A stab of mingled hope and wary suspicion transfixed Gray's heart.
Ward's dark face grinned briefly into his, with a flash of secretive
black eyes, and Gray was conscious of distrust.
"What do you mean, help me?"
Dio was working closer, watching them. The first growl of thunder
rattled against the cliff faces. It was dark now, the pink flames of the
Dark-side aurora visible beyond the valley mouth.
"I've got--connections," returned Ward cryptically. "Interested?"
Gray hesitated. There was too much he couldn't understand. Moreover, he
was a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenched
him from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eight
years before and hammered him into hardness--a cynic who trusted nobody
and nothing but Mel 'Duke' Gray.
"If you have connections," he said slowly, "why don't you use 'em
yourself?"
"I got my reasons." Again that secretive grin. "But it's no hide off
you, is it? All you want is to get away."
That was true. It would do no harm to hear what Ward had to say.
Lightning burst overhead, streaking down to be caught and grounded by
the copper cables. The livid flare showed Dio's face, hard with worry
and determination. Gray nodded.
"Tonight, then," whispered Ward. "In the barracks."
* * * * *
Out from the cleft where Mel Gray worked, across the flat plain of rock
stripped naked by the wind that raved across it, lay the deep valley
that sheltered the heart of the Moulton Project.
Hot springs joined to form a steaming river. Vegetation grew savagely
under the huge sun. The air, kept at almost constant temperature by the
blanketing effect of the hot springs, was stagnant and heavy.
But up above, high over the copper cables that crossed every valley
where men ventured, the eternal wind of Mercury screamed and snarled
between the naked cliffs.
Three concrete domes crouched on the valley floor, housing barracks,
tool-shops, kitchens, store-houses, and executive quarters, connected by
underground passages. Beside the smallest dome, joined to it by a
heavily barred tunnel, was an insulated hangar, containing the only
space ship on Mercury.
In the small dome, John Moulton leaned back from a pile of reports, took
a pinch of Martian snuff, sneezed lustily, and said.
"Jill, I think we've done it."
The grey-eyed, black-haired young woman turned from the quartzite window
through which she had been watching the gathering storm overhead. The
thunder from other valleys reached them as a dim barrage which, at this
time of Mercury's year, was never still.
"I don't know," she said. "It seems that nothing can happen now, and
yet.... It's been too easy."
"Easy!" snorted Moulton. "We've broken our backs fighting these valleys.
And our nerves, fighting time. But we've licked 'em!"
He rose, shaggy grey hair tousled, grey eyes alight.
"I told the IPA those men weren't criminals. And I was right. They can't
deny me the charter now. No matter how much Caron of Mars would like to
get his claws on this radium."
He took Jill by the shoulders and shook her, laughing.
"Three weeks, girl, that's all. First crops ready for harvest, first
pay-ore coming out of the mines. In three weeks my permanent charter
will have to be granted, according to agreement, and then....
"Jill," he added solemnly, "we're seeing the birth of a world."
"That's what frightens me." Jill glanced upward as the first flare of
lightning struck down, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the
dome.
"So much can happen at a birth. I wish the three weeks were over!"
"Nonsense, girl! What could possibly happen?"
She looked at the copper cables, burning with the electricity running
along them, and thought of the one hundred and twenty-two souls in that
narrow Twilight Belt--with the fierce heat of the Sunside before them
and the spatial cold of the Shadow side at their backs, fighting against
wind and storm and heat to build a world to replace the ones the War had
taken from them.
"So much could happen," she whispered. "An accident, an escape...."
The inter-dome telescreen buzzed its signal. Jill, caught in a queer
mood of premonition, went to it.
The face of Dio the Martian appeared on the screen, still wet and dirty
from the storm-soaked fields, disheveled from his battle across the
plain in the chaotic winds.
"I want to see you, Miss Moulton," he said. "There's something funny I
think you ought to know."
"Of course," said Jill, and met her father's eyes. "I think we'll see,
now, which one of us is right."
* * * * *
The barracks were quiet, except for the mutter of distant thunder and
the heavy breathing of exhausted men. Tom Ward crouched in the darkness
by Mel Gray's bunk.
"You ain't gonna go soft at the last minute, are you?" he whispered.
"Because I can't afford to take chances."
"Don't worry," Gray returned grimly. "What's your proposition?"
"I can give you the combination to the lock of the hangar passage. All
you have to do is get into Moulton's office, where the passage door is,
and go to it. The ship's a two-seater. You can get her out of the valley
easy."