Devil's World
Imaginative Tales – July 1957
(1957)*
Randall Garrett

Every secret agent sent to Mercury turned up dead; now Courtney volunteered for the task of trapping Thurston, the man who ruled this—Devil's World

-

	THE ASTRONOMY textbooks called it Mercury, but as far as SSP Lieutenant Roger Courtney was concerned it was just plain Hell. Even in the heat-suit Boss Thurston had so obligingly supplied, Courtney felt torrents of sweat rippling down his body. He forced his tired legs to struggle along, but the knowledge that he hadn't long to live numbed him and sucked vitality from his limbs.

	"Come on now, haul!"

	The mocking voice of the overseer echoed harshly in his suit-phones. Courtney gave another tug on the permoplast line and the cargo of molten metal slid forward another few feet. Somewhere up ahead was the blessed relief of the Twilight Zone, but he was wobbling unsteadily on his feet and probably wouldn't make it.

	And if he dropped on His kisser in the sands, they'd just leave him there. Boss Thurston would be overjoyed to be rid of him—and life came cheap on Mercury.

	Mercury—the Devil's world.

	"Haul! Haul!" the overseer urged.

	Courtney tugged until his muscles felt ready to pop from his arms. He glared up bitterly at the overseer's car overhead. The overseer rode in a heatproof gravcopter that was nice and balmy inside despite the blazing heat of the swollen, bloated sun filling the sky. He wasn't roasting. He was comfortable.

	"I'm hauling," Courtney muttered. "If you don't like the way I'm doing it, come down here and show me!"

	"Strong words, Courtney! But that's no way to talk to a superior."

	Courtney felt a shock of surprise; he hadn't known the suit-phones were working two-way. But they were—and the overseer had heard him. A sudden bolt of energy flickered down from above—a nerve-torturing electrostim. He shuddered and grabbed the line for support. The pain was agonizing.

	"Any more sweet words, Courtney?"

	He clamped his lips together and hauled. Before him, hovering in the airless waste, dancing mockingly, he saw the figure of Boss Charlie Thurston—Boss Charlie, who had seized control of Mercury Mines and held the little world in a mailed grip. Boss Charlie, who had smiled as he condemned Roger Courtney to a tour of duty in the Sunside Mines—a sure sentence of death.

	"Haul there, Courtney! Haul!"

	He hauled.

	Outside the heat-suit the temperature was climbing rapidly up above the 500° mark, according to the thermometer on the right wrist of Courtney's suit. That was mild, he thought. It was just a balmy Mercurian morning so far. Wait till the heat really gets going—up around 600° and 700°, when heat-ghosts flickered maddeningly up and down the craggy plain and men's flesh turned to water.

	Inside the suit it was only 106°, according to the left-wrist thermometer. The heat-suit was a pretty good thing. But a man couldn't do physical labor in plus-100° temperature wearing a bulky suit like this, even in Mercury's low grav.

	A man died after enough of it.

	"Haul, Courtney!"

	"I'm hauling," he grunted.

	This was the sort of work that ought to be done by robots, he thought. Pulling ladlesful of molten metal over the Mercurian plains on Sunside, dragging them to the lip of the mines. But robots couldn't be used here. Robots had delicate cryotronic brains that were dandy on Darkside, but blanked out totally on Sunside.

	They couldn't use robots for the job; they weren't tough enough, and they were too expensive. So Thurston used men.

-

	THERE WASN'T ANY reason why Thurston should have found out Courtney was an SSP agent. Courtney had arrived on Mercury wearing a lifemask that should have hidden his true identity under all tests but a direct mindprobe—and he didn't recall having been probed. It made no sense at all. But yet Thurston couldn't have done it with a blind guess!

	Courtney remembered Chief of Patrol Helgerson's words to him:

	"We know Thurston's a sharpie, and we know he's up to shady maneuvers on Mercury. But, dammit, we can't prove anything. And every time we put an agent down on the accursed planet he nails the man."

	"How well concealed were they?" Courtney asked.

	"The best masking job the Bureau can do. We've lost three men on Mercury now—"

	"Lost?"

	"That's right. Thurston's allowed a certain amount of casualties each year, due to Sunside work; the pay is tremendously high, and the men who go out there know what they're facing. And somehow each of the agents we've sent to Mercury has gotten into the Sunside mines—and each of them shortly after gets reported dead from one cause or another attributable to the heat. It's all nice and legal, and there's not a thing we can do. Thurston finds our men and sends them out in that hell to die. And meanwhile he's growing rich on the illicit power he diverts on that pipeline to Venus."

	"There is something we can do, Chief."

	"What's that?"

	"Send me there. I'll come back with the goods on Charlie Thurston."

	"It's more likely you won't come back at all. But I'll risk one more man. Just one."

	Now that he looked back on that conversation, Courtney realized that everything the Chief had predicted was about to come true.

	He hadn't been on Mercury a day before three of Thurston's toughs had called on him in his bunk in Twilight Zone. He opened the door and they came muscling in, grabbing him before he could move.

	They took him to Thurston. The heavyset Boss of Mercury Mines smiled urbanely as Courtney was thrust into his presence, struggling and kicking.

	"You're very violent, Mr. Courtney. Or should I say, Lieutenant Courtney?"

	"What the hell are you talking about?"

	"You needn't play games, Lieutenant. Your identity is crystal-clear to me." Thurston turned, paced the room, put his hands on a jewel-encrusted rectangular box that sat on his desk. "I know exactly who you are, and why you're here. And I can assure you that I have no intentions of allowing you to return to Earth and tell lies about me."

	"Murder's a crime, Thurston."

	"So it is! But who spoke of murder?"

	Thurston turned to his desk and spoke rapidly into the communicator. "Tell Overseer Ludlow of the Sunside Corps that I'm sending him a recruit. The recruit's name is Courtney—and he looks like a good hand at the zinc mines. Okay. Take him away."

-

	MERCURY was the smallest planet of the Solar System, smaller indeed than several of the great moons of the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter. But the mighty industries of Earth and the growing Venus colony were becoming more and more dependent for their power on Mercury—the little giant of the Solar System.

	Mercury bobbed around the Sun in an 88-day year, one face turned endlessly toward the blazing heat, the other hemisphere brushing the darkness of space. Thanks to the eccentricities of the planet's orbit, a Twilight Zone some few hundred miles wide ran the circumference of Mercury—and here it was that Mercury Mines had its headquarters and Charlie Thurston ruled his kingdom.

	Tightbeam interplanetary teleport communication was fixed between the Twilight Zone and both Earth and Venus, powered by the mighty energies of the nearby sun. Mercury Mines supplied raw metals to Venus, which had hardly any beneath its formaldehyde atmosphere, and Earth, which was well on its way to exhausting its own mineral supply.

	It wasn't hard work to find metal on Mercury. A lake of molten zinc fifty miles wide and un-fathomably deep lay in the heart of Sunside, right on the surface for the taking. It Was mere child's play to scoop the metal up and subsequently ship it to the needy planets.

	Child's play. The. only trouble was the teleports were located in Twilight Zone, and there was absolutely no way of setting them up under the tremendous magnetic stress of Sunside conditions. So the metal had to be hauled from the lakes to the matter-transmitters.

	Boss Charlie had found men to do it. His theory was a simple-one: if you give men enough money to do a job, they'll do it if it kills them. The standard pay for an eight-hour trek into Sunside and back was $500. That was $2500 a week for as many weeks as you could stand it.

	Some smart young men signed on for Mercury duty, made the trip out—it cost $1500, deductible from future paychecks if desired—and worked five or six days. Three days were shot in transportation, but they could clear out with two or three grand anyway, and when they'd spent that they could come back for another two-week tour. Those were the smart ones..

	But there were the other ones, the ones who kept promising they'd leave "tomorrow." Tomorrow never came. The lure of that $500 check at day's end kept bringing them back day after day, for "just one more day." They kept at it until they dropped. Some of them died with hundreds of thousands in the Mercurian bank; Boss Charlie sadly forwarded half their balance to their widows or next of kin, and pocketed the rest.

	Then there was a third group—at the moment consisting solely of Roger Courtney. Their pay went straight into Thurston's pocket—and they didn't get any chance to leave. They worked on the desert till the heat killed them.

	Which was strictly too bad, of course.

-

	"OKAY, COURTNEY," came the bored voice of the overseer. "Dump your load and take off."

	Courtney tripped the release-mechanism and sent the boiling zinc down the chute. The siphon would take it the rest of the way to the teleport and there it would be demolecularized and hurled outward through space to the receiving-station at Earth or Venus.

	"Okay. You're released for the day. The pickup truck will be here any minute."

	"Sure," Courtney said. He was half-dizzy with heat. Suit temperature was up to 115°; outside, a baking 586° prevailed. The ground seemed to shimmer; in Mercury's airlessness, there were no dust molecules in the air to break up the glare. It was merciless. Everything was merciless on this world.

	He staggered over to the pickup depot and forced himself to keep standing. If a man wearing a heat-suit fell, he wouldn't be strong enough to pick himself up—and he might fry out there before someone else came along to lift him to his feet.

	There were two other miners there already. Courtney recognized them through their faceplates, and weakly nodded in greeting.

	"Another day, another $500, eh, Courtney?"

	The man who spoke was "Iron Man" Delavalle. Delavalle had been on Mercury longer than anyone could remember; his bank balance reportedly was up in the millions. Yet he still kept making the daily trek, without any apparent strain. He was a lean, fleshless man who looked as if his skin was made from old parchment. The sun had long since baked all the fat from his frame.

	"Yeah," Courtney said. "How to get rich quick."

	The other miner was Paul Crestwick, a thin, pale young man who was on Mercury to pile up a stake to finance his marriage. This was his third day on Sunside, which meant he had just paid off his transportation. From now on, it all was gravy—and he hoped to return to Earth with at least $3000 in Mercury Mines checks in his pocket.

	"Here comes the truck," Crestwick muttered. The heat was taking a terrible toll on him. He was wobbling dizzily and looked ready to fall.

	"You birds going back?" the driver said. "Get in, if you are."

	The three staggered aboard, and the truck roared off toward Twilight Zone.

	They passed through the unnamed valley between the Mountains of Hell—two huge twin peaks, each higher than Everest, standing at the border of Sunside like two monstrous fangs. Temperature began to drop as the truck edged away from the pulsing, swollen sun; shadows grew thicker as they approached Twilight Zone.

	Finally they entered the zone of relative coolness, where the sun's rays did not penetrate but where enough of the broiling radiation from Sunside lapped over to cancel out the deadly cold that lay beyond. The truck pulled up at the airlock that led to the miners' barracks; the three riders got out.

	Courtney moved dazedly through the lock, shucked his cumbersome heat-suit, and headed up the esca-ramp to the two-by-four cabin Thurston had allotted him.

	He nudged the photobeam that operated the door. As the door opened, he shambled in and sprawled into the pneumocouch, utterly exhausted.

	He stared at his face in the dingy mirror they gave him. The mocking visage of a human skeleton stared back at him.

	He had weighed 195 four days ago, when he landed on Mercury. Now, after three days of Sunside duty, he estimated he had lost upwards of twenty pounds—boiled off him by the constant steam-bath conditions inside a heat-suit.

	That was about all the fat he had. From now on it would be muscular tissue that would drain away, until he was just skin and bones like some of the other miners. And then one day he'd pitch over in the desert, and—

	Damn Thurston!

	He was sure Thurston had set up an illicit power-tap. The whole system suspected it—but no one had any proof. Somewhere on Mercury there was a solar accumulator building up energy, and Thurston had it rigged to a teleport that was shipping it direct to Venus. It was a nice little racket, just as a side-venture. It probably brought Thurston a couple of million a year.

	Only there wasn't any way of prosecuting him for it. Not when every man the Solar System Patrol sent to Mercury wound up sent out to Sunside to die.

	The door opened.

	"Hello, Courtney." It was Ludlow, the lantern-jawed Overseer of the Sunside miners.

	"Come to pay me a visit, Ludlow? It's after working hours; I can pick and choose my own company."

	"Your working hours never stop, Courtney. If I wanted to I could grab you now and order you out for another eight-hour shift. It's always daylight out on Sunside, you know. No such thing as 'working hours'." There was cold menace in Ludlow's voice.

	"You wouldn't!" Courtney said.

	"No. I'm not going to. But it's not out of any spirit of mercy—or because I don't want to go back there myself. It's nice and comfy up in the gravcar, you know. But Thurston wouldn't like it if I took you out for another shift. It would probably kill you—and he wants you to die slowly. He doesn't want to finish you off so fast."

	"Thanks for the favor," Courtney snapped. "And now if you'll please get the hell out—"

	"Watch your language! You were sassy to me out on the plain today, and that's what I'm here a-bout. I don't take that kind of stuff from no one—'specially guys like you."

-

	LUDLOW STEPPED forward. Courtney watched with icy detachment as the Overseer grabbed him by the throat of his uniform and tugged him to his feet.

	"Let go of me, Ludlow."

	"When I'm through with you." The Overseer's hand slapped viciously across Courtney's face; the SSP man felt a trickle of blood begin to flow from his cracked, parched lips.

	Ludlow's hand connected savagely with his cheek. Courtney's reflexes were dulled by the heat; his mind fought to gain control of his exhausted body. Ludlow was laughing sadistically, as he beat the helpless SSP man.

	Suddenly Courtney lashed upward with his fist and connected satisfyingly with Ludlow's chin. The Overseer rocked back, his eyes wide with astonishment. On Mercury miners were supposed to keep their place—even while an Overseer was giving them a going over.

	Courtney felt strength flood back into his tired muscles. He stepped forward, fists first. He had surprise on his side. Ludlow ducked backward as Courtney's balled fist crashed into his face. Another blow ricocheted off the Overseer's chest, leaving him gasping for breath.

	"You'll pay for this," Ludlow grated through swelling lips. "You can't do this to—"

	"Can't I?" Courtney placed one piledriver blow that sent Ludlow staggering back against the wall. There was a sharp crack! as the Overseer hit headfirst—and then he slumped into a huddled heap at the foot of the wall.

	Courtney bent over the prostrate Ludlow and efficiently examined him.

	The Overseer was dead.

	Courtney felt only momentary remorse; it was hard to feel pity for Ludlow or any other member of Thurston's organization. ' He shuffled through Ludlow's pocket, extracting a nerve-whip and a passkey. Then he shoved the Overseer under the pneumocouch and straightened up.

	Ludlow had been overconfident; he had never expected a tired man to fight back, and he lay dead as a result. But an SSP man should never be counted out. Not at all.

	Three more days on Mercury would probably kill Courtney. But he wasn't figuring on staying on the hellish little planet those three days.

	If he could get out of here with some evidence on Thurston—

-

	CAUTIOUSLY he peeked out into the hallway. No one was in sight. Good; Ludlow had come a-lone.

	He closed the door and activated the photon-lock, hoping nobody would come by looking for him. It wasn't likely. No one knew much about him on Mercury but Thurston, and no one cared. So far as the other miners were concerned, he was just some guy looking for quick dough—not an SSP man who had been found out and assigned to a suicide job.

	Courtney slipped down the long hallway. Some of the miners had their doors open; he heard them talking, gloating over their bank balances, talking of when they planned to return to Earth, commenting on the heat and the general hellishness of Mercury.

	He caught the dropshaft and spun downward to the ground level. There, he entered the lock and donned a breathingsuit. It wasn't necessary to wear a heat-suit in Twilight Zone, where the temperature was usually moderate, but since there was no atmosphere even here—or anywhere on Mercury—a suit with air-feeder had to be worn.

	He stepped outside. A dull glow far to the east was all that was visible of the sun—just enough to keep the Twilight Zone warm. From here he could see the majestic peaks of the Mountains of Hell outlined against the faint redness of the sky. Behind those mountains, he knew, the huge sun blasted down with man-killing fury. Here it was safe.

	He glanced the other way. There, to the west, lay Darkside, shrouded in eternal night. Robots mined Darkside, robots whose brains depended on supercooled cryotronic circuits and who thus were scarcely bothered by the Minus 400° temperature there. They brought back frozen gases for use in the Twilight Zone colony.

	Up ahead was the main administration building. Somewhere in there was Thurston's office. Inside the spacesuit, Courtney's fingers were curling and uncurling in cold anticipation.

	The main airlock of the administration building yawned before him. Courtney entered the compression-chamber, stripped off his breathing-suit, hung it on the racks that were provided.

	Beyond the inner door of the lock stood one of Thurston's private guards. As Courtney emerged from the chamber, the goon pointed at him.

	"Where you going, buddy?"

	"I have a message from Mr. Ludlow for Mr. Thurston," Courtney said. He started to move past, but a hand grabbed him roughly.

	"Hold on, friend. No one gets in there without a pass. Where's yours?"

	Courtney chuckled. "Oh—I'm sorry. Here." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out the passkey he had lifted from Ludlow. Cupping the sliver of metal in his hand, he extended it toward the guard.

	"What kind of pass is that? I can't see it."

	"Take a better look," Courtney said. As the guard squinted and bent over, the SSP man slid the nerve-whip from his pocket and gave him a full dose of electrostim. The guard shuddered. Courtney kept his finger on the stud and the man went into an agonized dance, unable to control his own nerves.

	"Hold steady, will you?" Courtney said. "Ah—that's good." He measured the tough for the knockout punch and administered it. The man sagged to the floor. Courtney gave him another electrostim bath. Even unconscious he writhed in torment.

	Chalk off one goon, he thought. That one wouldn't be much good for anything for hours. And by then he should have found Thurston.

-

	HE ENTERED the dropshaft and pinwheeled upward. As he hoped, the shaft halted in mid-ascent and someone got in. Courtney had the nerve-whip drawn instantly.

	"That's it—step right in."

	"What do you want?" The man, Courtney saw, was a mine official.

	"I'm looking for Boss Charlie. Tell me where his office is or I'll sizzle your nerves."

	"You poor sucker! Don't you know Thurston'll spot you a dozen yards away? You can't get anywhere trying to knock him off."

	"What do you mean?" Courtney asked, gesturing with the nerve-whip.

	"Why, he's got some kind of telepathic Mercurian beast in that box of his. Some sort of heat-leech the robots found on Darkside. It tips him off ahead of time on things. How many miners do you think have tried to kill him in the last ten years?"

	So that's it, Courtney thought. So that's how he knew I was SSP!

	"I'll take my chances," he said. "Where's his office?"

	"Twenty-third level," the official said. "But you'll never get away with it."

	"Let me worry about that. Turn around."

	"Are you going to—"

	"Yes," Courtney said, and gave the official a full bath of electrostim. The man quivered and collapsed. Courtney dumped him out of the dropshaft and set the dial for the twenty-third level.

	He got off and edged stealthily along the corridor. He was going to have to play the rest of the game very carefully, if his opponent was able to read his mind.

	The sign on the door said Charles Thurston, Mine Coordinator. Courtney lay concealed atop a filing cabinet facing that door, and thought out his strategy.

	Thurston was inside. And in that jeweled box on his desk was—what did the fellow say?—a Mercurian heat-leech that read minds and passed the information along to Thurston in time.

	That was the way Thurston kept the SSP at arm's length. No matter what the disguise the heat-leech could penetrate it. Three men had died so far in the attempt to expose Thurston's racket; Courtney was determined not to be Number Four;

	The question was, at what range could the thing read minds? And also—how deep could it penetrate?

	I'll soon find out, he thought.

	He launched a furious burst of thought at the closed door in front of him. I'm going to ride up to the floor above and jump on him through the skylight. Then I'll grab him by the throat and wrestle with him. Here I am upstairs now. There's the skylight. I'll jump through and—1

	He heard the sound of a shot and of breaking glass—and in that instant he grinned and unleashed a barrage of electrostim at Thurston's door.

	He sprang from his perch, raced across the hall, and burst into the office, keeping his finger on the firing stud. The plan had worked perfectly. The skylight lay smashed, thanks to Thurston's bullet; the heat-leech had picked up Courtney's false thought and relayed it obediently to its master.

	"Hello, Thurston. No, I'm not lying dead on the floor above. I'm right here."

	He gave Thurston a quick blast of electrostim; the mine boss jerked convulsively and dropped his gun. Courtney jumped forward.

	He smashed a fist into Thurston's pudgy stomach and ducked as the nerve-shocked mine boss aimed a clumsy return punch.

	Thurston staggered; he rocked backward, and seemed about to topple. The mine boss' strength seemed fantastic, in view of the dose Courtney had thrown at him with the nerve-whip.

	"Okay, you've got me," Thurston said moaningly. "Don't turn that whip on me again."

	"Just stay down there and keep your hands where I can see them. I want to investigate this."

	Courtney turned to examine the box in which the heat-leech was kept. Suddenly a quiet mental voice said, He's got a knife.

	He whirled and saw something bright flashing in Thurston's hands. A quick blast of electrostim and the knife went clattering to the floor. Thurston stared at him in shock.

	"How did you know—?"

	"Your little pet told me," Courtney said. "It knows a loser when it sees one. It left you like a rat leaves a sinking ship. Except you're the rat."

	He scooped up the heat-leech's box and glanced at Thurston. "Hmm. That's another charge we can get you on when I get you back to Earth. Discovery of an alien life-form, and failure to report same."

	Thurston glared at him defiantly. "You'll never prove anything!"

	"I don't need to," Courtney said. "A quick mind-probe will settle the whole thing. All the evidence we need is locked up in the brain of the heat-leech here—enough to smash your lousy racket and put you away for keeps. Come on, Thurston—let's get moving."

The End