Title: Failure On Titan
Author: Abernathy, Robert
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Failure On Titan" ***


                           FAILURE ON TITAN

                          By ROBERT ABERNATHY

           Terror flared across the Saturnian moons. One of
           the Woollies, that perfect slave-race, had killed
               a _man_! But to Big Bill, shambling away
             from his bloody, suddenly silent master, the
              ancient pattern of obedience was unchanged.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Winter 1947.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


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 manlike
shapes, draped like Big Bill from head to foot in 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. Their red
eyes peered ahead through the noonday twilight toward the landing strip
two hundred yards away, slashed clean and straight across the ragged
low-gravity terrain.

There were human figures--three 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 men were things as
obvious as are apples or oranges to eyes and fingers.

Brilliant lights flashed on all along the landing strip. Thin
nictitating membranes descended over the eyes of the approaching
Woollies, and 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 named Paige, 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 Paige, was called Doc. In 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 Gedner.

He stood a little apart from the others, gazing into the starry sky
from which the rocket would come. For the watching Woollies 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 Woollies glimpsed 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 men 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.

Abruptly Gedner 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, onrushing 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 an instant later the face of
the little moon vibrated to the shriek of steel runners on fire-glazed
rock. The ship sledded 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 nearer to the slope on which the
Woollies 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 Gedner, and beneath his flat skull stirred an excitement, utterly
strange to the Woolly, yet in some way pleasant. The feeling was not
Big Bill's, 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 Woollies
were willing slaves of the introverted, insensitive Earthmen.

The metal gangway had descended to grate 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 Phoebean 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 suit, 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 remained motionless, and rolled silently forward on his
great splayed 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 unaccustomed 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 subtly different from any he had known
before--more rounded, with less prominent feature, smaller bones better
sheathed in 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.

       *       *       *       *       *

Leila Frey gazed round her, at the ill-lit Phoebean 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 men said, shrugging, "That's probably what
they'll do before another year is out. It won't be that long before the
market for genuine Phoebean jade has worked down a couple more income
levels, to the point where it can't compete with the just-as-genuine
synthetic product."

"That's a pre-eminently dirty trick," said Leila 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 Earthman, 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 pleased surprise, which rang hollow inside her air
helmet. "Why, Paul! Fancy meeting you here!"

Gedner's 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 gaiety. "Everybody knew you'd buried yourself somewhere
in the wilds. But imagine me stumbling onto your grave!"

Paul Gedner's grin tightened. "Not so surprising, Leila darling. You're
royally paid to go around the System digging things up, aren't you?"

Captain Manoly of the _Zodiac_ broke in, his voice betraying his
irritation. "I believe Miss Frey's luggage has all been landed."

"Fine," said Gedner, glancing toward where Mark Paige 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, Leila.... You're in a
hurry to lift, Captain?"

"That's right," snapped the spaceman. "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 Leila Frey's 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 Leila caught the movement of his helmet and followed the
look.

She could not suppress a gasp. Scarcely 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 muskox, covering all its face
save the expressionless crimson eyes. Its great three-fingered hands
rested on the ground as it cowered and stared.

Leila recovered her composure. "Is this one of your renowned killer
Woollies?" she asked coolly of Gedner.

"Not him. Big Bill's my right hand man." Gedner beckoned and the
creature rose and padded toward him. "Carry the lady's luggage, Bill."

Paige relinquished his task with alacrity. The great Woolly embraced
the entire load with ease, and moved toward the lighted buildings.
Leila's eyes followed him, and, accustomed as she was to the sight of
Woollies, a faint shudder shook her. The news which had brought her to
Phoebe was responsible for that shudder; two days before, the message
from the lonely moon had shaken the whole Saturnian 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; families 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 Woollies. The great race which had ruled
Saturn's moons before the Age of Man had, before its unexplained
extinction, bred its slave-creatures with superb skill, for vast
strength, for adaptability to the diverse environments of the
satellites--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 All-Planet News Syndicate had Leila Frey aboard the
_Zodiac_, traveling toward Phoebe at sixty miles a second.

Gedner took the girl's arm in one heavily-gloved hand and led her away
from the ship at a leisurely pace. Captain Manoly had already vanished
thankfully into the airlock of his vessel.

As if coming out of a trance, Leila 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 employers send you out after scoops," he remarked
thoughtfully.

"I just happened to be in the Subsystem, looking for general interest
stuff on the colonies," put in Leila 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 plodding on behind.

"You've been doing well since you got rid of me. But I always knew you
had what it takes to get ahead, darling; you've never been anything but
a grasping, selfish, irresponsible little monster."

Leila 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 icily. "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've 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 indrawn 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 erect 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 flame 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 space ship left the surface of the moon. In three days, Earth
time, it would return to pick Leila 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, Leila observed, was large and slovenly, arranged for both
business and relaxation, a scarred desk and file-cabinet keeping
company with a table, armchairs and a tired-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-soled 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 lightly, "The Company would raise hell
if they knew you were here."

"That's not my worry," retorted Leila. "I'm on assignment from A.P."

"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."

"The All-Planet people want the details, don't they?"

"For God's sake, Paul!" exploded Mark Paige. But his mouth twitched
beneath his hopelessly straggly little mustache as Gedner's gaze met
his.

"Shut up," said Gedner evenly. "Miss Frey and I are old friends. We
understand each other."

       *       *       *       *       *

Leila said nothing, but her red lips were compressed to a thin line as
she fumbled with the air-tight 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 donned
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-furred faceless thing with dull red eyes fixed unwinkingly
on the girl.

Leila sat down in one of the worn armchairs, but she failed to relax
from the tension, the nameless apprehension that had begun to grip
her 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 Leila.

"Cup of tea, then?" said Gedner. Leila nodded, grateful for a
distraction. Paige 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 to Paige. "We'd
better flame that strip before it cools off entirely," he said
matter-of-factly, and, to Leila, with a gesture at the still-helmeted
figure bending over the desk, "Doc Chaikoski 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 taut hatred as he glanced toward Gedner.
The latter took no notice, but turned away to join Paige, 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 faceplates shut and went out through the
airlock. Leila sat quite still for a little while, glancing nervously
from the crouching, silent Woolly against the wall to the equally
silent man. At last she exclaimed in exasperation, "Won't you take that
thing off your head? Two gargoyles in a room this size are too many!"

The other spoke for the first time. "It won't help much," he said in
a toneless voice, but he removed the helmet, set it carelessly on the
desk-top, 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 dun-colored hair. A terrific
blow, perhaps from a hot fragment of metal, must have left that mark.

"My name isn't Doc." There was increasing bitterness in his voice.
"It's Leo. It's just that it amuses _him_ to call me that, because I
happen to be a petrologist."

"Oh," said Leila. 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 Chaikoski stared fixedly at the tangle of papers. "What do you
mean?"

"Well ..." she hesitated. "Something about the general setup here, to
begin with."

"Setup? It's simple enough. Paul Gedner gives the orders to the
Woollies and to the rest of us--officially, he's only the Woolly boss,
but--well, you seem to know him."

"Yes," said Leila.

"I have a degree from North American Geological, so whenever the
Woollies 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. Paige keeps 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 Woollies dig the jade and load it when
the rocket comes, and Saturn Colonial pays our salaries."

But Leila 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 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 a drill, when one of the
Woollies on the job attacked him. There wasn't any provocation, nor any
warning. Paul killed the Woolly with that gun he carries, but Chandler
was done for."

There was a guarded look in the scarred face, and Leila was not
satisfied. She remembered her training in interviewing--the
you-approach.

"What do _you_ think made that Woolly run amok?" she demanded
pointblank.

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. His 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."

Leila sat open-mouthed. But there was no need for her to say anything;
the words came now from Leo Chaikoski in a jerky torrent.

"You've seen how it is. _He_ controls the Woollies, like he dominates
everything else around him. The rest of us know the technique, too--but
we can't do anything with them. He's _strong_. He made the Woolly 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 can 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 Woollies. If I had a gun, I could do it...." He grasped
pleadingly at the girl's limp hand on the arm of her chair. "Do you
happen to have a gun?"

"No," said Leila curtly. Her blue eyes stared into space, past Leo
and his fear; her mind raced, envisaging the widening 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 considering those consequences?

Leo's abject terror gave the weight of truth to his accusation--a
weird indictment, but no more preposterous than the simple fact that
a Woolly had killed a man. But there was still something missing, the
fundamental--

"Why?" said Leila 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 Woolly kill him."

Now Leila too glanced apprehensively at the door. She exclaimed, "But
this makes less and less sense. Why should Paul Gedner want the radio
out of commission?"

Leo was silent, avoiding her penetrating gaze; at last he said
sullenly, "Chandler wanted to send a message."

Leila's hands tightened on the arms of her chair. "What message?" she
persisted fiercely.

"Why shouldn't I tell you what he's doing?" Leo wondered dully. "He's
going to kill me, anyway, because 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 cowered against it. Into a deathly
silence came the grating of the inner airlock door. It opened, and
Gedner came in, followed by Paige burdened with the two glazing
torches. Gedner's eyes traveled from the girl to Leo and back again,
and his grin flashed as he lifted off his helmet.

"Having a nice chat?" he inquired softly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nobody answered; in the intolerable silence, Gedner crossed to the
desk, picked up a package of cigarettes and inhaled one into life as
he began removing his vacuum suit. Leo Chaikoski sidled away from him,
slumped into a chair in the corner, and sat staring into space.

"I hope you've found time to admire Big Bill," said Gedner lightly,
gesturing at the giant creature, which had not moved or shifted its red
gaze from Leila for a moment. "Quite a man, isn't he? You always liked
the big, husky type, didn't you, darling?"

"Wouldn't it be better," said Leila in a carefully governed voice, "to
leave that beast outside? After--what happened, I mean."

"Big Bill's all right. All the Woollies are all right; you just have to
know how to get along with them."

The girl shuddered inwardly; it no longer occurred to her to doubt what
Leo had told her. Another silence fell; it was broken by Paige, who,
having hung up his outer garments, had stood for a time, glancing about
uncertainly, and at last looked elaborately at his watch, moved toward
the inner door, and announced, "I'm going to bed."

"Go easy on the nightcap," advised Gedner. 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 bedtimes are various," he told Leila. "No proper
night or day here, and damn little system. The Company doesn't worry as
long as we get out the jade."

"The Company's worried now," said Leila, uncomfortably, feeling
Gedner's probing gaze upon her. "They're sending a commission to
investigate Phoebe."

"A commission!" mocked Gedner. There was silence again for a space, and
an infinitesimal change crept into his hard, smiling face; Leila strove
in vain to read it. Only 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.
Leila 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 Gedner. He made an unconcerned
gesture, and Big Bill bent to deposit Leila with care in her place in
the armchair again. The Woolly backed away to huddle as before against
the naked wall, his mighty three-fingered hands resting on the floor.

Leo Chaikoski had come to his feet, his scarred face distorted, hands
clenched at his sides. He made an inarticulate sound; Gedner 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 ... I'm not afraid...."

"Take it easy," said Gedner. He took Leo's arm in a sure grip, turned
him about and walked him firmly to the door. "You're all worked up,
Doc. You need a bit of sleep." As if in a dream Leo walked on through
the doorway; Gedner watched him go, pressed the stud that closed the
door, and turned a key in the lock.

Leila felt herself white and shaking from the reaction, and angrier
thereby. It was a minute before she could command her voice; then she
told Paul Gedner what he was, in terms that Leo Chaikoski would never
have thought of, in English, Spanish, and Martian.

Gedner 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--the
Woollies reproduce by budding when you feed them phosphorus. He
couldn't even eat you alive; you'd probably poison him. That's not a
crack; it's metabolism."

Leila 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 Gedner. "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 Leila's chair and rolled away across the floor. "You didn't
drink your tea.... Maybe you'd 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. Gedner 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 Woolly's flattened head and running
his fingers idly through the fine white hair. Leila could not face the
intent, identical gaze in the eyes of man and monster.

       *       *       *       *       *

Abruptly Gedner said, "That 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 Gedner amusedly.

A surge of anger nerved Leila. "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 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!" echoed Leila 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 Gedner readily. "The _Zodiac_
will be back here inside sixty hours. It won't be hard--with the
Woollies' help--to commandeer her."

"Now I know you're crazy!" But there was a doubt behind her
incredulity. In the confident figure of Gedner 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, Leila darling," he was saying. "I'd
intended to catch up with you before you got out of the moons,
anyway--but you've saved me a lot of trouble. From now on, you're going
along with me."

Leila knew 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 schedule to Titan. I've made some
discoveries, and I intend to use them. People have been using Woollies
for fifty years, and nobody has realized their full possibilities. I'd
already begun to a year ago, when I took this job on this God-forsaken
rock; and here I've had the leisure and the opportunity to work the
possibilities out."

"For murder?" asked Leila 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. Yet 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, there are 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 have learned to control
the Woollies, 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 Woollies
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."

Leila 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 of brutal
force. There was only one flaw.... She laughed.

"It ought to work very nicely, Paul. Until the Earth Government hears
about it and send a couple of battleships to blast you out of the
Universe."

Gedner 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, with men recruited--there will 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 Leila unbelievingly. _That_ was preposterous,
unheard-of.

"Why not? In a year, two years, I'll be stronger than Earth!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Leila stared at him again. "The population of the moons is about
twenty million. Earth has over three billion," she recited as if in a
classroom. "'Stronger than Earth'?"

"Your thinking in terms of population figures," said Gedner, "is very
crude. Don't you know what the real strength of Earth has been for the
past three hundred years? Not a mass of three billion people--but ten
or 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 that
they're the biggest carriers and distributors of pure energy that have
ever operated in the Solar System. And they remain effective as long as
there's atomic energy to power their weapons."

"I know all that," said the girl impatiently.

"All right. What you evidently don't know is that 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 helio-dynamic plants. But it's plain that Earth hasn't the
power to fight a major war at present."

"A major war?" said Leila helplessly. "What makes you think it would
take a major war to smash your scheme?"

"Evidently," said Gedner, "Doc Chaikoski didn't tell you all he knows."

Leila remembered, with a queer chill, the sentence that had been
interrupted by Gedner's return. She opened her mouth and closed it
without saying anything. Gedner, 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 Kroniopolis,
as soon as the _Zodiac_ comes back.... Leila, my love, this moon is
lousy with uranium."

"That can't be true!" cried Leila, 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 nearer the Sun, and wherever it came from there
was plenty of uranium. That's the way Chaikoski 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, and the Woollies--Do you see
now?"

"Yes ... I see," answered Leila slowly. She raised her blond head and
met Gedner's look steadfastly. "Paul ... did you ever read any history?
About six hundred years ago, there 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
Woollies, trained to obey and not to think. But what happened to him--"

"Isn't going to happen to me," interrupted Gedner, unimpressed. "I've
got enough imagination to see where history is heading _now_--not six
hundred 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 Gedner's dream of
conquest, Leila 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, Leila?" he asked
softly.

"I ... don't know," faltered the girl, rising stiffly, mechanically to
her feet as she spoke. Gedner laid a hand on her arm, but she jerked
away and retreated from him. "You'd better let me think that over."

Gedner'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 Leila. As she spoke, she
was still moving cautiously away, keeping her eyes on him. But at the
last moment, Gedner saw where she was going, and swore in fury as he
flung himself forward.

"The job's 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 of
the floor. He twisted a hand in her blond hair, pulled her head back
and bent to plant a savage kiss on her throat instead.

Suddenly the girl stopped struggling; her eyes dilated, looking past
Gedner's shoulder. In a smothered whisper she exclaimed, "Paul--_look
out_!"

[Illustration: _In a smothered whisper she exclaimed, "Paul--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 as 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 Gedner 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.

Leila, in a dazed huddle on the floor, saw the first look of utter
stupefaction on Gedner's face replaced by one of scowling mental
effort--and then by a dawning horror. Big Bill sank into a tense
crouch. Then Gedner threw himself sidewise, and his hand came up with
the 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 pistol spun away; Gedner 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-furred figure
with dangling hands, over a red thing on the floor that squirmed
painfully and was still. In the silence the sobbing gasps of Leila's
own breathing rang in her ears.

Knuckles crashed against the door panels, and Mark Paige's voice came
in, edged with anxiety--"Hey, Paul!" Leila 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 Paige's headlong entry when the door slid open nearly tripped
her taut nerves into pulling the trigger.

"Hey!" said Paige again in a low voice. His eyes fell on Leila's
shaking hand, and he reached across to take the gun away from her and
aim it pointblank 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.

Leila shook her head numbly. "I--I don't think it's necessary."

He was silent a moment, regarding the Woolly. "But we'd 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 its controls, and rolled out into the lock.
The clang of the outer door brought an involuntary sigh from Leila. One
mitten-like hand had left a red smear on the opening lever....

"What happened?" inquired Paige at last.

"I don't know," said Leila 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."

Paige laid the gun carefully on the desk, walked deliberately to the
couch, unfolded a blanket, and went to spread it over Paul Gedner and
his dream of an Empire of Saturn. The blanket could not quite cover
everything.

       *       *       *       *       *

Big Bill rolled ponderously through the inky Phoebean 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 Gedner'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 the
godlike master, no desires that were not the reflection of Gedner's....

Dimly he remembered the final scene in the humans' dwelling. There had
been a strange storm of unprecedented emotions, and Big Bill too had
felt a moment of overpowering desire for the slight fair-headed human
who had come in the rocket.... And 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 Gedner'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.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Failure On Titan" ***

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