Miners in the Sky

CHAPTER ONE

The rock which was also a mine floated in a golden, sunlit mist. There was a brighter part Of the mist and behind that there was a sun, some scores of millions of miles away. There was a dimmer part of the haze, with two or three glittering specks where it was thinnest. They were stars, whose distance could only be expressed in light-years. All the rest of the mist or haze was equally bright, to the right and left, before and behind. The rest was bright and wholly featureless except for the rock. It was seventy feet in its longest dimension, and at its thinnest it measured possibly fifty feet. Its substance, save for a single streak of gray matrix, was crystalline brown stuff broken violently away from something else and larger.

It floated in emptiness. It did not fall, because it was in orbit around a planet hidden by the shining haze. There was nothing to explain its presence here, but men had found it.

In straggly painted letters somebody had marked “GH-37” on it, the letters and numerals plainly visible from a distance, And then somebody else had painted “DK-39” on the same surface, partly over the first. This was all on one side of the rock.

On the other side, past occupation was more obvious. There was the half of a transparent bubble stuck firmly to the rocky substance. It was fifteen feet across. Its rounded surface reached a height of perhaps eight feet. There was a thin, tubular, metal-and-plastic frame on one side, which amounted to a transparent airlock. And inside the bubble there were objects known only to man. A sleeping bag with A hood over the head end. A cubical object which was an air-freshener. There were tanks piled up, with pipes and stopcocks sticking out of their ends. They were marked “Oxygen.” There were cases marked to show that they did or had contained food.

But there was no movement anywhere about the rock. Seventy by fifty by forty feet, it had a mass of some thousands of tons. It turned deliberately on some indefinite axis, making a complete revolution once in ten minutes or so. Nothing happened.

The rock had no name of its own. It floated in a mist in a vacuum, a cloud in emptiness, a vast glowing disk of brightness in interplanetary space. It floated in the Rings of Thothmes, of which the Space Directory said without interest that it was a gas-giant planet in the solar system Niletus, that it was the fourth planet out from its sun, and that it was surrounded by huge rings of dust and debris from shattered moons. Which was to say that it was a ringed world like the First System’s ringed planet Saturn.

The rock with the painted letters and numerals on its side floated in a golden luminosity. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Even what was in the sleeping bag did not move. Not even to breathe.

Dunne scowled as he drove his donkeyship through the Rings of Thothmes. He scowled because he was headed for Outlook, where the pickup ship ought to arrive very soon, and the need to travel just now was disturbing. There’d be practically hysterical festivity when the pickup ship grounded; but this wasn’t a time for Dunne to be moving about. Sheer necessity had made him leave his partner, Keyes, back in emptiness on the Ring-fragment they’d found and were mining. There was a two-foot vein of abyssal matrix in plain view on that rock, and it would have been insane to leave such a treasure unguarded. It was marked, of course. It was marked “DK-39” over an earlier “GH-37,” but the markings didn’t really mean anything. There was no law in the Rings of Thothmes, and that was another reason for disturbance. Keyes had a strictly limited store of oxygen, and nobody else knew where he was.

But it happened to be necessary for somebody to go to Outlook for supplies, which could only be had when a pickup ship was there. From the rock Dunne and his partner had been working, it was a two-and-a-half-day drive to Outlook, through a golden mist conspicuously devoid of route-markers. But of the two men Dunne was the better astrogator. If Keyes had taken the ship and left Dunne behind, he mightn’t have been able to find his way back again before the oxygen gave out. Dunne wasn’t likely to miss the way. But if both of them had left their precious find, somebody else could have come along and taken it over, painting new initials and numbers—if he was prepared to fight for it.

So Keyes was back there in the bubble, two days behind, and Dunne drove hard to get to Outlook and the pickup ship. They had to have oxygen. They had to have food and mining supplies. Dunne had to get them from the pickup ship that brought them all the way from Horus, which was the next planet out from this particular sun. Incidentally, he had to dodge ill-intentioned persons who might want to make use of the lack of laws in this neighborhood. His errand was not only urgent but difficult, and he scowled as he drove. He needed not only to get supplies, but to get back to the rock without anybody trailing him there. If he managed it, he and Keyes would be moderately well-to-do by the time the pickup ship arrived again. If he didn’t—

He had to. With luck he might have no trouble at all. But he didn’t like some of the possibilities.

From where he drove, the Universe looked very improbable.

There was a bright and radiant mistiness all about, and’ the donkeyship swam through it. The haze seemed to have no limits anywhere, but Dunne drove for Outlook through it. Outlook was the floating mountain—one of the innumerable fragments in Thothmes’ Rings—which was the accepted spaceport for this area.

Some millions or tens or hundreds of millions of years before, certain formerly solid satellites of Thothmes had blundered inside Roche’s Limit for that particular primary-satellite system. They crumbled because of tidal strains that nothing-literally nothing-could withstand. They broke up. In the process they ground themselves in part to impalpable dust particles, and in part to gravel and fist-sized stones; and parts of them clung together to form boulders and larger masses up to the size of mountain ranges floating in their orbits.

The dust and the debris of this ancient disaster now formed the shining Rings around Thothmes, Each dust particle had its orbit, and every larger object its; and every particle of gravel or boulder or monster mass like Outlook went rolling through emptiness on a duly established path. They floated in the dust clouds which formed the Rings so much like those of Saturn back in the First System. And of course men found reason to risk their lives among them.

In the case of Thothmes, the reason was simple. Different objects floating in the Rings had different constitutions. Some were scraps of surface rock from long-vanished moons. Sometimes they were lumps of nickel-steel from the cores of the split-up moons. And here and there, in random distribution, there were objects made of abyssal rocks in contact with such metal core substances. Some of those abyssal combinations contained crystals. They existed only where worlds or moons had once existed. They could only be obtained where moons or worlds had shattered. They looked rather like lumped rock candy, but they were the most valuable objects in the galaxy. They’d made and they kept space-travel possible.

The ships that went singing to the galaxy’s very rim depended on the special properties of abyssal crystals for the generation of their drives. Without them there would be no space commerce or any colonies. Earth would be a crowded slum with people trampling each other underfoot because there were so many of them.

And on one good-sized fragment in the Rings, Dunne and Keyes had discovered a streak of the gray matrix in which abyssal crystals occurred. They’d already made a good thing of it. Now Keyes, back in the bubble, was guarding the find and working out more of the crystals while he waited for Dunne’s return. And Dunne didn’t like it at all.

He watched his radar screen sharply as the donkeyship drove on. There was a pebble a mile to his right. It might be half an inch in diameter. It could be ignored. A fist-sized object floated three miles to the left. That could be ignored, too.

Then a clucking came from his detectors. There was a much larger object on ahead. The instruments had analyzed their own findings and called for Dunne’s decision. Some object behind the mist had moved otherwise than in an orbit around Thothmes. It couldn’t be a rock. It was large enough to be a ship. It might have sent out a radar pulse. The clucking sound seemed indignant.

Dunne growled to himself. He got into a space-suit—fast. He watched his instruments as he wriggled into the armor against emptiness. He picked up the stubby miners’ bazooka which fired very small shells to crack open rocky masses for examination of their’ inward parts. He stuck small shells in appropriate places in his space-suit belt.

He took a last look at the instruments and went to the airlock. He clipped a lifeline in place. He closed the inner door and opened the outer. This was standard for the examination of bits of celestial debris, but a man with a bazooka in an open airlock door can be a very deadly fighting unit.

He stared ahead into a mere mistiness lighted by the sun. But presently there was a shadow which became a shape, and then something solid, floating in nothingness. It was an irregularly shaped mass of rock, practically the size of a donkeyship. A small one could hide behind it, if aligned just right.

Then the bit of solidness was two miles away. Dunne opened fire. He loosed three bazooka-shells at it. The small projectiles flashed away. Here where there was no gravity they would travel in mathematically straight lines. When the rocky object was only one mile away, the first of the bazooka-shells hit. The rocky mass crackled. It began to break. A second shell hit. The third.

The rock seemed to disintegrate, and behind it there was a donkeyship. This other ship had been lying in wait. Most likely it had heard the whine of Dunne’s ship’s drive before he heard of it. It had cut its drive and made itself into an ambush. But now it was the center of a mass of explosion-driven stones flying in all directions. And Dunne, forewarned and demonstrably able to take care of himself, was boring in on it.

The strange donkeyship fled, with a last shell from Dunne’s bazooka to urge it on. He closed the outer airlock door and opened the inner. He went back to his instrument board. He dismissed the incident from his mind.

There was no point in being upset about it. This was the Rings, and this was the time when lucky space-miners were carrying abyssal crystals to a pickup ship. This was when unlucky ones were apt to take desperate measures. He dismissed the whole matter. But he was very much concerned about Keyes.

He changed the course of his donkeyship. If he was to get back as he should, no one should be able to back-track him. The ship he’d just discouraged from lying in wait, for instance. Not many of the less desirable characters in the Rings had the stomach for a fight. But a donkeyship heading for Outlook often carried enough crystals to be worth a murder or two.

So Dunne headed for Outlook. From time to time he changed his course—always when his detectors. picked up no trace of any other ship’s drive. He drove more or less by dead reckoning, but he heard other ships in motion, and they sheered away. Which was wisdom.

But eventually there were several thin, buzzing whines picked up by his communicator at one time and relayed to him by loudspeaker. They were all drives in action and heading for one destination which was now near. After a little more, he heard a voice at the lower limit of hearability. It was calling exuberantly: “Hi! Who’s comin’ in?”

The call meant that somebody was aground on Outlook and another ship was within seeing distance. And then Dunne knew everything that was happening, and what would happen.

One donkeyship had landed. It had come in cautiously, with an airlock door open and a space-suited figure in the opening holding a bazooka ready for use. It approached very, very cautiously, as if the appearance of Outlook gave it pause. But that wasn’t the case. Everybody knew what Outlook was like. It was a mountain—a solid mass of nickel-steel from the very center of a dead moon’s heart. It was more than a mile long, and its shape was that of a nightmare. One end was like a cone, and the other like a roughly rounded-half-globe. And all its surfaces were twisted, shattered, tormented metal, except at one spot.

There was one place which was a sheer plane, an almost fiat surface created by some sliding, grinding collision a few scores of millions of years ago. That flat area, without a beacon or a building or any single marking to say that men had ever been there—that was the spaceport on Outlook. The first ship to arrive would approach its prospective landing place with great caution. Eventually it would land and make contact with its magnetic grapples. It would then settle itself where nobody could approach if from any direction unseen.

Then it would wait. Dunne, for one, knew exactly what went on. Presently another donkeyship appeared. When it was the merest speck on the glowing golden fog, the ship aground hailed it: “Hi! Who’s comin’ in?”

Dunne heard this, and the reply. The second ship called down an identification. It settled on another place, not too close to the first-landed ship. Then talk between the two ships began. At first it was cautious and restrained. But the men in each of the twin space-craft had gone long weeks with only each other’s voices to hear. They were hungry to listen to the new ones.

Another ship. Two more. Many! The emptiness about Outlook became filled with short-wave conversation. Suddenly there were jests, there were jokes, and there was exaggerated, change-hungry laughter. Some of the jokes had been old before space-travel began. Very few of them were genuinely new, but men howled with laughter at them. There were questions, Did so-and-so still do this or still do that? Did somebody else still have nightmares and start fighting in his sleep? Remember the time—? Had anybody seen so-and-so? He wasn’t here last pickup ship. Was he here now?

Questions like that weren’t approved. They didn’t fit the mood of Outlook at pickup-ship time. The men now aground waited impatiently to get out of the rotund little ships that had been mere movable prisons for many weeks past. They didn’t want to hear that this or that team of donkeyship men had vanished. The presumption could only be that they were dead.

There was also a tacit agreement not seriously to ask what luck others had had. Anybody who boasted would practically invite less-fortunate others to trail him when he left. They’d want to know where he found the precious crystals all the galaxy bid for, But there were always two questions asked of everybody as they arrived. The first was, had they seen any gooks? This was considered very humorous. Had anybody seen any gooks? Laughter. The other question was, had they found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. This was excruciatingly amusing to men waiting hungrily to get out of their ships if only for minutes.

Dunne knew that these things went on, though he hadn’t yet reached Outlook. They were traditional.

Then his drive-detectors picked up the booming sound of the pickup ship. Its drive sounded quite unlike that of a donkeyship, It was bringing oxygen and food and mining supplies and mail, but mostly it was bringing a change, a relief, a temporary forgetting of life in the Rings of Thothmes. It was coming from Horus, the next planet out from the sun.

Its drive-sound, as the detectors reported it, was a deep-toned rumble. It came swiftly nearer. The voices of men aground on Outlook stopped abruptly. Dunne felt the desperate impatience everybody knew at moments like this. He wanted to fling his ship into top-speed, crazy rush to get to Outlook first. But he held himself in check. He heard the pickup ship’s drive stop, and reverse, and he knew that the large space-vessel was matching velocity and approaching the slowly rolling mountain with care through the haze of moondust floating in space. He drove on and on, and a confused notification appeared on his radar screen. There was something very large ahead. It was too far away to be identified, but he knew what it had to be. Outlook. He heard the pickup ship’s drive go on for half-seconds, and other half-seconds, and he knew that it was maneuvering to match velocity and rate-of-turn with the mountainous mass of nickel-steel.

There was an abrupt spurt of full-power drive, and then everything stopped. The communicator brought in fresh excited babblings of the men who’d come here to meet this ship. The pickup ship was aground.

Hilarious questions assailed the pickup ship. How was the weather on Horus? How did the Panthers make out in the planetary series? Did the pickup ship have any cold beer? Men shouted orders for civilized meals that they wanted to describe item by item; it could be guessed that in their past isolation they’d dreamed of special dishes unavailable in the Rings, and by the time the ship arrived they were waiting as hungrily for some special foodstuff as for the oxygen and other needs the pickup ship came to Outlook to satisfy.

Dunne came in, checking Velocity with fierce, full-power reversals of his ship’s drive. He hovered over the clustered donkeyships, arranged in an. incomplete circle on the nearly level space which was the spaceport of Outlook. He was sighted. Ribald greetings came to him from the childishly excited space-miners of the Rings. Who was he? Why was he late? Had he seen any gooks? He was too late. All the food supplies on the pickup ship were already spoken for. What was the news from the Big Rock Candy Mountain? References to that fabled Golconda were jokes, of course, but not altogether jokes. There was actually something, somewhere in the Rings, which had been christened the Big Rock Candy Mountain because it held the answer to every man’s dream of riches and magnificence. Dunne knew a little more about it than most, because his partner Keyes was the nephew of that Joe Griffiths who’d found it, and brought out untold wealth, and who’d gone back to get still more, and was never heard of again. Keyes didn’t want the relationship known because there’d be suspicion that he had. special useful information about the Mountain and was in the Rings to make use of it.

But the Big Rock Candy Mountain was part of the ritual on Outlook. There were men who believed in it implicitly, and accepted every mouth-watering detail of the tradition. Some believed in it with reservations. But nobody wholly disbelieved, because there was fact behind the legend. There was no miner in the Rings who didn’t dream of finding riches incalculable in some Ring-fragment he was sure to come upon eventually—perhaps before the pickup ship came again.

Dunne curtly gave his name and settled down on a place just beyond the donkeyships around the spaceport’s edge. It wasn’t one of the better landing places. He could see all that went on in the spaceport, but nearby there were crazy upcroppings of the kind usually called metal trees. They weren’t trees, but they were metal; and because of them, a man in a space-suit could get close, to Dunne’s donkeyship unseen. But it was the best place left.

Voices babbled at him, struggling for humor and for wit. Dunne, eh? How many kilos of crystals had he brought back? The question was genial mockery. A gram of crystals wouldn’t be despised, and ten grams was a fair average for the Rings. A kilogram would be spoken of with awe for years to come if anybody actually brought in so much. In any case, no man would answer such a query, not even on Outlook with the pickup ship nearby. Someone asked how Dunne’s new partner liked the Rings? Who bossed the ship? This last was reference to the psychological warfare that often developed when two men were imprisoned together for weeks or months on end. Some men came to hate each other poisonously under such circumstances. Sometimes one partner arrived at Outlook fiercely demanding that the partnership be dissolved. And it was done, on the pickup ship. Sometimes two sets of partners switched companions, to find out later that the situation was not relieved.

Dunne was known to have Keyes as a partner. Keyes was relatively new to the Rings. There were humorous queries. Had they fought? How had Keyes made out in the Rings? Hey, Keyes! How’re you doing? Is Dunne a tough character to get along with? They say he’s scared all the time he’s out of the ship in a space-suit. Does Keyes make you do all the out-of-ship work?

The talk was ridiculous. It was childish. But it expressed the frantic impatience of the men in the donkey-ships for a change of any sort, any new sight or voice, Keyes didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was back on the ring-fragment he and Dunne had discovered. The voices called for Keyes, to tell him hilariously of alleged tricks and chicaneries an experienced space-miner like Dunne might practice on him. But Keyes wasn’t there to answer.

Dunne grimly got his ship to ground and anchored with its magnetic grapples. Voices called again for Keyes.

Dunne said curtly, “He’s not here.”

Voices said, “What happened?”

Dunne said, “He’s not here!”

Then he realized that he’d made a grave mistake. If he’d said that Keyes had cracked his faceplate when out of the ship, it would have been better. That was a perfectly credible accident. It might or might not be believed, but nothing would be done about it. Or if he said he’d killed Keyes, it would have been nobody’s business. But he shouldn’t have refused to give any explanation at all. That would lead to guesses. Guesses might be dangerously dose to the truth—that Dunne and Keyes had found a rock too precious to be left unguarded while one of them went to the pickup ship for air to breathe.

There was a sudden silence. For a full half-minute the space about Outlook was startlingly still. Then somebody said something in a dry voice about the pickup ship taking its time. Other voices joined in. There was a sudden, absolute avoidance of the subject of Keyes. Because men would be making guesses. Dunne realized that he’d made an appalling blunder. Possibly half, or more than half, of the space-miners on Outlook would be debating whether or not to try to trail him when he went away. Their guess would be unanimous that Dunne and Keyes had found riches. Some would guess at enormous riches. A few would even guess at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Then a booming voice spoke from Dunne’s communicator. It was the ultra-powerful transmitter of the pickup ship. It said, growling: “All right! I don’t hear any more drives. Maybe we’re all here. Let’s get to business. Who landed first?”

A voice answered hilariously. It named a name. Another voice gave another name, very curt and businesslike. It had been second to arrive. There were other voices. A voice said, “Smithers.” There were other voices giving other names. An unctuous voice said, “Haney.” Dunne kept count. When it was time, when every other ship had answered, he said, “Dunne.”

There was a pause. The names were being checked. Mail was doubtless already sorted, but men who had wives or kindred to write to them devoured mail just as men in prison do. But as for checking the names, Dunne could have done it himself. It was simply a matter of comparing the names just given with the names on the pickup ship’s last visit. There was a difference between the lists. Some ships didn’t answer.

There was no comment. Nobody could know what had happened. When a ship dropped out of sight, it dropped out of sight. That was all. Nobody had to go to the Rings. It was their own decision, and they bought their own donkeyships and came to the Rings in full awareness that the death rate among space-miners was thirty per cent a year. The planetary government of Horus sent the pickup ships to supply their needs and bring back the treasure—the abyssal crystals—they found. But the pickup ships weren’t here to prevent or punish crime. That simply wasn’t practical. So Dunne wished bitterly that he’d said he’d killed Keyes instead of giving an excuse for guesses. In the Rings no governmental authority went outside the hull of a pickup ship. But curiosity had no limit.

“Okay,” said the pickup ship’s booming voice. “Let’s get at it!” It read off a name. It was the first name recorded. “Waiting for you, now!”

A pause. Then a man in a space-suit clambered out of a donkeyship. He carried a parcel. He went across the relatively flat surface of glittering metal. Magnetic-soled space-boots accounted for the fact of walking. A ladder reached down from the pickup ship. He climbed it. He was inside the larger space-vessel for some minutes. He came out and went leisurely over to the donkeyship from which he’d emerged.

The pickup ship boomed a second name. Another man in a space-suit came out of another donkeyship. He went in the pickup. He came out and went back to his own small craft. Donkeyship by donkeyship, as the ship from Horus called their names, men went to the large and infinitely welcome pickup ship. They carried parcels—small parcels—into it. They came out without them.

The man who’d said his name was Haney went in, swaggering even in his clumsy space-suit and with his magnetic-soled boots clinging as if sticky to the metal under him. Another man—the one who’d answered “Smithers.” Then Dunne answered to his name, and went. He was the last, because he’d arrived last. He turned over a parcel of abyssal crystals to the pickup-ship skipper. They were the reason for everything that happened in the Rings. He made the formal statement that he and Keyes had found a ring-fragment marked such-and-such, but obviously abandoned. They’d painted their own initials and a year on the rock. They were working it.

“Yeah!” said the clerk who took down his statement. “I remember them!” He spoke of the former owners of that fragment. “Doin’ well, they were, when they just didn’t come back.”

Dunne said, “Mail?”

He didn’t expect any, but Keyes should have a letter. He had a sister on Horus and was deeply concerned about her. Not to get a letter on the pickup ship would disturb Keyes. Dunne asked for a second look. There was no letter.

Dunne gave his order for oxygen and supplies. It would be made ready for delivery presently. He went back to his ship. A pause, seemingly for no particular reason. The booming voice of the ship said: “Any more? Any more coming in?”

It was a call for any donkeyship that might still be on the way to Outlook. The call could be picked up an astonishing distance away. But there was no answer. Silence. The voice from the pickup said dryly:

“All right, boys! Come aboard and spend your money!”

Instantly there was activity all around the spaceport’s edge. Men emerged from each of the ships. They headed for the ship from Horus. Now there was no silence. They babbled via their space-phones as exuberantly as before the pickup ship’s arrival. They were starved for conversation with strangers. They were ravenous for experiences they did not have in their ships. There were two men from each of the ships, except Dunne and that of the man named Smithers.

They trooped to the ladder of the supply-ship. They clambered up like small boys let out of school. They chattered like schoolchildren. Those who’d had mail were most exuberant of all. They went into the big cargo-lock which had room for all of them and had been pumped out earlier. As individuals they’d used a smaller, personnel lock. Now All crowded into this big lock, and the outer door closed. Air came in, turning misty from the chill of its own expansion into the vacuum of the lock. Then the inner doors opened and they were in the Ship. They made yapping noises at the sight before them.

All of this was standard. All of it was familiar. Every man had been through it before and each one was anticipating every item which his ordinary life—life in the Rings—did not provide.

There was food spread out on tables, waiting for them. There were white cloths and silver. There were drinkables. There was artificial gravity set at a little less than was customary in donkeyships. With space-suits stripped off, everybody felt lighter. Everything in the pickup ship made for euphoria. Only so. often did pickup ships come to Outlook, and only then could the men who sought and found mines in space live for a little while as their dreams demanded. Without this, they’d forget what they were working for and become less than human. With it, they knew the sensations of children.

Dunne felt all the urge to extravagance of behavior that the other men felt, but his partner Keyes was in a plastic bubble, many hundreds of mist-miles away, waiting for him to come back. He reminded himself. Their rock had been found by another donkeyship team, and the initials and year of its discovery was painted on it. GK-37 was the marking. But that pair of Ring-miners had disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to them. But the fragment went unworked for two solar years. Then Dunne and Keyes found it, and put their initials and the year on it. “DK-39.” Now Keyes stood guard against someone else appropriating it, and waited for Dunne to get back with food and oxygen. If Dunne didn’t come back, Keyes would die, If he were delayed too much, Keyes would die after so many days, hours and minutes. His oxygen would be finished. Dunne had to keep that in mind. He did.

The donkeyship men rushed upon the tables. They gulped down filled glasses. They devoured the food. Donkeyships carried no fresh food—fruits, meat, vegetables. Such things took up too much room, and they’d be impossibly expensive to ship from Horus to the Rings. So the pickup ship provided one banquet. It helped men endure the Rings, and therefore it was profitable to the planetary government of Horus. Very much of the budget for that planet was earned by men who lived in donkey-ships and worked the Rings. The crystals they found made it possible for freighters to ply between star-clusters. They furnished the means by which great passenger-liners went singing through the void.

Dunne ate. He drank. But he did not rejoice. He’d made a grave blunder in failing to account for the absence of Keyes. It would have been sufficient to say that he was dead. It would have caused no. trouble if he claimed to. have murdered Keyes. But he’d aroused suspicion of riches.

Actually, he’d just delivered to the pickup ship a full double handful of crystals. Against their value he’d ordered oxygen and—food and water and mining supplies, all of which had been brought millions of miles from Horus. Now he waited to get started back to. Keyes with them. The others from the Rings made merry. They acted as if made drunk by the mere spaciousness of the pickup ship and by the hydroponic-tank fragrance of the air, and especially by having mail to reread presently and new companions to talk to now.

Everybody talked at once, and at the top of their voices. Everybody made exaggerated gestures. They babbled. They cracked jokes—stale ones, but nobody minded—about gooks. They talked about the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Then they were likely to search with their eyes to make sure that Dunne hadn’t slipped away. They sang songs—several of them at the same time. They stuffed themselves. They were slightly insane. But none of them were unwise enough to boast of the quantity of greasy crystals they’d brought in, nor did anybody let slip the slightest clue to where they worked floating rocks with initials and numerals painted on them.

Only Dunne didn’t talk. He’d made a mistake and even in this festivity he was being watched every second. His problem had become multiplied by a mere slip of the tongue.

Presently a ship’s officer went quietly past Dunne. He beckoned unobtrusively. He moved on. Dunne, after a moment or two, followed him.

The pickup ship’s officer waited beyond the first closed door, He regarded Dunne sharply when he appeared.

“You’re Dunne?”

“Yes,” said Dunne defensively. “What’s up? Did you find some mail for us after all?”

“No. You’ve got a partner named Keyes,” said the ship’s officer.“Where is he?”

“He’s back at a rock we’re working,” said Dunne. One could speak freely to a pickup ship’s officer. They were chosen with great care. They had to be dependable because too much wealth passed through their hands, and the government took a part of it. They had to be capable of trust.

The officer said skeptically, “Look here! There’s no law in the Rings. You know it! If he’s dead—”

“He isn’t,” said Dunne irritably. “We found a rock. It was worked before and abandoned, or the men died, or something. Anyhow we’re working it. I brought in a double-handful of crystals from it. You can check that! Our rock is too good to leave unguarded. But we needed oxygen and food. Somebody had to come here to get it. If Keyes had come, he might never have found me again. So I came. I can find him again. I don’t like it, but there wasn’t anything else to do.”

The ship’s officer said vexedly, “The devil! Do you know anything about Keyes?”

“He’s my partner,” said Dunne. Men who’d been partners and weeks or months isolated in the Rings were apt to know pretty well everything about each other.

“His sister—”

“I mailed a letter to her,” said Dunne. “I put it in the mail when I ordered my supplies and turned over my crystals. Keyes wrote it for me to mail to her.”

“I know,” said the ship’s officer. He shrugged. “She’s read it. She wants to talk to you.”

Dunne stared. It was, of course, completely impossible. Women didn’t come to the Rings! He said angrily, “Is that your idea of a joke?”

“She came on the ship to talk to her brother. She has a round-trip passage. Naturally!”

It was necessary for anybody going to the Rings to have their return passage paid. Even men heading out to the Rings in donkeyships—a matter requiring very much stored fuel and foodstuffs—paid in advance for passage back to Horus if they should need it and were able to make use of it. That was a condition required of them if they were to deal with the pickup ships.

“It’s crazy!” said Dunne fiercely. “It’s lunacy! Why the devil—”

“She wanted to see her brother,” said the pickup ship man distastefully. “He should have been here with you today. If he’d been here, it wouldn’t have been crazy. Since he isn’t here, she wants to talk to you, This way.”

He led Dunne through another doorway and then another. Ships for long-distance travel were large, because size didn’t matter in space—only mass; a lightly built ship could be roomy. But a donkeyship had to be small to be maneuverable.

Here was a passenger lounge, It was luxurious, But Dunne didn’t look at the room. He stared at the girl who stood there, waiting for him. He recognized her from. a picture Keyes had had. Keyes’ sister, Nike. She looked frightened. She looked tense and strained and nerve-racked. She searched his face almost desperately.

“I’m sorry,” said Dunne. “You brother should have come with me, but we both thought somebody ought to stay with the rock we’ve found, And he wasn’t sure he could find his way back to it. So I came.”

“I—have to talk to him,” said the girl unsteadily. “I—I simply have to!”

Dunne fumbled in his pocket. He brought out the receipt for the double-handful of crystals he’d turned over less than an hour ago.

“Look!” he said. “This represents money. Your brother and I have some credit with the Abyssal Minerals Commission. I can give you an order on them for money for another round trip. So you’ll go back to Horus and come out again next trip. I’ll have your brother here to talk to you. All right?”

Nike was very pale. She shook her head.

“No. I can’t wait to talk to him. It has to be soon. Now.”

“He’s two and a half days from here,” said Dunne, “and the pickup ship won’t wait for me to go and get him.”

She swallowed. She held up, the letter he’d put in the mail for her. Somebody had broken all sorts of regulations to give it to her here.

“He thinks a great deal of you,” she said shakily. “Very much! I know what he’d tell me to do if he knew I were here. So—I’m going back with you. To see him. I have to!”

“No,” said Dunne. “Your brother wouldn’t tell you to do that! Not to go riding in the Rings! Anyhow, I won’t take you. You’ll have to do as I said. Go back, come again, and I’ll have him here to talk to you or do whatever you please.”

“But I have to talk to him—now! I must!”

“Not with me you mustn’t,” said Dunne grimly. “See here! You say your brother trusts me. Wouldn’t he trust me to tell you the right thing to do? Wouldn’t he expect me to give you the same advice he would?”

“Yes…” But she looked at him as desperately as before. Then she said, shaking a little, “But—the trouble is that I have to see my brother! I—have to!”

“Unfortunately, you can’t!” Dunne scowled. He came to a decision. “I’m going to be here in the ship until my supplies are ready. That’ll probably be an hour or. more. You write your brother a letter. I’ll give it to him. Meanwhile, I’ll arrange your passage back to Horus and back out here again. And while you’re travelling, he’ll think over whatever your problem is; and when you get back he’ll be all set to tell you exactly what to do. That’s the most I’ll do. It’s the most I’ll even think of doing!”

“But—it’s life or death!” The girl wrung her hands. “Really!”

“I can’t think of anything else you can do,” said Dunne. “Nothing will keep me from going back to my partner. His life depends on my getting back. But I won’t take you. I know you’re his sister. I’ve seen your picture. Short of taking you into the Rings, there’s nothing I won’t do for you on his account. But that one thing I will not do! I won’t!”

He turned away. He made his way back to the tumult and the shouting where all the Ring-miners behaved like drunken men because for one hour or thereabouts they did not have to stay on the alert lest they die.

His own nerves jangled. They’d been taut enough before he arrived at Outlook. Now they were worse. He bitterly regretted that he’d left Keyes behind. It would have been wiser to risk the loss of their rock to a later claimant than to have made the blunder of not accounting for Keyes, and to have this situation arise.

He’d brought a double handful of crystals to the ship. Added to the sum already to their credit with the Abyssal Minerals Commission, there was almost riches. If he and Keyes divided it, they’d each be moderately well-to-do. If Keyes divided again with his sister—and that was his intention—the sum for each wouldn’t be negligible. Keyes could quit the Rings and take care of his sister. Dunne knew that he wouldn’t quit, himself; but Keyes could, and he ought to.

This girl… Donkeyships were bare and barren functional devices, by which two men could track down solid objects in the golden mist which was the Rings. Normally they’d inspect hundreds before they found one worth testing. And not all those they tested yielded any trace of the crystals all men coveted. And, once in a donkeyship in the Rings, there was no backing out. There was nowhere to go until another pickup ship arrived. The bedlam here and now was proof enough of the intolerable strain of life in a donkeyship in the Rings. But for men there was the bright and shining hope concerning the Big Rock Candy Mountain. That was at once a dream which kept men from suicidal despair, and—since Dunne was suspected of finding it—made this the worst of all possible times for Keyes’ sister to come up as a problem. When they were suspected of such infinite good fortune, the only place for her was somewhere else. Anywhere else!

A grizzled spaceman came and sat beside Dunne. Dunne knew him. His name was Smithers and he was considered slightly cracked. He was the only donkeyship man in the Rings who habitually worked alone. He’d had a partner, and the partner disappeared; and from that time on, Smithers protested vociferously that his partner had been killed by gooks and that ultimately he’d avenge him. He talked about gooks—to anybody who’d listen, and probably between pickup ships he talked to himself.

“They’re calmin’ down now,” confided the grizzled man of the revelers about them. “They acted crazy at the beginnin’, but they’re calmin’ down now.”

Dunne nodded. He was inclined to grind his teeth because of his own folly. He’d given his order for oxygen and foodstuffs and mining supplies. His order was being made ready. Similar orders would be delivered to each donkeyship team, in the order of their arrival and delivery of their accumulation of crystals. Now Dunne had to wait his turn to receive them. But he’d become an object of suspicion. He was suspected of having found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was senseless. But it was very dangerous! Lonely, isolated men were apt to be cranks. This grizzled character was an example.

“Have y’heard,” he demanded of Dunne, “that there was gooks sighted down yonder? Fella named Sam. told me so last pickup ship time. He heard ’em first. Their drive don’t make a whine like a human drive does. It goes tweet… tweet… tweet instead.” He nodded portentously. “This fella Sam heard it. An’ then he saw a gook ship. It come for him. He lit out an’ lost it. But it was a gook ship!”

Then Smithers said, more portentously and more ominously still, “And Sam ain’t back this trip. He was here last time. He ain’t here this time. Somethin’ got him! It was gooks! We got to do somethin’ about gooks!”

Dunne shook his head, not paying attention. It was wholly likely that somebody’d been joking with Smithers, and Smithers didn’t see it. There had always been rumors of gooks in the Rings. The word meant something like “ghost.” Communicators occasionally picked up noises for which there was no explanation, but it did not follow that there must be alien entities to make them. Gooks were supposed to be inhabitants of the planet Thothmes, and some people believed that they’d made space-ships and came sneaking about the Rings, spying on humans and on occasion sniping them. But the evidence for them wasn’t good.

A world suitable for life to develop has to have heavy elements and rocks and metal compounds to provide the raw material for living things to be made of. But Thothmes, if one judged by its gravitational field, was not nearly as heavy as a same-sized globe of water. That ruled out the possibility of gooks. And it was believed that if there were a solid center under Thothmes’ turbulent veil of clouds, it must be frozen gas-ice or perhaps methane or ammonia. And life couldn’t originate or continue there!

The grizzled Smithers went on with sudden passion: “You listen here! You found the Big Rock Candy Mountain! Maybe you think you goin’ to keep it secret! Maybe you left Keyes behind on it to keep anybody else from minin’ it. But there’s gooks goin’ around, snipin’ men’s ships! All of us together, we c’n handle a lot of gooks! But you try it by y’self—”

Dunne said, “We didn’t find the Big Rock Candy Mountain!”

Smithers ignored the statement. He said firmly, “Remember what happened to Joe Griffiths. He found the Mountain! Everybody knows it. There’s millions an’ millions pilin’ up interest on Horus, waitin’ for the courts to find out who it belongs to. But what happened to him? The gooks got him, that’s what happened to him! Now you an’ Keyes, you found the Mountain, Keyes stayed on it to keep anybody else from bargin’ in. You go back to him without us fellas along to help fight off the gooks, an’ what’ll happen to you? The gooks!”

“We didn’t find the Big Rock Candy Mountain!” said Dunne.

“You better,” said Smithers ominously, “you better let us in on it. There’s plenty there for everybody, But you try to keep it all to yourself an’—pfft! You’re gone! There’s gooks watchin’ that Mountain! They know we lookin’ for it! They ain’t goin’ to let us have it if they can help themselves! That means you! You open up an’ talk, an’ you can lead two dozen men back to that there Mountain, an’ we can hold off any number 0’ gooks an’ clean up. You tool But try it by y’self an’ the gooks’ll get you sure! Certain! They’ll get you!”

“We haven’t found the Big Rock Candy Mountain!” said Dunne for the third time. “We simply haven’t found it!”

The grizzled Smithers said shrewdly, his eyes gleaming, “That wasn’t a ship’s officer that took you aside just now, was it? He didn’t take you off to try to get outa you where you found the Mountain? Huh? You just had ordinary luck, bringin’ in just enough crystals to keep you goin’ till another pickup ship comes by. Huh? That ship’s officer didn’t take anybody else off for a private talk about how much crystal they brought back! He did take you! I’m tellin’ you, there’s gooks sneakin’ around the Rings, an’ around the Big Rock Candy Mountain! You let us in with you; an’ we can fight em’ off an’ get rich besides. But you try to go back there by y’self— What’d that ship’s officer tell you? Didn’t he tell you the same thing?”

Dunne’s jaws clamped tightly. There was, perhaps, just one disclosure likely to make more trouble than belief in the Big Rock Candy Mountain. That one more menacing disclosure would be that there was a girl on the pickup ship. Nobody in the Rings had seen a girl since he’d been here. They’d been nearly hysterical simply because they were able to be out of their own ships for an hour or so while they bought supplies and oxygen. But if they saw a girl!

Smithers said warningly, “You better let us in on it! There’s the gooks!”

“We didn’t find the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” said Dunne, drearily, “and you can go to hell.”

Smithers, sputtering, went away. Later Dunne saw, him cornering other men. His idea was evidently to organize men who’d already resolved to track Dunne wherever he went after leaving the pickup ship.

Time passed. Smithers went from one to another of the men who’d come to Outlook in their donkeyships, He talked volubly. Each buttonholed man listened tolerantly, But, nobody took Smithers too seriously. Some men let him talk to them while they continued to stuff themselves at the nearly denuded tables. A few hunted for something to put into the formerly filled glasses. There were one or two clusterings of men who’d calmed down from their first exuberance and now talked (Dunne was sure) of the totally unprovable guess every man was only too ready to make: that Dunne and Keyes had found the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Presently a ship’s officer tapped a man on the shoulder. His ordered supplies were ready for him to take possession. He and his partner departed. Ordinarily they’d load up and get as far, as possible from Outlook before the next ship was supplied. That was to keep anybody from guessing where they mined a fragment floating in the Rings. Now, Dunne knew angrily, it wasn’t unlikely that they’d wait nearby to follow him when he departed. He began irritably to plan evasive tactics.

A second pair of donkeyship partners was tapped. They also seemed to leave. It was unlikely that they’d go off about their private affairs. They’d try to involve themselves in Dunne’s, It was pure silliness. Dunne had made a single unqualified statement, and instantly he was suspected of the success every other man had dreamed of! It was partly his fault. But Nike’s situation wasn’t! He wouldn’t take her into the Rings! He was desperately uneasy about Keyes, but he wouldn’t take Keyes’s sister into the Rings!

A loudspeaker barked: “Attention! Somebody’s moving about outside! If you want to check your ships, the lock’s ready!”

Instantly there was pandemonium, with men getting into space-suits faster than should have been possible. Dunne heard the grizzled Smithers cursing furiously: “It’s gooks! Them gooks! They come to stop us workin’ in the Rings!”

Dunne paid no attention to him. He was getting into his own suit. He was one of the first ten men to crowd into the big cargo-lock that would let all of them out at once.

The inner lock-door closed. The outer opened, with a vast rushing-away of air. The men in the lock dived out, and the urgency they felt was made clear. Every man used his emergency jet. They are normally reserved for ultimate emergencies when a man’s lifeline parts or something else occurs to make it necessary for him to propel himself in space.

They flew like birds across the spaceport, every man bound for his own ship.

Dunne heard the click of an electric detonator.

He saw his ship fly to bits with a momentary flash of monstrous intensity and violence.