A World is Born | Page 6

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