Battle on Mercury

by Lester del Rey (as Erik van Lhin)

  Now Johnny was forcing the robot to go through places that were rougher than any he had tried before, as if trying to save every second of time. The other wispy came back, darted down, as if reporting, and then went on its way elsewhere. Curiosity now had complete control of Dick.

  He sensed that they were almost at their goal as soon as Pete’s legs suddenly increased speed, and the robot with its wispy passenger disappeared down into a hollow. Dick scrambled along, trying to get up to the top of the little pile of rocks that lay ahead.

  Then he was where he could see. Down below, in a small rocky section, one of the prospecting tractors was stalled. It was caterpillar-treaded, and looked like a small dome on its tracks. With these, carrying air and supplies for weeks, the old prospectors who hunted new metal and ore strikes often went from dome to dome, or clear to the center of the hotlands. They could navigate almost anywhere, and carried tiny atomic motors that were good for months without replacements.

  But this one had obviously got into trouble. It must have caught something in one of its tracks that had gradually worn away some of the links. Now it was tilted at an angle, with the track off and spread about, as if someone had tried to repair it, and failed. And there was an air of hopelessness about it.

  Dick let out a useless yell, and ran down into the hollow. He knew the tractor—it was the battered old wreck of a prospector called Hotside Charlie. The old man had spent hours at a time telling Dick wild tales of the early days on Mercury when Dick had been a mere kid. He had seemed almost like an uncle to the boy, until he disappeared several years before on one of the long trips such men made.

  Charlie had been on his way back, apparently. And his luck had run out. Dick fumbled for his radio and twisted it to the emergency band, but there was no answer from the tractor. Then he saw that there was a crack in the plastic shell of the tractor—a crack big enough to let all the air run out.

  Pete had stopped beside the tractor and was trying to open the tiny airlock that led inside, but apparently Johnny hadn’t yet learned how to control the fingers. The wispy suddenly leaped from the head of the robot, leaving it standing motionless, and began dashing around the tractor in excited circles.

  Dick found the handle of the lock, and threw it open. He dashed into it, threw open the inner door, and glanced about with a rising fear as he saw no sign of Charlie. For a moment, he gave up hope. Then his eyes dropped to the floor by the seat, and he saw a bulky spacesuit lying there, stretched out.

  He was beside it at once. From inside, the face of Charlie stared out, as if the man were sleeping. Dick gasped, but his fears were groundless. At his touch, the old mans wrinkled face moved, and his eyes opened.

  “Hi, Dick,” he said. “Air low. No power. Ain’t dead yet though.”

  The effort was too much, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 3 Abandoned!

  Hotside Charlie had no business regaining consciousness at all, Dick saw. With his air running out, the old man had cut down his oxygen flow to a bare trickle, hardly enough to maintain life, let alone consciousness. He had enough left for no more than three hours at the rate he was now using it, and a lot less than that if the flow were increased enough for him to become active.

  And with no power for his cooling units, it was a wonder he could live at all. The shell of the tractor still kept the radiation of the sun off him, of course; but if he were moved outside, he’d bake in half an hour.

  Dick examined his own batteries hastily, and shook his head. Both were lower than he liked, and Pete’s batteries were an old style that wouldn’t fit. He took one of his own and plugged it into Charlie’s suit, nodding as the little motor there began to turn over briskly. But it left him with no more time than Charlie had. They had to get back to the dome in three hours, or Charlie would have no air at all left, and Dick would be without power. “Pete,” he called. “Wake up and come in here.” Without Johnny to control him, the robot seemed to work perfectly. It came into the tractor at once. Dick pointed to the old man, and stooped down to pick up his legs. “Grab the head, Pete. We have to carry him back to the dome. And Johnny!”

  The wispy came at once, ducking through the open lock of the tractor.

  “Thanks for bringing me here, Johnny,” Dick told him. The wispy had been trying long enough, and probably had even shorted the machinery in the mine to get Dick out and lead him here. But there was no time to think, even. “Now stay out of Pete, Johnny. He has work to do.”

  Apparently satisfied, the wispy settled about five feet above them and a hundred feet ahead, and began leading the way. Dick nodded, and decided to follow. Johnny had already proved that he could pick trail according to the needs of his human friend. It might save a few precious minutes.

  With Pete carrying the heavier end, it was still a burden. And there was no time to waste. Dick settled into the fastest pace he could hope to keep steadily, and struck out blindly after Johnny, with Pete moving along behind him. He’d put the old man’s legs on his shoulders, and Pete had to support the head even with that height. But apparently the robot was equal to the job.

  It was a nightmare before they had covered a mile. The weight pressed down more with each step, and Pete’s best efforts to keep in step and make the load easy were none too good. He had more intelligence than a mining robot, but he was a pretty sad imitation of a man.

  At the end of an hour, there was no feeling left in Dick. Each step was a matter of picking up a leg and putting it down to a count that he kept as fast as he could, but he had long since stopped thinking of the distance ahead. He had to get old Charlie back, he had to get Charlie back, he had to get back!

  It never entered his head to leave the old man. Either they’d all get through, or he’d drop outside with his burden.

  He was almost unconscious at the end of the second hour, but the legs under him still moved on, following where Johnny led without thought. Then a voice spoke weakly in his phones.

  “You’re a fool, kid—a hot-lead fool. Put me down and go home. And tell ’em old Charlie died happy, just knowing they still grow men in those domes!” It snapped Dick out of his daze, cutting through the pain and the fog until he seemed suddenly to catch a second wind.

  “Stop fighting yourself, Uncle Charlie,” he told the old man. “You’re wasting air. We’ll all make it.” And somehow, they did. Johnny suddenly snapped up and jerked off toward the hotlands, and Dick looked up to see the dome of Sigma only five hundred feet away, with a group of men in spacesuits piling out of the lock. He dropped to his knees and felt himself crumpling down, with the load of Charlie on top of him. But now it felt good to give up.

  When he came to, he was inside the dome, and on his own bed. Across the room, Hotside Charlie lay on the opened sofa from the living room. Dick’s neck muscles lanced with a grabbing pain as he turned his head, but he managed to see that the old man was breathing. And for once, Dick’s sister had no kid smart-aleckness on her face. She cried out as she saw he was conscious, and started for him. From the comer, Pete moved out quickly. “Master Dick rests,” he said flatly.

  Then others were in the room, but Dick’s sight grew fuzzy, and he slipped back into unconsciousness. It didn’t matter. He, Johnny, and Pete had done their job.

  He felt almost normal the next day, and the doctor assured him that the aches and pains that were left from the long trip would disappear after he moved around a little. It wasn’t entirely true, but he felt well enough to go down into the living room, where it seemed that half the population of Sigma had sat up through the night. They wanted all the details. There wasn’t much he could tell them, and he kept it as short as he could, hoping they would leave.

  His father cut through the babble of voices, shaking his head. “Looks like we were wrong about that pet of yours, Dick,” he admitted. “He’s been hanging around, and some of the men were trying to shoot him. I suppose we’ll have to call them off now. We just thought he was following you, before. Sure you’re
not making that up to explain your running off into the hotlands without permission?”

  He accepted Dick’s denial, though most of the others obviously weren’t convinced that Johnny could have meant well.

  “Just crazy pranks. You can’t tell about the spooks,” the chief of the repair gang said, “Besides, I don’t go for that business of a spook controlling a robot. This Pete probably got some signal from Hotside Charlie. They’re both fixed with old-time equipment. Took off after the signal, and the spook just went along, hoping to suck juice out of the robot. What I want to know is how Dick fixed that robot. We can use Pete at the shops and the farms, if he works right.”

  “He fixed him because he’s a natural mechanic, which is more than I can say for some who don’t believe his story,” Dick’s father told the man. “And you won’t use him without Dick’s permission. The boy was told he could have the robot, and that stands! Now all of you get out, and go back to work. We’ve still got trouble to take care of.” There were mutters of agreement, and the worry came back to the faces. They all began to move out, arguing about whether anything could be true about Dick’s story. He watched them leave with a mixed feeling of relief and anger.

  “They don’t believe me, do they?” he asked. His father grinned wryly. “No, they don’t. And if your sister came back with a story like that, you wouldn’t believe her. But I guess you’re right, at that. A couple of us saw you coming back, just as we were leaving the mine, and your Johnny certainly looked as if he were leading you. Look, your mother’s got some food fixed up, if you feel like eating. I’ve got to get back to the mine, but we’ll talk it all over later.”

  He left, and Dick went out to the kitchen, where his mother was fussing over some of his favorite foods. She started in by bawling him out for running off like that, and wound up by running her hands through his hair and telling him how Ellen had been crying all night until he came to.

  He liked it, somehow, though he felt embarrassed. Then he tried to give Pete to her, but she refused.

  “You’re a good boy, Dick. And I’m just as happy knowing you wanted to give him to me. But he’s yours. Land sakes, I wouldn’t know what to do with him. He’s been driving me crazy, staring all the time. He tried to wash the dishes this morning—as if I’d let any piece of metal and electricity fool with my good Earth dishes. No, you keep him.” Dick grinned, and began to feel like himself again. He’d never liked the repairman, who was a recent replacement from Earth for the man who’d done the work until a few years ago, but he decided Pete would be more useful in the tank farms, after all.

  Then he remembered that he himself was going to have to be useful there, and life was back where it had been before. He shoved the food aside, and got up.

  Being a hero for a day was fine, but it still didn’t make up for having to be a tank farmer the rest of his life.

  Charlie was still sleeping, but Dr. Holmes seemed to feel confident that all was going to be right with the old man. “Just sleeping. He’s worn out, and his body is still full of poisons from all that heat and bad air, but he’ll be all right, Dick. How he lived is more than I can see.”

  “Just wouldn’t die,” Dick guessed.

  The doctor nodded. “That’s about it. Medicine has come a long ways since we used to take out adenoids and let people run around sick with colds all the days of their life. But it can’t do anything about some things; it takes a will to live. And these old prospectors have that. Well, I’m going. Let him sleep until he wakes up, and you’ll find him the same as ever.”

  There was nothing for Dick to do except to discuss his trip with the people he met wherever he went. And that grew tiresome after a while. He put on his suit and went outside to look for Johnny, but the wispy had vanished. Apparently the men had scared him off for the time being.

  “Nope,” the watchman told him, in answer to his questions. “Ain’t seen him and don’t want to, unless it’s through the sights of my blaster. Can’t trust them. Freaks, that’s what they are. Get you off guard, then try to come in and ruin the dome. I’m wise to them.”

  Dick should have known better than to expect most of the miners to change their minds about Johnny. Even his father was only half convinced of Johnny’s good intentions. They were all much more interested in the fact that Pete was working again than in anything Johnny could do.

  By evening most of the excitement had died down, and the trouble threatening the dome had replaced Dick’s adventure in everyone’s mind. The miners coming back were glum, unsure of whether they should go on working or not. There had still been no word of the missing rocket.

  Bart Rogers admitted it openly, at supper. “No word,” he said. “I guess we can figure that something happened to it and that we’ll have to wait for the next one. Funny, though. You’d think they’d get worried when it didn’t come back and fly over to see how we’re doing.”

  It had been puzzling Dick, too. He knew that radio reception from the main city in North Twilight, the main shipping center to the domes, was bad enough at best, and probably impossible now. But it didn’t explain everything.

  A voice from the hall caught their attention, and they swung to see old Hotside Charlie standing there. He was still a little shaky, but his eyes were fully alive, and he seemed to be pretty much his old self. He’d obviously had Pete help him down the stairs, but now he shook off the robot and came forward, sinking into the chair Dick’s father pointed out.

  It was impossible to guess his age, though it must have been at least sixty. His hair had been speckled with gray ever since Dick had first seen him, and his grizzled beard hid much of his face. The deep tan and the network of wrinkles were more from Mercury’s hot sun than from age. And his eyes were snapping and alert. Age had made no difference in his body—it was partly slouched normally, but that was habit. And there was neither fat nor traces of gauntness about him.

  His clothes were shiny and old-fashioned, but they were as clean as they could be kept within a tractor. An old plastic jacket seemed to have been as ageless as he was. Under it, he wore a plain gray shirt, and a pair of black trousers of heavy material.

  They had been quiet while he seated himself and began to help himself to the food. Now he chuckled with appreciation. “Best eating this side of heaven, Mizz Rogers. If I’d a been ten years younger, I’d have given that there husband of yours a real tough fight. You betcha!”

  Then his eyes became serious, as he turned to face Bart Rogers.

  “You ain’t going to hear from that rocket ship of yours, Bart. That’s what I was a-coming to tell you. Came whooping along like a fool, didn’t watch what was happening. Old treads, went to pieces in no time after I hit that rock. Cracked open the tank, spilled me out of my seat, and blew out my power pile. Then I had to get smart and try to fix it, instead of coming on afoot! Should have left me to get my dusting-off, Dick. Getting old, no use any more. Started seeing things, even—thought a blamed wispy was hanging around waiting for me to die/’

  “Probably there was one there, according to what Dick saw,” Rogers said. He knew that the old man would tell his story in his own way, but this time he cut back to the original subject. ‘‘You were coming to tell us about the rocket, Charlie?”

  “Yeah. Sure was. High-tailing it along, fool enough to think the tractor could take that much speed. Your rocket ship cracked up better’n a hundred miles from here, Bart. I saw it come down— dunno why, but I guess they had a young pilot who forgot to roll her over when the top got too hot.”

  He munched thoughtfully on some yeast and soya “steak,” and shook his head before going on.

  He’d gone at once to where the ship landed, but he’d been too late. The rocket had cracked up completely, and the atomic pile that should have powered the radio hadn’t been working. Charlie had tried to get a signal out, but he didn’t have power enough for the set in the rocket.

  The supplies had all been ruined, since the ship had landed on its cargo holds, and they lay scattered
over the surface, already burned beyond usefulness in the heat of the sun.

  The pilot had been killed, of course. Charlie had done his best to give the proper burial, according to prospector custom—which meant finding a cavern big enough to hold the body and saying a few quick words over it. Then he’d gone back to search the ship and see if it belonged to Sigma dome, where his friends might need word of it.

  “Found a piece of paper, too,” he finished. “Orders. Figured it was important to you folks, so I came highballing along, trying to get it to you afore all the radio died in the storm that’s coming up. Here.”

  He passed the charred, crumpled paper across, and Bart read it. He handed it to his wife, and then gave it to Dick.

  Some of the words were missing, but there was enough to give the story. The rocket wasn’t supposed to bring them more than a minimum of supplies, after all. It had been sent to take them to East Twilight, where they were to hole up with the men from other domes. The solar storm due was expected to be the worst in all the history of the domes, and none of the little cities in the hotlands would be able to stand it.

  The men of Sigma dome would have to abandon it and get back to East Twilight at once. But without the rocket, there was no way to reach the larger settlement. It had been two days since the ship should have reached East Twilight, and no second ship had come for them, so there wasn’t much chance of another rocket being sent.

  Something had gone wrong, it seemed. And now they were abandoned, without supplies, to face the storm by themselves.

  Chapter 4 No Answer from Twilight

  It had been a busy night. The Council of Sigma had been called hastily, and had heard the story again from Charlie, this time surprisingly simple and direct in manner. Then the council of war had begun. There was little enough the miners could do, of course. But each had hoped that somehow somebody else would come up with an answer.