Chapter V

Sparks Hannigan came out grinning. He said, "This one looks like the business, Greg. Plenty of room. Dry and warm. It's even got a natural fluevent so's we can have a fireplace inside."

Greg nodded, pleased.

"Sounds good. I was beginning to think we'd never find a suitable cave. This one's within easy reach of that spring, too; that solves the fresh water problem. Well, we might as well get settled. Getting toward evening."

'Tina glanced at the sky, surprised. "So soon? I didn't know it had taken us so long. It seems as if only a few hours ago it was noon."

"It was," grinned Greg. "Titan's days are shorter than Earth's. Its diameter is only about 3,000 miles. By Earth measurements you'd say Titan had a sixteen hour day."

"And the 'day,'" grumbled Sparks, "ain't none too bright at that. On account of we're so far from the Sun."

"You haven't seen the worst of it. Right now we're on the Sun side of Saturn. We revolve about our primary once every 500-odd hours. Since Saturn is so large, when we are to the lee of it, it eclipses us entirely. So for about five days every Titan 'month' we suffer a complete blackout.

"And that--" Greg sobered. "That is another reason the others should dig into a good warm cave. It gets plenty cold during that eclipse period. An open camp on an exposed plain--" He shook his head.

Maud Andrews said, "I can't understand why this satellite is habitable at all. I was under the impression that Saturn is a frozen planet."

"It is. Its surface temperature is approximately 300° below zero, Fahrenheit. But the warmth of its numerous satellites is one of the astonishing discoveries made by the early space explorers, fifty or sixty years ago. Scientists have not yet explained the matter satisfactorily. Some say the tremendous mass of Saturn, the waves of atmospherics set up by its swirling motion and the 'grindstone' of its ring, form an electronic barrier-shield for the satellites. Still others believe that frigid Saturn acts as a gigantic mirror or solar reflector for its children."

"But Greg--" That was Tommy O'Doul. "Why ain't there any colonies here if the climate's O.Q.? Men live on Venus, where it's hot as billy-be-hanged, and on Uranus, which is nothing but a ball of ice, and on a bunch of cold, airless asteroids--"

"Economics, Tommy. The simple, single dictator of mankind's every venture. Venus has valuable vegetation, Uranus and the asteroids have important metals that can't be duplicated in Earth's laboratories, the asteroids have rare ore deposits. There is not--or at least there has not as yet been discovered--anything native to Titan that cannot be mined or made elsewhere more cheaply, more easily. Some day man's ever-expanding frontiers will claim this satellite as a colony, too. But now that the entire universe is open to man, the human race can increase a millionfold and _still_ allow every soul more _lebensraum_ than he can possibly use."

Sparks Hannigan gazed at him admiringly.

"It's stoo-pendous!" he said.

"Titan? Not any more so than--"

"Not Titan. You. You know everything, don't you? Pal--" Sparks shook his head. "I sure had you figgered wrong. I thought you was a soft-soaping dope. So then you got us off the _Carefree_ onto the skiff, cooled Breadon like a herring, declared yourself _It_ and made us like it--"

Greg said, "Nonsense! I just happened to--Oh, nonsense! Shall we go into our new home?" But he flushed.

By evening--Titan's short, grey shadowed evening, the only logical unit of duration by which they could live so long as they remained captive here--their new cave home began to take on some semblance of lived-inness.

Vegetation was abundant on the hillsides. Sparks and Tommy had gathered heaps of dry faggots while Greg built a crude stone fireplace underneath the fluevent Sparks had reported; shortly thereafter the women had a cheerful blaze crackling on the hearth, and mingled with its grateful warmth was the odor of a savory stew, welcome scent to the nostrils of five who had worked long and hard in gathering the vegetables that had gone into that potage.

"Eat nothing," Greg had warned, "dig nothing that does not show signs of having been eaten, dug or picked by wild animals. Later we can make chemical analysis of dubious foods to determine their edibility. For the present we will depend on the most certain test, the acceptance by other flesh-and-blood creatures."

He had also permitted that a single can of bouillon concentrate be used in the stew. "For flavoring. There is so little food in reserve that we must save it against the cold, dark days when we can't get out to gather supplies. Later on we'll have fresh meat."

He looked thoughtfully at Cuddles, sniffing, yapping excitedly by the fireplace, and Maud Andrews, with a swift, maternal gesture, swept the poodle into her arms and glared at him belligerently.

"Oh, no you don't! You'll eat _me_ first!"

"I wasn't thinking of that," said Greg indignantly. "I had something else in mind. A poodle, eh? Hmmm!"

'Tina and young Tommy came into the cave, arms full of fresh and fragrant ferns which they dumped beside a wall. Greg, glancing at them, could not curb his astonishment at the overwhelmingly sudden change that had come over 'Tina. During the _Carefree's_ cruise, during the years he had worked for old J. Foster, he had seen the girl a thousand times--but never, he discovered now, really _seen_ her before! Always she had been a dim, dusty figure in the background. A foil for the spoiled, immaculate perfection of Enid Andrews, the glittering, heart-stopping beauty of Crystal.

Now, viewed as a woman and a comrade, he was aware that she was lovely herself. Slim as a rush, and yielding-strong as that same wild water-flower; dark-eyed; hair as the Martian midnight with live lights glinting in it, too, as the stars glinted over the Martian deserts; soft, white hands, graceful but capable--

But here! he thought, what nonsense was this? He had work to do. And this was no time for weaving poetic cadences about a girl who was practically a total stranger!

Now she laughed, gaily, her very laughter seeming to burst from a heart happy with newfound freedom. And she said, "It was just as you said, Greg. We found the ferns down by the spring. Did we bring enough of them?"

Greg said, "Enough for tonight. They'll make comfortable beds. Later on Sparks and I will build real beds for all of us. Thank goodness there was a tool-chest on the skiff. You folks ready to eat?"

Hannigan lifted his nose from the fireplace.

"Ready! _I_ been ready for a half hour, and my stummick's been ready for a week!"

And somehow it didn't seem at all surprising to Greg that Maud Andrews should be the one who, sleeves rolled up, face flushed with hearth-heat, warmth and good fellowship, seized the ladle, beat on the side of the pot vigorously and bawled, in what was far from a wealthy socialite's cultured tone, "Come and get it! Come and get it!"

* * * * *

So, somehow, the first day was over ... and the second day, too ... and a week of Titan's sixteen hour days slid past so quickly that Greg could not truly say where they had disappeared.

Duties, chores, at first chaotic became matters of mere routine as one or another of the little band took them on his own shoulders. Maud Andrews, who on the second day bluntly and surprisingly startled everyone with the pronunciamento that henceforth there would be, "--no more of this 'Miss Andrews' stuff; call me 'Aunt Maud'; I'm old enough to have mothered every last one of you!", set herself up as cook, thus freeing 'Tina to take care of the multitude of other household--or cave-hold--duties. And an excellent cook she turned out to be, performing miracles with the odd, variegated samples of produce brought to her by the rest of the group.

Her once-aroused suspicion flared again when Greg casually requested, one day, permission to take Cuddles for a little run in the woods. She clucked to her pet, turned him over to Greg, but watchfully.

"I don't know what you have in mind, Greg Malcolm. But if you come back here with any sinister looking pieces of meat and no Cuddles--"

"I'm hoping to come back," confessed Greg, "with both meat _and_ Cuddles. He's a poodle, isn't he? Well, he's always been a lap-dog to you, but I have an idea maybe his heritage will overcome his habits when I get him out into the woods. The poodle, in its earliest beginnings, used to be a hunting dog, you know. It was bred and trained especially for that purpose. Of course his nose may have been ruined by being pampered, but--"

"My Cuddles," exclaimed Aunt Maud, "a hunting dog!" She looked horrified.

Greg said slyly, "I hope so. He wouldn't be the first member of this party to prove his true worth beneath a thin veneer of civilization."

Aunt Maud's cheeks were red, but it might have been the warmth of the fire. And maybe the wood-smoke made her eyes shine like that, too. She pushed Greg roughly.

"Oh, run along!" she ordered. "But mind you bring him back unchanged!"

"Okay, Auntie," Greg said.

Greg brought him back, but not unchanged. For the poodle had, amazingly, reverted to type, once set on the trail of wild game. Greg carried back to the dinner table two small creatures, one vaguely resembling a squirrel, one definitely allied to the rabbit family, plunked them proudly before his companions.

"Don't give me credit. It was the pup. He's a humdinger. You should have seen him tree that squirrel--or whatever it is! And that rabbit-thing--he went scrambling halfway down a warren after it! Didn't you, Slewfoot?"

The dog yerped happily. Aunt Maud moaned.

"Slewfoot! Oh, my gracious! Cuddles, come here to momsy-womsy wight away! Did nassy-mans call him--"

Cuddles made no move to obey. Greg whistled, and the dog looked up. "Okay, Slewfoot. Go to momma!" And the dog pranced over to Aunt Maud. Greg grinned. "I think he likes his new name better," he said.

Slewfoot yerped again in an ecstasy of approval.

* * * * *

And so, gradually, life became easier and smoother and happier for the quintet of cave-dwellers. Beds took the place of piled ferns, the woodpile towered toward the cave roof against the days of dark and cold which, according to Greg's computations, might be expected within the next week or so, food was varied and plentiful, and a needed food was supplied when Tommy O'Doul marched triumphantly home with a bawling kid in his arms.

Sparks glared at him.

"Hey, youngster, what did you tote that home for? We ain't got no room for pets. And that thing ain't ripe to be et yet."

Tommy said, "I had to bring it. It was the only way I could make its mom follow me. See?"

And sure enough, a few yards away, anxiously eying its captive offspring, was a mother goat. Or something like a goat, anyway. Sparks caught on them. A flying tackle and the camp had corraled its first head of livestock. And from then on there was milk.

And there were songs in the evening, and card games and stories and compensations for the long, hard tasks of the daytime. Sparks labored on his radio set, though without too much hope. "Smashed to hell and gone, Greg. The tubes is the wust part. I could jockey the wires around. But glass--"

Greg looked thoughtful. "I wonder," he said. "I wonder? Well--do what you can with the metallic parts."

So they waited and worked, and in some dim corner of their minds continued to hope for the release which all in some vague fashion expected might come "some day." And their camaraderie was great and wholesome, but there was a single subject they never mentioned. The other quintet on the plain below. From their hillside eyrie they could see the other camp, but by common consent they made no effort to approach Breadon's followers. They had offered assistance and it had been refused. They could do nothing more, now, unless--

The unless came sooner than they expected. In the still of the night it came in the dark, multi-mooned Saturnian night, when Greg and his comrades were all asleep in their bunks.

Greg woke with a strained feeling that he could not at first identify. He only knew, as a newly awakened sleeper dimly knows, that something was amiss.

Then, as he listened, he heard it again. The sound of a firing rifle. And the thin, muted whisper of a cry from the clearing below. A voice lifted in dismay.

With a start he was on his feet.

"Sparks!"

Hannigan bounced from his blankets like a redheaded ball of rubber. He was on his feet, scrubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, even before he knew he was awake.

"Smatta? Whuzzup, Greg? Smatta?"

"Below!" roared Greg. "The party in the valley--they're in trouble of some kind! Get your gun and come on!"