The Weather on Mercury
By WILLIAM MORRISON
Illustrated by VIDMER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anyone mad enough (1) to land on that crazy
world (2) in order to rescue that screwball
explorer should (3) have his head examined!
I
The first thing McCracken did was shoot a Mercurian native. But then
McCracken, although he had powerful muscles, was never supposed to be
very strong in the head.
The expedition was in the Twilight Zone, naturally, at the time.
Without special clothing, which no one had, both the perpetual night
of the Cold Side and the furnace heat of the Hot Side were out of the
question. The Twilight Zone at this point was about forty miles wide,
and the Astrolight had been skillfully brought down smack in the
middle of it. Two hours after the landing, having ascertained that the
air was as breathable as Kalinoff had reported, McCracken went out and
aimed his explosive bullet at the Mercurian.
If it hadn't been for Carvalho, who accompanied him, the rest of the
group would have known nothing of the incident. It was Carvalho who
reported what had happened to Lamoureux, captain of the expedition.
McCracken, of course, burst into vigorous denials that he had shot a
native. "You don't think I'd be fool enough to go around looking for
trouble, do you?"
Lamoureux thought he would, but didn't say so. "You did shoot at
something. We heard the report."
"I tried to hit a dangerous bird."
"What sort of bird was it?"
"Kind of like a penguin, I'd say, but with a broader face. No bill to
speak of—"
"Then don't speak of it," snapped Lamoureux. "Did you score a hit?"
"I think the explosion caught it in the shoulder. It got away."
"Thank God for small favors," said Lamoureux. "That bird, you
pigeon-brain, was a Mercurian. How do you expect intelligent
inhabitants of other planets to look? Like you? They'd die of
mortification."
"Damn it, how was I to know?"
"I told you not to shoot unless you were attacked." Lamoureux scowled.
"Kalinoff is somewhere in the Twilight Zone and we were supposed to
find him with the help of the Mercurians. It may interest you to know
that, while you were out at target practice, some of them came around
here and began to behave as if they wanted to be friendly. Then they
suddenly disappeared. I imagine they got news of what you had done. A
fat lot of help they'll give us now."
"We'll run across Kalinoff without them," said McCracken confidently.
Carvalho, who had a habit of looking for the dark side of every
situation, and finding it, suggested, "Suppose the Mercurians attack
us?"
McCracken said, "They haven't any weapons."
"How do you know?"
"Kalinoff didn't mention any."
Lamoureux emitted a laugh that sounded like an angry bark. "Kalinoff
wouldn't know. He was friendly with them. He did report that
they were an intelligent race. It'll be too bad if they use their
intelligence against us."
McCracken thrust out his jaw. There was a streak of stubbornness in
him, and he was not going to take too many dirty cracks lying down. He
growled, "I think you're making a mountain out of an anthill."
"Molehill," corrected Lamoureux.
"Whatever it is. What if Kalinoff did say the Mercurians would help us?
You can't take his word for it. Everybody knows what Kalinoff is."
Lamoureux frowned. "Kalinoff is a great man and a great explorer."
"They call him the interplanetary screwball."
"Not on this expedition, they don't, McCracken. You will please keep a
civil tongue in your head."
"There's nothing wrong in what I'm saying. Kalinoff is a screwball,
and you know it, Captain. He's always playing practical jokes. Look at
how he got that Martian senator into the same cage with a moon-snake,
and locked the door on him. The senator had a fit. How was he to know
the snake was harmless?"
"You don't think Kalinoff would play jokes when his own life was at
stake, do you?"
"Once a screwball," insisted McCracken firmly, "always a screwball."
Lamoureux lost patience. "Once an idiot, always an idiot. Get over to
the ship and help with the unpacking. And remember, if we don't find
Kalinoff, it'll be your fault, and God help you."
Having, he hoped, left McCracken feeling properly ashamed of himself,
Lamoureux walked away. The responsibility was beginning to weigh him
down. The other nineteen men in the expedition thought they were merely
trying to rescue an intrepid explorer for the sake of human life, which
was supposed to be sacred. They didn't know that, behind his screwball
surface, Kalinoff was as shrewd as they came. He had made some valuable
discoveries—and promptly staked out a claim to them.
He had run across large quantities of stable isotopes of metals whose
atomic numbers ranged from 95 to 110. These had remarkable and useful
properties.
They were, to begin with, of unusual value as catalysts in chemical
reactions. For example, element 99, in the presence of air, was a more
powerful oxidizing agent than platinum or palladium was a reducing
agent, in the presence of hydrogen. And the oxidations could be
controlled beautifully, could be made to affect almost any part of a
complicated organic molecule at a time. Element 99 was recoverable, and
could be used again and again. A few hundred grams of it alone might
very well pay for the cost of the entire expedition.
Add the value of a few kilos of elements 101 to 110, and Kalinoff had
discovered enough to make him and a few other people rich for life.
Lamoureux wanted to be one of those other people. He had three kids he
wanted to send through Lunar Tech; he had a wife with expensive tastes
in robot servants; and he had relatives. Let him get Kalinoff off this
God-forsaken planet, where he had been marooned for the past year, and
even an interplanetary screwball might be expected to show some feeling
of gratitude. Combine this feeling of gratitude with a reasonably fair
contract already printed, and needing only the explorer's scrawl to
give it validity, and Lamoureux could almost feel the money in his
pocket. If only McCracken had not spoiled everything by his stupidity—
Lamoureux shuddered to think that by the time they got to him
Kalinoff might be dead, and they would have to do business with his
heirs—heirs who had no sense of gratitude to impair their business
judgment. He felt suddenly poor again. But he put the gloomy thought
out of his head, and went on with his work.
Unpacking would be finished in a couple of hours at most. Meanwhile
there was some preliminary exploring to be done. The neighboring
ground must be surveyed, and landmarks noted, so that they would
have a suitable base from which to start their search. Kalinoff had
talked about two mountains with a saddlelike ridge joining them. Those
two mountains shouldn't be too difficult to recognize—if ever the
expedition ran across them.
McCracken, obeying orders, was lending a hand at the unloading. What
with Mercury's low gravity, and his own strength, he had no difficulty
in wrestling around the five hundred pound crates in which their
supplies had been packed. However, he was of little help in getting the
work done. With what Lamoureux decided was characteristic stupidity, he
seemed to be mostly in everyone else's way.
Lamoureux called, "McCracken!"
"Yes, sir."
"Let go those crates. The others will handle them. I want you—"
Lamoureux stopped suddenly. A distant sound had come to his ears—the
explosion of a bullet.
There was a sudden silence that was so absolute, Lamoureux could hear
his men breathe. Another bullet exploded, then another—and silence
again.
Somebody whispered, "The natives don't have guns. It must be Kalinoff!"
"What luck to find him this way!"
Lamoureux had run for his own gun. He fired ten shots into the air and
waited. But there was no reply.
Lamoureux spat out his orders with machine-gun speed. "McCracken, you,
Carvalho, and Haggard set out to the right. The shots seemed to be
coming from that direction. But we'll take no chances. Gronski, Terrill
and Cannoni, go straight ahead. Marsden and Blaine, to the left;
Robinson and Sprott, to the rear. Spread out fast and keep your eyes
peeled. Don't go any further away than the sound of a bullet. Uncover
every damned white-bush, and tear up every desert-cat hill, but don't
come back without Kalinoff. Now get going!"
The men started on a run. Lamoureux, waiting impatiently, walked up and
down in growing excitement. He had come prepared for a three months'
search, expected it. He had pictured himself and his men, exhausted
by a long trek across the planet, coming upon the startled Kalinoff,
striking a magnificent attitude, and saying, with characteristic
Tellurian modesty, "Dr. Livingston, I presume." And, instead, he was
going to find Kalinoff in less than a day. He ran into the ship, got
out the printed contract, and read it hastily.
All was in order. He'd have Kalinoff's signature that day.
A half hour passed, and Lamoureux fired ten more shots. Haskell, the
cook, was looking at the sky with a troubled expression on his face. He
approached Lamoureux apologetically. "Say, Captain—"
"What is it, Haskell?"
"Does it ever rain on Mercury?"
"Never. No rain, no snow, no hail. No man who has ever set foot on the
planet has come across any sort of bad weather. Kalinoff emphasizes
that fact."
"Well, that's what I seemed to remember. But just now I thought I felt
a drop of rain."
"Impossible, Haskell. Some bird—"
Lamoureux stopped abruptly. He, too, had thought he felt a drop of rain.
Haskell held out a hairy paw. "I thought I felt another one." His eyes
fell on the brown rocks. "Say, here's a big drop that splashed."
The brown rocks were being slowly spotted with black. And, as Lamoureux
stared, he felt his head grow wet. There was no doubt about it. It was
raining.
His mouth dropped open. "But it doesn't rain on Mercury!"
The sky was a dull gray now, and the patter of rain drowned out his
words. He realized suddenly that he was becoming soaked.
Haskell was running for the ship. Lamoureux followed him and slammed
the door shut. The men who had not been sent to search for Kalinoff
were already inside. The rain rattled on the hull of the Astrolight,
and on the parched ground.
Lamoureux stared through the side port and repeated blankly, "But it
doesn't rain on Mercury!"
Fortunately, the noise of the rain was so loud that no one heard him
say it.
II
It was six hours before the first of the search parties Lamoureux had
sent out returned. The men were soaked, but they had seen no trace of
Kalinoff. They had faithfully tried to follow Lamoureux's directions,
but in a downpour where it was impossible to see more than fifty feet
ahead of them, they stood little chance of rescuing anyone. Most of the
six hours had been spent finding their own way home.
The other search parties drifted in slowly, until all had returned.
Lamoureux checked them off one by one, and discovered, with practically
no surprise, that McCracken was missing.
"Where is the idiot?" he growled.
"McCracken separated from the rest of us," replied Carvalho. "He
thought he could catch a glimpse of those mountains Kalinoff described."
"When was this?"
"Just before it started to rain."
"He's probably within a few hundred yards of the ship right now, but
can't find us because of this rain. I hope he has sense enough to dig
up a white-bush and get some shelter."
"We can never be sure how much sense McCracken has. Anyway, Captain, it
can't go on raining like this for very long."
But it could, and it did. The men sat around in the ship, stretching
lazily, and took life easy. They had not had time to unpack many of the
five hundred pound crates, and what materials were exposed to the rain
would not be spoiled. There was no harm in leaving them where they were.
A vacation of this sort would have been welcome, if the trip through
space to Mercury had itself not been so largely a vacation. After a
day, Lamoureux saw plainly that his men were sick of inactivity. So,
for that matter, was he. He had come to take part in a strenuous and
dangerous expedition, not to sit on his fanny waiting for the rain to
go away.
Twenty-four hours after everyone else had returned to the ship,
McCracken made a sensational reappearance. With that independence of
thought that Lamoureux was beginning to recognize, he had found his own
way of coping with the bad weather. He had stripped off his soggy and
unpleasant clothing, and had meandered around for the past day clad in
nothing but his shorts, with his rifle, his one remaining possession,
held firmly in the crook of his right arm. The rain was fairly warm,
and outside of giving him his usual ravenous appetite, his outing had
done him no harm.
Lamoureux got one of the crew to dig up an extra suit of clothes to
cover McCracken's manly beauty. "Where did you sleep?"
"I didn't."
"You wandered around all this time shocking the natives without rest?"
"I'm no sissy," grunted McCracken. "I'm not even tired."
He yawned, and caught himself. "I didn't see anything of Kalinoff. But
I got a good look at those mountains he described. The pair with the
saddleback ridge between them."
"Where are they?"
McCracken scratched his head. "I think I lost my sense of direction.
But they're not far from here. No, sir, they're not far. Kalinoff is as
good as found. The screwball."
His eyes closed while he was talking, and Lamoureux had him led to his
bunk and deposited there. Two minutes later, McCracken's snoring was
competing successfully with the noise of the rain.
There was little sense in looking for the mountains until the rain let
up. Lamoureux waited, and waited in vain. The downpour kept on until
its monotonous sound had become an integral part of their life. They
learned to talk without paying any attention to it, and without even
hearing it. But not without, now and then, cursing it.
After it had been raining for a week, Lamoureux noticed that the
temperature was falling. It probably signified that on this part of the
Twilight Zone the Sun was dropping further behind the horizon. As if he
didn't already have troubles enough. He cursed Mercury; he cursed the
Twilight Zone; he cursed the rain; he even cursed the Sun. A few hours
later, he also cursed the snow and the hail.
Such weather was absolutely incredible. There was nothing to explain
it. As he had told Haskell, the cook, no previous explorer had ever
seen a sign of rain, snow, or hail. Kalinoff had not reported such
phenomena, and Kalinoff got around.
The men were going crazy with inactivity. Worst of all, to Lamoureux,
was the way they looked at him. They seemed to feel that, as leader of
the expedition, he was responsible for the weather. Lamoureux almost
found himself agreeing with them.
On the tenth day, he could stand it no longer. He called the men
together and made a short speech. "Men, this rain seems able to go on
forever. We can't stay here waiting for it to clear up."
Somebody cheered hopefully, and the others, for the sake of exercising
their lungs, joined in.
Lamoureux held up his hand. "McCracken has reported that he saw the
mountains we were looking for, with the saddleback ridge between them.
Rain or no rain, we're going to find them."
Somebody yelled, "Three cheers for Big Muscles McCracken!" The three
cheers were roared. Then there came, "Three cheers for our brave and
heroic captain!" and, "Three cheers for the mountains!" and even,
"Three cheers for the lousy rain and snow."
Lamoureux began to feel uncomfortable. This was too much like a high
school football rally, with burlesque overtones, to suit him. The men
were bursting with pent-up energy, and it had to get out somehow.
"I'm leaving only a half dozen of you behind to stay with the ship. The
rest are coming with me. Any volunteers?"
He had expected what followed. They all volunteered. He made his
choices rapidly. McCracken went along because he had actually seen
the mountains. Carvalho would make an intelligent assistant. Gronski,
Marsden, Sprott—he reeled off the names rapidly, and in less than a
minute had his group, leaving a disgruntled half dozen who would have
nothing to do but continue to sit around the ship.
Lamoureux himself carried a two-way radio transmission set capable of
receiving intelligible signals over a distance of 12,000 miles. He
gave another of the sets to McCracken, and ordered the man to hang on
to it no matter what happened. In the rain, it would be their only way
of maintaining communications with the ship. He put McCracken and the
radio in the second squad under Carvalho, and himself took charge of
the first. The two squads would stick together unless some emergency
demanded that they separate.
When they set out in the snow, wearing the heaviest clothing they had,
the men were singing. McCracken's voice, like the croaking of a huge
bullfrog, supplied an unharmonized but ear-filling bass. It sounded so
impressive to Lamoureux that not until McCracken had reached the third
song did he perceive that the man didn't know any of the melodies at
all. He just oom-pahed as the spirit moved him, evidently feeling that,
on Mercury, noise and good spirits were more important than any tune.
They had been marching for a half hour when Gronski exclaimed, "Well,
I'll be damned to Venus and back!"
"What's wrong, Gronski?"
"It isn't snowing so hard, Captain."
It wasn't. Carvalho said hopefully, "Maybe it'll stop."
Sprott was so overwhelmed with delight that he scooped up a huge pile
of snow, pressed it together, and popped McCracken on the nose with it.
McCracken threw him down and poured snow down his back.
Lamoureux said angrily, "Stop that, you fools! You're not a bunch of
kids."
The horseplay came to an abrupt halt. They marched on a little more
soberly, and in a few minutes the snow had stopped falling altogether.
Instead of being as happy as Lamoureux had expected, McCracken seemed
puzzled. He scratched his head and scowled.
"What's wrong, McCracken? Termites?"
"It's this snow, Captain. We walk two or three miles and it stops. It
don't make sense."
"It's got to stop sometime."
"The point is, Captain, it didn't snow here at all. There's none on the
ground. It just snowed around the ship."
It cost Lamoureux an effort to admit it, but McCracken was right. He
was not as stupid as he had seemed.
It was Lamoureux's turn to scowl. He got in touch with the ship.
"Haskell!"
"Yes, sir?"
"How's the weather where you are?"
"Are you joking, Captain?"
"I'm serious, Haskell. Is it clear?"
"It's still snowing, Captain, just as it was less than an hour ago when
you left."
Lamoureux grunted. "You may be interested to know that it hasn't
snowed here at all."
He cut off Haskell's astonished voice, and turned to the others, who
now seemed a little uneasy. The unexpected changes in the weather were
a little too much for them.
"Now that it's cleared up, we should be able to find that mountain.
We'll spread out just a little, but not too far. For all we know, it
may start to snow again. Carvalho, you take your group off to the
left—"
Sprott whispered, "Captain!"
"Yes?"
"Isn't that a Mercurian?"
Lamoureux stared where Sprott had pointed. About a half mile away,
a small gray creature, looking, as McCracken had reported, like a
penguin, but with a broader face and no bill to speak of, was standing
motionless.
"Sprott, you and Marsden go over to that thing. Be as friendly as you
know how. Smile, grin, stand on your head if you have to, but don't
scare it away. Try to induce it to follow you here. Maybe we'll finally
get some of that information about Kalinoff we're looking for."
Sprott and Marsden were approaching the Mercurian cautiously. Several
hundred yards away, they stopped and spread their arms in what was
evidently meant to be a gesture of good will.
The Mercurian remained motionless. Not until the men had come within
thirty feet of it did it give a sign of life. Then it took a step
toward them.
As Lamoureux watched, the two men spoke a few words. The Mercurian did
not respond, but when they turned around and moved away, it followed
slowly.
Seen from close at hand, the Mercurian did not so greatly resemble a
penguin. To begin with, it had no wings, and no arms either. It lacked
a bill altogether, but had instead a small mouth that seemed crammed
with teeth. Its two eyes were slanted, which gave it an appearance of
slyness. There were two round tufted ears. It moved forward not by
waddling, but with a smooth rollercoaster gait that was the result of
its moving its four legs forward one after the other.
Sprott reported, "It seems hurt."
There was, in fact, a grayish wound on the Mercurian's chest. Lamoureux
didn't know enough about Mercurian physiology to hazard a guess as to
what would be the best treatment; and, therefore, decided to leave
well enough alone. But, according to Kalinoff, the Mercurians were
intelligent. He wondered if the screwball explorer had taught this one
any of the Earth languages.
"Can you speak English?"
The Mercurian stared at him with its sly expression and said nothing.
"Parlez-vous français? Sprechen sie Deutsch?"
The men were grinning now, and Lamoureux felt his face growing warm. He
must look like a fool, trying to carry on a conversation with a bird.
He asked, "Anybody here know Russian? Polish? Spanish?"
His men supplied him with phrases in the languages he asked for, but
the Mercurian remained unresponsive.
McCracken ventured, "He don't look very bright to me, Captain. I can't
understand why Kalinoff said they were intelligent."
"Maybe," suggested Sprott, "it's because they just stand there looking
wise and don't say anything."
Lamoureux shook his head. "Kalinoff wouldn't be impressed by anybody's
just looking wise. And he wouldn't be impressed by anybody's not saying
anything. He didn't go for either stuffed shirts or strong silent men.
That's why I believe that this thing must have a language of its own,
and a fairly decent brain."
The Mercurian closed its two eyes slowly, like a sleepy cat, and opened
them again. Then it poked one of its four feet out from under its body
and scratched on the ground.
"He's nuts," decided McCracken. "Just scrabbling around."
"Hold it," ordered Lamoureux, "I'm beginning to get this."
The Mercurian had scratched nine parallel lines, only a few of
them visible on the rocky ground. Now it scratched other lines,
perpendicular to these.
Lamoureux barked, "A checkerboard! That's what it is! Has anybody got
one?"
Marsden had a pocket chess set. He took it out. The Mercurian's eyes
brightened. It sat down suddenly on the hard ground.
"I'll be damned," said Lamoureux. "He wants to play a game. Go ahead,
Marsden. Entertain our guest."
The men were grinning again. Marsden squatted down on the ground
and began to set up the men. The Mercurian stretched out two of its
paws—three-fingered affairs, the fingers almost human—and seized one
white chessman and one black. It hid the paws behind its back, then
held them out again.
Marsden chose the white, and moved forward the queen's pawn. The
Mercurian countered and the game was on.
It was Kalinoff who must have taught this creature the game, and, if it
did nothing else, the incident showed that the explorer was just as
screwy as ever, and probably alive somewhere on the planet. Or did it
merely show that he had been alive? Lamoureux, undecided, watched the
curious battle of wits.
Half an hour later, Marsden, thoroughly beaten, demanded, "Who says
this thing isn't intelligent?"
III
The Mercurian was sitting up, wagging its head from side to side as if
waiting for approbation. But Lamoureux, quite sure now that it wouldn't
or couldn't talk, wouldn't have given a damn if it had beaten every
champion on Earth. In addition, he was bothered by the fact that it was
snowing again.
The flakes had just begun to fall, large and feathery, and Lamoureux
himself soon had a powdered look. Most of the other men were still
gathered around the Mercurian. But one of them, Sprott, came over to
Lamoureux and glanced up at the sky as if puzzled.
"It's following us around, Captain."
"What is?"
"The snow, sir."
"Don't be silly, Sprott. We just happen to have run into a streak of
bad weather."
Sprott went on stubbornly, "It looks funny to me. First it rains and
snows for ten days around the ship. But it doesn't rain, or at least
it doesn't snow, here. An hour after we get to this place, though, it
starts coming down."
Lamoureux brushed some of the white flakes off his shoulders. "All
right, Sprott, suppose you are right. It is following us around.
That's no reason to alarm the other men, is it?"
"I guess not, sir.... I won't say a word. But there's something else I
wanted to speak to you about, sir. It's McCracken."
"You believe he's responsible for the snow?"
Sprott looked astonished. "I don't mean that, sir. I don't see how he
could be."
"I do. He shot a Mercurian. I have an idea that they're the ones who
are causing the peculiar weather we've been having."
"Why would they do that, sir?"
"Well, Kalinoff didn't mention seeing any weapons among them, so
we've always assumed they had none. But suppose the weather was their
weapon. It's a very effective one, Sprott. They've made things damnably
unpleasant for us."
"How can they make rain where there isn't any, Captain? I know that
rainmakers on Earth have had some success. But all they do is get the
rain to fall near where it would have fallen anyway. They may make it
precipitate a few hours before it would have otherwise, but that's all.
Here there weren't any clouds to start with."
Lamoureux admitted, "I don't know how the trick is done, Sprott. But I
agree with you that the snow is following us around, and I'm sure that
the trick is done."
Sprott was silent a moment. Then he said, "And you think, sir, it's all
because McCracken shot one of them?"
"They evidently believe in the principle of the rain falling on the
just and unjust alike. And the same thing goes for the snow."
Sprott said doubtfully, "I'm not sure about that, sir. But I do know
that McCracken is up to something. He's been getting some queer noises
on his receiver."
"Such as Haskell singing lullabies from the ship?"
"Nothing as unpleasant as that, Captain. They're just a series of
sounds, some a little longer than others. Da, da, da-a-a, da—that sort
of thing."
Lamoureux asked, "When did you hear them?"
"About ten minutes ago. McCracken doesn't know anything about chess,
and neither do I, so we both wandered away after the first ten minutes.
McCracken said he had an idea where those mountains were."
Lamoureux's eyes narrowed. "Those noises are undoubtedly a message. I
seem to remember that some centuries back there was a code invented by
a man named Morris. That's it, the Morris code. But where could such a
message have come from?"
Sprott shook his head. "I couldn't say, sir. There's supposed to be no
one but Kalinoff on Mercury, and his radio set doesn't work. Could the
message have been sent from Earth?"
"Impossible, Sprott. That set will hardly get more than twelve thousand
miles."
Sprott looked uncomfortable. "Then maybe what I heard wasn't a message
at all, sir."
"I think it was. Does McCracken know you overheard him?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"Then don't let him know that we suspect anything wrong. Come to think
of it, McCracken never seems to act quite as stupid as he pretends
to be. I shouldn't be surprised if, when he shot that Mercurian, he
understood very well what he was doing."
"You believe, sir, that he deliberately tried to cause trouble? Why
would he do that?"
"I don't know," said Lamoureux slowly.
That wasn't the whole truth. He didn't know, but he certainly could
make a shrewd guess. All along, his chief reason for fearing delay on
this expedition had been that Kalinoff might die before he could get to
him. Now there was another reason for fearing delay. Suppose there were
another expedition on the way to rescue Kalinoff. And suppose McCracken
was secretly in the pay of the people behind that expedition, and doing
everything possible to sabotage this one.
Lamoureux nodded to himself. That was probably it. The first thing,
then, was to get the radio set from McCracken.
Big Muscles, as the other men had nicknamed McCracken, was a few
hundred feet away, staring off into the distance. What else he could
see besides snow, Lamoureux couldn't guess. He yelled, "Hey, McCracken!"
"Coming, Captain."
McCracken took a few tentative steps, broke into a short run, and then
made a leap that carried him seventy-five feet through the air, past
where Lamoureux was standing. He ended up at attention, his hand raised
in a military salute.
Lamoureux frowned. Knowing what he did about McCracken, this attempt
to seem carefree, childish, and perhaps a little stupid impressed him
unfavorably. He said, "McCracken, I'm taking you out of Carvalho's
group and putting you into my own. I may need some strong-arm work and
you're just the man for it."
"I sure am, Captain."
"Seeing as I already have a radio, you may as well turn yours over to
Carvalho."
McCracken seemed a trifle less eager. "It's rather heavy, Captain. If
you'd like, I'd carry it for you just the same."
"I prefer to have my own where I can get at it whenever the need
arises. Turn yours over to Carvalho, McCracken."
"Yes, sir. Meanwhile, I want to report, sir, that from where I was
standing when you called to me, I think I could see those mountains."
Lamoureux had his doubts, but he kept them to himself. "Good," he said
briefly. "We'll get going."
He called the men together again and gave them their marching orders.
Whether the Mercurian understood what he said, Lamoureux didn't know.
At any rate, it went along willingly.
They reached the place where McCracken had been standing, and Lamoureux
stared where Big Muscles pointed. There were two mountains rising
off in the distance, barely visible through the snow, and there was
certainly a saddleback ridge between them. The only trouble was that
one of the mountains was almost twice the height of the other.
Kalinoff had reported them as approximately the same height.
"That doesn't fit Kalinoff's description."
McCracken said, "Maybe he looked at them from a different angle, sir.
Then they might have seemed the same height."
"If he looked at them from a different angle, the ridge would no longer
seem saddlebacked."
"That's true, sir. But then you know, sir, Kalinoff is a screwball—"
Lamoureux found this a little hard to take from a man he suspected of
quietly trying to stab him in the back. But he continued to hide his
feelings. "That's as may be, McCracken, but he's not cockeyed. These
aren't the mountains he described. Still, we may as well approach them.
We may be able to get a good view from the top of the taller one."
They moved onward again. A quarter of an hour's marching took them
to the edge of the falling snow. As they walked further, the air
became completely clear, and Lamoureux could see the mountains without
straining his eyes. There was no doubt about it. They were not the
mountains Kalinoff had described.
The Mercurian horizon was not so far away as the more familiar horizon
of Earth, and it was a little difficult for Lamoureux to estimate
distances. Still, the foothills of the mountains could not be more than
twenty miles away. For the past day, little more than the rim of the
Sun had been visible above the horizon, and while the peaks were ablaze
with scarlet and golden colors, only the higher one was out of the
shadow to any considerable extent. The saddlebacked ridge itself was a
vague outline of dull black.
The snow did not catch up with them until four or five hours later,
when they stopped to prepare a meal and rest. Then it began to fall
gently after they had been in the same place for three-quarters of an
hour. By now, Lamoureux was sure that it was the Mercurians who were to
blame. He still wondered how they did it.
The one they had come across had remained with them, and Lamoureux
found it harder than ever to regard the creature as intelligent.
All the thing had done was walk and play chess. Lamoureux had a low
opinion of chess players, even when they were fairly human. He had an
even lower opinion of trained animals. This Mercurian fell, in his
estimation, somewhere between.
They were no more than a mile or two from the foothills of the larger
mountain by now, and the saddlebacked ridge loomed several hundred
feet into the air. Unfortunately, the snow was between it and them,
and prevented them from gaining too clear a view. Lamoureux wondered
if the snow would keep up even at the top of the mountain, and damned
McCracken again for shooting that Mercurian. And then he discovered
that McCracken's feats of arms were not yet ended. McCracken was at
that very moment aiming at some target that Lamoureux could not see.
Lamoureux sprang to his feet. "Don't shoot, you fool!"
He was a little too late. The noise of the explosion rang out.
McCracken said, "Sorry, sir, I didn't hear you until my finger had
already squeezed the trigger. But I wasn't trying to hit anything that
was alive. There was something that looked like a rock on that ridge—"
The words died away in his throat. Lamoureux lifted his eyes and saw
something hovering in front of them, high in the air. It had eyes and
a mouth and, from these features, he knew that it was a huge head, as
large as a fair-sized house. There was a long, interminable stretch of
neck behind it, and somewhere in the rear he felt sure was a monstrous
body. But he wasted no time searching for that.
The eyes were staring at the men unblinkingly. These eyes alone were
bigger than the men were. Then the neck stretched out and the head came
poking down.
Lamoureux turned and ran. It had been years since he had done much
physical exercise, but he made up for them now. Then, too, as the
captain of the expedition, he felt that the men might expect a certain
amount of leadership from him; it was with some dismay that he
discovered that all the rest were ahead of him. Picking up speed, he
passed Sprott, then Marsden, and then Gronski. Ahead of him someone
stumbled, and Lamoureux wasted a precious second helping the man to his
feet.
The huge head opened, and a roar that almost knocked out his eardrums
vibrated through Lamoureux's body. The ground shook under him. That
meant that the whole creature, whatever it was, was coming after
them. Gronski and Sprott passed him as if someone had stuck a needle
into them, and Lamoureux, sobbing for breath, tripped over a rock and
plunged headlong.
The ground beside him trembled as if it were being rocked by a series
of quakes. A deep shadow fell over him, and Lamoureux tried to dig his
prone body into the ground and not breathe. From far ahead, a scream of
terror split the air.
Then the quakes and the shadow had passed, and Lamoureux dared to lift
his head. Far ahead, he could make out the gigantic neck stretching
into the air, its outline already vague through the falling snow. A few
feet away from him lay Gronski, and a little further on McCracken.
None of the other men were in sight.
The valiant McCracken, his rifle still clutched to him, was aiming at
the vanishing figure. Lamoureux said, "Don't bother, McCracken. You've
already done enough harm."
"I just thought I'd get a shot at him, sir, while he was excited. He
wouldn't know where it came from."
"He knew the first time. Don't bother, I say. You can't hurt him, and
he can do plenty to you."
"All right, Captain."
Lamoureux brushed some of the snow off him and tried to catch his
breath. "McCracken, if you're really anxious to play with your gun, you
may fire into the air. Five times."
"Yes, sir."
McCracken fired, and they waited. Lamoureux said, "I hope nobody was
hurt. I don't think any of them, if they're alive, are too far away to
hear those shots. We'll wait for them to assemble here and then start
out for those mountains again."
"Yes, sir. Except, Captain, that it may be a little difficult—"
"What'll be difficult?"
"Finding those mountains. They just don't look the same."
Lamoureux stared. The mountains stretched into the air exactly the same
as before, the same scarlet and gold colors glowing on their peaks, the
same shadows on their sides. But the saddlebacked ridge between them—
Lamoureux looked again. The entire ridge was gone.
IV
The snow fell as steadily as ever while Lamoureux waited for the men to
assemble. Only two were missing now—Terrill and Carvalho. McCracken
had fired again and again into the air, but these two had not returned.
Lamoureux decided finally, "It looks as if they're not coming. Gronski,
you take over for Carvalho. You'll stay here in charge of his group
while the rest of us climb the mountain."
McCracken said, "You want me to come with you, don't you, Captain?"
"I certainly do. I'm curious to know what in hell way of ruining this
expedition you'll think of next."
"Aw, now, Captain, that isn't fair. How was I to know that whole ridge
was one big animal? You wouldn't have believed it yourself. Something
over five hundred feet high, with a neck even longer. We're not used to
them that big on Earth. Here the gravity's less, so it's okay. But even
Kalinoff—"
"Don't talk to me about Kalinoff," said Lamoureux fiercely. "He's as
bad as you. That screwball!"
"We're still trying to find him, aren't we, Captain?"
"Sure, we're trying to find him, but how can we expect to do it?" Was
it his imagination, or did McCracken seem pleased? Lamoureux didn't
care. He went on, very bitterly, "He starts off by telling us that the
Mercurians are intelligent. You saw how intelligent they were. Where's
that specimen we had?"
"He got lost in the shuffle," reported Gronski.
"It's just as well. Kalinoff tells us of a landmark—two mountains
with a saddlebacked ridge between them. The ridge runs away, and our
landmark isn't a landmark any more. Then there's the weather—no rain,
no hail, no snow. Nothing but pure fresh air and nice clean sunshine."
He kicked at a snowdrift. "What's this thing supposed to be, a mirage?"
McCracken said, "I know how you feel, Captain. But about this mountain
now—do you really think we ought to climb it?"
"Why not?"
"You can't see the top from here on account of the snow. It's coming
down in bigger flakes than ever now. That means you can't see here from
the top. And as the only reason we want to climb it is to take a look
around—"
"We'll climb it anyway. Maybe it isn't snowing as hard on the other
side."
They started off then, with Lamoureux barely keeping a tight enough
grip on his feelings to prevent his talking to himself. The mountain
was steep, but the gravity here being low, it was easy enough to
climb. McCracken demonstrated how easy it was by running up it full
speed. Lamoureux let him go, hoping that he would break his neck, but
McCracken's luck was too good. All he did was start a gentle landslide
that almost buried everybody else.
As they rose, they got more and more of the Sun's rays and the
temperature went up slightly. The snow turned to rain, drenching them
to the skin, and they climbed all the faster, anxious to get the job
over with.
At the top, the rain had died down to a faint drizzle. Lamoureux,
looking off into the distance, could see as through a veil a range
of sky-piercing mountains, their peaks gleaming in the Sun, their
roots cleft with deep shadowed valleys. Between almost every pair of
mountains was a saddlebacked ridge.
"Landmarks," commented Lamoureux sourly. "To hell with them."
"I told you it would be a waste of time, Captain."
"Not in the least, McCracken. After all, you might have broken your
neck."
They started down again, and in a half hour were back at the line where
the rain changed to snow. Another hour took them to Gronski again.
Lamoureux shook his head. "No sign of Kalinoff."
"What do we do now?"
"We go back to the ship and carry on from there. I don't know what
steps we'll take after that, but at least we'll get back to shelter,
out of this snow."
"Which way is the ship?"
"That," said Lamoureux, "is one question we can find the answer to." He
spoke into his radio. "Haskell!"
Haskell was alert. "Yes, Captain."
"Keep your radio beam going. We're depending on it for direction."
"Sure, Captain."
Lamoureux snapped off the sending set. "Now let's get moving, before we
freeze to death."
The return trip was a slow one. Their spirits were all low, even
McCracken's. Lamoureux pictured the return to Earth, the eager, and
then disappointed, reception, and the wave of ridicule that would
follow their account of the difficulties they had encountered.
They stopped once to eat. Lamoureux estimated that they had supplies
for another two and a half months left in the ship, not counting what
would be needed for the return journey. They might as well stay here
until those supplies were used up. They might possibly find Kalinoff
during those two and a half months, although, with the Twilight Zone
of the whole planet to look in, and no decent clues, not to mention
the difficulties caused by the snow, the chances were none too bright.
Nevertheless, they would have to do their best.
The meal came to an end, and they started off again. They had gone only
a few hundred yards, when Lamoureux noticed something wrong.
"Haskell!"
There was no reply. Haskell's radio beam had been shut off.
This was a little too much. Lamoureux let loose a streak of profanity
that had even McCracken staring at him in awe. Then they started out
again, trying, through the falling snow, and over the rocky ground,
to keep in as straight a line as possible toward the ship. Lamoureux
managed to sustain his spirits only by thinking of what he would do to
his cook.
Two hours later, he had an opportunity to put his plan into practice.
For out of the snow there emerged Haskell, and the men who had been
left with him at the ship. Haskell started to run toward Lamoureux the
moment he caught sight of the other group.
"Here we are, Captain! We came as fast as we could!"
Lamoureux's eyes were almost as cold as the snow. "How thoughtful of
you."
"Who else is hurt, Captain?"
"Nobody's hurt, but somebody is going to be."
Haskell looked surprised. "I don't get it. You told me to come as fast
as I could, and you said that eight of the men were badly injured."
"I told you?"
"Yes, sir. I thought you were hurt yourself, sir. Your voice sounded
hoarse."
Lamoureux's jaws were clenched together so tightly in his effort to
maintain his self-control that his teeth hurt. He unclenched them. "I
don't quite understand you, Haskell. My voice is as melodious as ever.
Something else is strange, too. You ask who else is hurt."
"Yes, sir. We ran across Terrill a little while ago. He got brushed by
the tail of some animal and was walking around in a real daze."
"How do you suppose we're walking? At any rate, I'm glad you found him.
See any signs of Carvalho?"
"No, sir. We left the radio beam on to guide you—"
"What's that? You're sure you left it on?"
"Positive, sir."
"Well, someone has turned it off! Someone—Oh, my God!"
It was so damn simple, and he had never even thought of it. Carvalho
was the man. Carvalho was shrewd and quiet, a man who could keep his
intentions to himself and wreck an expedition without so much as
being suspected. Subconsciously, Lamoureux hadn't quite believed in
McCracken's guilt, despite the seeming evidence against him. McCracken
had too genuine a love of horseplay, and of childish showing off.
These things were hard to pretend. You didn't put snow down somebody's
back when you were plotting to leave him marooned on a deserted planet.
And you didn't impress people by making a seventy-five foot broad jump
when you could impress them much more effectively by condemning them
to slow death.
Once he had thought of it, Lamoureux couldn't doubt. Carvalho had
turned off the radio beam at the ship. By now the Astrolight was
probably somewhere in space, possibly proceeding to some rendezvous
with a rival expedition. Carvalho wouldn't dare appear back on Earth as
the lone passenger returning on Lamoureux's ship. But he wouldn't have
to. He could set the Astrolight adrift, be "rescued" by the people
who had employed him, and come back to tell of the dangers he had
braved on Mercury.
It all fitted in. Carvalho had been the one who had tried to hamper
their work from the moment they had landed. When McCracken had shot
that Mercurian—
Lamoureux asked, "What happened then? Try to remember."
McCracken scratched his head vigorously. "I think Carvalho saw this
Mercurian and started to yell and run. I thought he was scared. That's
why I shot."
So Carvalho had really been responsible for the shooting. Lamoureux
asked, "Why didn't you report that Carvalho started to yell and run?"
"Well, Captain, you don't expect me to go around telling you things
like that about another guy?"
The words, "You fool," had been on Lamoureux's lips, but he bit them
back. After all, who had been the bigger fool, McCracken or he himself,
who had insisted that Carvalho get the radio? There was no doubt about
the answer to that one.
As for the occasion when the radio had begun to emit its mysterious
code signals, the explanation for that was simple enough, too. The
people who were in contact with Carvalho had sent their messages, not
knowing whether strangers might be listening in, but not caring either.
No one could make head or tail of the mysterious sounds but Carvalho.
McCracken had, in fact, considered the noises a new strange form of
static that had interfered when he tried to talk to Haskell.
Lamoureux felt like asking McCracken to kick him in the pants. As that
would have been bad for discipline, he substituted an order to get
started back toward the ship. There was the faintest of chances that
Carvalho had delayed, or had been forced by some accident to delay, his
departure back to Earth.
It was snowing harder than ever now, and it was difficult for Lamoureux
to see more than fifty feet ahead of him. The rim of the Sun was
blotted out so thoroughly that it was almost as dark as on a moonless
night. Nevertheless he pressed on doggedly.
It was not until six hours later, after he and the men had been
wandering around aimlessly for a long enough time to have reached the
ship and returned, that he admitted to himself that they were lost.
V
Not that it mattered a great deal. Lamoureux realized perfectly well
that by this time the Astrolight was on its return journey to Earth.
All the same, it was disheartening to know that he was so completely
unable to find his way about on this planet.
The question now was what to do. They had little enough food, and not
too much in the way of other supplies. They would have to live off the
planet until some kind of rescue expedition had been organized to save
them. If Kalinoff had done it, they could, too. Lamoureux's face
burned as he pictured himself striding over to Kalinoff, staring at the
man solemnly, and uttering those historic words, "Dr. Livingston, I
presume." That was one scene that would never take place.
It was growing colder by the hour. That meant that they would have to
move over toward the Hot Side before the Sun sank beneath the horizon
altogether.
McCracken, the most cheerful of the lot, had a glum face as he asked,
"What do we do now, Captain?"
"First we eat, McCracken. Then we move toward the Sun. Just one word,
McCracken. You like to shoot?"
"Yes, sir."
"Save your bullets. I have an idea we're going to need them before this
little adventure of ours is finished."
Then Lamoureux sat down on a snowy rock, leaned back, and thought
everything over. It was improbable now that any of his kids would ever
get to Lunar Tech. Well, that wasn't anything to be sorry about. The
life of ease and luxury of the place had ruined more than one promising
youngster. His wife would have to get along with a single robot. It
would do her good to wait on the family for a change. As for his
relatives—to hell with them. Let them find somebody else to sponge on.
He was busy with these cheerful reflections when he heard McCracken
shout, "Hey!"
A figure loomed out of the snow ahead.
The figure paused and stared at Lamoureux.
McCracken yelled, "Hey, Captain!"
The figure came forward, bowed, and showed its teeth. "Mr. Stanley, I
presume?"
Looking back at it later, Lamoureux decided that this was the most
mortifying moment of his life. He had been sent to save Kalinoff.
Instead, Kalinoff had saved him.
It was the screwball explorer, of course. Lamoureux recognized him at
once. Kalinoff was a shrimp, a fraction of an inch below five feet in
height, and he had a face like a monkey's. Having taken a good look at
him, Lamoureux felt, "My God, is this what we've been trying to rescue?"
Kalinoff was not alone. He was accompanied by a pair of penguin-like
Mercurians, who looked just as sly and acted with as little
intelligence as the one they had previously encountered. Lamoureux had
no idea how Kalinoff had managed to get along with them.
Kalinoff, it seemed, was angry. "Why in hell," he demanded, "didn't you
have sense enough to return to the ship?"
Lamoureux stared.
"You mean the Astrolight is still here?"
"Of course it's here. And the radio beam is on."
"You're sure—the beam is on?"
"Of all the nitwits to let loose on an unfriendly planet, you're about
the worst. I've just told you it's on, haven't I? It's been on for the
past two hours."
Lamoureux swallowed hard. "And Carvalho?"
"There's a man who I assume is Carvalho. He's tied up. I've got a
couple of friends watching him to make sure he doesn't get away."
"Friends?"
"Like these." Kalinoff indicated the Mercurians. "Come on. I'd like to
get back to Earth. There's a girl I've got to see."
"But who—what happened to Carvalho?"
"He seemed anxious to leave, so I pushed my fist down his throat.
Incidentally, there was a radio going, with a code message."
"Short distance, radio?"
"Interplanetary. The ship's hull acted as a receiver, naturally. You
could get the message anywhere on the planet by arranging a short
distance automatic re-broadcast."
"So that's what Carvalho did."
"If I'm late this time," said Kalinoff worriedly, "she and I are
finished. She's willing to put up with dates six months in advance, but
there's a limit, and I've been late too often. And she's too nice to
lose. Get a move on, quick."
Lamoureux, in a daze, complied. They were only an hour's journey from
the ship, and, under Kalinoff's urging, they made it in forty minutes.
Carvalho, looking terrified of the two Mercurians who were standing
over him with their teeth showing, yelled, "Help!"
"Never mind him," Kalinoff ordered. "Hop into the ship."
"But what are we going to do with him?"
"Well, what's he been up to?"
Lamoureux explained briefly, and Kalinoff grunted. "You fellows are a
bunch of screwballs, setting out on an expedition like this without
proper equipment and proper information about Mercury." At the word
"screwballs," Lamoureux winced, but remained silent. Maybe it was
deserved. Kalinoff went on, "As for Carvalho, that's simple. Leave him
behind. He intended to maroon you, didn't he? Maroon him instead. But
first let him send one interplanetary radio message to his friends."
"In code? We won't know what it is!"
Kalinoff grinned. "We'll leave his punishment up to him. Suppose he
reports you've found me. Then his pals won't come for him, and he's
going to stay here indefinitely."
"What if he reports you haven't been found?"
"Then they come for him, discover he's a liar, and there's hell to pay.
Either way, he's in for a lousy time."
"They'll murder him."
"Oh, no. We'll let them know that we're reporting the facts of the
case to the Interplanetary Commission. They'd never dare commit murder."
Lamoureux objected doubtfully, "Wouldn't the Mercurians kill him?"
"If he treats them right, they'll treat him right. They're not as
intelligent as I thought at first—maybe you've discovered that—but
they have their points."
"They're wonderful chess players."
"Fair," said Kalinoff critically. "Only fair. I always beat them,
but then, naturally, I'm very good. Maybe that's why they admire me.
They have great mathematical abilities, and they can visualize well,
but their language is primitive and in some ways they're halfwits.
There have been plenty of mathematical prodigies on Earth just like
them—wonders at calculating, and fools at everything else. To hell
with them. Let's get started."
"Wait a minute, Kalinoff. What about those huge beasts? Won't they be
dangerous to Carvalho?"
"Oh, them." Kalinoff chuckled. "I certainly gave you some off-beam
instructions before that radio of mine went on the blink. I really
thought at first that those two mountains I described with the
saddlebacked ridge between them would make a good landmark. Two days
afterward, I discovered that the ridges were living creatures. The
things have a habit of sheltering themselves from the Sun between a
pair of mountains. They wrap their necks around their bodies, tuck
their heads beside them, and you'd never know they were alive. They
don't move for days at a time."
"But when they do move—"
"Leave them alone, and they leave you alone."
The Captain asked, "What about the rain and snow?"
"I may as well clear this up once and for all. The rain and snow were
my doing. After I had told you to rely on the Mercurians and described
the landmark, I discovered that the Mercurians were nitwits and the
landmark a false alarm. That meant that, once you landed, you'd never
find me except by accident. That put it up to me to find you.
"As you may have heard, normally there's no such thing as rain or snow
on Mercury. But there is water. And there is a continual process of
transfer going on. The water flows through subterranean channels to the
Hot Side, evaporates, and is carried over in the air to the Cold Side.
There it deposits on the ground eventually as ice, melts, and goes
through the whole process again."
"Why doesn't it rain?"
"Because there's no dust in Mercury's air. The absence of a rapidly
alternating day and night means that the air doesn't circulate on the
same scale as on Earth. Practically no wind, combined with little
erosion, means little dust. The water-laden air cools off and becomes
super-saturated at the Twilight Zone. But there are no clouds, and
there's no precipitation because the water needs either dust or ions to
condense on. In a Wilson cloud chamber, an experimenter furnishes it
with ions. Here on Mercury I furnished it with dust.
"I gave the Mercurians rifles and explosive bullets, and taught them to
shoot into the air. It was quite a job, but they learned. The explosion
spreads a cloud of dust, the water condenses, and you have rain or
snow, depending on the temperature. I impressed it upon their brains,
such as they are, that the presence of human beings calls for a Fourth
of July celebration—shooting into the air. And there you are. I had
the occurrence of rain and snow reported to me, moved toward wherever
the snow was thickest, and found the ship."
"Another thing—"
"I've talked enough. That dame won't wait forever. Which will it be,
Carvalho, the Lady or the Tiger?"
They listened in curiosity as Carvalho, tight-lipped, tapped out a
short message in code. They didn't ask him what it was.
As the Astrolight drove upward away from Mercury, Lamoureux had one
last glimpse of the Mercurians shooting into the air. The snow was
coming down in enormous flakes two inches across, and Carvalho, staring
after the ship, was shivering and cursing. After they reported the
facts to the Interplanetary Commission, a ship would be sent to pick
him up—but it might take some time.
"Let me tell you about this dame," said Kalinoff.
Lamoureux listened patiently, got out his contract, and waited, with
pen ready, for the interplanetary screwball's signature.
