Big Pill by Gallun Raymond Z

Author:Gallun, Raymond Z. [Gallun, Raymond Z.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Short Fiction
Publisher: Feedbooks
Published: 1952-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

Their helmet radiophones were full of static from intense electromagnetic disturbances, so that it was hard to converse.

But presently Alice shouted: "Bert! It's funny that we don't see the ship from camp anywhere in space. They must have gotten our warning to blast off with everybody. Radio reception was clear as a bell, then!… Wait! Somebody's trying to call us now… ."

Bert strained his ears to penetrate the scratchy noises thrown up by the atomic holocaust that he had set off, and hear the words spoken blurredly by a familiar voice:

"… Bert … Alice… . This is Lawler… . Rockets of ship won't function… . So … can't leave … camp… . Two Space Patrol boats cleared Titan with some … women… . Too small … few passengers… . Most … stranded here… . Bert—what?… I think … Lauren… ."

The rest of the words were drowned in a cataract of static.

Bert gulped. His mouth tasted suddenly sour with near-panic. "Lauren," he grated, his voice like a file. "Again. It would be a long chance that the ship broke down just by coincidence. He doctored those rockets and probably got clear in his own spaceboat. Leave it to him to make the use of the Big Pill look like disaster. And it can be that, now, with people left in the danger zone, losing their heads, acting foolishly."

Bert felt much more than just bitter, furious chagrin. His fellow colonists might lose their lives. He was responsible. He had launched a gigantic experiment recklessly.

"All we can do is get back to camp as fast as possible," Alice shouted above the static. "Come on, Bert! Bear down on the jets!"

So they hurtled at even greater speed toward the surface of Titan below. Meanwhile, faintly luminous vapors continued to pour over the hills from the direction of the terrible glow that fringed the horizon. Minutes before they reached the ground, hot, dusty murk thickened around them. It blew against them like a devil's wind.

They began to use their jets to brake speed. The camp was all but lost to view in the thickening haze. They landed heavily a mile outside it and went rolling for a few yards after the impact. Dazed, they staggered up.

For a while their impressions were blurred, as if they struggled through some murky, cobwebby nightmare. Once more on Titan, silent as death for unthinkable ages, there were howling wind-sounds that found their way to Alice and Bert dimly through their oxygen helmets. Often the hot blast bowled them over, but they arose and kept on toward camp.

Bert took a Geiger counter, pencil-size from his chest-pouch. In it, flashes of light replaced the ancient clicking. It flickered madly. This meant that outside their shielding spacesuits was radioactive death. The gases of the wind that howled around them, had been in part released from chemical compounds, but more had been transmuted from other elements of the rock and dust in the crust of Titan, in that atomic vortex where the Big Pill had struck.

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