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Lucky thought: At least things are breaking fast

He had been on Mercury only an hour He had had scarcely ti Starr, safely stowed in the underground hangar He hadred tape and seen to his ship

Those technicians, that is, and Scott Mindes, engineer in charge of Project Light It had been al in wait Alested a trip to the surface

To see sohts, he had explained

Lucky did not believe that, of course The engineer&039;s small-chinned face had been haunted with trouble, and his mouth twitched as he spoke His eyes slid away frolance

Yet Lucky agreed to visit the surface As yet, all he knew of the troubles on Mercury was that they posed a ticklish proble with Mindes and see where that led hilad to follow Lucky anywhere and any ti into their suits He nodded almost unno-ticeably toward the holster attachment on Mindes&039;s suit

Lucky nodded cal from the holster was the butt of a heavy-caliber blaster

The young engineer stepped out onto the surface of the planet first Lucky Starr followed and Bigraan came last

For the moment, they lost contact with one another in the nearly total darkness Only the stars were visible, bright and hard in the cold airlessness

Bigravity here on Mercury was alhts were alht sky were alhtly in the receivers of the others "Hey, I&039;s out"

So was Lucky, and the fact puzzled hiht There was a faint, luminous haze that lay over the fus with a paleof the sort on the Moon during its teek-long night There, also, was the coh and broken Never, in millions of years, either there on the Moon or here on Mercury, had there been the softening touch of wind or rain The bare rock, colder than iination could picture, lay without a touch of frost in a waterless world

And in the Moon&039;s night, too, there had been this milkiness But there, over half the M&039;oon at least, there had been Earth-light When Earth was full it shone with sixteen tihtness of the full Moon as seen from Earth

Here on Mercury, at the Solar Observatory at the North Pole, there was no near-by planet to account for the light

"Is that starlight?" he finally asked, knowing it wasn&039;t

Scott Mindes said wearily, "That&039;s the coronal gliht laugh "The corona! Of course! I should have known!"

&039;&039;Knohat?" cried Bigive!"

Mindes said, "Turn around You&039;ve got your back to it"

They all turned Lucky whistled softly between his teeth; Big

A section of the horizon was etched sharply against a pearly region of the sky Every pointed irregularity of that part of the horizon was in keen focus Above it, the sty was in a soft glow (fading with height) a third of the way to the zenith The glow consisted of bright, curving streaht

"That&039;s the corona, Mr Jones," said Mindes

Even in his astonishetful of his own conception of the proprieties He growled, "Call man" Then he said, "You mean the corona around the Sun? I didn&039;t think it was that big"

"It&039;s a million miles deep or more," said Mindes, "and we&039;re on Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun We&039;re only thirty ht now You&039;re from Mars, aren&039;t you?"

"Born and bred," said Bight now, you&039;d find it was thirty-six ti as it is when seen froht too"

Lucky nodded Sun and corona would be nine tie as seen from Earth And the corona could not be seen at all on Earth, except during periods of total eclipse

Well, Mindes had not altogether lied There were sights to be seen on Mercury He tried to fill out the corona, to iine the Sun it surrounded which was now hidden just below the horizon It would be a ht!

Mindes went on, an unht &039;the white ghost of the Sun&039;"

Lucky said, "I like that A rather good phrase"

"Rather good?" said Mindes savagely "I don&039;t think so There&039;s too hosts on this planet This planet&039;s all jinx Nothing ever goes right on it The mines failed" His voice trailed off

Lucky thought: We&039;ll let that simmer

Aloud he said, "Where is this phenomenon ere to see, Mindes?"

"Oh yes We&039;ll have to walk a bit Not far, considering the gravity, but watch your footing We don&039;t have roads here, and the coronal glihts"

He clicked his on as he spoke, and a shaft of light sprang out froh patchwork of yellow and black Two other lights flashed on, and the three figures moved forward on their thickly insulated boots They made no sound in the vacuum, but each could sense the soft vibrations set up by each footfall in the air within their suits

Mindes see about the planet as he walked He said in a low, tense voice, "I hate Mercury I&039;ve been here six months, two Mermurian years, and I&039;m sick of it I didn&039;t think I&039;d be here in with, and here the ti about this place is wrong It&039;s the smallest planet It&039;s the closest to the Sun Only one side faces the Sun Over there"-and his arleah in places to melt lead and boil sulfur Over there in the other direction"-again his ar-"is the one planetary surface in the whole Solar Syste about the place is miserable"

He paused to jump over a shallow, six-foot-wide rift in the surface, a reminder of some eons-old Mercury-quake, perhaps, which could not heal over without wind and weather He made the jump clumsily, the picture of an Earthravity of the Observatory Doly at the sight He and Lucky negotiated the ju of stride

A quarter mile farther on, Mindes said abruptly, "We can see it from here, and just in ti forward, with arman and Lucky halted with a sravel

Mindes&039;s helhts and there, in the darkness, where Mindes had pointed, was a sular splotch of white

It was brilliant, asunshine than Lucky had ever seen on Earth

"This is the best angle for seeing it," said Mindes "It&039;s the top of Black and White Mountain"

"Is that its naht You see why, don&039;t you? It stands just far enough nightward of the Terminator That&039;s the boundary between the dark-side and the Sun-side"

"I know that," said Bignorant?"

"I&039; There&039;s this little spot around the North Pole, and another around the South Pole, where the Terminator doesn&039;t move much as Mercury circles the sun Down at the Equator, now, the Terminator moves seven hundred miles in one direction for forty-four days and then seven hundred miles back in the next forty-four Here it just ood place for an observatory The Sun and the stars stand still

"Anyway, Black and White Mountain is just far enough away so that only the top half of it is lit up at ht moves up the mountain slopes"