The ship burst into searing sunlight. The Sunside of Mercury blazed below them. Out toward the velvet dark of space the side of a waiting ship flashed burning silver.
Even as he watched, the flare of its rockets arced against the blackness. They had been sighted.
Gray's practised eye gauged the stranger's speed against his own, and he cursed softly. Abruptly he wheeled the ship and started down again, cutting his rockets as the shadow swallowed them. The ship was eerily silent, dropping with a rising scream as the atmosphere touched the hull.
"What are you going to do?" asked Jill almost too quietly.
He didn't answer. Maneuvering the ship on velocity between those stupendous pinnacles took all his attention. Caron, at least, couldn't follow him in the dark without exhaust flares as guides.
They swept across the wind-torn plain, into the mouth of the valley where Gray had worked, braking hard to a stop under the cables.
"You might have got past them," said Jill.
"One chance in a hundred."
Her mouth twisted. "Afraid to take it?"