12 DISASTER AT THE MINE

"If I'm going through with this scheme I've got to have a lot more info than I have now," Jerry sweated, wiping his forehead with a sweep of his hand. "What is this DnDrf stuff they are mining?"

"Terrible!" Lord Prrsi said, shivering at the thought, and all the other Hagg-Inder quivered as well and, let me tell you, until you have seen a room full of red-hot, quivering, twenty-foot-iong black scorpions, you have seen nothing. "It is a drug one sniff of which will render the sniffer an addict for life. And an addict will do anything to keep the supply coming until, after a few years, the chitin turns to powder and the suffering creature is finally released from the terrible bondage."

"What if you don't have chitin?" John asked, interested.

"What's chitin?" Sally whispered. "I thought it was something you ate."

"That's chitlin," John whispered back. "Chitin is the hard outer covering of most insects and aliens like the Haggis here."

"Any time you are through whispering I'll be happy to answer your question," Lord Prrsi said, and twitched his great poison sting with annoyance. "The answer is if you don't have chitin, then you are immune to the drug effects of DnDrf. Which is why the cold, soft-fleshed races like yours are sent to the mines. The interstellar slave traders always drop by here knowing they can get a good price for their cargo. And by jingo! there's the answer to your problem of how to get into the mine! Grab the next slave trader that comes along and get sold to him. I would ask for one hundred credits but don't settle for a penny less than eighty-five."

"I do believe a slave trader will be calling in here," the king broke in. "A wonderful idea. And if you could stop the DnDrf trade, we would be ever so grateful."

"If there is a slave trader here," SaIly said, putting her pretty little mind to work, "then that means – gasp! – you keep slaves!"

"Well, not too many," the king said with a certain amount of guilt oozing out between his words. "We treat them well and that sort of thing, and it does keep the working classes quiet since they miss the worst jobs." SaIly turned her back, folded her arms, sniffed loudly, and said no more. Lord Prrsi was leafing through a sheaf of thin metal sheets marked with strange calligraphy.

"Yes, by Jove!" he elated. "Here's one of the bods just took off this morning. Slow tubs, you know, you can catch him up easily in your ship and flog Jerry to him for a decent price. They'll buy him, then sell him to the HaggLoos who will instantly pop him through the one-way door of the DnDrf mine and that is that.Ї

"How will we get out?" Jerry asked.

"That is a bit of a problem. Any plans you make with the others will be heard instantly by the mind-reading villains. Of course you could take in a batch of miniaturized mind shields; we have some nice ones."

They were indeed nice, no bigger than the head of a pin. Yet when one of them was breathed up a nostril and lodged in a sinus cavity it would go instantly to work, activated by the moisture and the warmth, and provide as good a mind shield as the bulky caps supplied by the Garnishee. A supply was provided and woven into Jerry's jockstrap, the theory being that if they took away his clothes and shoes, they would at least leave him that. The Hagg-Loos may have been insane monsters, but they wouldn't go that far. Then Jerry's clothes were torn and whip marks painted on his skin, and they all returned to the delicious cool of the Pleasantville Eagle and shot off after the slavers.

It was only a matter of minutes before they caught up with them in their parabola course that took their ship well outside the battle zone. John pulled up alongside the rusty, streaked, stained, filthy vessel and called them on the radio.

"Hello, slave ship, do you read me?"

"We prefer to be called Employment Counselors," came the whining answer in reply.

"We have an employee here maybe we can bring to you for counseling."

"A slave for sale?" came the slobbering answer. "State the specifications."

"Male, strong, stupid, loves obeying orders, lowtemperature life form suitable for the DnDrf mines. I want a hundred credits for it."

"You'll take eighty-five or you'll take nothing."

"Eighty-five it is. Match airlocks and we'll pass him over. See that the money is passed back in its place."

"We are honest businessmen performing a vital function in society and would never consider cheating on a legitimate transaction of this kind. Besides, we see your gun turrets."

Shoulders back, back straight, Jerry walked into the airlock and heard the heavy inner door close behind him like the sealing of a vault. The outer door opened into the slaver's airlock, where an ugly creature at least seven feet tall was waiting for him. It was humanoid but repulsive and carried a whip, which it instantly put to work driving Jerry before it, tossing a sack of credits back over its shoulder as it left. Jerry moved along quickly enough under this impetus and soon after found himself chained to a bar in the metal wall between two other slaves. They looked at him apathetically as is the slave's wont, but he took a greater interest in them.

"How do you do," he said to the slave on his right, a creature who was very humanoid, though bright red even to the eyeballs, and who had what might be called a normal left hand – if seven fingers are normal – but instead of a right hand the arm had a bony sword from the elbow down. This sword looked hard and efficient and rather sharp so that when the creature only answered with a guttural snarl and a jab at Jerry with the sword, he adroitly dodged aside and caught the red jaw of the other cleanly with his fist and laid him out for the count.

"Very neatly done," a deep voice resounded from beside him. "One should never waste time talking with the red swordsmen of Vindaloo. They have tiny minds and only know fighting, whereas my people of Bachtria are civilized and intelligent. May I introduce myself – I am called Pipa Pipa, but you may call me Pipa if that pleases you."

The individual who spoke was chained to Jerry's left. A fat, green, dampish sort of alien with a great white belly. His eyes protruded from his head, and his mouth slashed across the entire width of his great head. He must have come from a water world because his knobby fingers were connected by webs.

"My pleasure," Jerry said. "My name is Jerry Courteney."

"Then I may call you Courteney?"

"Jerry would be better."

"I understand," Pipa croaked. "Hist, the overseer comes, we must not be seen talking or it means the lash." He sighed deeply. "Not that it matters. Everything means the lash."

He sighed again as the whip fell across his back, and the overseer went down the line lashing right and left.

"On your feet, you scum of the universe," he bawled hoarsely with rough glee. "We have arrived at your new home. You'll love it here. The DnDrf mines of Haggis!" A sound, something between a moan and a groan, emanated from the filthy ranks, for this was known as the end of the road for slaves, from which none ever returned. With reluctance they rattled their chains as they were unlocked and driven toward the door.

"This is the end!" Pipa groaned. "I shall never see my home pond again."

Jerry wanted to give him some measure of cheer, but he dared not, not yet. The mind shield in his sinus prevented his brain being read like an open book, but he knew that all the others could have their thoughts tapped at any time. He must keep his secret safe! The time would come. . . .

Whips cracking like lightning, the slavers drove the hapless slaves down the gangway and into the frigid Artic wastes of Haggis. Of course, they were frigid by Haggisian standards, which meant the temperature was around 100 degrees by Fahrenheit standards, which is bearable, though not very comfortable. As each slave emerged, the slavers stripped him and – or her of all their clothing so they could survive in the dry heat. Jerry's Hush Puppies were cut from his feet with the slash of a blade, and his sundered tie-died Levi's followed them. All that remained was his jockstrap, and he was ready to fight to the death to keep this – and not only for the mini-mind shields – but because it was bright purple, the slavers thought it was part of his body (which shows you how slavers think) and they pushed him on with the others. Ahead were the mines.

It was a scene of utter desolation. All about lay a sulfur desert, cooking and shimmering in the heated air. Above hung the great blue sun of Sirius, frying brains in their brain-pans and shooting out hard radiation to batter genes and start the mutations mutating. Ahead lay a mountain range, and set into the nearest mountain was a solid collapsium* door just six feet high. Above this door was engraved in letters carved out of the solid rock "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" or something like that.

[* Collapsium is an artificial material made of atoms with their binding energy reduced so they sort of collapse in upon themselves and are dense and heavy and that kind of thing.]

Jerry could not be sure because he could not read Haggisian, but it seemed a reasonable guess. The whips cracked even more fiercely as they drove the reluctant slaves toward this grim portal.

"Now hear this," the master slaver bellowed through a loudhailer from a position on a rock where he could survey the gathered, trembling, fear-infested slaves, who were quickly whip-cracked into silence.

"I'm only gonna tell this to you just once, so cock your ears and bend your antenna or whatever. This here is the mine I been telling you about. That door there is the first of seventeen just like it. The drill is that it opens, one of you slobs goes in, then it closes before the next door opens. You go through that etc. etc. until you are in the mine. It is my poisonal suggestion that you step lively because three seconds after a door opens a fifty-sixthousand-volt current is sent through the compartment you will be standing in. So in you go, crying and weeping, but in you go. Once inside, you will find more slaves working away at mining the DnDrf. The Hagg-Loos don't bother about how the stuff is mined, and they don't care neither. Grinding machines inside grind it to a fine powder, and it is pumped out through a one-inch pipe. One ton of it a day. As long as that ton comes out every day, food and water are pumped in through other pipes. No workee, no eatee, as the expression goes. So do your best, work for your chow, resign yourself to a last look at the sun for eternity, and off you go into endless darkness."

The whips cracked again as the outer door opened, and the first slave was booted into position. One by one the others followed until it was Jerry's turn, and he took a last despairing look at the burning plain, the slaver ship, the insulated buildings where the Hagg-Loos were; then in he went. With an unoiled screeching the portal closed behind him, and darkness descended.

"I'm doing it for you, Chuck," he said staunchly, then sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. When the next door opened, he skittered through quickly as he heard the onrushing 56,000 volts zinging through the cables toward him.

It was a nightmare voyage with an even more nightmarish ending. As Jerry stepped through the last door, a great, hairy, ugly, brutal monster of a slave caught him in the back of the neck with a club (that looked suspiciously like a human femur), sending him sprawling. But surprised as he had been by the sudden and unprovoked attack, Jerry's reflexes were still superb, and he rolled with the blow so it did not stun him, fell and twisted and caught the brute's shin with a solid kick that knocked him to the ground.

Then, before the foul creature could recover, he dived on it and clutched hard with a Japanese headlock that renders the victim unconscious in five seconds and dead in ten. He applied full pressure. The thing tried to speak through its filthy beard. At the end of four seconds it gasped, "Urgh . . . Jerry. . . don't. . ." and instantly became limply unconscious on the fifth second. Jerry thought about this for a few seconds more, wondering how the creature knew his name. After eight seconds had passed, he looked at it more closely, and at the end of nine seconds he released the pressure so that blood reentered the thing's brain, and it did not die. Its grimy, bloodshot eyes opened tremblingly, and it glared up with bestial hatred.

"Chuck, that is you, isn't it?" Jerry asked. The thing blinked fuzzily and muttered, "Me name Chuck. . . how you know name?"

"Poor lad," Jerry said, helping him to his feet and dusting him off. "They have been walking through his brain with spiked boots, and they shall pay for it, and someday, I promise, he will be restored to full mental and physical health. Do you understand, Chuck?"

"Let's go eat. Chuckee hungry."

Jerry patted the Chuck-thing on the shoulder and led him toward the chow trough, where the others were guzzling, concealing his deepest feelings at this terrible fate that had struck his best friend. He felt no desire to compete with the others for the thin gruel that they lapped up by the handfuls. It looked and smelt like mashed mangelwurzels. In fact, it probably was mashed mangel-wurzels; these fiends would stop at nothing. So, while Chuck dived into the swill, Jerry looked around at the demoniac scene – and that was a good word for it, for the cave was dimly lit by flickering flames that leaped from niches scraped in the stone walls. These fires were fueled with some sort of dark lumps; he noticed this when one of the slaves dragged over a bucket and dumped some of them on a fire. A loud creaking and groaning filled the air as other slaves worked hard at the great handles of a grinding machine. This was fed with chunks of some black substance wheeled up on carts. The mill reduced it to a fine powder which was dumped into a funnel and vanished down a pipe.

"DnDrf!" he gasped aloud, the terrible drug that drove aliens mad, then ate away their chitin. Reluctantly he sidled up for a closer look and kicked at a glistening chunk that had dropped from the mill.

"You know," he mused to himself. "If I did not know that this was the hideous drug called DnDrf, I would say it is nothing but a lump of coal."

"It is only a lump of coal, for DnDrf is coal," a grating voice said from behind him. "You think you are a smart guy, huh!"

Jerry was beginning to catch onto the interpersonal relationships in the mine, so he ducked and dodged before turning so that the club, a human femur with a stone head, whistled by without hitting him.

"Try that again and you are a dead thing," he said to the thing wielding the club, crouching at the same time in the karate instant-death-mode.

The creature stopped and looked at him bemusedly, and he looked at it. It wasn't much to look at. Humanoid in form and about his height, it was covered with lumpy brown hide that had a crumbly texture. Only its eyes gleaming whitely from its misshapen head.

"I am called Fevil Dood," it grunted. "And I am top slave in this compound. Do you want to challenge me? Means fight to the death."

"Quite the opposite," Jerry simpered in a sucking way. A plan was already beginning to form. "I will obey all your commands and am completely at your disposal. Just tell me the drill here and show me where I fit in."

"Unghh," the thing grunted, reluctantly lowering its weapon. "Better be telling the truth, or you die like quick. Me and my boys run this place and do no work other than bash skulls in. You and other slaves dig the DnDrf, crush it, and pump it out, a ton a day. You do this every day, and we let you eat and drink and live."

"What do you get out of it?"

"We eat and drink and live; only we don't work."

"Seems a dull existence. I should think you would be planning ways to crack out of here."

"Forget it. You here to stay. We all thought about it; now we don't think about it any more. So work."

"Sure. But why did those two guys stop working?"

"Where?" Fevil Dood roared, raising the club and spinning about.

Jerry instantly gave him a chop on the neck that dropped him, unconscious, with a thud, to the ground. Working fast, Jerry plucked one of the mind shields from its hiding place and then sat on the alien's rough brown chest. With one hand he held Fevil's mouth shut, and with the other he pinched shut his nostrils. Even though unconscious, Fevil began to feel short of breath and groaned and writhed. When his skin was turning purple under the brown, Jerry relented and opened one nostril. As the torrent of air was sucked into his nose Jerry dropped the mind shield into the slipstream, and it vanished into the recesses of the creature's head. At this moment Fevil arched his back and sent Jerry spinning away. Seizing his club, he roared and attacked.

"Now just one moment," Jerry explained, dodging the blows. "If you will please stop that for a moment, I'll tell you what's going on."

The angry boss slave was not interested in explanations, though, and roared and chased Jerry about the cave, cheered on by the other slaves, who were glad of this bit of entertainment plumped into their monotonous existence. Jerry was getting tired of this, so the next time he ducked a blow he plucked up a lump of coal – and suddenly whirled about. The athlete who had batted .999 consistently and had pitched forty-two no-hit games in a row could hit the target he aimed at, oh, indeed he could! The coal whistled through the air and clunked off Fevil Dood's forehead and laid him low one more time. Jerry seized up the club and chased the other slaves away, then sat and waited, club raised, for the defeated superslave to recover. Recover he did, within moments, and glared up at the raised club.

"So go ahead and kill me already. See how you like being boss of these dumbheads."

"Shut up!" Jerry hissed. "Listen quietly or I will brain you. I knocked you out so I could insert a mind shield in your nose. I am here to lead an escape from this mine." Pevil Dood's eyes popped out three inches, on stalks, at this news. "You know, you're right," he mused. "I am a simple telepath but realize now I am getting no messages. So that means no one can listen in on my brain either?"

"Dead right. Now if I give you the club back, will you help me organize the slaves for a revolt?"

"I'm your alien!" he bellowed, leaping to his feet. "Let's go!"

They went. One by one his gang of bullyboys and overmuscled slobs was called aside and bashed on the head so a mind shield could be inserted. Once consciousness was recovered and the plan explained, the recruit instantly aided the head banging of the others. This went on until all the mind shields had been dispensed to the waiting sinuses, and the gang of eager thugs gathered around.

"Gather around," Jerry ordered, "and I will explain the escape plan. Our part will be to-"

"AHHHHHHHHH!" Fevil Dood said loudly. Jerry glared at him.

"Will you kindly shut the hell up?" he hinted.

"AHHHHHHHHH!" was his only answer. He went on, trying to ignore the interruption.

"As I was saying, our job is to overpower the guards outside."

"But," a great thug covered with tarnished scales asked,

"how do we get out?"

"That will be done by-"

"AHHHHHHHH-CHOOOOO!" Fevil Dood exploded, sneezing with great force. With such great force indeed that his mind shield was expelled from his hairy nostril and shot across the cave to vanish in the darkness.

"Gesundheit," Jerry said, politely.

"What is this meeting?" Fevil Dood asked in clipped, suspicious tones. "What are you all doing together? Why cannot I enter your minds? Aha, I see it all in the dim mind of this stupid creature! You are planning escape!"

Thunk the club said as it contacted the side of Fevil Dood's now rather bashed-up skull.

"He lost his mind shield," Jerry explained, "and a Hagg-Loos took over his mind. Now that they know we must push on with the plan!"

"You're not just gnashing your fangs," a slave said, rather well endowed himself with fangs. "Take a look at the rest of the mob!"

Every slave in the immense cave, other than those in this brave little band, had now ceased work and turned in their direction. Zombielike they raised their hands and clawed their fingers, their eyes blazed with alien fury as, with a shambling, hideous motion they advanced.

"They've been taken over by the guards," Jerry shouted. "Fall back this way, men. I'm sending out the message to start the attack."

He bit down hard in a certain way upon a certain tooth.

"Ow!" he screeched. "I've gone and broken a damn filling. Wrong tooth."

Now, biting down in a certain way upon the right tooth, he actuated an incredibly tiny, yet exceedingly powerful subetheric radio which sent out a prerecorded signal. Out the signal blasted through the seams of coal and the solid stone, out across the searing plain and into space and through the mountain range behind which the waiting Pleasantville Eagle was waiting.

He hoped. "Fight men, fight, for the signal has gone out and help is on the way."

It was an unequal battle, because for every slave bopped on the head and knocked out, two more sprang forward to take his place. And the slaves were ruthless, just slaves to their possessors' slightest whim, not caring if they were maimed or killed. On and on they came, and the defenders retreated step by step until their backs were to the stone wall and their numbers greatly diminished

Then, when all appeared to be lost, something incredible happened. A glare of light blasted forth, and they all stopped and gaped. Well, it wasn't really much of a glare, in fact, it was kind of dim, but their eyes were so used to the eternal darkness that it looked like a glare to them. For, in a single microscopic instant of time, all the indestructible series of one-way doors had vanished and in their place was a smooth-walled tunnel leading to the outside. The cheddite projector had whisked away all the portals and part of the surrounding rock so that the way to liberty was open.

"The way to liberty is open!" Jerry roared. "Follow me!"

His gang of club-wielding rowdies roared in answer and galloped through the other slaves who were now milling about disturbedly, some still under brain control, others released from this vile bondage. Down the tunnel Jerry ran, waving the club, fleet-footed and fast – one stumble and he would have been trampled to a pulp – and out onto the plain to engage the emerging guards in battle. Behind them in the cave the other slaves found themselves free of control and also headed for liberty.

Although the Hagg-Loos fought like the mad devils that they were, they never stood a chance. For not only did they have to face their enraged slaves, but from the plane burst John and a squad of Garnishee, as well as five Hagg-Inder warriors, led by Lord Prrsi, who charged out of the cargo hold. The battle was short, sweet, and bloody, and soon nothing but fragments of steaming Hagg-Loos flesh littered the landscape and the last defender was dead.

"Into the plane!" Lord Prrsi ordered. "Reinforcements are on the way, and I don't think we are up to facing their entire battle fleet."

"Hold on!" Jerry called out, battling his way against the stream of slaves pouring into the 747. "Where's Chuck? After all, we did come here to release him; that was the idea of the whole thing."

"He's not in the plane or in this bunch," John mused.

"Then he's still in the cave," Jerry called out and ran that way in the instant.

"Come back!" Lord Prrsi ordered. "We cannot wait, for if we do so, we risk the loss of the cheddite projector, as well as all aboard your ship, not to mention the ship itself."

"You just stay there and wait for me," Jerry commanded. "I'll only be a moment. Fight if you must, but just hold on a bit"

Then he was pounding into the cave once more and, frankly, getting sort of pooped and out of breath after the recent bout of activity. Inside the cave he could see nothing, since his eyes were now adjusted to the glare outside.

"Chuck!" he called, and "Chuck!" again, but there was no answer. Stumbling blindly along, he made his way to the food troughs – had he heard a slurping noise? – and there, sure enough, was his buddy, head down in the gruel and slurping away.

"We have to get out of here!" He pulled at Chuck's resisting shoulder.

"Booger off!" was the growled answer. "Chuck eet him food."

"Jerry's arm was sore when he raised it, and the edge of his hand hurt when he administered the karate chop to the muscular neck below him. It was a job to get the dead weight of his friend onto his shoulder, but he did manage, then staggered out of the tunnel once again. A steak and a hot bath was what he needed after this, he thought to himself, and maybe a couple of good belts of bourbon. Then the entrance was ahead, and he staggered and stumbled and stopped. High above he could see the diving forms of Hagg-Loos fighters, weapons glistening and ready.

But, before him on the battle-scarred plain where the Pleasantville Eagle had stood there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They were alone, trapped on this enemy planet so far from home.

What a hideous way to die. . . .