THE FALL OF MERCURY (6)
By:
October 23, 2025
Leslie F. Stone was one of the first women science fiction pulp writers; her stories — including “The Fall of Mercury” (Amazing Stories, Dec. 1935), in which a Black hero uses super-science to destroy a white race bent on conquering the solar system — often featured female or Black protagonists. We are pleased to serialize this story for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12.
We had just finished our dinner when the ringing of the bell to announce the opening of the heavy outer door startled us. It had never opened at this hour before. We turned expectantly in its direction, thinking our turn had come; but we were unprepared for the apparition that appeared. Unlike ourselves, who had been brought in by means of a compulsory force, the new arrival came under his own “steam” so to speak, bending down so that he could enter the doorway which was ten feet high, high enough to admit the tallest Martian. Yet this creature was even taller. When he had appeared, his head touched the high ceiling fifteen feet from the floor, and his body bent slightly at the shoulders. I felt Forrest clutch my arm. The same thought came to me even as he voiced it.
“It’s a Saturnian!”
The planet Saturn is a mystery in itself to the Federation. Forrest and I were not the only explorers who have sought to contact it in the past without success. Though the inhabitants were far from savages they did not welcome visitors. Any ship to land upon the planet was duly invited to be gone as quickly as it had come. It appeared that the Saturnians were merely indifferent to their fellow-beings, realizing themselves incapable of meeting the people of the Federation on common ground. How different they were, we did not know even now as we faced the giant creature before us.
Fifteen and a half feet tall he stood, a great hulk of a man, as black as coal. And I was suddenly struck by his similarity to our captors, the Mercurians, for like them he had double shoulders supporting two pairs of arms, a single eye and a barrel-like body. His thick legs reminded me instantly of an elephant’s leg with the round pad-like feet and four toes stuck close to the heavy foot. But there the resemblance to the little men of Mercury ceased. He was as black as they were white, and his single eye, which was overlarge, was green in color, set in a face that might have been termed handsome, were it of normal size. His brow was lofty, his cheek bones high, his mouth wide though pleasant, showing its tendency to smile easily, though actually it was toothless. His head was devoid of hair, exposing the broad well-shaped cranium.
He was but lightly clad in a pair of short trunks that had broad bands crossing the chest and ending at the waist band in the rear. But again, like the Mercurian, who each day appeared to call forth his allotment of laboratory specimens, he was completely enclosed in a flexible, transparent envelope. Only I noticed the material was heavier than worn by the Mercurian, it seemed to blur the Saturnian’s figure as if he were under water, or as if the stuff was of triple thickness. I recalled now that the thin, low-grade atmosphere of Saturn was almost a counterpart of Mercury’s atmosphere. Was there some connection between the little men of Mercury and the giants of Saturn?
As we studied him the giant in turn stared at his new cell-mates, his face mobile, his form motionless against the wall. No, not motionless, for he swayed as if scarcely able to keep his feet, and it was only by effort that he maintained his upright position. I saw one monstrous hand clung to the top of the door panel to support him, and he had braced two more hands against the wall behind him. Then his swaying became more evident. He was growing weaker. His green eye closed for a moment, and he was toppling forward!
It was a horrible sight to see the giant form fall. Like a tree uprooted he came down. The room resounded to the crash. Luckily Forrest and I dodged in time as we saw it coming. Then we rushed to the giant’s side. He was face downward, his four arms a-sprawl in wild disorder about him, one heavy leg doubled under his thick torso. We had the intention of rolling him over if we could, to make him more comfortable. Forrest was first to lay a hand upon him. The flexible envelope was icy cold. The fat man drew back his hand as if stung.
“That suit. We must get it off him. God, it’s cold!” We did not know the truth then, that the suit merely transferred the cold from the body of its wearer. I ran to our chamber to get my knife and the gauntlets of my outer-air suit. For ten minutes we worked, but the knife could mot pierce the strange material enclosing the giant. It did not even scratch it!
We stared in wonder at the strange body. There was no sign of life in it. We looked to see if the helmet of his suit was misted with his breath, and discovered there was no sign whatsoever of respiration! We concluded that his fall had killed him, if he had not been dead before his fall!
Staring at the body we stood there wondering about him. Why had the Mercurians pushed him in here when they knew he was dying? And why was he here?
There was a waning of the light around us. Night had come. Habit is strong. I wanted to retire, but Forrest wanted me to stay. “Bring my torch, will you, Bruce?” he asked of me, and I went for the required article, bringing my own as well. Forrest, as I have already said, is first of all a man of science, and even though death faced him to-morrow or to-night he was deeply disappointed that the giant had died before he could have a single word with him. So many things might have been explained about Saturn.
I came back to find my friend squatting in the obscurity, now that the light was gone, staring at the Saturnian with chin cupped in a hand. It was not entirely dark, however. With the going of the light the Saturnian glowed like phosphorus, emitting a bluish light that colored his features weirdly, making him something of a nightmare.
Forrest took the torch, without a word, and for nothing better to do I drew a chair up to join in his meditations whatever they might be. I felt a chill coming from the prone form of the giant, and shivered slightly. Forrest was talking now, more to himself than to me. “I can’t understand it. A living creature, and yet he does not breathe. Still he lives — he lives.”
I cried out in wonder. “Living… You mean…”
The fat man turned eyes upon me as if seeing me for the first time. He nodded his head. “He lives. He moved slightly when you were gone; and groaned…”
“But he doesn’t breathe! We made sure of that!”
“Do you forget those extra-terrestrial beings we discovered in the atmosphere of Pluto? They lived, but they did not breathe. Their physical structure was necessarily different of course. They weren’t blood and flesh exactly. We breathe to purify our blood with oxygen, plant-life breathes in carbon-dioxid, the Mercurians live on chlorine. I never thought though than any branch of Homo Sapiens could live without air. It’s against — but wait, he moved again…”
True, the giant was moving. It each was ponderous movement, as if effort cost him dearly. He floundered about a bit trying to sit up, giving sparks of blue light with every motion. He mumbled something in strange tongue; and I saw his single eye, ice-green in the light his body threw off, turn toward the torch in Forrest’s hand. There was a pause as he studied it; then he did an odd thing; he brought his face down toward the beam!
Divining what he wanted Forrest raised the light so that it covered his broad face. There was a minute’s pause as the creature basked in the light. After a while he shook his head, waving the torch away from his eye. There was a short silence in which he gazed at us. Now he spoke, and his words were those of the Interplanetary Code. “This suit — it refracts the rays. I must get out!”
Forrest was on his feet. “What can we do?”
The giant considered a moment, his eye traveling over our forms. “Get into your pressure suits, first. You would freeze otherwise. But hurry, hurry!”
We obeyed with alacrity; and in a few short minutes were back clad in our suits with our helmets under our arms. The giant looked us over and approved. “Turn your light beam on my face,” he ordered motioning us as close as possible, for I was to use my torch as well as Forrest. The Saturnian lay still upon the floor, his body raised slightly on two elbows. I could see that he was blowing upon the front of his helmet, but for what reason I could not guess.
For several moments he did this, but nothing happened. He was growing weaker now; he could hardly hold himself up. He shook his head, and his voice was weak, like that of a dying man. “Not enough. Need heat, a flame…”
Forrest felt in his pockets for his lighter, but realized he wore his air suit. I was already headed for our room, having remembered the lighter and matches were in there. With my return a low whisper of relief came from the prone giant. He had lowered his body to the floor now, and was lying on his back. Forrest took the lighter to hold it against the front of the helmet. I crept close, ready with matches if the fuel should give out. This time I saw perspiration forming on the inside of the glass-like helmet. The Saturnian’s eye seemed feverishly afire. The blue haze he emitted was brighter than ever as he blew hard against the inside of the headpiece.
After a moment saw that what I had taken for sweat was nothing more than the material of the helmet itself melting into drops. There was a pop- ping, like fireworks, and a rent showed suddenly in the face of the helmet. Again the giant gave a low cry of relief, and lifting one mighty hand grasped the edge of the hole and ripped the re- maining fabric away, next attacking the neckband so that the whole suit split wide open. He was free!
Thereupon I felt a new chill in the air. Automatically my hand went to the valves of my suit to switch on its heating units. Forrest was unconsciously doing the same. I realized now that the cold was not from the suit as we first imagined, but from the body of the strange man himself. His body temperature must have been far below that of zero! Suddenly I was admiring him immensely, a man dying; yet he had had time to think of us, to warn us to prepare against his own chill!
As soon as he was free of the suit the creature had taken Forrest’s light-torch from the floor, and now held the beam trained upon his face. I half understood.
He needed light as we needed air!
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.