"Calling Finden. Your message received. Can you explain further? Camp still under attack."
They switched back to Fane, heard him snarl: "By now Nostrand will have relayed Finden's blabbing to Earth. Any investigation will be much too close. But if I'm finished, so are you. And Nostrand and all the others. Yeah, like Martell and Jacobs. And these jets. I'm playing for keeps, smart guys! If I can't use them, nobody's going to. You'll reach hell before I do."
Young Finden's eyes looked haunted. "Damn me!" he said. "If I'd only kept still."
"Forget it," Rick snapped. "You probably did as right as anybody could. Even if we had patched things up with Fane he probably would have found a way to finish us in the end."
"So let's get to work," Lattimer said briskly.
They examined the parchment plans. They tore through Martian crates and boxes searching for the proper parts. They used tools made for tentacles instead of hands. They toiled like demons. A dream not begun in human minds gripped them. It was only a hope, now, for they were sure that they did not have enough time. Give back a world. Give Mercury a day and night. Spread out the terrible sunlight and darkness. Balance the two to temper each other. Let the frozen air turn to warm wind, and the snow and frost melt. Let the fierce sunlight be filtered by clouds and atmosphere. Let vegetation grow again in tropic lushness. Let the mines be reopened.
And if it was possible, too, let the attack on the camp be lifted, and those still alive there, survive. There was even a wish among these three men that they themselves might not be destroyed.
Again Rick Mills had to shove the thought of Anne Munson almost angrily from his mind. It was a mere frivolity, useless and aching in these grim circumstances. A futile wistfulness, worse than the rest.
Time passed. One by one the tasks were finished. Now the men had a Martian generator going, a queer, flat device to produce electric power and to free neutrons from beryllium. Exciter neutrons for those great jet tubes.