Miners in the Sky

CHAPTER TWO

The rotund little donkeyship split up into fragments, some of which disappeared with the velocity of rifle bullets. Pure emptiness was left where it had been. No debris. No fragments. Nothing. The gravitational pull of Outlook could only draw objects to it with an acceleration of inches per standard year. Any moving object touching Outlook bounced. Every scrap of the shattered ship that hit anything rebounded away, and all the fragments together amounted to no more than new fragments in new orbits in the Rings of Thothmes.

Dunne came to ground where his ship had been. His magnetic boot-soles clung to the metal. He could see where the explosion had taken’ place, because the mirror-bright metal had been slightly oxidized by the flame of the ship’s detonated fuel store.

He ground his teeth. He began to hunt doggedly for some evidence, some clue to who had bombed his ship and why. There was nothing to be found. Naturally!

The delivery of ordered supplies to donkeyship operators continued. At another place, where there was law, there would probably have been an investigation, and the taking of evidence, and maybe a conclusion about the guilt or innocence of someone or other. But here nobody had authority to investigate. Nobody had authority to question witnesses. Certainly nobody had authority to punish.

So everyday business resumed. The cargo-lock of the pickup ship opened, and two men came’ out towing their bundled supplies by a rope. Two men could move tons, here where nothing had any weight. With magnetic boot-soles clanking on the metal substance of Outlook, a donkeyship man hauled his purchases to a waiting ship. His partner would have opened the loading lock-door. The mass of floating stuff went inside. The door closed. The donkeyship went away.

Other business went on, only it wasn’t quite ordinary business. There was the firm, irrational conviction of the miners of the Rings that Dunne and Keyes had found great treasure. The reason for the guess was that Dunne had come to Outlook alone, and had let it be implied that Keyes stayed behind to guard their fabulous discovery. Which was correct, except that their discovery wasn’t fabulous. Rich, perhaps, but by no means unprecedented.

Again and again the pickup ship’s large lock opened, and a man or men brought out oxygen tanks and water-containers and food-stores and mining supplies and the like. They towed them, floating, to their ships. One went inside and a lock-door opened. The supplies went in. The ships went away. This sequence of happenings went on steadily. But the ships didn’t really go away—at any rate, not all of them. Somehow the destruction of Dunne’s donkeyship increased their belief that the Big Rock Candy Mountain had been found. Dunne must make a bargain with somebody to take him back to it. Those he didn’t bargain with would follow and make their own decisions. They lingered, tens or scores of miles from Outlook, hidden in the golden glowing mist. Because Dunne had to do something. He had to deal with someone. The others would combine—perhaps!—against whoever he made a deal with.

He’d already decided on the beginning of a course of action, but he went tramping about the place from which his ship had been blasted as if unable to believe in his disaster.

A donkeyship lifted off and went away into the all-concealing haze. Only one thing about it was certain. It wasn’t going far. And it wasn’t heading in the direction in which it had been searching for—or working—abyssal, crystal-containing matrix. Dunne tramped around the oxidation smear on the bright metal, apparently looking for evidence. Another ship took off. Another.

A voice from the pickup ship’s communicator, booming in the headphones of Dunne’s helmet.

“Calling Dunne! Calling Dunne! Come in, Dunne!”

“What is it?” growled Dunne.

“How’s your oxygen?” asked the ship curtly, “You’ve been out there a long time.”

Dunne checked his oxygen tank. In the vacuum of space a man doesn’t carry a tankful of air to breathe. He carries oxygen. He breathes oxygen at three pounds pressure instead of air at fourteen point seven, and he saves the weight of the useless four-fifths of nitrogen that ordinary air contains.

“I’m all right,” growled Dunne. “I’ll come in presently. I’m thinking, right now.”

The carrier-wave from the ship clicked off. A moment later it hummed again in his headphones. The voice boomed once more.

“Dunne?”

“What?”

“Miss Keyes asks if you’ll pay for a donkeyship team to go and pick up her brother, since you can’t do it with your ship destroyed, and he’ll die if nobody does. Will you pay?”

Dunne could have groaned. Now everybody knew there was a girl on the pickup ship.

“Tell her no,” he snapped. “I’ll take care of the situation!”

A donkeyship released its magnetic grapples and floated away. It put on power and vanished. More objects came out of the pickup ship. Wire-wound oxygen tanks. Foodstuffs. Mining equipment. Fuel. Reaction drills. Bazooka-shells to split a moon fragment with their shaped charges and so allow the inside to be examined.

A figure in a space-suit came out, towing the mass of stuff. The towing figure swaggered a little, even with magnetic soles to induce a plodding gait instead. Dunne noted it. It was Haney. Haney got his supplies to his ship. His partner took charge of stowing them. Haney himself swaggered to Dunne and ostentatiously turned off his space-phone. He grinned at Dunne through the helmet face-plate. He beckoned.

Dunne irritably accepted the signal. Ordinarily, speech in emptiness goes by space-phone, radiating microwaves from a tiny antenna. Such speech can be picked up for miles. Here there was no air to carry sound, but it was still possible to speak direct. As in a liquid ocean, helmets touched together conveyed sounds by solid conduction. The quality of the sound was not remarkable, but at least it would not be overheard.

The helmets clanked into contact.

“A bad business!” said Haney. “Do you know who did it, or why?”

“I can guess why,” said Dunne savagely.

“Somebody,” said Haney’s tinny, unctuous voice through the helmets’ contact, “somebody knows what you’ve found and where it is. Eh?”

Dunne was silent for long seconds. Then he said, “We didn’t find the Mountain.”

“Okay,” said Haney blandly. “Cut us in on what you did find, and we’ll block the scheme the others have made and ferry you to your rock. You and the girl and supplies. We’ll land you. We’ll set up a bubble. Then we’ll stop by and pick you up next pickup-ship time, you and the girl and Keyes.”

“Is this charity?” asked Dunne coldly.

“It’s a gamble,” said Haney. “We get half the crystals you find while we’re gone. Half.”

It was plausible. Had someone else made the offer, it might even be attractive. To take a man to and from his working—his mine—for half his take while there… It wasn’t bad under the circumstances. But Haney didn’t insist on the Mountain’s discovery, which might mean that he knew the facts. He might know what they’d found. And there was no assurance at all that he’d keep to such a bargain. Dunne knew better. There was no law in the Rings. There was nothing but his own self-respect to make a man keep a bargain when he could profit by breaking it.

And there was the girl Nike, She definitely shouldn’t go off in Haney’s donkeyship.

Dunne said, “No.”

He let it go at that. Haney grimaced inside his helmet. He moved away. His partner was already stowing the supplies purchased for their ship. Haney went to his partner and touched helmets with him, for conversation not to be picked up by the pickup ship or Dunne.

Haney went back to the pickup ship. He mounted the ship-ladder. His partner completed getting stores aboard.

Something made Dunne stare after Haney. Nike was desperate to find her brother. Some. unimaginable emergency had driven her to ask to go into. the Rings with Dunne, to find her brother and to keep from traveling back to Horus and then back out to Outlook again. She didn’t realize how dangerous such a thing would be. She’d never been where there was no law and order. She couldn’t imagine the risks a completely lawless environment implied. They were bad enough for a man. They’d be impossible for a girl. But she was desperate, or thought she was. She’d have risked trusting herself to Dunne. When he refused to take her, had she tried to make a bargain with Haney?

Dunne began to cross the spaceport above which the golden haze hovered perpetually. He saw the pickup ship’s personnel lock again. He noted that Haney’s stores were all aboard, and his partner was in the act of dogging the lock-door shut.

Haney came out of the pickup ship. Behind him there came another figure in a space-suit. Haney helped it down the ladder with exaggerated chivalry—but there was need of assistance, at that. The first time one uses magnetized shoes in no gravity, clumsiness is inevitable.

Dunne leaped, with his belt-jet for propulsion and guidance. He went soaring across the relatively level metal plain. He landed with a clank, facing Haney savagely. He turned on his helmet-phone and said coldly;

“Oh, no, you don’t! Nike, back into the pickup ship! Haney, get into your ship and get to hell away from here!”

Haney had to raise his own hand to make his own helmet-communicator go on. Dunne watched sharply. He saw the girl’s eyes turn, and faced himself so Haney was between Dunne and Haney’s. partner. Haney’s partner was in the airlock with a bazooka in his hand.

“If your partner pulls trigger on that thing,” said Dunne icily, “you’ll be blown apart before the shell gets here.”

Haney protested, “She wants to find her brother! You won’t take her! So she asked me to take her. Why not?”

Dunne’s voice was very deadly indeed. “Because if you know where to take her, you’ll be the man with a reason to blow up my ship so I can’t get back there! If you know where Keyes is, all you have to do is stop me from getting to him and you’ll have the rock we’re working!”

The pickup ship would hear all this, of course. The helmet-phones carried for miles.

“Say it,” snapped Dunne. “If you know where to take her—if you know where her brother is—say it!”

His belt-weapon bore upon Haney’s middle. It was a weapon of ancient design, because there was no need for anything more deadly than a missile-weapon in space. A space-suit puncture anywhere was a mortal wound. Blasters suitable for use in atmosphere could do no more than kill. And the blasters were bulky and leaked their charges. In a fire-fight over a source of abyssal crystals, an automatic pistol firing lead bullets was actually to be preferred to a blaster. It was always charged and it fired faster and it could be recharged without a return to a source of power.

Dunne thrust his weapon deeper into Haney’s middle.

“Where’ll you take her?” he raged. “Where!”

Haney’s voice went shrill.

“I was—I was going to look for him,” he panted. “I—I tried to get you to go along to show the way. But y’wouldn’t go, so I was goin’ to look for him as best I could.”

“With her aboard. But you’re not going to do it now, Haney!” Dunne’s voice was thick with fury. “Are you? You’re not going to take her off into the Rings and come back next pickup-ship time and say she died. Are you? You’re not going to take her.”

“No!” panted Haney, more shrilly than before. “No! I ain’t! I give it up! I wouldn’t do nothing like that.”

“Then move!” rasped Dunne. He was acutely aware that he could pull the trigger and kill Haney, and that absolutely nothing would be done to him as punishment, because these were the Rings. “Get to your ship and away! I’ll take care of getting to Keyes and picking him up. You—move!”

He stood shaking with fury as Haney stumbled to his ship. Haney wasn’t swaggering now. Once his partner moved as if to lift his bazooka. Dunne’s weapon came up. As a missile-gun it could be deadly accurate, because there was no gravity. Haney’s partner lowered his weapon with exemplary haste.

Haney climbed into his ship. The airlock door closed. It locked. The donkeyship floated free. It suddenly drove, accelerating swiftly. In seconds it bad vanished in the mist.

Dunne practically drove the girl up the companion-ladder and into the pickup ship. She was affrightedly silent. He didn’t speak until the inner lock-door opened and they were both inside the ship.

Then the girl said desperately, “But—there’s my brother! What are you going to do about him? Somebody has to go for him!”

Dunne nodded, his eyes still hot and angry.

“Somebody will. In fact, I will. You can come back next pickup ship and talk to him.”

“But how—what—I have to—”

Dunne was gone, tramping in his space-suit through the open space where the donkeymen had feasted. They were all gone now. It looked very much as if a hurricane had struck it. Dunne went through, looking for the skipper’s cabin.

He found it, and the skipper inside, with all the small bags of abyssal crystals neatly ticketed with their masses and owners. He looked up sharply when Dunne came in the door.

“I thought you might be interested,” said Dunne, “to hear how I’m going to get to my partner with oxygen and food so we can wait for the next pickup ship’s arrival.”

The skipper looked definitely skeptical. He swept the bags of crystal into a drawer, out of sight. As he did so, Dunne plucked a bazooka-shell from his belt and began to toss it thoughtfully from one hand to the other. The skipper jumped.

“Put that thing away!” he snapped.

“Presently,” said Dunne. “Let me explain. I had a donkeyship. It’s been blown up. That leaves my partner marooned. I haven’t any way to get back to him and keep him alive until you or another pickup ship comes back.”

“I can’t help that!” said the skipper. He added sharply, “Put that thing away! If you drop it—.”

“I won’t let it fall,” Dunne promised. “I even juggle! Look!”

He brought out a second bazooka-shell from its pocket in his space-suit belt. He began to juggle the two of them, more or less competently. The pickup skipper’s face began to turn slowly white. A bazooka-shell is a tiny rocket, with a fuel-load that detonates as a shaped charge when it hits something. If Dunne should drop one of those small spinning objects, weighing only ounces, the result would be rather like a hundred-pound demolition charge exploding in the skipper’s cabin. It might not break so large a ship into pieces, but it would never be able to make its way back to Horus.

The skipper sat still, frozen, while Dunne juggled the little shells. Once he almost missed a catch.

“I was thinking,” said Dunne pleasantly, “how careful traffic controls are about things. For instance, you couldn’t lift off of Horus without lifeboats. You have to carry enough lifeboats not only for the crew you have, but the passengers you usually don’t.”

He seemed almost to miss a catch, again. The skipper went whiter still. But there was no possible way to stop Dunne.

“In fact,” said Dunne, “I was thinking that I brought enough crystals aboard, just now, to pay for a lifeboat and stores for it. I was thinking that it would be a very fine solution if you sold me a lifeboat. If you do, and launch me well away from Outlook, I’ll go and pick up my partner Keyes.”

The skipper, watching the twinkling shells, involuntarily cried out in an agonized tone as Dunne just barely caught one of them only inches from the floor—and destruction.

Dunne said soothingly, “It’s all right. I’m a little out of practice, but the knack seems to be coming back. I think I’ll try three in the air at once.”

He tossed a shell higher than usual, while he tried to pluck a third from his space-suit belt. The third seemed stuck. Dunne balanced off that difficulty by keeping two shells in the air with one hand while he tried to extract the stuck shell with the other. The skipper gulped.

“All right!” he said hoarsely. “All right! Stop the juggling! You can have the lifeboat!”

“Fine!” said Dunne politely. He ceased his juggling, but kept the two shells ready in his hands. “You make out a bill of sale. I’ll give you an order for the money. Next trip I’ll be here at the spaceport with the boat and Keyes, and we’ll all have a hearty laugh over it. Eh? Now, you arrange things.”

The pickup ship’s skipper stood up. He was obviously badly shaken. He might have defied threats, or disbelieved that Dunne would actually take any drastic measures. But Dunne had taken the one course to make the skipper believe that he must be supplied with what he demanded. He’d risked his life to do it, but nothing else would have done.

As the skipper moved to leave his cabin, Dunne said: “You might tell that girl that I’m going for her brother after all, and she can write him a letter. I’ll see that he gets it. And she can talk to him next time a pickup ship comes to Outlook.”

He relaxed. He even reflectively put one’ of the two bazooka-shells back in its pocket. But he kept the other ready in his hand, tossing it meditatively up and down.

The ship seemed very silent. Only by straining his ears to the utmost could Dunne detect small noises that were signs of movement on the pickup ship.:

It was half an hour before the skipper came back. He said grimly, “Here’s the charter agreement. I can’t sell you a lifeboat. I can only charter you one; and I don’t know how legal that is! But you make a deposit of the lifeboat’s full value. Sign this. Then I sign here, and that’s all I can do. The lifeboat’s stored and fueled.”

“Splendid,” said Dunne politely. He read and signed. “A most businesslike proceeding! You’ve told Miss Keyes what I’m doing? Did she write a letter for me to take?”

The pickup ship skipper snorted.

“She was told, of course. Come and get in your damned lifeboat. Of course, I hope you make out!”

Dunne followed him out of the cabin. He went along the patterned steel floorplates that were used everywhere on the ship that wasn’t considered a habitation. Nobody can live long in a completely artificial environment; but these were corridors in which nobody lived.

And here was the lifeboat. Dunne couldn’t see more than the quasi-vestibule between the ship and the lifeboat’s entrance-lock. He went in, looked over the control panel, and nodded. The seal-off door closed. A voice from a speaker in the ceiling of the tiny control. room made conventional reports. The pickup ship lifted and, as seen from near Outlook, dwindled to insignificance and vanished.

Dunne strapped himself in before the control board. He said, “Ready!” and on the outside of the big ship a pair of mussel-shell blister-doors opened. They were designed for the launching of lifeboats. From the direct-view ports Dunne could see that golden haze which was, actually, the rings of Thothmes.

“Ready to clear?” asked a booming voice from overhead.

“Ready,” said Dunne again. He frowned.

“Ejection coming,” said the speaker.

There was a shock. The lifeboat hurled itself violently to one side. It began to turn end-for-end, and he could see the pickup ship as a monstrous shadow, already with all details wiped out by the haze.

Up to this instant, Dunne had been almost satisfied. Not pleased, but confident. The miners of the Rings had every reason to believe that he was leaving Outlook as a passenger on the pickup ship. There hadn’t seemed anything else for him to do. Believing this, it would seem to most of the men in the Rings, convinced that the Big Rock Candy Mountain had been found again, that Dunne had sacrificed his partner to the secret of the Mountain—left him to die because Dunne couldn’t get to him and still keep the secret.

But then the speaker in the ceiling of the lifeboat’s control room boomed with the full volume of the ship’s transmitter. The voice of the pickup ship’s skipper came out.

“Luck to you, Dunne! You made me mad, and it’s crazy not to stay aboard. But luck to you anyhow!”

And then the pickup ship’s drive boomed, and the ship moved away. It accelerated swiftly. Almost immediately it was out of sight in the Ring mist. It vanished before Dunne could draw a single infuriated breath. He was speechless with fury. Anybody within a thousand miles could have picked up that foolish, that stupid, that damning three-sentence farewell of the pickup ship’s skipper.

Anybody who heard it would know that Dunne had been able to stay behind when the ship from Horus left. And anyone could reason that Dunne had gotten a lifeboat with which to go after his partner. The men who’d intended to trail Dunne’s donkeyship would now shift their attention to a lifeboat, as soon as they could locate it. And in particular, whoever had destroyed the donkeyship would now set about trying to destroy the lifeboat. Without turning on the drive, Dunne knew it would have a completely distinctive drive-sound, and couldn’t pass as just another donkeyship.

It needn’t have happened. It was unnecessary. It was more than infuriating. It could easily be fatal.

He heard a stirring in the central cabin of the lifeboat. He whirled, his hand going to his belt-weapon.

The door to the tiny control room opened wider. A girl stood there, very pale. She was Keyes’ sister, Nike.

“They told me,” she said shakily, “that you’d gotten this boat to—go get my brother. And I’ve got to see him. So I came along. I—stowed away.”

Dunne ground his teeth. The pickup ship was gone. It would be in overdrive by now, heading across the many millions of miles between Outlook and the inhabited planet Horus. There was no way to call it back. There was no place to which this girl could be taken for safety or simply to keep her from interfering with the troubles and the dangers of normal life in the Rings of Thothmes.

“I suppose,” said Dunne bitterly, “that you consider you’ve won the argument with me. Maybe you have. You’re going with me to see your brother! I’m taking you along because I can’t do anything else. But you’re going to be sorry!”

He clenched his fists. He repeated, with emphasis, “You’re going to be damned sorry!”