A World is Born | Page 6

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.