Miners in the Sky (3 page)

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!”