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Somewhere in the void was a planet with a new
element that could transform men into supermen.
It was Boone's job to find that world—if he survived—

The Terror Out Of Space

By Dwight V. Swain

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
July 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was a good proposition, the way the lean, grey man from Associated Independents told it. He ticked off the points on his fingers:

"Ten thousand credits an Earth year, Boone, win or lose. Full command of the field force. Five per cent cut on the profits if you get a mekronal processing unit in production on one of the unassig ned satellites ahead of the Cartel."

"Sorry, Terral." Again, Boone glanced at his chronox. "It's like I said. Any other time I might be interested. But right now I've got something else on my mind."

"Fifteen thousand, then. And ten per cent if you spot in more than one satellite." Terral leaned forward. "Hell, man, that's more than you can hope to make as a GX if you stay with the Cartel!"

The lean man pushed back abruptly and gulped down his drink. "Then it is the woman!" he accused. A spark of pale fire lighted behind the grey eyes. Even in the dimness of the thil-shop, Boone couldn't miss the tension. "Krobis shoves her in ahead of you, but you'd still throw away your future—"

Boone brought his own glass down on the tanach table top, just hard enough so that it clicked a curt, sharp period to the other's sentence. "And what makes that your business?"

For the moment Terral's narrow jaws seemed to widen at the hinges. His lips peeled back, as if he were about to say something raw and cutting. Then, reconsidering, he breathed in deep instead and slumped loose in his seat. The thin lips drew together in a crooked smile. "My business—? Nothing, Boone. Nothing at all."

The night closed in upon him—the night, and the narrow street; the alien sounds and smells and stir of Gandor City. A cadet from the Federation fleet pushed past him, a moss-furred Callistan crustach perched on his shoulder. Behind the cadet came two spask-masked berlon prospectors, up from the Hertzog fields, leading their lumbering flipper-tentacled coddob by a chain run through its gill-slits. The throb of the atmosphere compressors pressed in like a giant heartbeat, punctuated by the rattle of surface carriers, the shrill wail of tricol pipes. A sweetish, slightly nauseous scent of thes-wood flares and Martian paggod eddied from the doorway of a greasy-looking grill that placarded "Genuine Earth Meats—No Synthetics, No Alien Substitutes!"

In spite of himself, Boone's belly tightened. Turning at the first intersection, he headed for the carrier station.

The IC flight was already on the line and waiting. He found a seat next to a dour-faced tech whose eye-whites showed green with mekronal infusion.

The carrier wheeled slowly forward into the lock that sealed off Gandor City's precious, bubble-pressured air supply from the bleak world outside. A moment later the lock's outer hatch opened. Climbing on its anti-gravitational beam—slowly, at first; then faster and faster—the carrier lanced out across the star-spangled black velvet of the Ganymedan sky.

The minutes dragged. Crags and peaks came and went below; then the dull grey wash of a cliff-bound sea of liquid gas. Off to the left, the sky took on a scarlet-purple tint, reflection of Jupiter's great Red Spot.

Its inner seal opened. The carrier swept into the bubble proper, settling onto the clean-swept ramp with its glaring forspark lights and the sign that said:

INTERPLANETARY CARTELS UNLIMITED
MEKRONAL PROCESSING DIVISION
GANYMEDAN ADVANCE BASE

"Back early, aren't you, Mister Boone?" The guard grinned. "Guess it makes a difference when you go alone. Though I will say that new job's a nice break for Miss Rey."

"She goes out tonight, doesn't she?" The guard's face grew sober. "Hope she makes it o.k. That Titan run is no picnic—not with this monster business hitting half the ships. Bucking that kind of thing ain't my idea of a woman's job, no matter how high it rates nor how much it pays."

"Sure." The guard's eyes shifted away from Boone's. "Sure, Mister Boone. She'll make it."

Turning in at his own quarters, he strode down the empty, echoing corridor to his room; closed the door behind him.

The nerve-gun lay in the top drawer, as always—sleek, grim, coldly lethal. Stiff-fingered, Boone checked the charge, then slid the weapon beneath his blouse and turned to go.

She was wearing her first uniform, with its student stripes, the silver comet Cartel insignia shining against the dark blue of the lapels. But even official tailoring and close-combed regulation hair-do couldn't hide her radiance. The blue eyes laughed with sheer love of living. Her lips showed soft and smiling, better styled for kisses than commands.

That was the Eileen Rey whom he remembered ... the Eileen of his own student unit days, the girl who'd climbed rank after rank beside him through Interplanetary Cartels' service.

He cursed Krobis under his breath, slapped the picture back, face down on the cabinet.

There was another guard at the gate to the Titan ramp. Boone bared his ID plate.

"Mister Krobis' orders, sir. You are barred from the ramp till after the ship gravs off."

"Thanks." Stiffly, Boone turned and wa lked back the way he'd come, past silent warehouses and noisy shops and rattling, rumbling surface carrier units.

For the fraction of a second only, he hesitated. Then, turning in, he strode through the deserted passageways.

Krobis' office. Another guard. "Mister Krobis is busy, sir. He left orders that he wasn't to be disturbed till after the Titan ship gravs off."

Again, a long, long, moment of decision. Then, very gently, Boone repeated, "I want to see Krobis."

Boone brought out the nerve-gun in one swift motion, leveled it at the man's belly. "Maybe you didn't understand."

The guard's eyes flicked from his face to the nerve-gun. "You're making a mistake, sir."

Boone kept the nerve-gun steady, ready. "You're probably right. But anyone who tries to stop me is going to get hurt."

Wordless, the guard shrugged again and, turning, walked through the anteroom towards Krobis' door.

Boone spun the nerve-gun's impact dial down to the temporary paralysis level and fired.

It was a big room, with the desk set at the far end so that visitors would have plenty of time to lose self-confidence while they walked its length.

"That's right." Boone heeled the door shut behind him. "You're a hard man to see these days, Krobis. This time I couldn't wait."

Krobis straightened slowly, a small, sharp-featured man with too-short legs. Twin spots of color came to mark his cheekbones, and his black eyes grew hard and shiny. "I don't believe I understand you, Boone."

Boone laughed, harsh and bitter. "You understand, all right." He strode forward. "That's why you gave orders to the guards to keep me away from you and off the ramp."

"So Eileen Rey doesn't take the Titan run." Boone gestured with the gun. "Let's go, Krobis."

"You realize what you're doing, of course, Boone?" A raw, raging edge crept into Krobis' voice. "You know that this finishes you with IC? That as soon as my report goes in, it's the end of your career?"

Deliberately, Boone spun the nerve-gun's dial to the lethal output point. "Time's too short for talk, Krobis. We're going out to the ramp. You and me, together."

Again, Krobis' nostrils flared. His shoulders drew in. His head thrust a fraction forward.

Boone tightened his finger on the nerve-gun's trigger. "Try it, Krobis. Just try it."

Then, slowly, Krobis' head came up. He made a business of smoothing his sleek black hair and came around the desk, walking with the peculiar, waddling stride that came of trying to stretch his too-short legs farther than they were meant to go.

He hadn't done quite a good enough job on his hairline, either, Boone noted. Tiny beads of sweat still showed at the roots.

Stripping a coat from the rack, Boone draped it over his arm to hide the gun, then fell in at Krobis' left, not quite abreast him. In silence, they went through the anteroom where the stunned guard lay and on out of the administration building.

Low-voiced, Boone said, "I'm going aboard that Titan ship, Krobis. See that I get there if you want to live."

Ahead, the great sphere that was the Titan ship glinted under the forspark lights. The cargo hatches were already sealed. The last of the surface carriers shuttled in and out like rumbling beetles through the shadows cast by the stubby tripod legs.

Boone herded Krobis to the loading shaft, into the lift; threw a tight grin at the man on duty. "How long?"

Boone prodded Krobis down the narrow, duroid corridor that led to the tech quarters. The card on the last door to the right said, "Miss Rey."

Boone knocked. The tension was almost unbearable now. His palms were slick. His belly quivered.

Shoving Krobis ahead of him, Boone crowded her back into the cabin and shouldered shut the door.

Krobis spoke rapidly, caustically: "Boone's jealous of your new assignment, my dear. He doesn't want to let you go to Titan."

"You can believe that if you want to, Eileen." Boone quit trying to keep the anger, the tension, out of his own voice. "The main thing is, you're not going."

"Can't I?" Boone tossed the coat from his arm, baring the nerve-gun. "I've watched Krobis run through this big-boss act before, Eileen. He specializes in putting people under obligation. In your case, he knows how much your work means to you, so he'd like to maneuver things around to where you'll feel indebted to him for letting you prove your professional competency at the top level. Only this gun,"—he gestured with it—"says he's not going to get away with it."

The curves of Eileen's face chang ed to planes and hollows. A thin white anger-line drew about her mouth. "Fred, this is utterly absurd!"

And from Krobis: "Miss Rey happens to be one of the Cartel's best extraterrestrial biologists—"

Boone slashed in on him: "—And also, at the moment, she's a woman you want." He laughed—savagely, explosively. "A nice co-incidence, isn't it? You'd gamble her life on it—send her into a chunk of void where monsters materialize out of nowhere and two ships in three never come back. If she lives and cracks the nut, figures out how those nightmares get aboard our ships and why, mekronal production and your rating—with Eileen and IC both—go sky-high. If she dies, you chalk up another score for yourself as an ironclad Cartel man so set on his job that he doesn't know what sentiment means. Either way, Martin Krobis wins."

"Then you'd let this ship go out without a biologist?" Eileen's breath came fast and shallow. "You'd let the crew face the monsters with not even a fighting chance to win?"

Boone clipped his words: "Don't worry. There'll be a biologist aboard." And then: "You see—I'm going in your place."

"So—!" Face alight, Krobis turned to Eileen. "I was right, my dear! Boone's jealous, that's all—jealous of you, your ability, the chance I've given you to solve this problem!"

A tremor ran through Eileen. For an instant she swayed, her pale face a mask of mixed emotions.

It caught her squarely on the point of the jaw. Her teeth clicked; her head snapped back. Already sagging, she reeled against the wall, then slid unconscious to the floor.

Boone said tightly, "Come ahead, Krobis! Eileen I wouldn't burn. But you—it'd be a pleasure!"

Boone shot a quick glance at his chronox. "Less than four minutes till grav-off. We'll hav e to hurry." He gestured with the nerve-gun barrel. "Get her up!"

Krobis' eyes wavered. Squatting, he dragged Eileen's limp body round till he could slide an arm beneath her and heave her up onto his shoulder.

Boone closed in to help support her. "You know what to tell the man at the lift, Krobis: Miss Rey's suddenly been taken ill, so you're relieving her from duty and assigning me to take her place."

"And in case you've got any sharp ideas—just remember no man alive can outrun a nerve charge...." Sliding his hand up under Eileen's service blouse to conceal his weapon, Boone jerked open the cabin door. In seconds, they had Eileen into the lift.

Then they were past the guard ... out on the ramp again ... into the black shadows on the far side of an emptied cargo carrier.

Boone stepped back while Krobis awkwardly lowered Eileen to the ramp. She moaned a little; that was all.

Krobis straightened. "You'll never get away with this, Boone!" His voice was thick with hate.

"Because you'll stop the grav-off, you mean?" Boone spun the nerve-gun's dial back to the temporary paralysis level. "I've thought of that, too, Krobis."

The hatchmen were already gathering with their sealers. The hum of the converters rose in an all-pervasive drone.

Up in the tech quarters once more, Boone wryly slipped the card bearing Eileen's name from its bracket on the door and substituted his own. Then, going on into the cabin, he threw himself down at full length on the foamex bunk. He was tired, more tired than he could remember ever having been, with the utter weariness that comes of too mu ch strain and tension.

A moment later the signal light above the door flashed red. Then a momentary shifting said that the sphere was off the ground and rising, riding its great beam of anti-gravitational force up from Ganymede's bleak surface.

So it was done. Eileen was safe at last and he, Fred Boone, was on his way to Titan.

He fell asleep that way ... a troubled sleep, full of mad, distorted dreams of Eileen and Krobis, and of monsters.

Then, all at once, he was awake again, sitting bolt upright in the bunk—sweat-drenched, fists clenched.

In the same instant the sound came again—a knock, echoing over-loud in the cabin's stillness.

Eileen stood in the corridor outside, flanked by two guards with nerve-guns at the ready. A cold-eyed ship's officer waited behind them.

"I believe these are my quarters, Mister Boone," Eileen said. She was a picture of chill self-possession. Only a faint trace of color marked the place along her jaw where he had struck her.

"You're surprised, you mean?" Her voice stayed icy. "I thought you might be. It's just that you didn't hit me quite as hard as you thought you did. I was conscious again before you ever carried me out of this cabin. But you had a gun, so I let you take me off, then came back on again just behind you."

"I see," Boone nodded slowly. Of a sudden there was a churning weakness in his middle. "Then—Eileen—"

"Miss Rey," she corrected, voice still icy. And then: "You'll understand, of course, that I had no choice but to take this whole thing to the captain ."

"To return to Ganymede once the locks were closed behind us would be an expensive undertaking. So we'll both go on to Titan. I'll serve as biologist for the run, in accordance with my orders. As for you"—she shrugged—"your status should be obvious."

"Then I'll clarify it." All at once her eyes, her face, mirrored bitter triumph. "You'll make the trip, Mister Boone, but you'll do it as a prisoner—under guard and confined to your quarters!"

The captain was a broad-bodied, heavy-shouldered man with the veined red nose and cheeks of a heavy drinker. The cold-eyed way he looked at Boone, low-lidded, told how he felt.

"Don't think I've turned you loose because I like you, Boone," he clipped. "I don't. But we're coming into Saturn's orbit, and that means we need a biologist on duty. Prisoner or not, you qualify, so you're elected."

Boone caught his breath as the door swung open to admit a thin-faced young ensign. "Another down, Captain," the man reported grimly. "Verdov, converter crew."

"That makes four. Thank the good Lord we've got plenty of chandak extract." The captain hunched forward, his thick forearms heavy on the desk. "You see where it puts us, Boone. From here on in it's monster country; we'll pass Japetus any minute. So the quicker you check the ship, the better."

"Right." Dry-lipped, Boone pivoted and strode towards the door, gesturing to the ensign. "Come on."

Together they rode the lift to the highest level, then walked to the end of the "A" passage.

"Open it—?" The ensign's eyes widened. "You mean you're going to check inside, too?"

"Well, if you say so...." Frowning, the ensign broke the seal; swung back the hatch.

Cold air washed over them. Light glinted on the seven-foot synthice slabs stacked floor to ceiling, each casing a contract worker stiff in frozen sleep.

Narrow-eyed, Boone probed each nook and crevice with his light-rod, then stepped back. "All right. Let's have the next one."

The ensign slammed shut the hatch. He studied Boone curiously. "Just what are you looking for?"

Boone shrugged. "Monsters don't come out of nowhere; not really. My bet is that they get aboard our ships at the Titan base—in embryo, maybe, or as a virus. If we can spot one before it's grown to a full-scale nightmare, it may give us a hint as to how to beat them."

"Maybe. But no man I know can appear and disappear at will, and so far we're the only humanoid race we've found anywhere in the system. Till I see more proof, I'll put my money on alien life-forms plus optical illusion."

It went on like that, section after section. They checked supply storage, power receptors, converters.

In the control room, when they got there, Japetus was already fading from the visiscreen. Hyperion loomed ahead, a bead-like dot hovering in the shadow of the Rings.

Titan, greatest satellite of Saturn, nearly half the size of Earth itself. Titan, that had given Man mekronal, the precious, mysterious catalyst that cut loose the human race from the need for the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere of its homeland.

Or even if he did, would Eileen Rey live to s ee it with him? What were the odds against a woman struck down by Titan fever?

Weary, tight-lipped, he turned from the screen. "Nothing here. Let's try the crew quarters."

Boone went rigid; spun about as the com-box crackled, raw and ragged: "Top level calling! There's something in "A" passage—something awful! Get the biologist—Oh, my God—!"

Ahead, something shifted in the shadows. He became aware of a vague, phosphorescent glow.

Its beam sprayed out across a creature like nothing ever seen before in earth or heaven. A bulbous thing, a nightmare of pseudopodal horror.

First it drew together, a bubbling mass like green calf-slobber shot with blood. A rank stench of musty death curled to him from it.

Now she stood erect and naked, shrouded from the hips down in the slime-mass. Her hands caressed her high, proud breasts. She laughed and stretched her arms out toward Boone.

In spite of himself, he took a dragging step forward. Then another, and another.

As one, woman and slime-mass lunged towards him. An d now, incredibly, Boone saw that there were fangs beneath the laughing lips; that, like Medusa, the woman was crowned not with rippling hair, but writhing serpents.

He screamed as the voice on the com-box had screamed; blazed point-blank at the naked belly with his nerve-gun.

The soft flesh shimmered, darkened. Great scales took form. The smooth body distorted into the plated, cartilaginous torso of a dragon.

Boone hurled himself aside as its great horned head lanced forward. With all his might, he threw the nerve-gun into the yawning mouth.

Behind Boone, thunder crashed in the passage. A fire-bolt from a blaster smashed into the monster.

Dragon and slime-mass alike exploded into spattering fragments. Half-stunned, Boone felt the ensign's fingers dig into his shoulders and drag him back towards the lift-shaft.

But he shook them off. "No. I've got to see—" Even as he spoke, he knew that the words were coming out an incoherent mumble.

"Real? Of course it was real!" This from the half-hysterical ensign. "I saw it all—the woman, the dragon! If I'd been two seconds later with the blaster, it would have got you!"

A muffled crash of sound from the lift-shaft cut in on him. Red lights flashed on the call-board.

Together they plummeted downward ... stumbled out into a murky, smoke-eddying third level passage.

Only he hadn't fired quite quick enough. He sprawled dead on the floor-plates, his chest torn wide open as if by t alons.

Red lights were flashing all over the call-board now. Alarm bells jangled wildly.

The captain's voice rasped from the com-box: "All hands! Make for your closest emergency carrier and stand by to abandon ship! Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes! Repeat, Central Control will blow all carriers clear in three minutes, so get aboard fast! All hands...."

Stiff-lipped, Boone stared up at the call-board. "Seven levels signalling! It's an attack in force, then...."

The ensign clutched his arm. "Let's go! There's a carrier at the end of the passage!"

"Let the medmen worry about her! They'll take her off if she's not too sick to move!"

The ensign threw him one last taut, frustrated glance, then wheeled and ran off down the passage towards the carrier lock. A score of steps he ran....

Only then, out of the murk, a primordial horror rose before him—a thing of tentacles and feelers massed about a hideous white skull-face.

It happened too fast for shouts or screaming. The ensign's head jerked back and sidewise. He tried to veer.

Too late. With a sound that came straight from hell, the skull-thing lurched forward. The tentacles engulfed him.

Convulsively, Boone clawed the blaster from the dead hands of the man beside the lift-shaft ... lanced a fire-bolt into the monster's leering face.

Face and monster vanished in a blaze of ear-shattering sound and blue-white flame.

Then the echoes died and Boone was alone again—shaking, retching. Of the ensign, no trace remained.

Numbly, Boone stumbled back into the lift and dropped it fullspeed down the shaft to the tenth le vel, the very heart of the great sphere-ship.

There was another monster waiting for him when he came out—a creature that looked for all the world like a huge, iridescent coffin whose lid came up to bare rows of razor-edged shark-teeth.

Raw-nerved, he blasted it to atoms; then, belly churning, waded through stench and putrescent fragments towards the tech quarters where Eileen lay.

For an instant Boone went rigid, then cursed aloud. That jolt—it could have been only the impact of the carriers' departure.

Now, truly, he was alone—alone in the void on a sphere of death, where nightmare monsters roamed lusting for his blood.

He quickened his pace, moving along the corridor cold-eyed and wary, his finger taut on the blaster's trigger.

Eileen lay in the bunk, held there by the broad straps of a safety pack. A flush-faced Eileen with wild, fever-blinded eyes. Her lips moved in ceaseless, garbled speech. Thin fingers tugged and twisted at the sheets as if it were not in them to be still.

A knot drew tight in Boone's midriff. Grimly, he studied the chart on the stand, then glanced at his chronox.

Stiff-fingered, he prepared the aerojet; sprayed the precious drops into Eileen's jugular vein. Then, barring the door against invading monsters, he settled down to wait and hope.

The hours dragged by till he lost track, a blur of time broken only by the routine with the aerojet. Once he thought Eileen recognized him. Twice he fell asleep. A dozen times, in his mind's eye, the monster s came, only to fade away again as he fought his way up from the depths of his fatigue. Hunger, thirst—they were words only....

It threw him clear across the cabin, to land with stunning force against the farthest wall. The whole room hung tilted at a thirty-degree angle.

Eileen's eyes were closed, her tongue and fingers still at last. To Boone, it seemed as if her forehead were less feverish—as if she might even be asleep.

But again, she might have slipped into a coma. In his own state, he couldn't be sure.

Only the room couldn't stay this way, tilted. Not with the sphere floating free in space. That was what the orientational gyroscopes were designed to prevent.

A chill ran through him. Scrambling erect, he snatched up the blaster, fumbled open the door, and peered out into the corridor.

No monsters—but something worse. For here the ammonia-smell hung even stronger.

Dragging the door shut behind him, Boone half-ran, half-fell along the crazily-tilted passage to the administrative center at the ship's core.

The door to the medical office was locked. Cursing savagely, Boone drew back and to one side and fired a glancing bolt.

Inside, Boone pawed the supply chest into chaos, then turned to the wall cabinets.

Coughing as a new eddy of ammonia fumes curled round him, Boone snatched down the carton and an extra aerojet injector, then ran from the room and back along the passage to Eileen's cabin.

The air inside was a little better. Slamming shut the door, he tossed down the ampules and began wad ding the first of Eileen's garments to come to hand into the wall vent.

She smiled, the pale wraith of a smile. But her eyes had lost their fever-wildness. Her cheeks were no longer quite so flushed.

"Nothing. Nothing." Futilely, Boone groped for some convincing fable. "It's just—you've been down with Titan fever—"

"Don't ... lie to me, Fred. Please tell me." And then: "Were there ... monsters—?"

Of a sudden Boone could no longer face her. "Yes, there were monsters." He pivoted; stuffed more clothing into the air vent. "All hands took off in carriers. Now the ship's crashed—on Hyperion, maybe; someplace with an ammonia-and-methane atmosphere, anyhow. The plates must have sprung when we hit. The smudge outside is leaking in."

Boone finished with the vent. Sliding down to the bunk, he tore open the mekronal case with unsteady fingers; drew out an ampule.

"We'll try it on mekronal," he answered in a voice gone flat in spite of him. "If we can last three hours till it takes effect, we still may make it."

He readied the injector and sprayed the ampule's contents into Eileen's bloodstream, then shot a second into his own.

Seconds dragging by, melding into minutes. The cabin growing uncomfortably warm, the air stale and stuffy.

Again and again, Boone read the legend on the carton: Mekronal is an unanalyzed catalyst derived from the skeletal structure of the non-carbon chemistry life-form Helgae found on Titan. When injected into the human bloodstream, it enables man to breathe all known atmospheres, regardless of content, without toxic effect. Dosage: One ampule every thirty minutes till three ampules have been injected. Repeat we ekly until return to normal oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Takes effect within approximately three hours after first injection though an additional one-hour safety factor is recommended.

Or the other line—"Enables man to breathe all known atmospheres, regardless of content, without toxic effect."

Did that include carbon dioxide atmospheres like the one now forming in this cabin?

Maybe it would be better to take no chances—move Eileen to a lower point, where the air was clearer.

Besides, the heat here by the bunk was becoming almost unbearable. Already, both of them were drenched with sweat.

There shouldn't be any heat to speak of—not if they lay in a plate-sprung ship on Hyperion's frigid surface!

Freeing her from the safety pack, Boone carried her to the room's lowest corner. She roused a little, then sank back once more, as if even consciousness had become an effort.

Then, slowly, the pressure on Boone's lungs seemed to lift. Depression and weariness fell away. New energy flowed through him.

Of a sudden he was giddy with exaltation. He wanted to shout, to laugh and leap.

Her eyes were open, cool and steady. The last flushed traces of fever had vanished.

Then, because he could not trust his own emotions further, he rose and took up the blaster. "I'll go take a look around, get you something to eat."

The corridor outside was thick with the alien atmosphere. But though it stung his eyes a little, his lungs now accepted it without protest.

Watchful, wary of monsters, he made his way to the galleys and gathered up a sack of food, wolfing down a whole can of meat synthetic in the process.

Eileen was up and dressed when he returned. Grinning, he watched her eat with the eager hunger of the fever-famished.

When she had finished and he got up to leave again, she rose also. "Fred, I'm going with you."

For an instant his eyes met hers and he knew again that now, as always, he never could deny her. "All right. Just for a little way."

Together, his arm about her, they left the cabin ... turned down the corridor that led to the nearest carrier lock.

The hatch hung free, sprung from its hinges. Bracing himself, Boone levered it open.

Instead, a blaze of living color spread before him, kaleidoscopic in its brilliance. Huge flowers like none that he had ever seen carpeted the foreground in clumps of yellow, red, green, purple—every color of the rainbow. Strange trees stretched upward towards the shining blue vault of the sky, rustling and swaying in the gentle breeze.

Her words broke the spell. "Beautiful? Yes, of course it is," Boone nodded, frowning. "But the question is, where are we? There's no planet like this anywhere in our whole solar system, so far as I know—"

He broke off; moved out into the carrier-cradle proper, where he could get a broader field of vision.

To the right, t he flowerland stretched away to rolling hills that spread as far as he could see.

Beyond the flower-fields, strange, low domes rose—grey-silver domes whose very lines and curves bespoke an alien pattern. One atop the other they piled in a jumbled, sprawling mass like bubbles trapped in cooling lava. Boone could only guess how many miles of ground they covered.

Yet it was a scene of a kind he'd seen before, once, on microreels in IC's confidential archives.

Behind him, Eileen caught her breath. "Those things—Fred, are they buildings?"

"Buildings?" Boone hesitated; fumbled. "I don't know. I guess that you might call them that."

"You guess—? Then you recognize them!" Eileen's blue eyes were suddenly worry-shadowed. "Tell me, Fred. Don't hold back. Is something wrong? Where are we?"

For a long, long moment Boone stared away at the distant dome-pile. "No, nothing's wrong," he said at last. "Maybe it's even better luck than we could hope for." And then: "But wherever we are, Eileen, one thing's for certain: That place is a Helgae city!"

On the one hand, the Helgae domes loomed over the paradisaical flowerland where the sphere-ship lay in strange, silent menace.

On the other, aboard the globe, he could not but chill to the recollection of the monsters.

As for Eileen ... Boone wondered. She had said not a word about their earlier trouble—his desperation-born effort to keep her from making the Titan run; its sudden reversal and her triumph. Yet after the first moments of tenderness and relief at their own survival the clash hung like an invisible wall between them. Out of it, a reserve had come into being—a weighing of words, a wary watching.

Regardless, they had to adjust to each other's presence; to work out some solution to their mut ual problem.

Cautious exploration finally convinced him that the monsters had vanished from the ship as mysteriously as they'd come. It didn't surprise him; it had been the pattern in every such invasion—nightmare figures materializing out of the void to wreak chaos aboard the IC's Titan-bound craft, then disappearing again, back into whatever dark limbo they called home.

Too, the carrier towards which the dead ensign had been running when the monster seized him was still aboard; apparently the blast-charge had jammed its locks. So there was at least a slim chance for escape.

It was enough for Boone. He persuaded Eileen that, weak as she was, it would be best to stay in her cabin and eat and sleep and rest while they waited for night and stars that might give them some clue as to where they were.

For his own part, he moved from one empty carrier-cradle to another, studying the landscape and the sky.

The effort brought only bafflement. Here and there in the distance, great mountains towered. But always, the blue of the heavens seemed to chop off their highest peaks, as if the sky were a translucent ceiling that they pierced.

Nor could he find the sun, save as a vague, luminous glow that shifted slowly towards the far horizon.

Yet the astrogation microreels showed no satellite or planet short of Venus with an atmosphere thick enough to give such an effect.

Instead, a pitch-black night came down. Only in one tiny spot, almost directly over the fallen globe-ship, could he detect a spark of light.

Or was it? Before, the glint had shone cold and blue. Now, it seemed to have a faint orange cast.

For a few minutes it grew brighter, then faded again till only ebon black remained.

A dim, greenish glow, so pale he could not be sure that it was really there. Then a pin-prick of undeniable light.

A rustle of movement. At his elbow, Eileen said, "Fred, that light—this black—I don't understand."

"I'm afraid I do." Boone rubbed the stiffness from his neck and quit trying to watch the spark above. "We've always thought of the outer worlds as rock and ice. Where this one's concerned, we were wrong. There's ice, all right, but at least in places it's just a shell, with a warm pocket underneath."

"Yes. We must have been crossing this planetoid's orbit when the crew abandoned ship. It's too small to have much gravity, but there was enough to pull us in. So we crashed through the ice-shell and landed here."

The girl's body touched his. He could feel her shiver. "Then those lights we see are the stars as they pass above the hole we made? We'll have to go through it again to get back into space?"

"That's right." Boone put his arm about her shoulders. "It shouldn't be too hard. I'm betting this is Hyperion—and that means we are close enough to jump to Titan, even in a carrier. We'll know for sure when it gets light again. I can check the time from sunset to sunrise against the tables that show how long it takes Hyperion to revolve on its axis."

"You make it seem so easy." Eileen sighed. "In a way, I'm not even sure I want to go."

"Can't you guess?" All at once the girl sounded weary; almost bitter. "There's going to be trouble, Fred. Trouble with Krobis. You know that."

"He won't forget what you did. He'll break you for it. And—and I won't like that."

Boone could feel his muscles tensing. In spite of him, his voice came edged: "Then that's all that's bothering you? You just don't want to see me get in trouble?"

"No, no!—Oh, I don't know!" Eileen's words were suddenly stumbling and uneven. "It's just that—well, you showed me something, Fred, when you tried to stop me. How you feel about me. How my work doesn't really matter to you."

"I see." Boone's mood turned raw and savage. "Maybe you even figure like Krobis pretended he did—that I was just jealous of your assignment when I barged into this business."

"Fred!" And then: "You're trying to hurt me, Fred. I hurt you, so now you want to pay me back."

A moment of silence. At last Eileen said, "I—I think I'll go to bed. I'm still awfully tired. That fever...."

Her voice trailed away. Then, after another moment, her shoes whispered on the cradle-plates.

The whispering footsteps faded, died. He stood alone, in utter silence. Even the murmur of the breeze in the trees about the ship was stilled.

As a matter of fact, was anything natural in this weird, ice-shelled wonderland? Even the flowers lacked kinship with those he'd known on Earth.

It came to him in a flash that what he needed now was action. The night, the silence, the bitter disillusion—they'd rasped his nerves in a raw tension. Unless he cut it loose, something would snap.

Pivoting, he strode back along the carrier guides to the hatch ... started to step through.

"I've got one." A beam blazed in the black, half-blinding him. "You're going—out—?"

It was a belligerent statement, geared for more trouble. But Eileen's tone stayed almost humble: "Can I come with you?"

"If you want to." Boone took the light-rod and, with no further words, led the way down to the sphere-ship's lowest level and out through another carrier-cradle.

Just short of the mouth, he paused. Lowering himself carefully from the cradle-lip, he tested the ground.

It had the slightly spongy feel of thick carpeting, but there was no question but that it would hold his weight. Spraying t