[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories, July 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Doug Norris hesitated for an instant. He knew that another movementmight well mean disaster.
Here deep in the cavernous interior of airless Mercury, catastrophecould strike suddenly. The rocks of the fissure he was following had atemperature of hundreds of degrees. And he could hear the deep rumbleof shifting rock, close by.
But it was not these dangers of the infernal underworld that made himhesitate. It was that sixth sense of imminent peril that he had felttwice before while exploring the Mercurian depths. Each time, it hadended disastrously.
"Just nerves," Norris muttered to himself. "The uranium vein is clearlyindicated. I've got to follow it."
As he again moved forward and followed that thin, black stratum in thefissure wall, his eyes constantly searched ahead.
Then a half-dozen little clouds of glowing gas flowed toward him from abranching fissure. Each was several feet in diameter, a faint-glowingmass of vapor with a brighter core.
Norris moved hastily to avoid them. But there was a sudden flash oflight. Then everything went black before his eyes.
"It's happened to me again!" Doug Norris thought in sharp dismay.
Frantically he jiggled his controls, cut in emergency power switches,overloaded his tight control beam to the limit. It was no use. He stillcould not see or hear anything whatever.
Norris defeatedly took the heavy television helmet with its bulgingeyepieces off his head. He stared at the control-board, then lookedblankly out the window at the distant, sunlit stacks of New York PowerStation.
"Another Proxy gone! Seven of them wrecked in the last two weeks!"
It hadn't just happened, of course. It had happened eight minutes ago.It took that long for the television beam from the Proxy to shuttlefrom Mercury to this control-station outside New York. And it took aslong again for the Proxy control-beam to get back to it on Mercury.
Sometimes, a time-lag that long could get a Proxy into trouble beforeits operator on Earth was aware of it. But usually that was not a bigfactor of danger on a lifeless world like Mercury. The Proxies, builtof the toughest refractory metals, could stand nearly anything but anearthquake, and keep on functioning.
"Each time, there's been no sign of falling rocks or anything likethat," Norris told himself, mystified. "Each time, the Proxy has justblacked out with all its controls shot."
Then, as his mind searched for some factor common to all the disasters,a startled look came over Doug Norris' lean, earnest face.
"There were always some of those clouds of radon or whatever theyare around, each time!" he thought. "I wonder if—" A red-hot thoughtbrought him to his feet. "Holy cats! Maybe I've got the answer!"
He jumped away from the Proxy-board without a further glance at thatbank of intricate controls, and hurried down a corridor.
Through the glass doors he passed, Norris could see the other operatorsat work. Each sat in front of his control-board, wearing his televisionhelmet, flipping the switches with expert precision. Each was operatinga mechanical Proxy somewhere on Mercury.
Norris and all these other operators had been trained together whenKincaid started the Proxy Project. They had been proud of theirpositions, until recently. It was a vitally important job, searchingout the uranium so sorely needed for Earth's atomic power supply.
The uranium and allied metals of Eart