their helmet radios shut off to
avoid eaves-dropping. They clasped hands so that the sound-waves of
their voices would have a channel over which to pass, in the absence
of a sufficiently dense atmosphere.

"All of a sudden I'm a little worried, Bert," Lawler growled. "About
the Big Pill. Maybe Lauren is half right about its being so dangerous.
After all it has never been tested on a large scale before. And there
are two hundred people here on Titan. Well, you know what's got to be
done now. When you get to the _Prometheus_, tell Doc Kramer that I'm
squeezing my thumbs...."

Lawler sounded almost plaintive at the end.

Bert felt the tweak of that same worry, too, but his course was set.
He grinned in the darkness that surrounded them.

"Nuts!" he said. "Even Lauren admits that everything is a gamble,
remember? And you can pile all of the people into the space ship here
in camp, and blast off with them, and hover at a safe distance from
Titan till we're absolutely sure. I'd better hurry now, Lawler.
Lauren's cops'll be on my tail any second. Gotta go."

"With your wife along?" Lawler demanded.

"Sure," Bert answered. "Allie's a fine shot with a blaster. Often I
wish she wasn't such a good shot with her tongue. But I guess that
with Lauren she cleared the atmosphere. Right, Allie?"

With a small hand on the shoulder of each man, Alice had been
listening in. "I think so," she answered grimly. "Let's dash."

Ten seconds later Bert Kraskow and his wife went rocketing up into the
weird and glorious Titanian night, which was nearing its end. They
thought of Doc Kramer, the little physicist, waiting for them out in
the desert, in the space ship, _Prometheus_, with its terrible and
wonderful cargo. Bert thought, too, of his contact and contract with
the new colonists' supply company, which was also called Prometheus.
Yeah, Prometheus, the educator, the fire-bringing god of the ancient
Greeks. The symbol of progress. At that moment Bert Kraskow felt very
right. He'd been hired secretly to help carry the torch against the
stiff and smug forces of conservative obstructionism, with its awkward
and now antiquated methods.

Alice kept looking behind through the windows of the spaceboat's
cabin. She spoke, now, with her helmet face-window open, for there was
breathable air around them.

"I was thinking that Lauren might want us to run like this, Bert, so
that we'd lead the cops to the hiding place of the _Prometheus_. So
f