Trouble on Titan

When Gerry Carlyle and Tommy Strike made their appearance, the cheering was tremendous and prolonged. Candid camera fiends clicked their shutters and fought for unusual angles. Autograph hunters battled one another grimly for "Catch-'em-Alive" Carlyle's signature. The inevitable college youth tried to handcuff himself to Gerry's wrist in a futile effort to achieve fame. For Gerry Carlyle's name was synonymous with glamor--more than the most highly paid star who ever acted for Nine Planets Pictures.

In a swift blitzkrieg, the pair smilingly thrust their way through to the battery of microphones. And there, for the first time, Strike met Professor Erasmus Kurtt. It was a shock.

Strike's innate sense of fair play had him prepared to lean over backward to do the fellow justice. He had already felt sorry for him in view of his universal unpopularity. But Kurtt was a creature not even a mother could love.

He was tall and rather lean, yet had a remarkably rounded little paunch. He looked