“Sure, I’ll have to stock up right smart. Say, I’ll bet he would! I’ll bet Bart would tell me I couldn’t have any, at that. He’s got enough food and air, but he’d say no, sure as shooting. And I got enough power, so I wouldn’t have to ask for that, but I can’t live without air.”
“Then I’ve got something you need,” Dick pointed out. “I happen to know what the combination to the mining store is, and there’s plenty of air stored in there—and concentrated food, too. Even some fair stuff for traveling out into the hotlands.”
“Good. Good. Only you aren’t going to start …”
“No,” Dick told him quietly. “I’m not going to start anything. I’m finishing it. Either we both go on this trip, or you can stay here with me. We’ll have double the chance going together, and you know it.”
“I could tell your father I’d make sure you stayed here iffen he’d supply me with stuff,” Charlie said, but he wasn’t sure of himself now.
Dick shook his head. “He’d tell you he intended to make sure both of us stayed. And once you tipped him off that we’d done any more plotting about this, he would, too.”
For a second Charlie glowered at Dick. Then his face began to crease into a leathery smile. Finally his lips parted, and he began to rock back and forth, laughing silently, but with more gusto than Dick had seen since the trouble began.
At last, when he had quieted, he turned to the boy. “Doggone you, Dick, if you’d been born forty years ago, I’d of made the best miner of you that ever walked this here planet. Yes, sir. A crook, a swindler, a blackmailer—you’re as twisted inside as a frogs stomach. And you’re straight, too. Yes, sir. When it comes down to it, you see straight, and you get straight to the point. Partner, we’re going to reach that Relay Station, or we’ll both die trying. And I don’t think we’re the kind that dies. Shake.”
“You mean I can go?” Dick asked, as he took the other’s hand. “You’re not trying to fool me?”
“Word of honor. When I shake a man’s hand, I don’t lie to him. That’s rule one. It only takes a small he out there to kill a man, so tell the truth about business. And he like fury when you tell a tall story for fun, just to get all the lies out of your system. It don’t hurt then, because nobody but a fool is going to believe you. What’s the combination?”
Dick hesitated, and then nodded. Charlie could go out and get the stuff with nobody thinking anything about it. If they saw him going into the mine store, they’d think that Dick’s father had told him the combination, and that he was going out in his tractor. But if Dick went along, it would cause suspicion at once.
He told his story quickly. “And where’ll I meet you, Uncle Charlie?”
“Just Charlie, now, partner. When we go out that port, you’re a man—else I wouldn’t have you with me. And men don’t go around saying ‘uncle.’ Or don’t you kids use those words any more?”
Dick nodded. He’d caught the pun. “Okay, Charlie, but where do we meet?”
“Outside, of course. If I go out, no questions are asked. If you take a trip out with your robot, they figure that’s fine. But if we both go together without your father, they’ll notice it. So we go out to that little valley on the way to where you found me, then we start for Relay Station.”
It made sense to Dick, and he nodded. But it wasn’t until Charlie had gone out toward the tractor that it began to seem real. Dick looked around at his room and tried to imagine what his mother would think when she found it empty in the morning. He could hear his father trying to comfort her, and see his lips tighten at the defiance Dick was going to show for his orders. He’d never given many orders as a father, but he was the city chairman here, and this was an official order Dick was breaking.
Then he sighed to himself, and sat down to write the best note he could. Ellen came in and stayed for a while. But this time he didn’t get mad. He found his best mechanical pencil and gave it to her. She acted suspicious for a moment, then suddenly kissed him on the cheek and ran out to try it on all the places where she had no right to write.
Sometimes, Dick told himself, orders had to be disobeyed. And he hoped that his father would understand. He was sure that Rogers would have done exactly as he was doing, if he’d had the same decision to make.
Anyway, either he succeeded, in which case it didn’t matter what everybody thought, as long as he could save them; or else he’d fail, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone very long. Two weeks wasn’t much time for anything.
Chapter 8 Into the Hotlands
The Sun was plainly kicking up worse than ever when Dick came out, just before what would normally be breakfast. He’d known enough to get a good night’s sleep before starting, partly for his own good, and partly because there would be less suspicion at the port if he left during the day.
Pete followed along like the mechanical gadget he was, having no feelings about anything, but obeying because he was built that way. They reached the port, and the guard there threw it open without question.
Dick turned up the trail they had made with the tractor, and began slogging along at a slow trot, the robot keeping up easily. If Charlie had waited for him, they should soon be moving along rapidly. For a moment he began to be afraid that Charlie might have gone on.
But common sense told him that Charlie would have tipped off the guard, or done something else, instead of letting him come out this far. He relaxed, keeping to a pace that would not be too tiring.
From somewhere, a wispy popped up ahead of him. He reached for his blaster, and suddenly realized he had left it behind in his hurry! Then Johnny bobbed about, indicating that it was the right wispy, and he relaxed. Charlie would have a pair of blasters, at least, and he certainly didn’t need arms against Johnny.
The spook hovered around Pete’s head, and then began to slide in. For a second, the robot went off stride, as it failed to keep in step with the orders Johnny must be giving it. Dick started to command it to sleep, but apparently Johnny had remembered the trick, and had thrown the relay. The robot settled down to its former steady pace as Johnny took up the job of guiding it.
He must enjoy it, Dick thought. Probably it was a big toy to Johnny, and a complete novelty. The wispies might be intelligent, but they had never had any chance to control things before. They couldn’t hold or shape or control, because they were nothing but a ball of electricity, as unsolid as the thinnest gas. And now, in the robot and touching the relays to make it work, using tiny bits of power that were automatically amplified, the wispy could do most of the things that men did.
It was as if a man found he could float around and dart away at a thousand miles an hour, just by thinking about it. It must have been a wholly new sensation to the creature.
Now they came over the little group of rocks, into the small valley, and Dick saw that the tractor was waiting for him. He speeded up to a sprint, and was on it a moment later, shoving through the little airlock. Johnny started to follow, and changed his mind. He ran around the tractor and took his place ahead of it.
“Forgot my blaster, but everything else is okay,” Dick reported. “I’d like to borrow one from you, Charlie.”
Charlie snorted. “Never carried one, and never will, Dick, except when I’m around people. With one of those, you only get yourself into scrapes you’d have sense enough to stay out of, otherwise.
Forget it, and take over here. You’d better get the feel of driving this while the going is good.”
Dick had meant to suggest the idea, and he slipped behind the seat quickly and shoved it back. He could have used it as it was, but he’d seen his father readjust it, and he knew that his longer legs would make him more comfortable that way. Then he slipped in, dropping his feet on the two pedals that worked the brakes on the tracks, slowing or turning it according to the way they were used. His hands settled over the wheel that gave him some control, by changing the angle of the tracks, and he started off slowly.
At first the number of controls puzzled him, but he h
ad a good instinct for any machine, and this was no great problem. He spotted the robot running ahead, and set out for it.
“Johnny knows how to pick a trail,” Charlie admitted. “He can almost think like a man, when he tries. And if you don’t think that’s tough for something built like him, you should try to think like him sometime. But when you get better control, you’d better get the robot inside. Pete isn’t built to keep up with this here tractor.”
Less than half an hour later the robot seemed to jerk to a stop, and the glow that was Johnny shot out from it. For a second the robot hesitated, then sprang up to the tractor and fixed itself onto the rail behind. Somehow, Johnny had been able to leave orders before he pulled out, it seemed.
After that, they made good time. Dick could see how the old tractor had come to be almost a part of Charlie. Riding in it had been dull, compared to driving it. The complicated controls made it almost as responsive as a man’s hands.
Dick glanced at the clock on the dashboard and realized that by now his family must know. But it was too late for regret or turning back, and he shifted his eyes back to where Johnny was hunting the way through a group of boulders.
Old Hotside Charlie took over after a while, and stepped it up, Dick noticed now that Johnny shifted almost at once, no longer seeming to hunt so carefully. He seemed to leave the little details to Charlie, and only set the broad pattern of their trip. It wasn’t exactly complimentary, when Dick had felt he was driving so well, but it indicated that Johnny was constantly aware of the situation, with whatever senses he had in place of eyes working perfectly.
Once or twice he darted aside to leap onto a bit of blue fire that sprang up from the rocks, but he only nibbled at it quickly, rather than trying to absorb it all, and jumped back to the breaking of the trail.
By afternoon, Charlie was nodding to himself. “Been a fool forty years, Dick,” he said. “I should have kept that first wispy I hit it off with. I’d have been a rich man by now. Bet they can even find ores, from that map he drew. Hey, Johnny.” He spoke into the microphone that was mounted on the wheel. “Know where there is any platinum around here?”
Johnny came back quickly, and made a quick zigzag to the left, then darted back. He spun himself half around and back again several times, and began leading them on.
“Like a man shaking his head,” Charlie muttered. “Bet he’s meaning the same thing. Knows where it is, but either too deep or not enough of it. All the same, wish I’d made friends with that first wispy.” He slid from the seat, and nodded to Dick, who took over. This time Johnny did less of the careful picking of the course, as if willing to give Dick his head. Charlie pulled out a rubber air cushion, blew it up, and stretched out on it.
“Better get some sleep,” he said. “You drive on about six hours, then I’ll take over while you sleep. We got a long ways to go.”
Dick nodded, and began figuring out how far. They had been located almost at the center of the hotlands. Mercury was 3,100 miles in diameter, a little less than 10,000 in circumference. And it was one-quarter of that from the center of the hotlands to the Twilight Zone, where the wobbling of the little planet gave a sort of long night and day. That would make a trip of nearly twenty-five hundred miles. They’d need to make all the speed they could.
Then he was sorry that he had bothered to figure it out! It was longer that way than it had been when it was just a journey. He started to divide it into days of travel, and gave up. There was no way to figure it. On good terrain they could make a thousand miles in a day, but that was only by figuring a whole day of smooth traveling. They’d be lucky, actually, to do a third of that if he had to do all the driving, and even Charlie probably couldn’t count on more than six hundred in a good period of twenty-four hours.
The tractor grumbled and groaned, and the old electric motor that drove it from the atomic boiler and generator whined unhappily. It was an old tractor, and it had broken down and been patched up hastily. It could break down again and leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere, to try the impossible trek on foot.
Dick tried to push it from his mind. Ahead of them, a wispy came floating along, and drew close to Johnny. For a second they seemed to be in communication. Then Johnny abruptly changed course, and began heading east of the route he had marked on the plastic map.
The other wispy sailed off again, to return—or for one exactly like it to return—in another fifteen minutes. This time the conversation was longer. Johnny bore west this time, taking them back to the trail he had marked.
The fire along the edges of the rocks was stronger now. And with it, there seemed to come more of the wispies. But Johnny avoided these when they came near them, dropping back to the tractor, and once retreating quickly into the shell of Pete and doing his guiding in the robot for almost half an hour.
Then the things became less common, and he sailed back to his usual position.
Charlie took over, and Dick dropped onto the mattress. On that, the tractor motion was a soothing thing that put him to sleep almost at once. He felt good when he awoke, almost ready to believe that they would have no trouble on the long trip.
Another day passed, and Charlie was glowing happily at the progress they had made. He was already a day ahead of the schedule he had figured for himself.
“All the little demons are out,” he told Dick toward the end of the day, just before Dick prepared to sleep. “And I reckon the little wispies, too. You don’t see the small ones much, unless there’s a touch of storm. They stay way up at the real center of the hotlands. See there—-a little yellower than Johnny? I don’t swear it’s a young one, but I kind of figure I’m right about it.”
“How come they don’t attack us?” Dick wanted to know. He’d been puzzling over that for hours. “You don’t have a full coating of aluminum on your dome here—you have to keep the front and rear clear. And you’ve got electricity in the tractor. I’d think they’d come running for it.”
Charlie chuckled. “Nope, I found out a long time ago that they don’t like some things. One of them’s a real long wave length of radio stuff—about two hundred kilocycles to you—kilocycles, not the megacycles we have; that used to be called high frequency stuff in the old days. So I got me a little transmitter built in. Been trying to get some of the domes to try it for years, but they think I’m crazy. That’s why Johnny stays away from the tank, except when one of the demons is around. Then he decides he likes that better than demons. Don’t think it hurts them—more like a bad smell. Hey, you better get some sleep.”
Charlie was looking worried when Dick awoke on the morning of the third day, and it wasn’t hard to tell why. There was a bumping sound mixed with the other noises of the tractor, and a faint jarring mixed with the feel of its motion. Charlie was going slower.
Dick started to take the controls, but the old man pushed him away. “No, I’d better keep her. Had the same thing happen before. Might just keep going till we hit Twilight, and might pop off any minute. If she goes, we’d better be set to work like beavers.”
“What is it?” Dick asked. “One of the wheels the tracks run on?”
The old man looked at him with suddenly renewed respect. “That’s it—got a gear missing, must have broke off back there in the last bad spot. If it was just the one gear tooth, it’ll be rough, but we’ll keep going. And if it’s a weakened wheel, and other teeth go—well, you better do a little praying. It sure isn’t any fun trying to weld them things back.”
The next hour was one of worry, but the gear seemed to be holding up, if not exactly smoothly. Charlie had just begun to relax when there was a wrenching, and the tractor suddenly spun around, one track frozen and the other twisting the whole machine around.
The old man cut power and applied the brake to the other track almost at once, bringing it to a halt. For a second he sat there quietly. Then he reached out and picked up his suit.
“We re going to have to look for the pieces, I betcha,” he said sourly. “The way that w
ent, it probably sprayed itself in six hunks. And if there’s one thing I’d hate worsen having to weld on teeth, it’s having to build up and cut out a new wheel from scrap.”
They climbed down and inspected the machine. Charlie was right. The gear had broken completely, and was missing. It had left only the bearing on which it turned.
“Could be quite a ways back,” Charlie said. “When they pop out, sometimes the momentum of the track holds it up for a while. Felt like that this time.”
They began searching, while Johnny drew closer to the tractor and seemed to watch them unhappily. By the time they had gone back a hundred feet, Dick began to abandon hope, but Charlie kept on, looking from side to side. Dick shook his head and followed the older man’s example.
Suddenly Charlie moved forward quickly, and scooped up something from the hot ground. It was almost half of a gear wheel, broken across the bearing. “Yep. See. Right here is where that tooth broke off—weakened the gear at the same time. Well, if we find the rest, we may get it fixed.” Dick went on searching, and it was his turn Almost straight ahead of him lay the other part, driven into the ground.
He pried it out, and they fitted the two parts together. It was going to be a tough job, but barely within the limits of the little welder the tractor carried. And building up a single tooth wouldn’t be impossible.
“We’ll substitute it for another one, back where the strain is less,” Dick suggested. “I noticed one the same size that won’t carry much stress, most of the time. That way, it should stand up.”
He turned back to the tractor, just as Johnny came swooping down at him. “Okay, Johnny,” he began. “We found …”
“Dick!” It was a scream in his earphones, and the old man’s voice was desperate. “Duck! That ain’t Johnny. It’s a demon!”
Battle on Mercury Page 7