Lucky Starr And The Big Sun Of Mercury by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf
Published: 2011-06-07T14:28:27+00:00

9. Dark and Light

But with his body taut, his leg muscles almost vibrating in the first part-instant of contraction, there was a sudden hoarse cry of utter surprise in Bigman's ears.

They were standing there, both of them, in a gray, dark world in which their beams of light etched one another out. Outside the beams of light, nothing, so that the sudden blob of motion that flashed across the line of sight made no sense at first.

His first reaction, his first thought was: Lucky! Had Lucky returned? Had he somehow mastered the situation, turned the tables?

But there was motion again, and the thought of Lucky faded away.

It was as though a fragment of the rocky wall of the shaft had worked itself loose and was drifting downward in the lazy fall that was characteristic of Mercury's low gravity.

A rope of rock that was somehow flexible, that struck Urteil's shoulder and-clung. One such encircled his waist already. Another moved slowly, bringing itself down and around as though it were part of an unreal world of slowed motion. But as its edge circled Urteil's arm and touched the metal covering Urteil's chest, arm and chest closed upon one another. It was as though the sluggish and seemingly brittle rock contained the irresistible strength of a boa constrictor.

If Urteil's first reaction had been one of surprise, there was now nothing but complete terror in his voice.

"Cold," he croaked harshly. "They're cold."

Bigman's whirling mind was having trouble encompassing the new situation. A piece of that rock had encircled Urteil's lower arm and wrist. The butt of the blaster was clamped in place.

A final rope came floating down. They were so rock-like in appearance that they were invisible until one actually detached itself from the wall.

The ropes were connected one with another as a single organism, but there was no nucleus, no "body." It was like a stony octopus consisting of nothing but tentacles.

Bigman had a kind of explosion of thought.

He thought of rock developing life through the long ages of Mercurian evolution. A completely different form of life from anything Earth knew. A life that lived on scraps of heat alone.

Why not? The tentacles might crawl from place to place, seeking any bit of heat that might exist. Bigman could see them drifting toward Mercury's North Pole when mankind was first established there. First the mines and then the Observatory Dome supplied them with unending trickles of heat.

Man could be their prey too. Why not? A human being was a source of heat. Occasionally an isolated miner might have been trapped. Paralyzed with sudden cold and terror, he would be unable to call for help. Minutes later his power unit would be too low to make a radio call possible in any case. Still later, he would be dead, a frozen relic.

Cook's mad story of the deaths in the mines made sense.

All this passed through Bigman's mind almost in one flash while he remained unmoving, still struggling with a sense of stunned amazement at the sudden new turn of events.

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