hat, 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. Those gases were so new
that they were tainted with the fires of their birth--saturated with
radioactivity.

"It's nothing that we didn't expect, Allie," Bert grated into his
helmet-phone, as if to reassure himself as well as his wife. "We knew
beforehand."

His arm was around Alice, supporting her unsteady steps. Through
blowing clouds of dust and gas that had surpassed hurricane force,
they reached camp. Through the murk they saw that the wind had
flattened and scorched every airdome. But there was no one in sight.

"The people must be inside the ship!" Alice shouted. "Even if it can't
fly, it can protect them! There it is, undamaged!..."

"Yeah," Bert agreed, but he knew that her cheerfulness was a