“Yes, sir.”
The thermometer grazed 200. The cooling system was beginning to suffer—but it would not have to endure much more agony. Within minutes the Leverrier was lifting from Mercury’s surface—minutes ahead of the relentless advance of the sun. The ship swung into a parking orbit not far above the planet’s surface.
As they hung there, catching their breaths, just one thing occupied Ross’s mind: why? Why had Brainerd’s orbit brought them down in a danger zone instead of the safety strip? Why had both he and Brainerd been unable to compute a blasting pattern, the simplest of elementary astrogation techniques? And why had Spangler’s wits utterly failed him—just long enough to let the unhappy Curtis kill himself?
Ross could see the same question reflected on everyone’s face: why?
He felt an itchy feeling at the base of his skull. And suddenly an image forced its way across his mind and he had the answer.
He saw a great pool of molten zinc, lying shimmering between two jagged crests somewhere on Sunside. It had been there thousands of years; it would be there thousands, perhaps millions, of years from now.
Its surface quivered. The sun’s brightness upon the pool was intolerable even to the mind’s eye.
Radiation beat down on the pool of zinc—the sun’s radiation, hard and unending. And then a new radiation, an electromagnetic emanation in a different part of the spectrum, carrying a meaningful message:
I want to die.
The pool of zinc stirred fretfully with sudden impulses of helpfulness.
The vision passed as quickly as it came. Stunned, Ross looked up. The expressions on the six faces surrounding him confirmed what he could guess.
“You all felt it too,” he said.
Spangler nodded, then Krinsky and the rest of them.
“Yes,” Krinsky said. “What the devil was it?”
Brainerd turned to Spangler. “Are we all nuts, Doc?”
The psych officer shrugged. “Mass hallucination…collective hypnosis…”
“No, Doc.” Ross leaned forward. “You know it as well as I do. That thing was real. It’s down there, out on Sunside.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that wasn’t any hallucination we had. That’s something alive down there—or as close to alive as anything on Mercury can be.” Ross’s hands were shaking. He forced them to subside. “We’ve stumbled over something very big,” he said.
Spangler stirred uneasily. “Harry—”
“No, I’m not out of my head! Don’t you see—that thing down there, whatever it is, is sensitive to our thoughts! It picked up Curtis’ godawful caterwauling the way a radar set grabs electromagnetic waves. His were the strongest thoughts coming through; so it acted on them and did its damnedest to help Curtis get what he wanted.”
“You mean by fogging our minds and deluding us into thinking we were in safe territory, when actually we were right near sunrise territory?”
“But why would it go to all that trouble?” Krinsky objected. “If it wanted to help poor Curtis kill himself, why didn’t it just fix things so we came down right in Sunside. We’d cook a lot quicker that way.”
“Originally it did,” Ross said. “It helped Curtis set up a landing orbit that would have dumped us into the sun. But then it realized that the rest of us didn’t want to die. It picked up the conflicting mental emanations of Curtis and the rest of us, and arranged things so that he’d die and we wouldn’t.” He shivered. “Once Curtis was out of the way, it acted to help the surviving crew members reach safety. If you’ll remember, we were all thinking and moving a lot quicker the instant Curtis was dead.”
“Damned if that’s not so,” Spangler said. “But—”
“What I want to know is, do we go back down?” Krinsky asked. “If that thing is what you say it is, I’m not so sure I want to go within reach of it again. Who knows what it might make us do this time?”
“It wants to help us,” Ross said stubbornly. “It’s not hostile. You aren’t afraid of it, are you, Krinsky? I was counting on you to go out in the heatsuit and try to find it.”
“Not me!”
Ross scowled. “But this is the first intelligent life-form man has ever found in the solar system. We can’t just run away and hide.” To Brainerd he said, “Set up an orbit that’ll take us back down again—and this time put us down where we won’t melt.”
“I can’t do it, sir,” Brainerd said flatly.
“Can’t?”
“Won’t. I think the safest thing is for us to return to Earth at once.”
“I’m ordering you.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Ross looked at Spangler. Llewellyn. Falbridge. Right around the circle. Fear was evident on every face. He knew what each of the men was thinking.
I don’t want to go back to Mercury.
Six of them. One of him. And the helpful thing below.
They had outnumbered Curtis seven to one—but Curtis’ mind had radiated an unmixed death-wish. Ross knew he could never generate enough strength of thought to counteract the fear-driven thoughts of the other six.
Mutiny.
Somehow he did not care to speak the word aloud. Sometimes there were cases where a superior officer might legitimately be removed from command for the common good, and this might be one. of them, he knew. But yet—
The thought of fleeing without even pausing to examine the creature below was intolerable to him. But there was only one ship, and either he or the six others would have to be denied.
Yet the pool had contrived to satisfy both the man who wished to die and those who wished to stay alive. Now, six wanted to return—but must the voice of the seventh be ignored?
You’re not being fair to me, Ross thought, directing his angry outburst towards the planet below. I want to see you. I want to study you. Don’t let them drag me back to Earth so soon.
When the Leverrier returned to Earth a week later, the six survivors of the Second Mercury Expedition all were able to describe in detail how a fierce death-wish had overtaken Second Astrogator Curtis and driven him to suicide. But not one of them could recall what had happened to Flight Commander Ross, or why the heatsuit had been left behind on Mercury.