"I want her," Trevor said to Shannach. "She belongs to Galt. I do not interfere." Galt shrugged. "You're welcome. But keep her chained. She's too dangerous now for anything but hawk-meat." * * * * * The ship was not far beyond the city. It lay canted over on its side, just clear of a low spur jutting out from the barrier cliff. It had hit hard, and some of the main plates were buckled, but from the outside the damage did not seem irreparable, if you had the knowledge and the tools to work with. Three hundred years ago it might have been made to fly again, only those who had the knowledge and the will were dead. And the convicts wanted to stay where they were. The tough metal of the outer skin, alloyed to resist friction that could burn up a meteor, had stood up pretty well under three centuries of Mercurian climate. It was corroded, and where the breaks were the inner shells were eaten through with rust, but the hulk still retained the semblance of a ship. "Will it fly?" asked Shannach eagerly. "I don't know yet," Trevor answered. Galt lighted a torch and gave it to him. "I'll stay out here." Trevor laughed. "How are you ever going to fly over the mountains?" "He'll see to that when the time comes," Galt muttered. "Take the rest of these torches. It's dark in there." Trevor climbed in through the gaping lock, moving with great caution on the tilted, rust-red decks. Inside, the ship was a shambles. Everything had been stripped out of it that could be used, leaving only bare cubicles with the enamel peeling off the walls and a moldering litter of junk. In a locker forward of the air lock he found a number of spacesuits. The fabric was rotted away, but a few of the helmets were still good and some half score of the oxygen bottles had survived, the gas still in them. Shannach urged him on impatiently. "Get to the essentials, Trevor!" The bridge room was still intact, though the multiple thickness of glassite in the big ports showed patterns of spidery cracks. Trevor examined the controls. He was strictly a planetary spacer, used to flying his small craft within spitting distance of the world he was prospecting, and there were a few gadgets here he didn't understand, but he could figure the board well enough. "Not far, Trevor. Only over the mountains. I know from your mind--and I remember from the minds of those who died after the landing--that beyond the mountain wall there is a plain of dead rock, more than a hundred of your reckoning in miles, and then another ridge that seems solid but is not, and beyond that pass there is a fertile valley twenty times bigger than Korith, where Earthmen live." "Only partly fertile, and the mines that brought the Earthmen are pretty well worked out. But a few ships still land there, and a few Earthmen still hang on." "That is best. A small place, to begin...." "To begin what?"