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But with his body taut, his legin the first part-instant of contraction, there was a sudden hoarse cry of utter surprise in Big there, both of theht etched one another out Outside the bea, so that the sudden blob of ht 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 ht of Lucky faded away

It was as though a fragment of the rocky wall of the shaft had worked itself loose and was drifting doard in the lazy fall that was characteristic of Mercury&039;s low gravity

A rope of rock that was so One such encircled his waist already Another h it were part of an unreal world of slowed e circled Urteil&039;s ar Urteil&039;s chest, argish and seeth of a boa constrictor

If Urteil&039;s first reaction had been one of surprise, there was now nothing but complete terror in his voice

"Cold," he croaked harshly "They&039;re cold"

Big the new situation A piece of that rock had encircled Urteil&039;s lower arm and wrist The butt of the blaster was cla 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

Bight of rock developing life through the long ages of Mercurian evolution A co Earth knew A life that lived on scraps of heat alone

Why not? The tentaclesany bit of heat thattoward Mercury&039;s North Pole when mankind was first established there First the mines and then the Observatory Do trickles of heat

Man could be their prey too Why not? A hu was a source of heat Occasionally an isolated ht 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&039;s mad story of the deaths in the , still struggling with a sense of stunned amazement at the sudden new turn of events

Urteil&039;s voice was soasp "I-can&039;t Help "

Gone in a ht that this man was an ene Big; here was anonhuman

Since ers and rown up a stern, unwritten law Huotten when man faced the common enemy, the non-human and inhuht be that not everyone adhered to that law, but Bigman did

He was at Urteil&039;s side in a bound, tearing at his ar to avoid the tentacle that encircled Urteil&039;s clutching fist Bigman noted absently that the tentacle didn&039;t curve sh arranged in nu for purchase on Ur-teil&039;s suit,away reflectively The cold was an icy shaft, penetrating and burning his hand

Whateverheat, it was like nothing he had ever heard of

Big He did not notice at first the alien touch on his back, then-iciness lay over hio away When he tried to jump away he found he could not A tentacle had reached out for hirown together, so firmly were they bound

The physical pain of the cold grew, and Bigiving?

Urteil&039;s voice startled hiered and then, slowly, under the weak pull of Mercury&039;s gravity, he toppled over to one side, carrying Big sensation He could scarcely tell whether he was still holding theto his wild, siderenches, or was it a last gasp of wishful thinking?

His suit-light was diy into the voracious power-sucking ropes

Death by freezing could not be far away

Lucky, having left Biged to an inso-suit in the quiet of the hangared Shooting Starr, stepped out onto the surface of Mercury and turned his face toward the "white ghost of the Sun"

For long ain the milky luminescence of the Sun&039;s corona

Absently, as he watched, he flexed his smoothly-muscled limbs one at a time The inso-suit worked more smoothly than an ordinary space-suit That, cohtness, lent it an unusual sensation of not being there altogether In an environ, but Lucky brushed aside any feeling of uneasiness he ht have had and surveyed the sky

The stars were as numerous and brilliant as in open space, and he paid the else he wanted to see It o days now, standard Earth time, since he had last seen these skies In two days, Mercury hadits orbit around the Sun That rees of sky had appeared in the east and over eight degrees had disappeared in the west That meant news stars could be seen