Give Back a World

by Raymond Z. Gallun

Once again Rick thought that it was a little queer that two resourceful men should fall victims to the same accident even if roasting and freezing looked like the classic ways to die on Mercury.

Rick longed primitively just then to drive his fists into Fane's narrow jaw. Was he a liar and a murderer? If so, what was his motive?

But then Rick was almost ashamed. The Colonial Board seemed to have accepted the report. And that Fane had brought the bodies of his companions, preserved by Mercurian conditions, back to Earth, was a minor hero's deed, wasn't it?

Other of Fane's written comments came back in Rick's mind:

"There is far more frozen air and water on Mercury's dark side than there should be....

"Several times I may have imagined glimpsing movement. Once I thought I saw something small scurry into hiding under some ancient wreckage. I tried to dig it out. I don't know what it was....

"There are ruins and much ancient junk on Mercury. Martian stuff. And from Planet X. As could be expected.... Left alone while I waited for favorable relative orbital positions for a return to Earth, my investigations of things on Mercury were somewhat limited, however...."

Such were Fane's sketchy notes, supplemented by a few blurred photographs that had been salvaged from much film that had been obviously ruined by a small radiation leak from his rocket's A-jets. But as for the wreckage he had written of, everyone knew that Earth wasn't the first world to colonize other planets. Remembering, Rick Mills felt mingled fascination and dread.

Fifty million years ago Mars and Planet X had been rivals. On Earth, the evidence of their final war must have been trampled under foot by the last of the dinosaurs, buried by volcanoes and rusted away by the damp climate. About the same had happened on Venus.

But on Earth's moon there still were gigantic bomb craters. And a few bright new weapons and engines of war, preserved perfectly by the vacuum. And two kinds of grotesque, dried-out corpses. In Mars' thin air and dryness, there still had been much weathering. But the fused-down, glassy remains of its cities, still slightly radioactive, lingered to show how the Martians had been wiped out.