Five minutes later, they blasted clear of the space-station on an orbit that would intersect the Mercurian ellipse at perihelion. From there, the _Gordak_ would visit Venus, Mars, the planetoid Ceres, the four large Jovian moons, Titan and Uranus. Ten worlds in all the hunters would touch on--and each world would offer up its native fauna for the _Brody Carmical Circus_. Steve wondered if there'd be trouble with _Barling Brothers Interplanetary_. There generally was. But then he smiled without mirth, for the chances were he'd never get beyond the first landing on Mercury, anyway. * * * * * There were fifty men in the _Gordak_'s crew and another thirty-odd in the expedition, and a space ship being the complicated, labyrinthine device that it is, it wasn't too strange that Steve failed to encounter LeClarc until immediately before landing on Mercury. Then the _Gordak_'s deceleration tubes had cut in and Steve found the most readily available accel-hammock in the general lounge. The Frenchman was stretched out on the cushions three feet from him. LeClarc said, "This will be a terrible, hot place." "I know. At perihelion, Mercury's not much more than thirty million miles from the sun." If the Frenchman wanted to bury the hatchet, fine. LeClarc strained to raise himself on his elbows against the increasing deceleration. "Sure," he said, "a hot place. After you foul up, Stedman, my vote will be to leave you on the hot side instead of giving you passage to the twilight zone." The Frenchman was being illogical and pointlessly childish. "I didn't ask you to fight with me," Steve told him. "Why don't we forget all about it?" "If you want to, forget. I, LeClarc, never forget." "By space, LeClarc--" the voice came from the other side of the lounge "--then you're a spoiled little child." It was the big Exec officer who spoke, Kevin McGann. LeClarc did not answer. Kevin winked at Steve, then set his face grimly against the bone-crushing deceleration. Fifteen minutes later, they landed at Furnacetown. The names of the new frontier settlements, Steve thought with a grin, were as picturesque as the names of the old Wild West towns. There was a huge, priceless matrix of ruby far below the surface near Furnacetown, and the frontier settlement existed to mine from it. But the place was named aptly, for here on the hot side of Mercury, the temperature was hot enough to melt tin and lead. A community of half a thousand hearty souls, Furnacetown shielded itself from the swollen, never-setting sun with a vacuum-insulated dome and a hundred million credits worth of cooling equipment. Even so, the atmosphere within the dome was a lot like New Orleans on a sultry summer day. The mayor of the town, a man named Powlaski, met them at the landing field. "It's hot," said Teejay, offering her hand and shaking with the plump official, man-fashion.