Science fiction; Short stories; Space colonies -- Fiction
Gradually he came out of the dream-like period, learning of what had
happened. Until the time when he walked from the sick-bay, unsteadily,
but on the mend.
Alice, at his elbow, spoke: "It was like Doc Kramer planned, Bert,
solving the hardest problem."
He knew what this meant. Transmutation, or any atomic process, must
involve the generation of much radioactivity that can destroy life. In
the Big Pill, the problem was to make all the atoms break, and
rearrange their components into new elements as cleanly and sharply as
possible, so that residual atomic instability--radioactivity, that
is--would not linger for years, but would disappear quickly.
"Titan's new atmosphere is clean and breathable, now, Bert," Alice
went on. "And likewise the radioactive poisons that made you and
Lawler and the others very ill disappeared quickly from your bodies.
However, two colonists were beyond saving."
Lawler was with the Kraskows. They went out of the ship without the
cumbersome protection of spacesuits. A Space Patrolman hovered like a
worried hawk, watching Bert, but the latter seemed not to mind.
Far above, replacing the hard stars and blackness of space, common to
the firmaments of all dead and near-dead worlds, were great fleecy
clouds and blue sky. The atmosphere, because of Titan's low gravity,
was highly expanded and hence thin, but rich in oxygen. The breeze
smelled cool and fresh. Overhead was a second sun, seemingly much
larger in diameter than the distant central orb of the solar system.
It crept with visible motion across the sky. It was the molten globe
of what had been the _Prometheus_ and its cargo, locked in its
sub-lunar orbit around Titan. But it was calculated to provide
sufficient warmth and light to a small world such as this, for ten
Earth-years, without renewal.
Colonists were clearing away the wreckage of the now useless airdomes,
and putting their cottages in order. But they still looked around in
awe at the miracles that ended their space-nostalgia, making them feel
truly at home here. Down in the valley there was even a great lake of
rainwater from condensed steam--one of the end-products of the process
that had gone on in the rocks of the great crater on the other side of
Titan. That process had died to a sleepy smoking, now; but all over
this moon of Saturn there were many lakes.
Big Lawler chuckled gleefully, the sound rumbling deep in his chest.
"Rejuvenation of burnt-out spheres on a really progressive basis," he
growled. "No obsolete, jury-rigged junk! Expensive? Sure! But we can
pay for it! Out there are Saturn's metal-rich Rings!"
Bert was thinking that the same trick could be used on any world with
enough gravity to hold down a respectable atmosphere. Half-dead Mars.
Jupiter's four biggest moons. Some of the other satellites of Saturn.
Mercury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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