolly's.

The great race which had ruled Saturn's moons before the age of man had, before its unexplained

extinction, breaded slave creatures with superb skill, for vast strength, for adaptability

to the diverse environments of the satellite, and for a perfect susceptibility to telepathic

control.

But if a woolly had killed a man, the company had declared at once its intention of sending

an investigating commission to Phoebe.

It did not request the interference of the colonial government, and that from the company

was equivalent to a stern keep-out in the face of the police and everyone else.

But before the corporation heads had recovered sufficiently to issue their statement, the

old planet news syndicate had lila-fray aboard the zodiac, traveling toward Phoebe at sixty

miles a second.

Gedner took the girl's arm and one heavily gloved hand and letter away from the ship, and

a leisurely pace.

Captain Minoli had already vanished thankfully into the airlock of his vessel.

As if coming out of a trance, lila made a sudden effort to shake her arm from Gedner's

grip.

Failing, she walked on beside him in stiff silence.

It was the man who spoke when they had almost reached the largest of the lighted structures.

So now your employer send you out after scoops.

They remarked thoughtfully, I just happen to be in the subsystem looking for general

interest stuff on the colonies.

Put in lila quickly, almost defensively.

Gedner went on as if she had not spoken, and with like disregard for the fact that every

word was ringing also in the helmet phones of the two other men plotting on behind.

You've been doing well since you got rid of me.

I always knew you had what it takes to get ahead, darling.

You've never been anything but a grasping, selfish, irresponsible little monster.

Lila wrenched herself away from him as they paused at the airlock door of the company headquarters.

I assure you, I haven't changed in the least, she told him, I silly.

And neither have you.

You're still one huge hypertrophied ego.

Nothing matters to you except being the boss.

Say, she began to laugh staccato.

Why, Paul, you found the one ideal place for yourself here, out of the whole system,

a planet little enough to make you feel as big as you want to, where you're almost alone

with a crew of subhuman things that don't know anything but obedience.

Her own words called back the jarring memory of what had brought her here, and she stopped

on an in-drawn breath.

Gedner had stared at her in silence.

She knew that of old as a sign that she had come near the quick of his pride, and abruptly

she was aware of the ghostly mass of Big Bill, looming erects behind his master.

Out on the landing strip, blue lightning ripped through the noonday dusk.

The ground vibrated as the zodiac began to glide forward.

The rocky landscape stood out in harsh light and shadow, and the glare of atomic flames

silhouetted the misshapen figures of the two other men, who had come up and were waiting.

Gedner operated the airlock mechanism, and they passed through.

The throbbing vibration underfoot rose to a higher pitch and died suddenly, as the

spaceship left the surface of the moon.

In three days' earth-time it would return to pick Lila up on the return trip to Titan.

After the three men and the girl entered the giant woolly, the thin translucent lids

descended again over his eyes as he rolled into the brightly lit room.

The room, Lila observed, was large and slovenly.

Arrains were both business and relaxation, a scarred desk and file cabinet keeping company

with a table, arm chairs, an entire looking couch.

Walls and ceilings were naked insulation.

The iron floor was unswept of dust and cigarette butts, and patched with rust.

But it was a relief for her to feel her great iron-sold shoes, like those of a medieval

Russian peasant, assert their magnetic grip.

Without further ado, the girl unfastened the bulky ballast belt about her slender waist,

wriggled out of the shoulder harness, and let what on earth would have been a thousand

pounds of lead slide to the floor.

Gedner lounged against the table.

He had raised the faceplate of his helmet, and his features had the pallor which comes

with a long stay on the outer planets.

He remarked slightly, the company would raise hell if they knew you were here.

That's not my worry, retorted, Lila.

I'm on assignment from AP.

Maybe you'd like to interview Sam Chandler, he's right outside.

The girl recoiled from Gedner's easy smile.

No, she said sharply, and then added, later, perhaps, they all planted people want the

details, don't they?

For God's sake, Paul, exploded Mark Page.

But his mouth twitched beneath his hopelessly straggly little moustache, as Gedner's gaze

met his.

Shut up, to Gedner evenly, Miss Frey and I are old friends.

We understand each other.

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Lila said nothing, but her red lips were compressed to a thin line as she fumbled with the airtight

zippers of her suit as she wriggled with difficulty out of the heavy garment.

Gedner's hard black eyes dwelt with pleasure on the white silk blouse and shorts she had

in the stuffy cabin aboard the rocket.

On the soft curves of her breasts and her slender legs, and in the corner crouched big

bill, a great white fird faceless thing with dull red eyes fixed unwinkingly on the girl.

Lila sat down in one of the worn armchairs, but she failed to relax from the tension, the

nameless apprehension that had begun to gripper when she first set foot on this little twilight

moon.

Her gaze flicked from Gedner to Paige, who had picked up her discarded vacuum suit, and

was arranging it meticulously on the hangers beside the outer door, and from him to the

third man, who, without even removing his helmet, had bent over the desk and seemed to be

absorbed in the disordered papers atop it.

The humming undertone of the air pump, which had started automatically on the opening of

the inner airlock door, stopped suddenly, as the room pressure reached normal, and left

a heavy silence.

She looked back to Gedner, leaning lazily against the battered table, one thumb hooked

into the belt that sagged awkwardly over his ballast belt, to support a holstered flame

pistol.

He smiled at her again, and she had a panicky feeling of being alone with him in this

bare room millions of miles from civilization.

But what he said was not at all alarming.

Care for something to eat?

I had dinner on the rocket, said Lila.

Cuppity, then, said Gedner.

Lila nodded, grateful for a distraction.

The page had already moved toward what was evidently the kitchen door, methodically removing

his gloves as he went.

Presently he came back with a tray and a single steaming cup.

Gedner slid off the edge of the table and turned the page.

We'd better flame that strip before it cools off entirely.

He said matter of factly.

And to Lila, with a gesture at the still-helmeted figure bending over the desk, Doc Chikowski

here can entertain you while we're busy.

The one indicated looked up quickly, and though his face was obscured by the reflection of light

in his helmet, his very posture, even in the grotesque space suit, spoke of taught hatred

as he glanced toward Gedner.

The latter took no notice, but turned away to join page, who had silently opened a

chest in the far end of the room and was dragging out two heavy portable electron torches.

The two men snapped their faceplate shut and went out through the airlock.

Lila sat quiet still for a little while, glancing nervously from the crouching silent

woolly against the wall, to the equally silent man.

At last she exclaimed an exasperation, won't you take that thing off your head?

Two gargoyles in a room this size are too many!

The others spoke for the first time.

It won't help much.

He said in a tomeless voice.

But he removed the helmet, said it carelessly on the desktop, and turning, began to unzip

his vacuum suit.

The girl saw a pale, thin, youthful face, shockingly marred by a huge angry scar, which

cut diagonally across the cheek, ruined the bridge of the nose, and disappeared under

an unkempt shock of done-colored hair.

A terrific blow, perhaps from a hot fragment of metal, must have left that mark.

My name isn't Doc.

There was an increasing bitterness in his voice.

It's Leo.

It's just that it amuses him to call me that.

As I happen to be a patrologist, oh, said Lila.

She watched him cross the room and toss his space suit onto a hanger, return and sprawl

limply in the chair behind the desk.

Then she remembered that she was a reporter with the biggest story of her life to get.

Perhaps you can tell me something of what I need to know, she suggested.

Leo Chikoski stared fixately at the tangle of papers.

What do you mean?

Well, she hesitated.

Something about the general set up here to begin with.

Set up?

It's simple enough.

Paul Gedner gives the orders to the Woolies and to the rest of us.

Officially he's only the Woolie boss, but, well, you seem to know him, yes, said Lila.

I have a degree from North American Geological, so whenever the Woolies have worked out

a Jade site, I go out and kick over a couple of rocks to uncover a new one.

It's not a job.

The surface supply will outlast the market.

Pages keep the accounts and production records, and makes out requisitions once in a while,

and spends the rest of his time with a book and a bottle.

Chandler was our maintenance man for the mechanical equipment, and the Woolies dig the Jade

and load it when the rocket comes, and Saturn Colonial pays our salaries.

But Lila seized on the mention of the dead man.

She said, I'm here to get the facts on Chandler's death, you know.

His head snapped up.

The girl fancied she saw a alarm flash into his eyes, then he looked down again.

You'd better ask the others.

They were both there when it happened.

I wasn't, but you must know how it happened.

Chandler was out at the diggings, inspecting and grill, when one of the Woolies on the job

attacked him.

There wasn't any provocation, nor any warning.

Paul killed the Woolie with that gun he carries, but Chandler was done for.

There was a guarded look in the scarred face, and Lila was not satisfied.

She remembered her training in interviewing the you approach.

What do you think made that Woolie run amok?

She demanded point blank.

Leo rose to his feet with a jerk, as if the abrupt question had carried a physical impact.

He said in a savage voice, I don't think I, he bit off the last word and fell silent.

The great scar growing more apparent as his face paled.

As eyes strayed fearfully toward the outer door, then he looked back at the girl and

advancing toward her, lowered his voice.

Listen, I'll tell you, but you mustn't let him see that you know.

Paul killed Chandler.

Lila sat open mouth, but there was no need for her to say anything.

The words came now from Leo Chikosky in a jerky torrent.

You've seen how he is.

He controls the Woolies like he dominates everything else around him.

The rest of us know the technique too, but when we can't do anything with them, he's

strong.

He made the Woolie kill Chandler, and he could kill Paige or me the same way.

Or you.

Yes, he could kill you too if he wanted to.

He has us all in his hands.

The young man's voice had sunk lower and lower, and a thread of mortal terror ran through

it.

That's why he could murder us and never be caught.

Leo's scarred face twisted with impotent rage.

I'd kill him, but he always has the gun and the Woolies.

If I had a gun, I could do it.

He grasped pleadingly at the girl's limping and on the arm of her chair.

Do you happen to have a gun?

No, said Lila Kirtling.

Her blue eyes stared into space, past Leo and his fear.

Her mind raised, envisaging the whitening ripples of consequence that were even now spreading

throughout the whole system from the death of a mechanic.

If that death had been murder, had the killer acted without a gun?

How considering those consequences?

Leo's object terror gave the weight of truth to his accusation.

A weird indictment, but no more preposterous than the simple fact that a Woolie had killed

a man.

But there was still something missing.

The fundamental why, said Lila suddenly, almost to herself.

I don't doubt that Paul's capable of murder, but it would have to be for profit.

The motive?

Leo hesitated then.

Oh, that's simple.

He sabotaged the radio.

Chandler was going to fix it.

He wasn't afraid.

So Paul made the Woolie kill him.

Now Lila too glanced apprehensively at the door.

She exclaimed, but this makes less and less sense.

Why should Paul Gettner want the radio out of commission?

Leo was silent, avoiding her penetrating gaze.

At last he said suddenly, Chandler wanted to send a message.

Lila's hands tightened on the arms of her chair.

What message?

She persisted fiercely.

Lila shouldn't I tell you what he's doing?

Leo wondered, Dully.

He's going to kill me anyway.

As I know, and then he'll kill you too.

His words were choked off in a gasp.

He sprang back, crashing bruisingly into the desk and coward against it.

Into a deathly science came the grading of the inner airlock door.

It opened, and Gettner came in.

Followed by Paige, burdened with the two glazing torches.

Gettner's eyes traveled from the girl to Leo and back again.

He is grin-flashed as he lifted off his helmet, having a nice chat, he inquired softly.

Nobody answered.

In the intolerable silence, Gettner crossed to the desk, picked up a package of cigarettes

and inhaled one into life, as he began removing his vacuum suit.

Leo Chikoski sidled away from him, slumped into a chair in the corner, and sat staring

in the space.

I hope you found time to admire Big Bill, said Gettner lightly, gesturing at the giant

creature, which had not moved or shifted its red gaze from Lila for a moment.

Quite a man, isn't he?

You always liked the big husky-typed, didn't you, darling?

Wouldn't it be better, said Lila in a carefully-governed voice, to leave that beast outside?

What happened, I mean?

Big Bill's all right.

All the woolly's are all right.

You just have to know how to get along with him.

The girl shuddered inwardly, no longer occurred to her to doubt what Leo had told her.

Another silence fell.

It was broken by page, who, having hung up his outer garments, had stood for a time, glancing

about uncertainly, and at last looked the elaborately at his watch.

Move toward the inner door and announced, I'm going to bed.

Go easy on the nightcap, advise Gettner.

He looped his pistol belt carefully over the back of a chair with the gun hanging on

the outside.

Then sat down on the edge of the desk and drew contentedly on his cigarette.

Our bed-times are various, he told Lila.

No proper night or day here, and damn little system.

The company doesn't worry, and as long as we get out the jade, the company's worried

now, said Lila, uncomfortably feeling Gettner's probing gaze upon her.

They're sending a commission to investigate Phoebe, a commission, Moth Gettner.

There was silence again for a space, and an infinitesimal change crept into his hard,

smiling face.

Lila strove in vain to read it.

She at the last moment did she become aware of the pale shadow looming beside her.

She looked up into the scarlet eyes of the monster, and screamed uncontrollably.

Shaggy white arms went round her and lifted her into the air.

She could feel the muscles bulging like plastic iron against her, pressing her to the furry

body that was almost painfully hot.

Lila went wild for a few seconds, striking at the white mask of Big Bill's face, struggling

uselessly.

Then she made herself lie still.

"'Your idea of a joke?' she choked.

Quite a man, isn't he?' chuckled Gettner.

He made an unconcerned gesture, and Big Bill bent to deposit Lila with care in her place

in the armchair again.

The woolly back the way to huddle as before against the naked wall, his mighty three-fingered

hands resting on the floor.

Leo Chakosky had come to his feet, his scarred face distorted.

Hands clenched at his sides.

He made an inarticulate sound.

Gettner turned and looked at him for a long moment.

Then asked softly, don't you think it's your bedtime too, doc?

Leo jerked out.

You damned, stinking, and I'm not afraid.

Take it easy,' said Gettner.

He took Leo's arm in a short grip, turned him about and walked him firmly to the door.

Here all worked up, doc.

You need a bit of sleep.

As if in a dream Leo walked on through the doorway.

Gettner watched him go.

Press the stud that closed the door and turned a key in the lock.

Leo felt herself white and shaking from the reaction, and angry her thereby.

It was a minute before she could command her voice, then she told Paul Gettner what

he was.

In terms that Leo Chakosky would never have thought of.

In English, Spanish, and Martian, Gettner laughed, thrusting the key into his pocket.

You're all right.

But for about two seconds I'll bet you thought Big Bill was going to carry you off.

Like the gorillas do, the beautiful white girls in the story books.

Bill could hardly have a gorilla's motives though, though Woolie's reproduced by budding

when you feed them phosphorus.

He couldn't even eat you alive.

He could probably poison him.

I saw the crack.

It's metabolism.

Lila was relatively calm again.

I think it's my bedtime too, she said frozenly.

I'm tired from my trip, and this friendly reception, not yet, insisted Gettner.

We ought to have a lot to talk about.

It's been a long time since I saw you.

He added, or any woman for that matter.

His eyes fell on the teacup, which had toppled unnoticed from the arm of Lila's chair and

rolled away across the floor.

It didn't drink your tea.

Even like something more stimulating.

He bent to open a drawer of the file cabinet and take out a half-filled bottle.

No, the girl said sharply.

Gettner shrugged and put the bottle back.

He crossed the room and leaned against the wall beside Big Bill, letting a hand rest on

the great Woolie's flattened head, and running his fingers idly through the fine white hair.

Lila could not face the intent identical gaze in the eyes of man and monster.

abruptly Gettner said a little crackpot was talking to you, wasn't he?

At the girl's nod, he went on.

He's not particularly sane.

They get that way out in these stations.

She looked at him at last.

He seems to be about as sane as you are, Paul.

So you think I'm crazy, said Gettner amusedly.

A surge of anger nerved Lila.

You've always been a little crazy.

Now I think you're crazy a lot.

Power crazy.

That's right, answered the man unexpectedly.

Something glowed in his black eyes, smothering the mocking light.

He's straightened.

And I've got it now.

Here, as you've seen, I'm the boss, and that's not all.

That's not all, Echo of Lila with a scornful laugh.

Wait till the company investigators get here.

Where will your little kingdom be then?

We won't be here to meet them, said Gettner readily.

The zodiac will be back here inside sixty hours.

They won't be hard with the woolly's help to commandeer her.

Now I know you're crazy.

But there was a doubt behind her incredulity.

In the confident figure of Gettner, she saw the author of the fear and menace that had

spread out from this remote moon to grip the whole Saturnian subsystem.

But the why was still unanswered.

I'm glad you showed up here, Lila darling.

He was saying, I'd intended to catch up with you before you got out of the moons anyway.

But you saved me a lot of trouble.

From now on you're going along with me.

A new, a sinking sensation.

But she rallied bravely.

What do you think you're going to do?

Convert the zodiac into a pirate warship with a woolly crew?

Those days are gone.

Nothing so stupid.

She'll go on scheduled to tighten.

I've made some discoveries, and I intend to use them.

People have been using woolly's for fifty years.

Nobody's realized their full possibilities.

I had already begun to a year ago when I took this job on this godforsaken rock.

And here I've had the leisure and the opportunity to work the possibilities out.

For murder?

As Lila bluntly.

I had to get rid of Chandler.

He had one of those single track minds, full of ideas about loyalty to the company and

so on.

But I see you don't understand.

But you must know better than I do just what's happened in the subsystem.

Since I sent out the news that one woolly had killed one man.

He paused, and when she did not answer, panic, financial collapse, the whole system starts

falling to pieces.

Before long, they're going to be more such incidents.

Not on Phoebe this time, but on Titan, right in the heart of Saturnian civilization.

You can imagine what will happen then.

Now suppose, in the midst of the turmoil, appears a small group of men who've learned

to control the woolly's, fully control, so that no untrained human mind can challenge

their commands.

Like I control Big Bill.

He gestured at the immobile monster.

Look at him.

He thinks only what I think.

He wants only what I want.

Never before did two hearts beat so completely as one.

Suppose then that this group, a few friends and I, take over the central offices of the

company, and incidentally the colonial government.

Then of course the secret can come out.

That woolly's don't run wild.

They don't kill unless they're ordered to.

And they won't be ordered to kill anybody who stays in line and does as he's told.

There'll be a general sigh of relief, and nobody will worry about the change of administrations.

Lila sat very still, assimilating the picture his words built up.

It wasn't impossible.

It was the ancient pattern of successful revolution.

First bring in chaos, then out of the chaos, a new order brutal force.

There was only one flaw.

She laughed.

It ought to work very nicely, Paul.

Until the earth government hears about it, then send a couple of battleships to blast

you out of the universe.

Get ner-grinned confidently.

But earth is in opposition beyond the sun.

It'll take over two weeks for a ship to get there.

If any escapes before we seize the ports, and by the time they can get any fleet units

here, we'll be ready for them.

But men recruited.

There'll be plenty willing to join us.

And the defenses of the major moons could stand off half a dozen battleships.

They won't dare bomb the cities because of the civilian populations.

War with earth cried Lila unbelievably.

That was preposterous, unheard of.

Why not?

In a year, two years, I'll be stronger than earth.

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Lila stared at him again.

The population of the moons is about 20 million.

Earth has over 3 billion.

She recited as if in a classroom.

Stronger than earth?

Your thinking in terms of population figures, said Gettner, is very crude.

Don't you know what the real strength of earth has been for the past 300 years?

Not a mass of 3 billion people, but tenor a dozen battleships, the backbone of the fleet.

Do you know what a star-class battleship is?

A thousand feet of hull, tungsten alloy armor, ten feet thick.

Twenty-six gravity mercury engines, fifteen to twenty-one atomic blast guns, a thousand

tons or so of atomic explosives.

Those are the surface features, but what matters is there the biggest carriers and distributors

of pure energy that have ever operated in the solar system.

And they remain effective as long as there is atomic energy to power their weapons.

I know all that, said the girl impassantly.

All right, what you evidently don't know is it right now in the year of Civilization 745.

Earth is almost at the end of its supply of power metals.

They've been importing Martian power, solar power for the last two decades,

hoarding their own dwindling stores of the heavy elements in case of war.

And at the same time trying to build up the domestic heliodynamic plants,

but it's plain that Earth hasn't the power to fight a major war at present.

A major war, said Lila helplessly.

What makes you think it would take a major war to smash your scheme?

Evidently, said Gettner.

Doc Chikoski didn't tell you all he knows.

Lila remembered with a queer chill, the sentence that had been interrupted by Gettner's

return.

She opened her mouth and closed it without saying anything.

Gettner, who had been pacing up and down, paused and gave her a long intent look.

I intended you to know, in any case.

You'll go with me to Croniopolis as soon as the zodiac comes back.

Lila, my love, this moon is lousy with uranium.

That can't be true, cried Lila, but her voice shook.

The scientists, the whole theory of planetary origins, you've been reading your own science

and progress supplements.

Certainly, the theory says there can't be any heavy metals on the surfaces of the major

planets or their moons.

But Phoebe isn't a moon of Saturn.

Look at its retrograde revolution.

It wandered in a long time ago from somewhere near the sun.

And wherever it came from, there was plenty of uranium.

That's the way Chikoski explained it, at least.

He happened onto a deposit the last time he went prospecting for Jade.

And once he knew what to look for, he found three more.

And that's just a sample of what there must be.

With that hand, the woolly's, do you see now?

Yes, I see.

Answered Lila slowly.

He raised her blonde head and met Gettner's look steadfastly.

Paul, did you ever read any history?

About 600 years ago it was a man called Hitler, who had ideas a lot like yours.

He got pretty far with them too, because he had the same advantages you count on.

Better weapons than anybody else in the world.

And a whole nation of people that were almost like the woolly's, trained to obey and not

to think.

But what happened to him, isn't going to happen to me, interrupted Gettner, unimpressed.

I've got enough imagination to see where history is heading now, not 600 years ago.

And the brains to make a good thing of it.

Earth is done for.

Saturn and Mars are going to be the next centers of the solar system.

And inside the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be the boss of Saturn.

He was smiling triumphantly down at the girl as she sat in the armchair.

For the moment, staggered by Gettner's dream of conquest, Lila had forgotten her own present

situation.

Now with a tremor, she realized that he was very close.

How are you going to like being queen of Saturn, Lila?

Yes, softly.

I don't know, faltered the girl, rising stiffly, mechanically to her feet as she spoke.

Gettner laid a hand on her arm, but she jerked away and retreated from him.

You'd better let me think that over.

Gettner's smile twisted down at one corner.

His intense gaze followed her slim figure in the scanty white costume, and his eyes narrowed.

I didn't ask you whether you wanted to be queen of Saturn.

I asked you how you were going to like it.

It doesn't sound like my kind of a job, said Lila.

As she spoke, she was still moving cautiously away, keeping her eyes on him.

But at the last moment, Gettner saw where she was going, and swore in fury as he flung

himself forward.

The job yours, he muttered, and you start now.

She fought, but his arms were about her with a strength that seemed to equal that of

the giant woolly.

When he tried to kiss her panting mouth, she bit his cheek until the blood ran.

But he only laughed and swung her clear the floor.

He twisted a hand in her blonde hair, pulled her head back and bent a plant a savage kiss

on her throat instead.

Suddenly, the girl stopped struggling, her eyes dilated, looking past Gettner's shoulder.

In a smothered whisper, she exclaimed, Pa, look out!

The urgency in her voice made him glance up.

In an instant, he had released her and spun around to face Big Bill, who had silently risen

half erect, and silently advanced upon the two.

The woolly's flat head was sunk between his shoulders.

His huge three-fingered hands dangled below his shaggy knees, and almost all his resemblance

to a man was lost.

His red eyes glinted coldly in the bright light.

As Gettner wheeled, Big Bill halted his stealthy approach.

He reared abruptly to his full seven feet of height, then slowly raised his great

mitten-like hands.

Lila, in a dazed huddle on the floor, saw the first look of utter stupuffaction on Gettner's

face, replaced by one of scowling mental effort, and then by a dawning horror.

Big Bill sank into a tense crouch.

Then Gettner threw himself sidewise, and his hand came up with a gun, and in that instant,

Big Bill went for him in one terrible rolling rush.

Before the man's finger could jerk the firing lever, one of those huge three-fingered hands

closed on his forearm.

There was a snapping, and the flame pistols spun away.

Gettner screamed out in agony then, and once again as the woolly lifted him into the

air to smash him down against the iron floor.

That was all.

Big Bill stood quietly, a stooping white fird figure with dangling hands over a red thing

on the floor that squirmed painfully, and was still.

In the silence the sobbing gasps of Lila's own breathing rang in her ears.

Lila's crashed against the door panels, and Mark Page's voice came in, edged with anxiety.

Hey, Paul!

Lila stirred from her stunned apathy and picked herself off the floor, and then she did

the bravest action of her life.

With heart banging against her front teeth, she walked across the room and knelt beside

the shattered body.

The great red eyes of the woolly looked dully down at her.

Fortunately, the key was in the first and most accessible pocket.

It took her several tries, with her back to Big Bill, to fit it into the lock.

She had picked up the flame pistol, and held it in her left hand, pointing away from

the door at a wavering angle.

That was just as well, for Page's headlong entry when the door slid open, nearly tripped

her top nerves into pulling the trigger.

Hey, said Page again in a low voice.

His eyes fell on Lila's shaking hand, and he reached across to take the gun away from

her, and aim at point blank at Big Bill.

There was a strong odor of liquor on his breath, but his hand holding the pistol was perfectly

steady.

Shall I shoot him?

He asked almost casually, Lila shook her head numbly.

I don't think it's necessary.

He was silent a moment regarding the woolly, but we better get him out of here.

He gestured and frowned at Big Bill, and by sign language and telepathy, made the great

creature understand.

Big Bill retreated to the airlock, fumbled with his controls and rolled out into the lock.

The clang of the outer door brought an involuntary sigh from Lila.

One mitten-like hand left a red smear on the opening lever.

What happened?

Inquired Page's at last.

I don't know, said Lila confusedly.

Her knees had gone boneless.

She sank into a chair.

It was just sitting against the wall there, she pointed.

And then it got up and killed him.

She hesitated.

Paul seemed to be trying to control it.

But I guess he couldn't.

Page laid the gun carefully on the desk, walked deliberately to the couch, unfolded a blanket,

and went to spread it over Paul Gettner and his dream of an empire of Saturn.

The blanket could not quite cover everything.

Big Bill rolled pondrously through the Inky Fabian night.

His huge red eyes picking an aimless path by the starlight.

There was a nagging emptiness in his little mind.

A vacuum left by the vanishing of Gettner's dominant will.

The vanishing, big Bill, could not explain.

But he knew that he had had no thoughts that were not also those of a god-like master.

No desires that were not the reflection of Gettner's.

Dimly he remembered the final scene in the human's dwelling.

There had been a strange storm of unprecedented emotions.

And Big Bill too had felt a moment of overpowering desire.

The slight, fair-headed human would come in the rocket.

Then came an instant of blind alien fury to which Big Bill could give no name or meaning.

And whose deeds he could not remember.

Nor could he know that mirroring Gettner's passions, he had only felt and acted as the

man would have if he, instead of the woolly, had been the onlooker.

He had gone mad with jealousy.

Next on the lost sci-fi podcast, the night the moon turns in eerie green.

Every living creature on earth falls into a silent paralysis.

Except one scientist who stumbles onto the secret too late to warn the world.

Now with alien invaders already preparing to claim the planet,

he must launch a desperate strike before the last free mind on earth fades into the same living death.

When the moon turn green, my hell K wells.

Hi, this is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad.

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