Free Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury by Isaac Asimov Page B

of dirty skin."
    Urteil shouted, "That's enough… "
    But Bigman shouted over him, his high-pitched voice ringing. "Shoot, you yellow pirate. You showed yellow at the dinner table. Stand up to me, man to man, with bare fists and you'll show yellow again, bloated as you are."
    Bigman was tense now. Let Urteil act in rash haste now. Let Urteil aim on impulse and Bigman would jump. Death was probable, but there would be a chance…
    But Urteil seemed only to stiffen and grow colder.
    "If you don't talk, I'll kill you. And nothing will happen to me. I'll claim self-defense and make it stick."
    "Not with Lucky, you won't."
    "He'll have his own troubles. When I'm through with him, his opinions won't mean a thing." The blaster in Urteil's hand was steady. "Are you going to try to run for it?"
    "From you?" Bigman said.
    "It's up to you," said Urteil coldly.
    Bigman waited, waited without saying a word while Urteil's arm grew stiff and Urteil's headpiece dropped slightly as though he were taking aim, though at point-blank range he could not miss.
    Bigman counted the moments, trying to choose the one in which to make his desperate jump for life as Lucky had when Mindes had similarity aimed at him. But here there was no second party to tackle Urteil as Bigman had tackled Mindes on that occasion. And Urteil was no panicky, mind-sick Mindes. He would laugh and aim again.
    Bigman's muscles tensed for that final jump. He did not expect to live for more than five more seconds, perhaps.

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