Give Back a World

Young Survey Service recruit Rick Mills lands on Mercury expecting a brutal scientific outpost and instead finds a planet haunted by war, sabotage, and the ghost of a civilization that once tried to remake worlds. His uneasy fascination with Frank Fane, the lone survivor of a previous expedition, grows into suspicion as buried ruins, dead battlefields, and cryptic warnings suggest that Mercury's secrets are still active—and deadly. When the expedition is shattered by surviving war machines and hidden defenses, Rick is driven deep into Mercury's dark hemisphere, where he discovers an ancient planetary-engineering system capable of transforming the frozen world. But Fane has already seized the project, using stolen knowledge and remote-controlled weapons in a fanatical bid to "give back a world" on his own terms. As Rick races to stop him, the struggle becomes more than a fight for survival: it is a contest over whether Mercury will remain a graveyard of old wars or become a living planet. In the end, Rick's desperate choice unleashes the giant jet tubes and begins Mercury's violent rebirth, with hope for Anne Munson and a future worth building. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.