Isaac Asimov - Lucky Starr 03 - Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury.pdf

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MAD ROBOT!
A sudden thought stabbed at Lucky.
Great Galaxy! He’d been blind, stupidly, criminally blind!
It wasn’t the robot’s legs that were out of order, nor its voice, nor its eyes. How could the heat affect
them? It was—it had to be—the positronic brain itself that was affected; the delicate positronic brain
subjected to the direct heat and radiation of the Mercurian Sun for how long? Months?
That brain must be partially broken down already.
A mad robot! Driven mad by heat radiation!
Cautiously, Lucky retreated. He said, “Do you feel well?”
By Isaac Asimov
Published by Ballantine Books:
THE CLASSIC FOUNDATION SERIES: Foundation
Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation’s Edge
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THE GALACTIC EMPIRE NOVELS: The Stars, Like Dust The Currents of Space Pebble in the Sky
THE CAVES OF STEEL
THE NAKED SUM
I, ROBOT
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
LUCKY STARR
AND
THE BIG SUN OF MERCURY
Isaac Asimov
A Del Key Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW ORK
Writing as Paul French
A Del Rey Book
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381213716.001.png
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1956 by Doubleday and Company, Inc. Preface Copyright 1978 by Isaac Asirnov
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
ISBN 0-345-31439-5
This edition published by arrangement with Doubleday and Company, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America First Ballantine Books Edition: February 1984 Cover art
by Darrell K. Sweet
CONTENTS
The Ghosts of the Sun
Mad or Sane?
Death Waits in a Room
Over the Banquet Table
The Direction of Danger
Preparations
The Mines of Mercury
The Enemy in the Mines
Dark and Light
The Sun-Side
Saboteur!
Prelude to a Duel
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Results of a Duel
14 Prelude to a Trial
15 The Trial
16 Results of the Trial
To Robyn Joan, who did her best to interfere.
LUCKY STARR
and THE BIG SUN OF MERCURY
Preface
Back in the 1950s, I wrote a series of six derring-do novels about David “Lucky” Starr and his battles
against malefactors within the Solar System. Each of the six took place in a different region of the system,
and in each case I made use of the astronomical facts —as they were then known.
Now, a quarter-century later, Fawcett is bringing out the novels in new editions; but what a
quarter-century it has been! More has been learned about the worlds of our Solar System in this last
quarter-century than in all the thousands of years that went before.
LUCKY STARR AND THE BIG SUN OF MER-CURY was written in 1955 and at that time,
astrono-mers were convinced that Mercury presented only one face to the Sun, and that it rotated on its
axis in 88 days, which was exactly the length of the year. I made that conviction a central part of the plot
of the book.
In 1965, however, astronomers studied radar-beam reflections from the surface of Mercury and found,
to their surprise, that this was not so. Mercury rotates on its axis in 59 days, so that there is no perpetual
day-side or night-side.
Every part of the planet gets both day and night, and the Sun moves in a rather complicated path in
Mercury’s sky, growing larger and smaller, and back-tracking on some occasions. If I were writing this
book today, I would take all this into account,
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I hope my Gentle Readers enjoy this book anyway, as an adventure story, but please don’t forget that
the advance of science can outdate even the most con-scientious science-fiction writer and that my
astronom-ical descriptions are no longer accurate in all respects.
Isaac Asimov
1
The Ghosts of the Sun
Lucky Starr and his small friend, John Bigman Jones, followed the young engineer up the ramp toward
the air lock that led to the surface- of the planet Mercury.
Lucky thought: At least things are breaking fast.
He had been on Mercury only an hour. He had had scarcely time to do more than see his ship, the
Shooting Starr, safely stowed in the underground hangar. He had met only the technicians who had
handled the landing red tape and seen to his ship.
Those technicians, that is, and Scott Mindes, engi-neer in charge of Project Light. It had been almost as
though the young man had been lying in wait. Almost at once he had suggested a trip to the surface.
To see some of the sights, he had explained.
Lucky did not believe that, of course. The engineer’s small-chinned face had been haunted with trouble,
and his mouth twitched as he spoke. His eyes slid away from Lucky’s cool, level glance.
Yet Lucky agreed to visit the surface. As yet, all he knew of the troubles on Mercury was that they
posed a ticklish problem for the Council of Science. He was willing to go along with Mindes and see
where that led him.
As for Bigman Jones, he was always glad to follow Lucky anywhere and any time, for any reason and
no reason.
But it was Bigman whose eyebrows lifted as all three were getting into their suits. He nodded almost
unnoticeably toward the holster attachment on Mindes’s suit.
Lucky nodded calmly in return. He, too, had noticed that protruding from the holster was the butt of a
heavy-caliber blaster.
The young engineer stepped out onto the surface of the planet first. Lucky Starr followed and Bigman
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