PROXY PLANETEERS
By EDMOND HAMILTON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories, July 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Doug Norris hesitated for an instant. He knew that another movement might well mean disaster.
Here deep in the cavernous interior of airless Mercury, catastrophe could strike suddenly. The rocks of the fissure he was following had a temperature of hundreds of degrees. And he could hear the deep rumble of shifting rock, close by.
But it was not these dangers of the infernal underworld that made him hesitate. It was that sixth sense of imminent peril that he had felt twice before while exploring the Mercurian depths. Each time, it had ended disastrously.
"Just nerves," Norris muttered to himself. "The uranium vein is clearly indicated. I've got to follow it."
As he again moved forward and followed that thin, black stratum in the fissure wall, his eyes constantly searched ahead.
Then a half-dozen little clouds of glowing gas flowed toward him from a branching fissure. Each was several feet in diameter, a faint-glowing mass of vapor with a brighter core.