Temperature 158 degrees.

  The crawler seemed to be getting nearer. On the horizon the radar tower was melting into a crazy shambles.

  There was a shriek. “Curtis!” Ross yelled, his mind hurriedly returning to awareness. He ran aft, with Spangler close behind.

  Too late.

  Curtis lay on the floor in a bloody puddle. He had found a pair of shears somewhere.

  Spangler bent. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead. Of course.” Ross’s brain felt totally clear now. At the moment of Curtis’ death the fog had lifted. Leaving Spangler to attend to the body, he returned to the astrogation desk and glanced through the calculations he had been doing. Worthless. An idiotic mess.

  With icy clarity he started again, and this time succeeded in determining their location. They had come down better than three hundred miles sunward of where they had thought they were landing. The instruments hadn’t lied—but someone’s eyes had. The orbit that Brainerd had so solemnly assured him was a “safe” one was actually almost as deadly as the one Curtis had computed.

  He looked outside. The crawler had almost reached the ship. Temperature 167 degrees out there. There was plenty of time. They would make it with a few minutes to spare, thanks to the warning they had received from the melting radar tower.

  But why had it happened? There was no answer to that.

  ***

  GIGANTIC IN HIS HEATSUIT, KRINSKY brought Llewellyn and Falbridge aboard. They peeled out of their spacesuits and wobbled around unsteadily for a moment before they collapsed. They were as red as newly boiled lobsters.

  “Heat prostration,” Ross said. “Krinsky, get them into takeoff cradles. Dominic, you in your suit yet?”

  The spaceman appeared at the airlock entrance and nodded.

  “Good. Get down there and drive the crawler into the hold. We can’t afford to leave it here. Double-quick, and then we’re blasting off. Brainerd, that new orbit ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The thermometer grazed 200 degrees. 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.

  ALAREE

  This little item dates from the early part of my career, and displays my growing professionalism. I wrote it in March of 1956—one of eight stories that I managed to produce that month, while still carrying a full class load in college. (They all sold!) Its theme is a good indication that I was trying to address the psychological preoccupations of the brilliant, cantankerous editor Horace Gold of Galaxy, John Campbell’s most determined competitor, to whom I had not yet managed to sell a story. It’s smoothly handled and I was sure that it would bring about a breakthrough for me there. But Gold had writers like Theodore Sturgeon and Fritz Leiber to deal with matters of this sort, and evidently didn’t need my attempt at it. (Though he did start buying my work a few months later.) The story went bouncing around from magazine to magazine for over a year before an equally brilliant and equally cantankerous editor, the veteran Donald A. Wollheim, purchased it for the March 1958 issue of a short-lived and now wholly forgotten magazine called Saturn Science Fiction that he edited with his left hand while giving most of his attention to his highly successful and important paperback series, Ace Double Books.

  WHEN OUR SHIP LEFT ITS carefully planned trajectory and started to wobble through space in dizzy circles, I knew we shouldn’t have passed up that opportunity for an overhauling on Spica IV. My men and I were anxious to get back to Earth, and a hasty check had assured us that the Aaron Burr was in tiptop shape, so we had turned down the offer of an overhaul, which would have meant a month’s delay, and set out straight for home.

  As so often happens, what seemed like the most direct route home turned out to be the longest. We had spent far too much time on this survey trip already, and we were rejoicing in the prospect of an immediate return to Earth when the ship started turning cartwheels.

  Willendorf, computerman first class, came to me looking sheepish, a few minutes after I’d noticed we were off course.

  “What is it, Gus?” I asked.

  “The feed network’s oscillating, sir,” he said, tugging at his unruly reddish-brown beard. “It won’t stop, sir.”

  “Is Ketteridge working on it?”

  “I’ve just called him,” Willendorf said. His stolid face reflected acute embarrassment. Willendorf always took it personally whenever one of the cybers went haywire, as if it were his own fault. “You know what this means, don’t you, sir?”

  I grinned. “Take a look at this, Willendorf,” I said, shoving the trajectory graphs towards him. I sketched out with my stylus the confused circles we had been traveling in all morning. “That’s what your feed network’s doing to us,” I said, “and we’ll keep on doing it until we get it fixed.”

  “What are you going to do, sir?”

  I sensed his impatience with me. Willendorf was a good man, but his psych charts indicated a latent desire for officerhood. Deep down inside, he was sure he was at least as competent as I was to run this ship and probably a good deal more so.

  “Send me Upper Navigating Technician Haley,” I snapped. “We’re going to have to find a planet in the neighborhood and put down for repairs.”

  It turned out there was an insignificant solar system in the vicinity, consisting of a small but hot white star and a single unexplored planet, Terra-size, a few hundred million miles out. After Haley and I had decided that that was the nearest port of refuge, I called a general meeting . . .

  Quickly and positively I outlined our situation and explained what would have to be done. I sensed the immediate disappointment, but, gratifyingly, the reaction was followed by a general feeling of resigned pitching in. If we all worked, we’d get back to Earth, sooner or later. If we didn’t, we’d spend the next century flip-flopping aimlessly in space.

  After the meeting we set about the business of recovering control of the ship and putting it down for repairs. The feed network, luckily, gave up the ghost about ninety minutes later; it meant we had to stoke the fuel by hand, but at least it stopped that accursed oscillating.

  We got the ship going, and Haley, navigating by feel in a way I never would have dreamed possible, brought us into the nearby solar system in hardly any time at all. Finally we swung into our landing orbit and made our looping way down to the surface of the little planet.

  I studied my crew’s faces carefully. We had spent a great deal of time together in space—much too much, really, for comfort—and an incident like this might very well snap them all if we didn’t get going again soon enough. I could foresee disagreements, bickering, declaration of opinion where no opinion was called for.

  I was relieved to discover that the planet’s air was breathable. A rather high nitrogen concentration, to be sure—82 percent—but that left 17 percent for oxygen, plus some miscellaneous inerts, and it wouldn’t be too rough on the lungs. I decreed a one-hour free break before beginning repairs.

  Remaining aboard ship, I gloomily surveyed the scrambled feed network and tried to formulate a preliminary plan of action for getting the complex cybernetic instrument to function again, while my crew went outside to relax.

  Ten minutes after I had opened the lock and let them out, I heard someone clanking around in the aft supplies cabin.

  “Who’s there?” I yelled.

  “Me,” grunted a heavy voice that could only be Willendorf’s. “I’m looking for the thought-converter, sir.”

  I ran hastily through the corridor, flipped up the latch on the supplies cabin, and confronted him. “What do you want the converter for?” I snapped.

  “Found an alien, sir,” he said laconically.

  My eyes widened. The survey chart said nothing about intelligent extraterrestrials in this limb of the galaxy, but then again this planet hadn’t been explored yet.

  I gestured towards the rear cabinet. “The converter helmets are in there,” I said. “I’ll be out in a little while. Make sure you follow technique in making contact.”

  “Of course, sir.” Willendorf took the converter helmet and went out, leaving me standing there. I waited a few minutes, then climbed the catwalk to the air lock and peered out.

  They were all clustered around a small alien being who looked weak and inconsequential in the midst of the circle. I smiled at the sight. The alien was roughly humanoid in shape, with the usual complement of arms and legs, and a pale-green complexion that blended well with the muted violet coloring of his world. He was wearing the thought-converter somewhat lopsidedly, and I saw a small green furry ear protruding from the left side. Willendorf was talking to him.

  Then someone saw me standing at the open air lock, and I heard Haley yell to me, “Come on down, Chief!”

  They were ringed around the alien in a tight circle. I shouldered my way into their midst. Willendorf turned to me.

  “Meet Alaree, sir,” he said. “Alaree, this is our commander.”

  “We are pleased to meet you,” the alien said gravely. The converter automatically turned his thoughts into English, but maintained the trace of his oddly inflected accent. “You have been saying that you are from the skies.”

  “His grammar’s pretty shaky,” Willendorf interposed. “He keeps referring to any of us as ‘you’—even you, who just got here.”

  “Odd,” I said. “The converter’s supposed to conform to the rules of grammar.” I turned to the alien, who seemed perfectly at ease among us. “My name is Bryson,” I said. “This is Willendorf, over here.”

  The alien wrinkled his soft-skinned forehead in momentary confusion. “We are Alaree,” he said again.

  “We? You and who else?”

  “We and we else,” Alaree said blandly. I stared at him for a moment, then gave up. The complexities of an alien mind are often too much for a mere Terran to fathom.

  “You are welcome to our world,” Alaree said after a few moments of silence.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I turned away, leaving the alien with my men. They had twenty-six minutes left of the break I’d given them, after which we would have to get back to the serious business of repairing the ship. Making friends with floppy-eared aliens was one thing, getting back to Earth was another.

  ***

  THE PLANET WAS A WARM, friendly sort of place, with rolling fields and acres of pleasant-looking purple vegetation. We had landed in a clearing at the edge of a fair-sized copse. Great broad-beamed trees shot up all around us.

  Alaree returned to visit us every day, until he became almost a mascot of the crew. I liked the little alien myself and spent some time with him, although I found his conversation generally incomprehensible. No doubt he had the same trouble with us. The converter had only limited efficiency, after all.

  He was the only representative of his species who came. For all we knew, he was the only one of his kind on the whole planet. There was no sign of life elsewhere, and, although Willendorf led an unauthorized scouting party during some free time on the third day, he failed to find a village of any sort. Where Alaree went every night and how he had found us in the first place remained mysteries.

  As for the feed network, progress was slow. Ketteridge, the technician in charge, had tracked down the foul-up and was trying to repair it without building a completely new network. Shortcuts again. He tinkered away for four days, setting up a tentative circuit, trying it out, watching it sputter and blow out, building another.

  There was nothing I could do. But I sensed tension heightening among the crewmen. They were annoyed at themselves, at each other, at me, at everything.

  On the fifth day, Ketteridge and Willendorf finally let their accumulated tenseness explode. They had been working together on the network, but they quarreled, and Ketteridge came storming into my cabin immediately afterward.

  “Sir, I demand to be allowed to work on the network by myself. It’s my speciality, and Willendorf’s only snarling things up.”