ter or worse," Alice
remarked. "Half of our job is done."

But time had to pass before that metal colossus could drive itself and
fall the thousand miles to the bleak, dried-out hills below. And the
space ship hurtled on, to leave the point of coming impact far beyond
the horizon. This, the Kraskows knew, was fortunate for them. The
solid bulk of Titan would be the shield between them and holocaust. No
human eyes could have looked directly on such a holocaust, at a range
of a mere thousand miles, and not be burned from their sockets.

Bert and Alice noticed that the Space Patrol craft were no longer
pursuing them. Alice switched on the radio again but only jangled
sounds came through.

"Now for the last half of our job, Allie," Bert said. "First we attach
shoulder-pack jets to our spacesuits."

This was accomplished a few seconds before the stupendous flash of the
Big Pill's explosion blazed beyond the horizon. The dark curve of
Titan's bulk was limned against thin white fire that streamed outward
toward the stars like comet's hair. The spectacle looked like a
much-enlarged color-photo of a segment of a solar eclipse. The glare
on the other side of Titan was so intense and far-reaching that the
night-portions of huge Saturn and his other satellites, and the
shadowed part of the fabulous, treasure-filled Rings, all hundreds of
thousands of miles away, registered an easily perceptible flicker.
But in airless space, of course, no sound was transmitted.

Alice's face went pale. Bert did not stop doing what must be
done--adjusting the timing system in the black case beside his pilot
seat, and looking with a final, intense glance along the cable which
led back through the hull of the ship to a silvery, pipelike thing
around which the thousands of tons of sinister black ingots were
stacked. It was the primer-cap of another kind of subatomic fury.

About the white fire beyond the horizon, hardly dimming at all after
its first dazzling flash, neither Alice nor Bert said anything. Maybe
their awe and concern were too great. But already long fingers of
incandescent gases were jetting and flowing over the hilltops, as if
to catch up with the speeding ship.

Bert Kraskow knew pretty well what was going on where the Big Pill had
struck the crust of Titan. First, there had been that stupendous
blast. Then, inconceivable blue-white incandescence, like the heart of
a star, began gnawing more gradually into the walls of the gigan