He smiled harshly. "I haven't yet reached the stage where I kill women.
You'll be safe here--the men will find you in the morning. I'm going
back, alone."
"Safe!" she said bitterly. "For what? No matter what happens, the
Project is ruined."
"Don't worry," he told her brutally. "You'll find some other way to make
a living."
Her eyes blazed. "You think that's all its means to us? Just money and
power?" She whispered, "I hope they kill you, Duke Gray!"
* * * * *
He rose lazily and opened the air lock, then turned and freed her. And,
sharply, the valley was bathed in a burst of light.
"Damn!" Gray picked up the sound of air motors overhead. "They must have
had infra-red search beams. Well, that does it. We'll have to run for
it, since this bus isn't armed."
With eerie irrelevancy, the teleradio buzzed. At this time of night,
after the evening storms, some communication was possible.
Gray had a hunch. He opened the switch, and the face of John Moulton
appeared on the screen. It was white and oddly still.
"Our guards saw your ship cross the plain," said Moulton quietly. "The
men of the Project, led by Dio, are coming for you. I sent them, because
I have decided that the life of my daughter is less important than the
lives of many thousands of people.
"I appeal to you, Gray, to let her go. Her life won't save you. And it's
very precious to me."
Caron's ship swept over, low above the cables, and the grinding
concussion of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled it down with the stern end
twisted to uselessness. The screen went dead.
Gray caught the half stunned girl. "I wish to heaven I could get rid of
you!" he grated. "And I don't know why I don't!"
But she was with him when he set out down the valley, making for the
cliff caves, up where the copper cables were anchored.
Caron's ship, a fast, small fighter, wheeled between the cliffs and
turned back. Gray dropped flat, holding the girl down. Bombs pelted them
with dirt and uprooted vegetables, started fires in the wheat. The pilot
found a big enough break in the cables and came in for a landing.
Gray was up and running again. He knew the way into the explored
galleries. From there on, it was anybody's guess.
Caron was brazen enough about it. The subtle way had failed. Now he was
going all out. And he was really quite safe. With the broken cables to
act as conductors, the first thunderstorm would obliterate all proof of
his activities in this valley. Mercury, because of its high electrical
potential, was cut off from communication with other worlds. Moulton,
even if he had knowledge of what went on, could not send for help.
Gray wondered briefly what Caron intended to do in case he, Gray, made
good his escape. That outpost in the main valley, for which Ward had
been heading, wasn't kept for fun. Besides, Caron was too smart to have
only one string to his bow.
Shouts, the spatter of shots around them. The narrow trail loomed above.
Gray sent the girl scrambling up.
The sun burst up over the high peaks, leaving the black shadow of the
valley still untouched. Caron's ship roared off. But six of its crew
came after Gray and Jill Moulton.
* * * * *
The chill dark of the tunnel mouth swallowed them. Keeping right to
avoid the great copper posts that held the cables, strung through holes
drilled in the solid rock of the gallery's outer wall, Gray urged the
girl along.
The cleft his hand was searching for opened. Drawing the girl inside,
around a jutting shoulder, he stopped, listening.
Footsteps echoed outside, grew louder, swept by. There was no light. But
the steps were too sure to have been made in the dark.
"Infra-red torches and goggles," Gray said tersely, "You see, but your
quarry doesn't. Useful gadget. Come on."
"But where? What are you going to do?"
"Escape, girl. Remember? They smashed my ship. But there must be another
one on Mercury. I'm going to find it."
"I don't understand."
"You probably never will. Here's where I leave you. That Martian Galahad
will be along any minute. He'll take you home."
Her voice came soft and puzzled through the dark.
"I don't understand you, Gray. You wouldn't risk my life. Yet you're
turning me loose, knowing that I might save you, knowing that I'll hunt
you down if I can. I thought you were a hardened cynic."
"What makes you think I'm not?"
"If you were, you'd have kicked me out the waste tubs of the ship and
gone on. You'd never have turned back."
"I told you," he said roughly, "I don't kill women." He turned away, but
her harsh chuckle followed him.
"You're a fool, Gray. You've lost truth--and you aren't even true to
your lie."
He paused, in swift anger. Voices the sound of running men, came up from
the path. He broke into a silent run, following the dying echoes of
Caron's men.
"Run, Gray!" cried Jill. "Because we're coming after you!"
The tunnels, ancient blowholes for the volcanic gases that had tortured
Mercury with the raising of the titanic mountains, sprawled in a
labyrinthine network through those same vast peaks. Only the galleries
lying next the valleys had been explored. Man's habitation on Mercury
had been too short.
Gray could hear Caron's men circling about through connecting tunnels,
searching. It proved what he had already guessed. He was taking a
desperate chance. But the way back was closed--and he was used to taking
chances.
The geography of the district was clear in his mind--the valley he had
just left and the main valley, forming an obtuse angle with the apex out
on the wind-torn plain and a double range of mountains lying out between
the sides of the triangle.
Somewhere there was a passage through those peaks. Somewhere there was a
landing place, and ten to one there was a ship on it. Caron would never
have left his men stranded, on the off chance that they might be
discovered and used in evidence against him.
The men now hunting him knew their way through the tunnels, probably
with the aid of markings that fluoresced under infra-red light. They
were going to take him through, too.
They were coming closer. He waited far up in the main gallery, in the
mouth of a side tunnel. Now, behind them, he could hear Dio's men. The
noise of Caron's outfit stopped, then began again, softly.
Gray smiled, his sense of humor pleased. He tensed, waiting.
* * * * *
The rustle of cloth, the furtive creak of leather, the clink of metal
equipment. Heavy breathing. Somebody whispered,
"Who the hell's that back there?"
"Must be men from the Project. We'd better hurry."
"We've got to find that damned Gray first," snapped the first voice
grimly. "Caron'll burn us if we don't."
Gray counted six separate footsteps, trying to allow for the echoes.
When he was sure the last man was by, he stepped out. The noise of Dio's
hunt was growing--there must be a good many of them.
Covered by their own echoes, he stole up on the men ahead. His groping
hand brushed gently against the clothing of the last man in the group.
Gauging his distance swiftly, he went into action.
One hand fastened over the fellow's mouth. The other, holding a
good-sized rock, struck down behind the ear. Gray eased the body down
with scarcely a sound.
Their uniforms, he had noticed, were not too different from his prison
garb. In a second he had stripped goggles, cap, and gun-belt from the
body, and was striding after the others.
They moved like five eerie shadows now, in the queer light of the
leader's lamp. Small fluorescent markings guided them. The last man
grunted over his shoulder,
"What happened to you?"
"Stumbled," whispered Gray tersely, keeping his head down. A whisper is
a good disguise for the voice. The other nodded.
"Don't straggle. No fun, getting lost in here."
The leader broke in. "We'll circle again. Be careful of that Project
bunch--they'll be using ordinary light. And be quiet!"
They went, through connecting passages. The noise of Dio's party grew
ominously loud. Abruptly, the leader swore.
"Caron or no Caron, he's gone. And we'd better go, too."
He turned off, down a different tunnel, and Gray heaved a sigh of
relief, remembering the body he'd left in the open. For a time the noise
of their pursuers grew remote. And then, suddenly, there was an echoing
clamor of footsteps, and the glare of torches on the wall of a
cross-passage ahead.
Voices came to Gray, distorted by the rock vaults.
"I'm sure I heard them, just then." It was Jill's voice.
"Yeah." That was Dio. "The trouble is, where?"
The footsteps halted. Then, "Let's try this passage. We don't want to
get too far into this maze."
Caron's leader blasphemed softly and dodged into a side tunnel. The man
next to Gray stumbled and cried out with pain as he struck the wall, and
a shout rose behind them.
The leader broke into a run, twisting, turning, diving into the maze of
smaller tunnels. The sounds of pursuit faded, were lost in the tomblike
silence of the caves. One of the men laughed.
"We sure lost 'em!"
"Yeah," said the leader. "We lost 'em, all right." Gray caught the note
of panic in his voice. "We lost the markers, too."
"You mean...?"
"Yeah. Turning off like that did it. Unless we can find that marked
tunnel, we're sunk!"
Gray, silent in the shadows, laughed a bitter, ironic laugh.
* * * * *
They went on, stumbling down endless black halls, losing all track of
branching corridors, straining to catch the first glint of saving light.
Once or twice they caught the echoes of Dio's party, and knew that they,
too, were lost and wandering.
Then, quite suddenly, they came out into a vast gallery, running like a
subway tube straight to left and right. A wind tore down it, hot as a
draught from the burning gates of Hell.
It was a moment before anyone grasped the significance of that wind.
Then someone shouted,
"We're saved! All we have to do is walk against it!"
They turned left, almost running in the teeth of that searing blast. And
Gray began to notice a peculiar thing.
The air was charged with electricity. His clothing stiffened and
crackled. His hair crawled on his head. He could see the faint
discharges of sparks from his companions.
Whether it was the effect of the charged air, or the reaction from the
nervous strain of the past hours, Mel Gray began to be afraid.
Weary to exhaustion, they struggled on against the burning wind. And
then they blundered out into a cave, huge as a cathedral, lighted by a
queer, uncertain bluish light.
Gray caught the sharp smell of ozone. His whole body was tingling with
electric tension. The bluish light seemed to be in indeterminate lumps
scattered over the rocky floor. The rush of the wind under that
tremendous vault was terrifying.
They stopped, Gray keeping to the background. Now was the time to evade
his unconscious helpers. The moment they reached daylight, he'd be
discovered.
Soft-footed as a cat, he was already hidden among the heavy shadows of
the fluted walls when, he heard the voices.
They came from off to the right, a confused shout of men under fearful
strain, growing louder and louder, underscored with the tramp of
footsteps. Lights blazed suddenly in the cathedral dark, and from the
mouth of a great tunnel some hundred yards away, the men of the Project
poured into the cave.
And then, sharp and high and unexpected, a man screamed.
* * * * *
The lumps of blue light were moving. And a man had died. He lay on the
rock, his flesh blackened jelly, with a rope of glowing light running
from the metal of his gun butt to the metal buttons on his cap.
All across the vast floor of that cavern the slow, eerie ripple of
motion grew. The scattered lumps melted and flowed together, converging
in wavelets of blue flame upon the men.
The answer came to Gray. Those things were some form of energy-life,
born of the tremendous electric tensions on Mercury. Like all
electricity, they were attracted to metal.
In a sudden frenzy of motion, he ripped off his metal-framed goggles,
his cap and gun-belt. The Moultons forbade metal because of the danger
of lightning, and his boots were made of rubber, so he felt reasonably
safe, but a tense fear ran in prickling waves across his skin.
Guns began to bark, their feeble thunder all but drowned in the vast
rush of the wind. Bullets struck the oncoming waves of light with no
more effect than the eruption of a shower of sparks. Gray's attention,
somehow, was riveted on Jill, standing with Dio at the head of her men.
She wore ordinary light slippers, having been dressed only for indoors.
And there were silver ornaments at waist and throat.
He might have escaped, then, quite unnoticed. Instead, for a reason even
he couldn't understand, he ran for Jill Moulton.
The first ripples of blue fire touched the ranks of Dio's men. Bolts of
it leaped upward to fasten upon gun-butts and the buckles of the
cartridge belts. Men screamed, fell, and died.
An arm of the fire licked out, driving in behind Dio and the girl. The
guns of Caron's four remaining men were silent, now.
Gray leaped over that hissing electric surf, running toward Jill. A
hungry worm of light reared up, searching for Dio's gun. Gray's hand
swept it down, to be instantly buried in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's
hatchet face snarled at him in startled anger.
Jill cried out as Gray tore the silver ornaments from her dress. "Throw
down the guns!" he yelled. "It's metal they want!"
He heard his name shouted by men torn momentarily from their own terror.
Dio cried, "Shoot him!" A few bullets whined past, but their immediate
fear spoiled both aim and attention.
Gray caught up Jill and began to run, toward the tube from which the
wind howled in the cave. Behind him, grimly, Dio followed.
The electric beasts didn't notice him. His insulated feet trampled
through them, buried to the ankle in living flame, feeling queer tenuous
bodies break and reform.
The wind met them like a physical barrier at the tunnel mouth. Gray put
Jill down. The wind strangled him. He tore off his coat and wrapped it
over the girl's head, using his shirt over his own. Jill, her black
curls whipped straight, tried to fight back past him, and he saw Dio
coming, bent double against the wind.
He saw something else. Something that made him grab Jill and point, his
flesh crawling with swift, cold dread.
* * * * *
The electric beasts had finished their pleasure. The dead were cinders
on the rock. The living had run back into the tunnels. And now the blue
sea of fire was flowing again, straight toward the place where they
stood.
It was flowing fast, and Gray sensed an urgency, an impersonal haste, as
though a command had been laid upon those living ropes of flame.
The first dim rumble of thunder rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill,
Gray turned up the tunnel.
The wind, compressed in that narrow throat of rock, beat them blind and
breathless, beat them to their bellies, to crawl. How long it took them,
they never knew.
But Gray caught glimpses of Dio the Martian crawling behind them, and
behind him again, the relentless flow of the fire-things.
They floundered out onto a rocky slope, fell away beneath the suck of
the wind, and lay still, gasping. It was hot. Thunder crashed abruptly,
and lightning flared between the cliffs.
Gray felt a contracting of the heart. There were no cables.
Then he saw it--the small, fast fighter flying below them on a flat
plateau. A cave mouth beside it had been closed with a plastic door. The
ship was the one that had followed them. He guessed at another one
behind the protecting door.
Raking the tumbled blond hair out of his eyes, Gray got up.
Jill was still sitting, her black curls bowed between her hands. There
wasn't much time, but Gray yielded to impulse. Pulling her head back by
the silken hair, he kissed her.
"If you ever get tired of virtue, sweetheart, look me up." But somehow
he wasn't grinning, and he ran down the slope.
He was almost to the open lock of the ship when things began to happen.
Dio staggered out of the wind-tunnel and sagged down beside Jill. Then,
abruptly, the big door opened.
Five men came out--one in pilot's costume, two in nondescript apparel,
one in expensive business clothes, and the fifth in dark prison garb.
Gray recognized the last two. Caron of Mars and the errant Ward.
They were evidently on the verge of leaving. But they looked cheerful.
Caron's sickly-sweet face all but oozed honey, and Ward was grinning his
rat's grin.
Thunder banged and rolled among the rocks. Lightning flared in the
cloudy murk. Gray saw the hull of a second ship beyond the door. Then
the newcomers had seen him, and the two on the slope.
Guns ripped out of holsters. Gray's heart began to pound slowly. He, and
Jill and Dio, were caught on that naked slope, with the flood of
electric death at their backs.
His Indianesque face hardened. Bullets whined round him as he turned
back up the slope, but he ran doubled over, putting all his hope in the
tricky, uncertain light.
Jill and the Martian crouched stiffly, not knowing where to turn. A
flare of lightning showed Gray the first of the firethings, flowing out
onto the ledge, hidden from the men below.
"Back into the cave!" he yelled. His urgent hand fairly lifted Dio. The
Martian glared at him, then obeyed. Bullets snarled against the rock.
The light was too bad for accurate shooting, but luck couldn't stay with
them forever.
Gray glanced over his shoulder as they scrambled up on the ledge. Caron
waited by his ship. Ward and the others were charging the slope. Gray's
teeth gleamed in a cruel grin.
Sweeping Jill into his arms, he stepped into the lapping flow of fire.
Dio swore viciously, but he followed. They started toward the cave
mouth, staggering in the rush of the wind.
"For God's sake, don't fall," snapped Gray. "Here they come!"
The pilot and one of the nondescript men were the first over. They were
into the river of fire before they knew, it, and then it was too late.
One collapsed and was buried. The pilot fell backward, and then other
man died under his body, of a broken neck.
Ward stopped. Gray could see his face, dark and hard and calculating. He
studied Gray and Dio, and the dead men. He turned and looked back at
Caron. Then, deliberately, he stripped off his gun belt, threw down his
gun, and waded into the river.
Gray remembered, then, that Ward too wore rubber boots, and had no metal
on him.
* * * * *
Ward came on, the glowing ropes sliding surf-like around his boots. Very
carefully. Gray handed Jill to Dio.
"If I die too," he said, "there's only Caron down there. He's too fat to
stop you."
Jill spoke, but he turned his back. He was suddenly confused, and it was
almost pleasant to be able to lose his confusion in fighting. Ward had
stopped some five feet away. Now he untied the length of tough cord that
served him for a belt.
Gray nodded. Ward would try to throw a twist around his ankle and trip
him. Once his body touched those swarming creatures....
He tensed, watchfully. The rat's grin was set on Ward's dark face. The
cord licked out.
But it caught Gray's throat instead of his ankle!
Ward laughed and braced himself. Cursing, Gray caught at the rope. But
friction held it, and Ward pulled, hard. His face purpling, Gray could
still commend Ward's strategy. In taking Gray off guard, he'd more than
made up what he lost in point of leverage.
Letting his body go with the pull, Gray flung himself at Ward. Blood
blinded him, his heart was pounding, but he thought he foresaw Ward's
next move. He let himself be pulled almost within striking distance.
Then, as Ward stepped, aside, jerking the rope and thrusting out a
tripping foot, Gray made a catlike shift of balance and bent over.
His hands almost touched that weird, flowing surf as they clasped Ward's
boot. Throwing all his strength into the lift, he hurled Ward backward.
Ward screamed once and disappeared under the blue fire. Gray clawed the
rope from his neck. And then, suddenly, the world began to sway under
him. He knew he was falling.
Some one's hand caught him, held him up. Fighting down his vertigo as
his breath came back, he saw that it was Jill.
"Why?" he gasped, but her answer was lost in a titanic roar of thunder.
Lightning blasted down. Dio's voice reached him, thin and distant
through the clamor.
"We'll be killed! These damn things will attract the bolts!"
It was true. All his work had been for nothing. Looking up into that
low, angry sky, Gray knew he was going to die.
Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in the tunnel came back to him. "You're
a fool ... lost truth ... not true to lie!"
Now, in this moment, she couldn't lie to him. He caught her shoulders
cruelly, trying to read her eyes.
Very faintly through the uproar, he heard her. "I'm sorry for you, Gray.
Good man, gone to waste."
Dio stifled a scream. Thunder crashed between the sounding boards of the
cliffs. Gray looked up.
A titanic bolt of lightning shot down, straight for them. The burning
blue surf was agitated, sending up pseudopods uncannily like worshipping
arms. The bolt struck.
The air reeked of ozone, but Gray felt no shock. There was a hiss, a
vast stirring of creatures around him. The blue light glowed, purpled.
Another bolt struck down, and another, and still they were not dead. The
fire-things had become a writhing, joyous tangle of tenuous bodies,
glowing bright and brighter.
Stunned, incredulous, the three humans stood. The light was now an
eye-searing violet. Static electricity tingled through them in eerie
waves. But they were not burned.
"My God," whispered Gray. "They eat it. They eat lightning!"
Not daring to move, they stood watching that miracle of alien life, the
feeding of living things on raw current. And when the last bolt had
struck, the tide turned and rolled back down the wind-tunnel, a blinding
river of living light.
Silently, the three humans went down the rocky slope to where Caron of
Mars cowered in the silver ship. No bolt had come near it. And now Caron
came to meet them.
His face was pasty with fear, but the old cunning still lurked in his
eyes.
"Gray," he said. "I have an offer to make."
"Well?"
"You killed my pilot," said Caron suavely. "I can't fly, myself. Take me
off, and I'll pay you anything you want."
"In bullets," retorted Gray. "You won't want witnesses to this."
"Circumstances force me. Physically, you have the advantage."