Miners in the Sky (16 page)

The fifteen-hundred-foot half-mountain turned on its axis. Radio waves could enter the cavern into which Dunne had backed his lifeboat. But they could only enter from one direction at a time.

“We’re shielded by the rock,” said Dunne. “We can only receive from one direction. And it changes.”

The drive-whine of Smithers’s ship. He panted, “If that’s you, Dunne, say so! Tell me! If it ain’t—”

The steady, buzzing whine of a donkeyship with no voice accompanying it. The sound of crackling lightning bolts, then the rustling of the sun’s photosphere.

Something fled across the Ring-mist which could be seen from the ports of the lifeboat. Smithers’ voice came from it, squealing. It was his fate or destiny always to involve Dunne in events Dunne wished urgently to avoid. He’d done enough harm before, through panic; but now, without knowing it, he’d chosen a course that could not but bring his silent pursuer past the open-mouthed cavern, into which Dunne had moved for Nike’s safety.

The slow rotation of the rocky mass cut off Smithers’ voice. The sound of another donkeyship replaced it.

“Maybe,” said Dunne deliberately, “maybe we can turn this cave into a break. I’m going out to the mouth of it. It looks like Smithers is just running round and round this rock, with Haney after him. I may be able to interfere.”

“I go too!” said Nike, fiercely. “If you get killed, I will be too!”

It was true. Haney’s primary purpose was to kill Nike, to change the situation in a long-continued lawsuit back on Horus, of which, in turn, the object was to distribute certain treasure from the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Dunne picked up his bazooka. Nike had hers loaded before he’d more than picked his up. She showed him that she’d put it on safely. He said, warningly, “No space-phones!”

She reached up to her helmet. A light glowed. She looked inquiringly at him. Nothing could be much more useless than a helmet lamp for a space-suit to be used in the Rings. But it was simpler to use a space-helmet with an unneeded feature than to get others made, particularly when so small a number would be required. But a helmet light meant something now, with the spaceboat backed into a cavern.

Dunne nodded. He leaned over until their helmets touched.

“I want to say,” said Dunne deliberately, “—something I only admit because I think we’re going to be killed. I want to say that I like you very much. I’d like to have you near me permanently. In short—”

But then he put her into the airlock. He said no more until the outer door opened. He fastened the lifelines for both of them. He saw her making ineffectual gestures, and he saw her face and realized that she was crying and trying to wipe her tears through a space-helmet.

Dunne made his way toward the cavern’s mouth. Nike suddenly stiffened, staring toward the back of the cave. She made a curious inarticulate noise, but only she heard it. There were painted symbols on the rocky wall.

But Dunne was facing away from them. He reached the bow of the lifeboat. He saw something solid in the all-enveloping mist. It was a donkeyship. It fled, and careened to turn and get back behind the giant mass of minerals. It was Smithers’ ship. It vanished.

A misty moving other object appeared almost instantly. It was Haney’s ship. Like a hawk after a sparrow, it flung itself in pursuit. Both ships disappeared.

Dunne shook his head inside his helmet. He found a place in which to brace himself, for the use of his bazooka. And then, practically from under his feet, Smithers’ battered ship came eeling out again. It streaked for the concealing mist. A thing came after it. Streaks of smoke—bazooka-shell smoke—came after it. One missed and went on uselessly on toward nothing whatever. But a second one struck and its shaped charge vaporized a hole in the metal and poured its whole explosive force into the donkeyship. A second bazooka-shell struck the donkeyship’s belly as it tumbled. A third hit.

Smithers’ battered ship began to come apart in space. The pursuer appeared, incredibly, from the mist to one side. It fired twice—three times more before the mist obscured it again. What wreckage remained connected together went on toward shining oblivion beyond the haze. Twice, Dunne saw a movement in that strange fog. It was each time a ship swirling and circling around its enemy. There were momentary flashings of light, explosions even brighter than sunshine on the dust of Thothmes’ rings. Shells were being pumped into the remains of the fragments of the wreck.

Then—nothing. Dunne waited, his bazooka ready, his features contorted with pure hatred. The hatred wasn’t on account of Smithers. It was because Haney and his companions had committed cold-blooded murder before his eyes, and he hadn’t been able to stop them. And Nike would presently be another victim.

Then Nike pulled at his arm. He touched his helmet to hers.

He said grimly, “If Smithers could track us and try to overtake us so we’d fight for him, then Haney’s donkeyship trailed us too. They’ll come back.”

Nike shook her head impatiently. “No! Not that! Come here!”

She threw the light from her helmet to the back of the cave. Catching onto one handhold after another, she dragged him half the length of the lifeboat. She pointed at the rocky wall where were the initials and numbers “JG-27.” Nike narrowed the beam. The light played on gray stuff. Friable stuff. There were actually greasy seeming crystals in view. They actually stuck out of the matrix! And Nike swung the light beam again.

There was an airlock door, made of the same plastic material as the bubbles used in the mining process of the Rings of Thothmes.

Nike touched her helmet to Dunne’s.

“This is it!” said her voice in the tinny, resounding helmet. “Don’t you see? JG—Joe Griffiths! And 27. That’s the year he found it! This is the Big Rock Candy Mountain!”

And it was. But as Dunne gaped at it, a shadow went past the cave mouth. Dunne jerked his head about. A donkeyship went past the cavern, no more than twenty or thirty feet from the lifeboat’s nose. From the airlock of this other ship, a man threw something.

The donkeyship went on. The object that had been thrown revealed its nature by detonating with a monstrous violence. It shattered the entire bow of the lifeboat, back through the miniature control room. The stern of the lifeboat was cracked, and it bow parts were smashed.

Haney’s donkeyship was out of sight. Dunne knew that peculiar raging frustration of a man who considers that right and justice and decency have been outraged and realizes that nothing can be done about it. He and Nike had just found the Big Rock Candy Mountain, a fit subject for fables and tales to the end of time. Therefore, they owned it. But they would own it only until the material needed for breathing gave out. There was no need for Haney to do anything more. They were dead. It would be completely, as well as figuratively, true in a very short time.

It was undoubtedly curiosity that brought about the final development of the situation. It was Nike’s curiosity, perhaps; but Dunne’s curiosity may have had a share in shaping the remaining events. Possibly he unconsciously had some hope that made him look alertly about him. Certainly Haney’s curiosity contributed. Or perhaps Haney didn’t so much want to make sure as he wanted to swagger in the presence of those who had opposed his purposes and frustrated some of his efforts, even if they happened to be dead when he swaggered. Possibly he had a freakish idea that such brilliance and talent as he’d displayed deserved a greater reward than merely being the husband of Nike’s second cousin once removed, and thus collateral descendent of Joe Griffiths. He may have had a notion that this was the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that wasn’t likely.

Haney moored his donkeyship to one of the freakish metallic formations on the surface of this fifteen-hundred-foot Ring-fragment. He relaxed in absolute assurance of complete success in all his undertakings. The brother and sister, to whom his wife was a second cousin once removed, were dead. Their deaths had come about in the Rings, where there was no law. The highest court on Horus had officially determined that they had no jurisdiction over events, properties, or crimes in the Rings of Thothmes. Therefore, all must be well. But—just possibly—there might be crystals in the wrecked lifeboat. It would be interesting to see. It might be a good idea to remove the bodies of Dunne and Nike and send them away as Ring-fragments to find their own orbits and stay in them forever. And it was really possible that Dunne might have some special, large, unusually valuable abyssal crystals he’d hidden from his partner when he came upon them. Haney would have cheated any partner he had; it seemed reasonable to see if Dunne had done the same.

Therefore, after a leisurely, self-satisfied contemplation of all his affairs, Haney took his companion and went to look at the wreckage of the lifeboat. They made the journey with much care and very little exertion.

Meanwhile, Dunne and Nike faced the fact that in every respect but one they were already dead, so they went through the plastic airlock to see what the interior of the Big Rock Candy Mountain was like.

There was no gravity, there was no air in the considerable cave beyond the plastic entrance. Nike’s and Dunne’s helmet-lights showed them that there was a strong resemblance between this cave and a plastic bubble. Cracks and crevices had been sealed by plastic. There was a living space, floored with planks brought here from Horus—several scores of millions of miles away. There was furniture attached to the plank flooring, which in turn was fastened to the rock beneath. There was an upholstered chair with ribbons to be knotted across the knees to hold a person in. There were lamps with elaborate if not very tasteful shades; they were fastened to the tables on which they stood. There was even a painting hung on a wire stretched across the center of the cavern. The floor and furniture were placed as in theatres “in the round,” with no walls anywhere, so the floor and furniture could be seen from any direction.

And the cave had two occupants. There was a spacesuit standing upright. In it there was what had been a man. He stood, because there was no gravity to make him fall. Lying on dried-out-brittle cloth, there was another spectator; he had been murdered many years ago. Neither of these spectators were alarming. They were pathetic. Dunne turned Nike so she did not have to look.

“That’ll be Joe Griffiths,” he said wryly, “and a certain member of a donkeyship team who probably managed to trail him there. That somebody killed Griffiths, and then somebody killed somebody else, which left only one of them to own the Mountain.
*
But why
he
never showed up with a donkeyship load of crystals, I’ll never know!”

Nike stirred. She faced the peculiar, useless airlock through which they’d come. Dunne felt her startled movement. She reached up and turned off her helmet-light. Then his.

Some light appeared where the lifeboat so nearly blocked the entrance to the cave. The light changed. There was nothing outside to change it. It changed again. Something was moving at the mouth of the cave. It could only be human movement.

Dunne drew a deep breath. In the blackness of the cavern, now, he plucked Nike off her feet. He launched himself and her for the back of this peculiar rocky hollow. They floated, until his outstretched hand stopped them just before they collided with the stone wall.

Now his eyes and Nike’s were beginning to adjust to the darkness. Some light did filter in, past the lifeboat and beyond where the now useless airlock stood. Dunne and Nike had been long enough in this darkness to be able to see a little of what occurred. They could see vaguely what their helmet-lights had shown clearly.

He and Nike made noises, but only inside their spacesuits. They were breath-stoppingly loud. A metallic clanking seemed qualified to wake the two motionless figures who had been in this ultimate of treasure chests for years. But there was no air to carry sound. No noise came from outside.

Helmet-lights came into the outer part of the cave. Somebody had seen the painted “JG-27” and realized that they’d found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. The helmet-lights were round disks of brightness, slipping frictionlessly over every object they illuminated. The wall-less living room appeared—a plank floor with gimcrack furniture fastened to it. Then the helmet-lights moved, and steadied, and moved again, to limn out the incredible area of gray matrix and occasional dull gleams of imbedded crystals.

Haney and his companion—only Haney left his donkeyship for the pickup ship on Outlook—Haney and his companion went mad with delight and triumph. There could be no value set on the riches in plain view. It would have been ridiculous to speak of the money value in terms of millions. A larger order of magnitude would be necessary. Here were as many abyssal crystals in one place as all the Rings of all the ringed planets had yielded up to date. And the market would not be glutted. It couldn’t be. There could never be too many abyssal crystals.

In the darkness Dunne pulled Nike down to shelter behind a mass of rock. He stood up. Helmet-lights crossed and crisscrossed. The emotions of the men who’d found the greatest treasure known in the galaxy found expression. He heard inarticulate noises. He heard gaspings. He heard cursings. He heard the most horrible of blasphemy and obscenity.

And Dunne found himself raging because if Nike turned on her space-phone she would hear them.

He turned on this space-phone and shouted, and his own voice was deafening in the resounding space-helmet. It would be no less numbing in theirs.

“Quiet!” he snapped. Instantly, disks of light went crazily about the cavern, hunting for him. “I doubt you’ll have it any other way,” said Dunne grimly, “So—”

A light fell on him and a bazooka flashed. But when there is no weight, one must be braced in order to aim a bazooka. The rocket-shell went sliding crazily to a wall of black stone. It burned out in glaring blue-white flame. He felt Nike moving beside him. He raised his own weapon and fired. More glaring blue-white radiance. From the blackness of the tomb—which it was—the cave in the Big Rock Candy Mountain became lighted as brightly as if from a nearby sun.