flesh with their nails. Petty officer Caldwell was standing as straight as a totem pole, clenching and unclenching his hands. The second assistant engineer was sticking out his tongue. His face was deadpan, which made what was obviously a terror reflex look like an idiot’s grimace.
Lawton moistened his lips. “Men, listen to me. There is some sort of plant outside that is giving off deliriant fumes. A few of us seem to be immune to it.
“I’m not immune, but I’m fighting it, and all of you boys can fight it too. I want you to fight it to the top of your courage. You can fight anything when you know that just around the corner is freedom from a beastliness that deserves to be licked—even if it’s only a plant.
“Men, we’re blasting our way free. The bubble’s wearing thin. Any minute now the plants beneath us may fall with a soggy plop into the Atlantic Ocean.
“I want every man jack aboard this ship to stand at his post and obey orders. Right this minute you look like something the cat dragged in. But most men who cover themselves with glory start off looking even worse than you do.”
He smiled wryly.
“I guess that’s all. I’ve never had to make a speech in my life, and I’d hate like hell to start now.”
It was petty officer Caldwell who started the chant. He started it, and the men took it up until it was coming from all of them in a full-throated roar.
I’m a tough, truehearted skyman,
Careless and all that, d’ye see?
Never at fate a railer,
What is time or tide to me?
All must die when fate shall will it,
I can never die but once,
I’m a tough, truehearted skyman;
He who fears death is a dunce.
Lawton squared his shoulders. With a crew like that nothing could stop him! Ah, his energies were surging high. The deliriant weed held no terrors for him now. They were stouthearted lads and he’d go to hell with them cheerfully, if need be.
It wasn’t easy to wait. The next half hour was filled with a steadily mounting tension as Lawton moved like a young tornado about the ship, issuing orders and seeing that each man was at his post.
“Steady, Jimmy. The way to fight a deliriant is to keep your mind on a set task. Keep sweating, lad.”
“Harry, that winch needs tightening. We can’t afford to miss a trick.”
“Yeah, it will come suddenly. We’ve got to get the rotaries started the instant the bottom drops out.”
He was with the captain and Slashaway in the control room when it came. There was a sudden, grinding jolt, and the captain’s desk started moving toward the quartz port, carrying Lawton with it.
“Holy Jiminy cricket,” exclaimed Slashaway.
The deck tilted sharply; then righted itself. A sudden gush of clear, cold air came through the ventilation valves as the triple rotaries started up with a roar.
Lawton and the captain reached the quartz port simultaneously. Shoulder to shoulder they stood staring down at the storm-tossed Atlantic, electrified by what they saw.
Floating on the waves far beneath them was an undulating mass of vegetation, its surface flecked with glinting foam. As it rose and fell in waning sunlight a tainted seepage spread about it, defiling the clean surface of the sea.
But it wasn’t the floating mass which drew a gasp from Forrester, and caused Lawton’s scalp to prickle. Crawling slowly across that Sargasso-like island of noxious vegetation was a huge, elongated shape which bore a nauseous resemblance to a mottled garden slug.
Forrester was trembling visibly when he turned from the quartz port.
“God, Dave, that would have been the last straw. Animal life. Dave, I—I can’t realize we’re actually out of it.”
“We’re out, all right,” Lawton said, hoarsely. “Just in time, too. Skipper, you’d better issue grog all around. The men will be needing it. I’m taking mine straight. You’ve accused me of being primitive. Wait till you see me an hour from now.”
Dr. Stephen Halday stood in the door of his Appalachian mountain laboratory staring out into the pine-scented dusk, a worried expression on his bland, small-featured face. It had happened again. A portion of his experiment had soared skyward, in a very loose group of highly energized wavicles. He wondered if it wouldn’t form a sort of sub-electronic macrocosm high in the stratosphere, altering even the air and dust particles which had spurted up with it, its uncharged atomic particles combining with hydrogen and creating new molecular arrangements.
If such were the case there would be eight of them now. His bubbles, floating through the sky. They couldn’t possibly harm anything—way up there in the stratosphere. But he felt a little uneasy about it all the same. He’d have to be more careful in the future, he told himself. Much more careful. He didn’t want the Controllers to turn back the clock of civilization a century by stopping all atom-smashing experiments.
The Mercurian
We stood before the airlock, the old man and I, and watched them go out. Ellison was a granite man and I was just the lad who threw the switches.
I was new at it. They had sent me out with a pat on the back and a commission, but I didn’t feel like a Mercury run officer. Mining uranium on the Sun’s firstling was no job for a green kid of twenty-two. Outside were lakes of molten zinc and a temperature of 790 degrees Fahr.
No part of that temperature seeped into us, but just knowing it was out there was spine-chilling. I am not being facetious. To keep from thinking of the hot face we thought of the cold face, and you can’t imagine extremes of cold without feeling shivery. Out on the cold face were other miners, working under conditions I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. They had the cold of open space to contend with, and a little of that seeped in.
The Commander was passing out advice to each of the miners as
