Chapter II

It was six hours before the first of the search parties Lamoureux had sent out returned. The men were soaked, but they had seen no trace of Kalinoff. They had faithfully tried to follow Lamoureux's directions, but in a downpour where it was impossible to see more than fifty feet ahead of them, they stood little chance of rescuing anyone. Most of the six hours had been spent finding their own way home.

The other search parties drifted in slowly, until all had returned. Lamoureux checked them off one by one, and discovered, with practically no surprise, that McCracken was missing.

"Where is the idiot?" he growled.

"McCracken separated from the rest of us," replied Carvalho. "He thought he could catch a glimpse of those mountains Kalinoff described."

"When was this?"

"Just before it started to rain."

"He's probably within a few hundred yards of the ship right now, but can't find us because of this rain. I hope he has sense enough to dig up a white-bush and get some shelter."

"We can never be sure how much sense McCracken has. Anyway, Captain, it can't go on raining like this for very long."

But it could, and it did. The men sat around in the ship, stretching lazily, and took life easy. They had not had time to unpack many of the five hundred pound crates, and what materials were exposed to the rain would not be spoiled. There was no harm in leaving them where they were.

A vacation of this sort would have been welcome, if the trip through space to Mercury had itself not been so largely a vacation. After a day, Lamoureux saw plainly that his men were sick of inactivity. So, for that matter, was he. He had come to take part in a strenuous and dangerous expedition, not to sit on his fanny waiting for the rain to go away.

Twenty-four hours after everyone else had returned to the ship, McCracken made a sensational reappearance. With that independence of thought that Lamoureux was beginning to recognize, he had found his own way of coping with the bad weather. He had stripped off his soggy and unpleasant clothing, and had meandered around for the past day clad in nothing but his shorts, with his rifle, his one remaining possession, held firmly in the crook of his right arm. The rain was fairly warm, and outside of giving him his usual ravenous appetite, his outing had done him no harm.

* * * * *

Lamoureux got one of the crew to dig up an extra suit of clothes to cover McCracken's manly beauty. "Where did you sleep?"

"I didn't."

"You wandered around all this time shocking the natives without rest?"

"I'm no sissy," grunted McCracken. "I'm not even tired."

He yawned, and caught himself. "I didn't see anything of Kalinoff. But I got a good look at those mountains he described. The pair with the saddleback ridge between them."

"Where are they?"

McCracken scratched his head. "I think I lost my sense of direction. But they're not far from here. No, sir, they're not far. Kalinoff is as good as found. The screwball."

His eyes closed while he was talking, and Lamoureux had him led to his bunk and deposited there. Two minutes later, McCracken's snoring was competing successfully with the noise of the rain.

There was little sense in looking for the mountains until the rain let up. Lamoureux waited, and waited in vain. The downpour kept on until its monotonous sound had become an integral part of their life. They learned to talk without paying any attention to it, and without even hearing it. But not without, now and then, cursing it.

After it had been raining for a week, Lamoureux noticed that the temperature was falling. It probably signified that on this part of the Twilight Zone the Sun was dropping further behind the horizon. As if he didn't already have troubles enough. He cursed Mercury; he cursed the Twilight Zone; he cursed the rain; he even cursed the Sun. A few hours later, he also cursed the snow and the hail.

Such weather was absolutely incredible. There was nothing to explain it. As he had told Haskell, the cook, no previous explorer had ever seen a sign of rain, snow, or hail. Kalinoff had not reported such phenomena, and Kalinoff got around.

The men were going crazy with inactivity. Worst of all, to Lamoureux, was the way they looked at him. They seemed to feel that, as leader of the expedition, he was responsible for the weather. Lamoureux almost found himself agreeing with them.

* * * * *

On the tenth day, he could stand it no longer. He called the men together and made a short speech. "Men, this rain seems able to go on forever. We can't stay here waiting for it to clear up."

Somebody cheered hopefully, and the others, for the sake of exercising their lungs, joined in.

Lamoureux held up his hand. "McCracken has reported that he saw the mountains we were looking for, with the saddleback ridge between them. Rain or no rain, we're going to find them."

Somebody yelled, "Three cheers for Big Muscles McCracken!" The three cheers were roared. Then there came, "Three cheers for our brave and heroic captain!" and, "Three cheers for the mountains!" and even, "Three cheers for the lousy rain and snow."

Lamoureux began to feel uncomfortable. This was too much like a high school football rally, with burlesque overtones, to suit him. The men were bursting with pent-up energy, and it had to get out somehow.

"I'm leaving only a half dozen of you behind to stay with the ship. The rest are coming with me. Any volunteers?"

He had expected what followed. They all volunteered. He made his choices rapidly. McCracken went along because he had actually seen the mountains. Carvalho would make an intelligent assistant. Gronski, Marsden, Sprott--he reeled off the names rapidly, and in less than a minute had his group, leaving a disgruntled half dozen who would have nothing to do but continue to sit around the ship.

Lamoureux himself carried a two-way radio transmission set capable of receiving intelligible signals over a distance of 12,000 miles. He gave another of the sets to McCracken, and ordered the man to hang on to it no matter what happened. In the rain, it would be their only way of maintaining communications with the ship. He put McCracken and the radio in the second squad under Carvalho, and himself took charge of the first. The two squads would stick together unless some emergency demanded that they separate.

When they set out in the snow, wearing the heaviest clothing they had, the men were singing. McCracken's voice, like the croaking of a huge bullfrog, supplied an unharmonized but ear-filling bass. It sounded so impressive to Lamoureux that not until McCracken had reached the third song did he perceive that the man didn't know any of the melodies at all. He just oom-pahed as the spirit moved him, evidently feeling that, on Mercury, noise and good spirits were more important than any tune.

* * * * *

They had been marching for a half hour when Gronski exclaimed, "Well, I'll be damned to Venus and back!"

"What's wrong, Gronski?"

"It isn't snowing so hard, Captain."

It wasn't. Carvalho said hopefully, "Maybe it'll stop."

Sprott was so overwhelmed with delight that he scooped up a huge pile of snow, pressed it together, and popped McCracken on the nose with it. McCracken threw him down and poured snow down his back.

Lamoureux said angrily, "Stop that, you fools! You're not a bunch of kids."

The horseplay came to an abrupt halt. They marched on a little more soberly, and in a few minutes the snow had stopped falling altogether. Instead of being as happy as Lamoureux had expected, McCracken seemed puzzled. He scratched his head and scowled.

"What's wrong, McCracken? Termites?"

"It's this snow, Captain. We walk two or three miles and it stops. It don't make sense."

"It's got to stop sometime."

"The point is, Captain, it didn't snow here at all. There's none on the ground. It just snowed around the ship."

It cost Lamoureux an effort to admit it, but McCracken was right. He was not as stupid as he had seemed.

It was Lamoureux's turn to scowl. He got in touch with the ship. "Haskell!"

"Yes, sir?"

"How's the weather where you are?"

"Are you joking, Captain?"

"I'm serious, Haskell. Is it clear?"

"It's still snowing, Captain, just as it was less than an hour ago when you left."

Lamoureux grunted. "You may be interested to know that it hasn't snowed here at all."

He cut off Haskell's astonished voice, and turned to the others, who now seemed a little uneasy. The unexpected changes in the weather were a little too much for them.

"Now that it's cleared up, we should be able to find that mountain. We'll spread out just a little, but not too far. For all we know, it may start to snow again. Carvalho, you take your group off to the left--"

Sprott whispered, "Captain!"

"Yes?"

"Isn't that a Mercurian?"

* * * * *

Lamoureux stared where Sprott had pointed. About a half mile away, a small gray creature, looking, as McCracken had reported, like a penguin, but with a broader face and no bill to speak of, was standing motionless.

"Sprott, you and Marsden go over to that thing. Be as friendly as you know how. Smile, grin, stand on your head if you have to, but don't scare it away. Try to induce it to follow you here. Maybe we'll finally get some of that information about Kalinoff we're looking for."

Sprott and Marsden were approaching the Mercurian cautiously. Several hundred yards away, they stopped and spread their arms in what was evidently meant to be a gesture of good will.

The Mercurian remained motionless. Not until the men had come within thirty feet of it did it give a sign of life. Then it took a step toward them.

As Lamoureux watched, the two men spoke a few words. The Mercurian did not respond, but when they turned around and moved away, it followed slowly.

Seen from close at hand, the Mercurian did not so greatly resemble a penguin. To begin with, it had no wings, and no arms either. It lacked a bill altogether, but had instead a small mouth that seemed crammed with teeth. Its two eyes were slanted, which gave it an appearance of slyness. There were two round tufted ears. It moved forward not by waddling, but with a smooth rollercoaster gait that was the result of its moving its four legs forward one after the other.

Sprott reported, "It seems hurt."

There was, in fact, a grayish wound on the Mercurian's chest. Lamoureux didn't know enough about Mercurian physiology to hazard a guess as to what would be the best treatment; and, therefore, decided to leave well enough alone. But, according to Kalinoff, the Mercurians were intelligent. He wondered if the screwball explorer had taught this one any of the Earth languages.

"Can you speak English?"

The Mercurian stared at him with its sly expression and said nothing.

"_Parlez-vous fran├žais? Sprechen sie Deutsch?_"

The men were grinning now, and Lamoureux felt his face growing warm. He must look like a fool, trying to carry on a conversation with a bird.

He asked, "Anybody here know Russian? Polish? Spanish?"

* * * * *

His men supplied him with phrases in the languages he asked for, but the Mercurian remained unresponsive.

McCracken ventured, "He don't look very bright to me, Captain. I can't understand why Kalinoff said they were intelligent."

"Maybe," suggested Sprott, "it's because they just stand there looking wise and don't say anything."

Lamoureux shook his head. "Kalinoff wouldn't be impressed by anybody's just looking wise. And he wouldn't be impressed by anybody's not saying anything. He didn't go for either stuffed shirts or strong silent men. That's why I believe that this thing must have a language of its own, and a fairly decent brain."

The Mercurian closed its two eyes slowly, like a sleepy cat, and opened them again. Then it poked one of its four feet out from under its body and scratched on the ground.

"He's nuts," decided McCracken. "Just scrabbling around."

"Hold it," ordered Lamoureux, "I'm beginning to get this."

The Mercurian had scratched nine parallel lines, only a few of them visible on the rocky ground. Now it scratched other lines, perpendicular to these.

Lamoureux barked, "A checkerboard! That's what it is! Has anybody got one?"

Marsden had a pocket chess set. He took it out. The Mercurian's eyes brightened. It sat down suddenly on the hard ground.

"I'll be damned," said Lamoureux. "He wants to play a game. Go ahead, Marsden. Entertain our guest."

The men were grinning again. Marsden squatted down on the ground and began to set up the men. The Mercurian stretched out two of its paws--three-fingered affairs, the fingers almost human--and seized one white chessman and one black. It hid the paws behind its back, then held them out again.

Marsden chose the white, and moved forward the queen's pawn. The Mercurian countered and the game was on.

It was Kalinoff who must have taught this creature the game, and, if it did nothing else, the incident showed that the explorer was just as screwy as ever, and probably alive somewhere on the planet. Or did it merely show that he _had_ been alive? Lamoureux, undecided, watched the curious battle of wits.

Half an hour later, Marsden, thoroughly beaten, demanded, "Who says this thing isn't intelligent?"