The Project Gutenberg EBook of Big Pill, by Raymond Zinke Gallun

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Title: Big Pill

Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun

Release Date: April 9, 2010 [EBook #31929]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Planet Stories September 1952. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

BIG PILL

By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

_Child, it was, of the now ancient H-bomb. New. Untested.
Would its terrible power sweep the stark Saturnian moon of
Titan from space ... or miraculously create a flourishing
paradise-colony?_

* * * * *

Under the glow of Saturn and his Rings, five of the airdomes of the
new colony on Titan were still inflated. They were enormous bubbles of
clear, flexible plastic. But the sixth airdome had flattened. And
beneath its collapsed roof, propped now by metal rods, a dozen men in
spacesuits had just lost all hope of rescuing the victims of the
accident.

Bert Kraskow, once of Oklahoma City, more recently a space-freighter
pilot, and now officially just a colonist, was among them. His small,
hard body sagged, as if by weariness. His lips curled. But his full
anger and bitterness didn't show.

"Nine dead," he remarked into the radio-phone of his oxygen helmet.
"No survivors." And then, inaudibly, inside his mind: "I'm a stinkin'
fool. Why didn't we act against Space Colonists' Supply Incorporated,
before this could happen?"

His gaze swung back to the great rent that had opened in a seam in the
airdome--under only normal Earthly atmospheric pressure, when it
should have been able to withstand much more. Instantly the warmed air
had rushed out into the near-vacuum of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Those who had been working the night-shift under the dome, to set up
prefabricated cottages, had discarde