Chapter III

A strained silence followed the factor's final words. A silence during which Lynn Graham's troubled gaze swept the table, searching reassurance--finding none--in the eyes of her dinner companions. A silence during which Dr. Rockingham Roswell fidgeted uneasily, removed his glasses, breathed upon them, polished them, and replaced them for the hundredth time.

It was Captain Burke who finally broke the spell. He cleared his throat and rose.

"Well, I must be getting along to the bridge. We'll be at New Boston space-port in a matter of minutes now. I suggest that you go to your staterooms, see that your luggage is in order, and prepare to disembark."

Dr. Roswell said hesitantly, "Er ... Captain ... just a moment. When ... er ... how soon does the _Gaea_ return to Earth?"

"Return to Earth! But--" Captain Burke turned a blank, uncomprehending stare upon his questioner--"but you have not yet set foot on Titan!"

Dr. Roswell shuffled uncomfortably.

"I ... er ... I quite realize that, Captain. But I ... er ... have been reconsidering. In view of Mister Grossman's revelations, I ... er ... am not altogether certain it would be wise to pursue my investigations...."

The space skipper's broad, flat features contracted into a grimace of disdain. Despite his company's instructions to maintain at all times a respectful mien toward passengers, he permitted contempt to echo in his voice.

"You don't mean to say you are _afraid_, Doctor Roswell!"

The young man's cheeks flushed. He said, "I ... er ... should not put it quite that way, sir. However, I prefer not to expose myself to needless risks. The work I had intended to do on Titan is not sufficiently important to warrant--"

Grossman chuckled. The girl, Lynn Graham, looked at the embarrassed pedant almost pityingly. Captain Burke said, "I am afraid, Doctor Roswell, it will not be possible to return to Earth immediately. The _Gaea_ is not returning to Earth."

"Not returning--"

"No. We are going on to Uranus to leave a cargo of food and medical supplies there. We will, however, stop back at Titan in three Solar Constant weeks. If--" The skipper's voice was openly ironic--"if you can endure the rigors of the satellite for that length of time, we will be glad to pick you up on our return trip."

"I ... er ... I suppose it would not be possible for me to ride with you to Uranus?"

"I'm sorry," said Burke decidedly. "The Uranus post is a military zone forbidden to civilian tourists. I cannot take you there."

"Then in that case," shrugged Roswell, "I must stay. But you _will_ stop for me?"

"I'll stop for you. Meanwhile, you had better make arrangements to stay somewhere where you will be quite safe." Captain Burke's patience was quite exhausted. "Miss Graham can, perhaps, prevail upon her father to allow you to remain at the Space Patrol base."

The young doctor turned to the girl eagerly.

"Can you, Miss Graham? I would be _most_ grateful--"

Lynn Graham nodded, her icy politeness more devastating than forthright scorn.

"Yes, Doctor Roswell, I am reasonably sure you can make such arrangements. I will ask Daddy as soon as we land. And now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me--"

She rose and left the dining-hall. Grossman, still chuckling, followed her example. He stopped at the doorway.

"Sorry I upset you, Roswell. But cheer up! Three weeks will pass swiftly. You'll be all right on Titan if you keep your eye peeled and carry your Haemholtz at all times."

But his reassurance proved to be just the opposite. For the savant's lower jaw dropped; he quavered, "Haemholtz! Gracious ... you mean I should carry a ray-pistol! Oh, mercy! I couldn't _think_ of doing such a thing!"

And with a little bleat of dismay, he turned and ran toward his stateroom. The two men in the dining-hall watched him disappear. Then Grossman laughed aloud, and Captain Burke snorted.

"The younger generation! If that's the kind of men Earth is breeding nowadays, Lord help us all!"

* * * * *

Dr. Rockingham Roswell pattered down the long, metal corridors of the _Gaea_ to his A-deck suite. He fumbled near-sightedly at the vibro-lock and stumbled into his compartment. But once inside, the door securely bolted behind him, a change came over him. A change which would have astonished those who had a few moments before been amused at his timidity.

He removed his spectacles, casing them and thrusting them into an inside pocket. He then removed his coat. Oddly enough, rid of that closely-tailored garment, his shoulders looked considerably broader, his chest inches deeper. He drew a deep breath ... much the same sort of breath as a sponge diver draws when he emerges from the hampering depths of the sea to the more accustomed world above ... and called a name.

"Bud?"

A figure appeared from the plushy wallows of a divan, waved at the young professor companionably.

"Hi, Rocky! Beginnin' to wonder when you was comin' back. We're halfway to the cradle. What's the good word?"

"The good word," grinned his informant, "is that I've paved the way. Miss Graham is going to ask her father to let us stay at the Patrol base."

"Huh?" Mulligan looked baffled. "What's good about _that_? We could've stayed at the Patrol Base anyway. All you had to do was tell Colonel Graham who you were--"

His superior officer groaned in mock despair.

"Sometimes I wonder if that cranium of yours is good for anything but a hair-garden! Don't you see, Bud, that the whole scheme depends on our being _invited_ to become guests at the Patrol base? Of course, we could present our credentials, walk directly from the _Gaea_ to headquarters. But it would be a cold tip-off to Grossman that we are S.I.D. men.

"As it is, he hasn't got the faintest idea that 'Doctor Rockingham Roswell' and his 'valet' are members of the Solar Investigation Department. He thinks I'm a very badly rattled pedagogue, and you're a mealy-mouthed nonentity. And that is exactly what we want him to believe--until we get the goods on him."

"Then he _is_ our man?"

"I'm practically certain of it now. He's as nervous as a cat. Flared up the moment I questioned his reasons for living on Titan. As factor of the New Boston trading-post he is in an ideal situation to stir up trouble amongst the Titanians. And that's precisely what he has been doing. We don't know exactly why--yet!--but it's quite clear that for some reason of his own he wants all Earthmen save himself to leave Titan."

"Gold, maybe?" suggested Bud. "Oil? _Ekalastron?_"

"No-o-o, I don't think so. The mineralogists would have detected the presence of any of those when they surveyed Titan. His reason is something deeper than that--Say! Wait a minute! I wonder if it possibly--?"

"Yeah?"

"No, I'm crazy! It couldn't be that. I happened to think of that T-radiation. But I don't believe even Grossman is enough of a scientist to have discovered what it is or how it can be used--if at all. Well, anyhow--"

"Anyhow, we're in at the Base. And Grossman doesn't suspect us. That's part of the job. So--the next move?"

"We circulate. We move around and ask questions and snoop and pry and investigate."

Mulligan grinned.

"In the good old Rocky Russell tradition, eh?"

"Who?"

"Rocky Russell, I said. Don't tell me you've forgot your real name, chum?"

Rocky Russell reached into an inside pocket, brought forth a pair of thick-lensed spectacles, hooked them over his ears. His voice lifted to a high, gentle, hesitant whine.

"Oh, mercy me!" he simpered. "Forgotten my ... er ... real name? But, of course not! I am Doctor Rockingham Roswell. And you are my valet, Ambrose."

Bud groaned.

"Gawd! All the names in creation, and I've got to be called 'Ambrose'!"

* * * * *

"So you're a doctor?" asked Colonel Graham. "That's fine. We can use another doctor on this post. Glad to have you stay with us, Doctor Roswell."

Several hours had passed since the _Gaea's_ landing on Titan. In that time, much had happened. Dr. Roswell and his "man" had made their adieux to a scornful Captain Burke and a highly amused Factor Grossman, removed their baggage from the cruiser, and accompanied Lynn Graham to the S.S.P. base a few miles outside the Titanian city of New Boston.

There they had witnessed the surprise meeting of the Commandant and his daughter. Lynn Graham had rightly guessed her father's reaction upon seeing her. She had erred in only one minor detail. She had expected him to turn "pale violet" with anger. The color he _actually_ achieved was somewhere in the apoplectic spectrum between dull scarlet and turkey red.

His outraged bellows, replete with invocations to the deities of a dozen worlds and highly censorable, were audible for a good half mile. But eventually--when Lynn had pointed out that: (1) she could not return to the _Gaea_; (2) she didn't want to return to the _Gaea_, and (3) that she had no intention of returning to the _Gaea_ even if she could--he calmed down a trifle. And in his brusque kiss of greeting was an affection hardly in keeping with the violence of his protestations.

It was then that Lynn had introduced Dr. Roswell and his valet, explaining their desire to stay at the base. Confused and bewildered, the commandant had agreed. And now the quartet were gathered in the colonel's private quarters. The colonel, in his own crisp way, was trying to be friendly.

"A doctor," he repeated. "That's good. We need the services of a good doctor around here."

Rocky smiled feebly.

"I ... er ... I'm afraid you don't understand, sir. I'm not an M.D., you know. I'm an ... er ... D.M."

"D.M.?" repeated Graham wonderingly. "What's that?"

"A Doctor," explained Rocky, "of Mythology. It's an archeological degree, rather than a medical one. I'm what ... er ... might be called a research student. I gather folk tales and ancient legends, study them, analyze them, and attempt to determine their underlying meanings." He beamed happily from behind his thick-lensed glasses. "A most fascinating hobby," he said. "Oh, goodness, yes ... _most_ fascinating!"

Colonel Graham stared at him incredulously.

"Legends! Folk tales! But why on earth--?"

Red of face, he spluttered into silence. Lynn tried to bridge the awkward moment.

"What Daddy means, Doctor Roswell, is--why do you hunt down these ancient fables? Does your work have any practical value?"

Rocky's eyebrows arched as if the query caused him a physical pain.

"Practical value! My dear young lady, of course not! It is purely a labor of love. Knowledge for the sake of pure knowledge. Er ... _scientia gratia scientiarum_, you know ... that sort of thing. Of course--" He shrugged--"once in a while the research of my learned colleagues does contribute a share to the understanding of man's more mundane pursuits, but such occasions are, I hasten to assure you, quite incidental--"

Colonel Graham had recovered his composure.

"Mythology, eh? Well, what sort of legends interest you, Doctor? Fairy tales? Ghost stories?"

"Well--no," said Rocky pedantically. "The tales of greatest interest are those of fabulous monsters ... incredible beings endowed with fantastic powers or attributes. Such may be found in the mythologies of any race or clan. Not only on Earth, but on all the planets have we heard such stories. It is our delight to track down these tales and unearth the germ of underlying truth which created them."

* * * * *

"You mean," queried the girl, "that behind each folk tale lies a true cause or event or--or creature?"

"Exactly. For instance--well, let me see--you are familiar with the Earthly legend of the phoenix, aren't you?"

"The bird which was supposed to have had a life-span of a thousand years, at the end of which time it threw itself into a blazing pyre, from the ashes of which it was reborn?"

"That," nodded Dr. Rocky, "is the legend. Quoted as you have told it, it made no sense to Earthmen for thousands of years. Until, in fact, the year 1987 A.D., when the first Martian expedition visited the desert planet. The members of this expedition were amazed to discover a _rara avis_ upon Mars impervious to extremes of both heat and cold. A bird with an astonishing life-span in excess of a thousand Earthly years. In short ... the archetype of the fabled phoenix!"

Colonel Graham looked interested in spite of himself.

"By Gad, that's right! The _tulalaroo_ bird. Doesn't mind heat or cold, either one. Nests in ice or red-hot coals! That's rather interesting, Doctor. Any more such examples?"

"Scores! There is the fabled unicorn ... a one-horned gazelle-like animal certainly not indigenous to Terra, yet it found its place in the 'unnatural natural history' of not one but a dozen races. Whence originated this record of a single horned creature we could not guess .. until we discovered such a beast on Venus.

"The fabulous 'salamander' turned out to be a common asbestos-like lizard of Mercury. Aqueous Venus solved for us the problems of the mermaid, the sea serpent and the undine. On mighty Jupiter mythologists encountered the fire-breathing saurian which gave rise to the 'dragon' myth--"

"But, Doctor Roswell!" gasped the girl, "what does this mean? That once upon a time, countless centuries ago, beasts of this sort roamed Earth? Or--?"

Rocky shook his head soberly.

"We do not know, Miss Graham. There are a number of equally valid possibilities. One is that which you have mentioned ... that Earth was once host to all the types of animal life now to be found on its sister planets. Another is that aeons ago Earthmen--or the intellectual rulers of one of the other planets--knew the secret of spacetravel. The factual records of places visited, strange sights seen, would in the musty passage of time become mythology.

"Still another possibility--"

"Yes?"

"Well, it is ... er ... a theory recently advanced by an erudite scholar, but it has elements of fantasy which make it almost incredible. You are ... er ... familiar with the theories of Svante Arrhenius?"

Lynn frowned. "I remember the name faintly. Didn't he claim life traveled through the ether?"

"Yes. He put forward, the concept that the life-germ is universally diffused, constantly emitted from all habitable worlds in the form of spores which traverse space for years or ages, the majority being ultimately destroyed by the flame of some blazing star, but some few finding a resting-place on bodies which have reached the habitable stage.

"My colleague has carried this theory a step forward, suggesting it is not only the fundamental life-germ which thus travels ... but also individual and distinctive life-forms! He has suggested that from each and every world in every galaxy, occasionally there set forth into the void the spores or eggs of every highly developed life-form.

"Most of these never reach their destinations. Some do. And when these do, unwilling worlds play host to beasts of nightmare mien."