No one ever saw the terrible blast of incandescence that they threw into space, like the jet of an old fashioned, Fourth-of-July pinwheel. Not even Fane, out there somewhere in the cold wilderness. Before he could glimpse what was happening, the glare charred his eyeballs. Then it charred him inside his space suit. Then a sea of slush engulfed him and his robots. A slush of liquid air and snow. Steam rose high and scattered to blank out the stars with an awful wind.
Five hours later the sun that had set here fifty million years ago, rose again. But the melting went on under the veil of fog. And across the furnace desert of Mercury, darkened now at last, rivers roared, hissing. Volcanoes blazed, for how can you cause a world to spin again, without poking up its internal fires with the strain?
But at last the fury of rebirth quieted. And down a murky river days later, a still dazed Rick Mills and his battered companions, paddled a crude metal boat to meet another party from the main camp. The air was thin and steamy, but rich in oxygen, and good to breathe. They had removed their space suit helmets.
Rick took out the picture of Anne Munson. He read the legend scrawled under her pert smile:
"Find us a world, Rick!"
"You thought you were pulling my leg, Miss Munson," Rick said solemnly. "But you'll be on Mercury, helping build things up, before you know it. Bet we'll even have a house...."
Young Finden's chuckle, and the twinkle in Lattimer's eyes, constituted another kind of leg-pull.