Part 1

GIVE BACK A WORLD

By RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

_What did Fane know about Mercury that he never told? For instance, a push-button war, fifty million years old, that had been put into cold storage ... dead storage ... but maybe not quite dead?_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Red signal lights winked on, on the white walls that surrounded the tiers of bunks there in the belly of the _Sun Child_. Tension sharpened. Crap and card games broke up. Last-minute checking of gear and weapons was dropped, as five hundred men of the Survey Service climbed into their bunks for the deceleration.

This would be only the second time that Terrans, surging out to colonize the planets, had reached Mercury, the Paradox World.

As he pocketed the cards, there was only a brief flicker in Fane's pale eyes, suggesting to Rick Mills that he was a bad loser at poker. But the savage glint was masked at once.

Fane's low, broad forehead crinkled. "You lucky stiff, Mills," he said with a shrug and a grin. "Well, I don't need to win money now."

Rick knew Frank Fane some after three months of journeying from Earth cooped up in a space transport with him. He seemed a fairly good Joe, some ways. He never lent or borrowed anything. That was sound policy. Or independence carried to a fault. Besides, Rick had an idea that Fane's thin face was a flexible mask, too inclined to act out the surface he wished to show, instead of revealing his honest emotions. And his sly hints, which never told very much about Mercury, seemed Satanically designed to provoke dread in less experienced listeners.

Here came Fane's great distinction. He was the sole survivor of the Martell Expedition, the one man alive who had been on the most sunward world. Six months he'd spent there. That made him an object of awe in younger eyes. It also inspired insidious doubts about him.

And the one thing that set Rick Mills a little apart from other hard young experts that had recently graduated from the Survey Service School on Mars, and who now formed most of the five hundred aboard the _Sun Child_, was that he had almost made friends with Fane. Curiosity, and warmth toward people had prompted the effort. And wariness before suspicion.

From his bunk across from Rick's, Fane now spoke:

"Well, here we go. Just a few more minutes. The end of book learning, eh, you guys? The beginning of experience. I wonder if all of us will still be alive inside of twenty-four hours?"

Maybe it wasn't malicious humor. Maybe it was just the brutal kind of joshing that helps to make men.

"Shut up, Fane," Rick joshed back in the tough manner that Fane seemed to like in him. "Keep on your toes yourself or you might be the first to die."

Fane chuckled. "Always the smart boy, eh, Mills? Better keep it up. Because Mercury's a crazy place. It's the planet closest to the sun. But it forgot to turn on its axis ages ago. So the dark side is colder than Pluto must be. But on the solar side your space-boots can slosh into wetness that you might believe is water. Umhm-m. Only it turns out to be a puddle of molten lead.

"Hell, you guys have always known stuff like that. So why repeat myself? When there are interesting circumstances? A push-button war fifty million years old that got put into cold storage, for instance. Dead storage. But maybe not quite dead. I wouldn't know, for sure. How about getting mixed up with that?"

Some strange jubilance seemed to possess Fane.

The retard-jets of the _Sun Child_ thundered to check vast speed. Conversation died as, from the zero of free-fall, weight rose to five gravities, pushing the corners of men's mouths back toward their ears.

Still, in spite of the strains in his own stocky, muscular body, Rick Mills kept an eye cocked at the long, sinewy shape that was Fane, prone on taut canvas across the aisle. Fane's grimace remained reckless.

With the mystery of Mercury at hand, Rick was like his companions. He thought some of home. Minnesota. His folks. Anne Munson. Anne who was on Mars, at the Survey Service School. They could use girls for certain less rugged jobs, Rick thought of her picture in his pocket. Honeydew hair. Cool, pleasant eyes. And under her smile her scribbled, half-kidding challenge:

"_Find us a world, Rick!_"

Well, it would never be hellish Mercury. No place for a girl.

* * * * *

Rick also thought that he would have liked to like Fane if he could. Now didn't seem the right time. His veiled bragging and shows of insolence had begun to exceed the limit, even for rough men. And there were too many questions in Rick's mind now. Was Fane struggling to keep some inner elation from showing too much? What did he want from life? Wealth, maybe? Did he have a Mercurian secret that led toward what he wished to accomplish?

Rick's cold feeling found its chief source in the Martell Expedition to Mercury of a year ago. Just Martell, Jacobs, and Fane--the pilot and mechanic--in a small, long-range rocket ship.

On his return, Fane of course couldn't be evasive in his written report to the Interplanetary Colonial Board. It had been published. Rick could remember parts of it almost word for word:

"... We had gone a hundred miles into the dark hemisphere with the tractor. Martell wandered off alone. Jacobs and I found him with a hole in the back of his oxygen helmet. Falling backward onto a sharp rock could have done it. The hole let the air out of his space suit, and the cold in....

"Jacobs ended up just about the same, two Earth weeks later. Except that it was on the hot, sunward hemisphere...."

Once again Rick thought that it was a little queer that two resourceful men should fall victims to the same accident even if roasting and freezing looked like the classic ways to die on Mercury.

Rick longed primitively just then to drive his fists into Fane's narrow jaw. Was he a liar and a murderer? If so, what was his motive?

But then Rick was almost ashamed. The Colonial Board seemed to have accepted the report. And that Fane had brought the bodies of his companions, preserved by Mercurian conditions, back to Earth, was a minor hero's deed, wasn't it?

Other of Fane's written comments came back in Rick's mind:

"There is far more frozen air and water on Mercury's dark side than there should be....

"Several times I may have imagined glimpsing movement. Once I thought I saw something small scurry into hiding under some ancient wreckage. I tried to dig it out. I don't know what it was....

"There are ruins and much ancient junk on Mercury. Martian stuff. And from Planet X. As could be expected.... Left alone while I waited for favorable relative orbital positions for a return to Earth, my investigations of things on Mercury were somewhat limited, however...."

Such were Fane's sketchy notes, supplemented by a few blurred photographs that had been salvaged from much film that had been obviously ruined by a small radiation leak from his rocket's A-jets. But as for the wreckage he had written of, everyone knew that Earth wasn't the first world to colonize other planets. Remembering, Rick Mills felt mingled fascination and dread.

Fifty million years ago Mars and Planet X had been rivals. On Earth, the evidence of their final war must have been trampled under foot by the last of the dinosaurs, buried by volcanoes and rusted away by the damp climate. About the same had happened on Venus.

But on Earth's moon there still were gigantic bomb craters. And a few bright new weapons and engines of war, preserved perfectly by the vacuum. And two kinds of grotesque, dried-out corpses. In Mars' thin air and dryness, there still had been much weathering. But the fused-down, glassy remains of its cities, still slightly radioactive, lingered to show how the Martians had been wiped out.

The end of Planet X had been even more spectacular. Some colossal projectile must have drilled to its center to blow it apart, and form the thousands of fragments that were the asteroids. Drifting among them were the shattered cornices and columns of buildings, broken and cindered instruments and machines, art works, whatnot. So, two splendid technologies had perished with their creators.

Till on Earth science had risen again to challenge the primitive solar system. There were rich metals to be dug, new cities to be built for growing populations, adventures to be had, and knowledge to be gained and regained.

Mercury, too, had certainly been mixed up with that violent past. And now it hovered, a disturbing enigma, in both the immediate and the farther future. In only moments, now, that past would blend with the present. His--Rick Mills' present. Fane would be in it, too. With the brassy taste of worry before the nameless in his mouth, Rick realized how easy it might be to be unjustly suspicious. So he tried to fight off his tension, which most of his companions must share in some degree. He tried to substitute an adventurous eagerness.

Amid gusts of fire from its underjets the _Sun Child_ thudded down at the old Martell campsite in Mercury's Twilight Belt which rings the planet between its hot and cold hemispheres. Here there is day and night of a sort. For Mercury, wobbling a little in its eccentric orbit, does not always keep exactly the same face turned sunward. In the Twilight Belt the sun sometimes rises slightly above the horizon, and then sinks back. Here there is no terrible heat or cold.

Everything was done now with swift precision. Like establishing a beachhead in some Earth-conflict of years ago. These five hundred men of the Survey Service, though civilians, functioned like a small army. They were the vanguard of research workers that must spearhead the occupation of yet another world. Bookish and academic they might seem, but they were trained for great ruggedness, too.

Working in space suits, they strung a security perimeter of electrified barbed wire around the ship. Breastworks were built and weapons were mounted against the unknown. Air tight tents to house testing instruments were set up and inflated. Everyone--Rick Mills, Lattimer, Turino, Finden, Schmidt, Horton, and the hundreds of others--toiled hard.

* * * * *

Then there was time to really look around. The dry rusty plain bore patches of low vegetation, with crinkly, silver-gray whorls. Lichen, it looked like. A sad remnant of life. In the all but airless sky stars blazed, even though a white-hot silver of the sun peeped above the brooding horizon, beyond which, for all one knew, great metal shapes might hide, waiting, preparing an ambush.

Nostrand, the leader of this expedition, held an aneroid barometer in his gloved hand. He was gray as iron, square-built of face and body, with widely separated teeth. He grinned, now, and spoke through his helmet radiophone:

"Funny. There's a wisp of air left. Small as it is, and with a gravity only one-fourth that of Earth, Mercury shouldn't have been able to hold down much of an atmosphere for more than a few thousand years. It should be as dead as our moon by now. A minor riddle, eh?"

Nostrand's tones fell, almost unnoticed, into a hollow stillness. Fane was standing near. He said nothing, but Rick Mills saw him grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Eyes continued to grope all around--at newness to them which was eons old. In the near distance was what seemed a highway. It ran east and west. One end vanished among the gloomy hills, at the fringe of the frigid hemisphere of eternal night. The other end reached straight across the plain toward where the top edge of the sun blazed supernally. In that direction the Twilight Belt turned gradually into unequalled desert.

Sunward along that highway, several ruined domes were visible, like scattered castles. They looked ancient Martian. Beyond them, out of sight, there must be others--buildings never made to offer shelter from the continuous, blazing radiation to which they were now exposed.

Also in sight on the highway was the wreck of a great turtle-like war engine, its triangular prow marking it as a probable product of Planet X. Doubtless, too, it had been an automatic, unmanned thing, capable of seeking out enemies by radar, and attacking, on its own, even without remote control. But if there was fear among those who saw it that the energy in it would be reawakened by their presence, this was dispelled as far as it was concerned. It lay on its side, torn out of shape, knocked out on the road those ages ago.

"Jeez!" some young guy muttered.

Then Nostrand spoke again, expressing most everyone's mood:

"Mercury was different when it rotated on its axis. Torrid, yes. But solar heat was nowhere continuous. Nor was darkness and cold. There were nights to cool off the heat of day. But the tidal drag of the too-near sun slowed the rotation. It must have stopped rather suddenly, as a wheel spinning against considerable friction stops. Then everything on Mercury changed, became extreme. It must have happened just about when the Martians and Xians were fighting each other. Maybe both sides held part of the planet at first...."

Nostrand's tone was musing and remote, hinting at pictures of ancient history. In his mind Rick Mills saw those dim pictures. His hide tingled. And his eyes combed the surrounding hills and plain warily. Was he looking for strange movement? This thought was tied up with the knowledge that, as on the moon, automatic machines could be perfectly preserved for millions of years here on weatherless Mercury, and that in some of them power might still be triggered into action by the disturbance of something penetrating a radio aura around them.

Rick spent some minutes with this scrutiny. By mood, nothing but a little dust and scant air molecules ever should stir on this tomblike planet. Once he may have imagined something small crawling on a hillside. But the second time, in a boulder-strewn gulch toward the dark hemisphere, and only a quarter-mile away, he could not be mistaken. A shape, hunched under a heavily loaded rucksack, was hurrying and dodging away. A man in space armor!

Rick gasped. He glanced around and then cursed. At once he had thought of Fane. Fane had been present moments ago. Now he was gone. Somehow Rick wished mightily that he had not lost sight of him for an instant.

"There goes Fane!" Rick yelled, pointing.

But while others took up the cry, Rick spied a piece of white notepaper at his feet. He picked it up and read:

"I'll drop this where you'll find it, Mills. So long. Thanks for the interest in me. It's flattering. I feel something is going to happen. I'm a lone wolf, unused to schoolbook greenhorns. I'm playing it single, and taking French leave. It's safer. I know you're supposed to go with a bunch into the dark hemisphere. Maybe I'll see you--if you live. Fane...."

Others read the note over Rick's shoulders. And other voices expressed some of Rick's scattered thoughts.

"Damn Fane! Something screwy about him. I always knew...."

"Sure! What's he trying to pull? What does he know about Mercury that he never told? Running out on us, now, huh? Six months he spent here once. Bet he did kill Martell and Jacobs! What is he after now? And what has he found out about the war machines that must be here?..."

"Easy, guys. No wolf-pack talk...."

"Easy--hell! If he didn't know his way around he'd never be wandering off like that on foot! His running off means no good...."

Then someone raised a long-range blaster. But before it could be fired at the dodging and elusive Fane, Nostrand struck the weapon down. The runaway had already reached the darkward foothills.

"It's no use trying to stop him now," Nostrand said.

"Fane--do you hear me?" Rick called, his helmet radiophone giving his voice the needed range. "Tell me, what's the pitch?"

Rick heard Fane's derisive and harsh laugh. "I told you, didn't I, smart boy Mills?" he taunted. "Or are you all stupid?"

The laugh and the words revealed more of Fane's nature to Rick than he'd ever seen before. The ego, the vanity, flaunted now because of some hidden advantage. Doubtless it salved an inferiority. Rick would have liked to like Fane. But now that big lanky man, for all his show of competence, was like a poisonous child.

Rick felt an amused smirk coming out on his own face in spite of his sense of the presence of masked danger. "Somebody has got the idea that he's super, Fane," he chuckled. "I wonder how that old, tiresome thing happened to you. Maybe you had a bitter, frustrated youth. Kids beat you up, hunh? So now you're the bigshot who makes monkeys out of everybody. Well, go play your marbles...."

Final response was only another harsh laugh.

For secrecy, Rick now cut off his radio, and established a sound-channel for his voice by grasping Nostrand's shoulder.

"We've got to follow him, Chief. See what he's up to," he said.

Nostrand nodded, and beckoned Schmidt, who was supposed to lead the pre-planned party into the dark hemisphere, to come closer. Nostrand spoke softly, with his phone also shut off:

"Of course. Things will proceed about as we intended. With the primary purpose of scientific exploration. But we'll cut the parties to ten men each to risk less personnel. One party with specially shielded space suits and tractors will invade the sunward hemisphere, while you folks will go the other way."

* * * * *

Within an hour, under Schmidt's able command, Rick and his other companions were moving along the highway toward the shadowy eastern hills, with two tractors fitted with pressurized cabins. Rick and two other men, Lattimer and Finden, rode atop the lead vehicle as lookouts.

Rick thought of how flexible a Survey Service guy had to be. Here their intended work was to learn about Mercury--to dig, even, into its crust, searching out its mineral wealth and learning its history, even back far beyond the rivalry of the Martians and Xians. A steaming, fast-spinning little world, it must have been once. And of course its now dubious value to modern civilization and economics must be judged.

But now another duty was added--something of criminal detection! There was suspicion without proof. Doubt that might be groundless, almost. Or that might point to a deadly unknown.

What must be Fane's tracks in the dust, were visible in one place for about a mile, along the hard-surfaced road. But then they vanished among the rocks. And what sense was there to try to hunt him out of the hills? Schmidt gave no such order. And Rick realized fully, then, that it was not so important to find Fane himself, but to learn what fabulous mystery it was that had made him hurry into this wilderness alone. Something tremendous must be at stake.

Miles were covered swiftly at first, making the sliver of sun sink from view to the rear. But one pale wing of the solar corona--a reminder, here, of the final sunset so long ago--still projected above the horizon, providing ghostly illumination. There was little talk, but Rick Mills felt as if he was invading some immense and haunted cellar, covering half a planet.

For young Finden to photograph, there were domed structures, vast buildings that might have been factories, huge slag heaps from mines, even the still standing trunks of trees, that had been perhaps developed from Martian stock. Thicker and thicker layers of frost and frozen air were over everything. And scattered along the road were the scars and wreckage of violence. Here, wood had been blackened by fire. Here, dug in the ground, had been a fortified strong point and supply-dump, full of toppled cylinders. Here there were dried-out, blackened corpses. The Martians, their many tentacles stiffened to the consistency of old wood, looked like charred tree-stumps. The Xians, with but four boneless limbs, were like deflated sacks of old leather.

There were great tanklike machines, of both Martian and Xian origin, blasted, and grotesquely toppled into ditches. There were metal forms, vaguely human and similarly torn. Here was all the evidence of battle and of Martian retreat. Mile by mile they must have been driven back toward some fortress deep in the now dark hemisphere.

And what comments were there to make now, about all this archaic fury that had gone silent and moveless those eons past? In momentary contact with their space suits, Rick Mills heard Finden's "Jeez!" and Lattimer's monosyllabic and awed curses. Fane had said something about a push-button war put into deep freeze.

"That's about the size of it," Rick said once to his companions. "Everything is in deep-freeze--almost absolute zero, and a vacuum, besides. No method of preservation could be much better."

It was as if here on the dark hemisphere, time had stopped with the ending of the passing days that measured it. Nowhere else in the solar system could the remains of that old conflict be better kept. And nowhere else were they more profuse.

It was hard not to think, now, that it was unwise to have come here so rashly. Rick had the feeling of having plunged too far into enemy territory where his bunch could be ambushed. For those war machines were not all smashed, certainly. Time meant nothing to them here. And the mystery of their function was half known from others like them on other worlds. There was always the chance that some of them would respond to the stimulus of detected movement around them. They were known to have intricate electronic relay systems inside them, almost brains.

"Keep your necks swivelling and your eyes peeled," Schmidt told his watchers on the tractor top, in a brief helmet phone message from inside the cabin.

"Don't worry, we will, Chief!" Lattimer growled back.

Overhead blazed the same constellations of stars known on Earth. Venus was glorious among them. Earth was dimmer--farther off. And it was the brilliance of that space-like star curtain that limned the first ugly moving silhouette. One of the man-like monsters was on the road ahead, its arms raised. Its great jutting thumbs of metal might have been the sort of things that had punctured the helmets of Martell and Jacobs. Perhaps this colossus had awakened on its own, as has been suggested. On the other hand, it might have been commanded by remote control, operating through radio impulses, of which the static-like whispers, barely noticeable in Rick's phones, might be the evidence.

To signal, Rick pounded on the roof of the tractor's cabin. And the men below fired their main blaster at once. The dazing blue flash of neutrons tore the metal giant apart with a spattering of incandescence. But then something fired back. There were two concussions and a blinding glare. Rick felt himself hurtling.

When he scrambled out of a deep snow-like drift, both tractors were blossoming white-hot vapors from their insides. In their cabins, no one could still survive, Schmidt, or any of the others. The lump was hard in Rick's throat, and the blur was thick and angry in his mind. He scrambled along the ditch, keeping down, firing at little shapes that scurried on the road. They were oval, half a foot long, like tortoises, but much faster. He'd seen their like at the Survey Service School brought from Earth's moon. Deadly little robots from X. They scuttled for cover. No use trying to dig them out. They were as elusive as rats. And they could fire atomic pellets.

Two more Earth-made blasters had been in action.

"We're still with you, Rick!" Finden risked saying by phone.

"Yeah, all I got out of it was some bruised ribs," Lattimer who was older, joined in, hiding a wince of pain.

* * * * *