Iron Head: Science Fiction Mystery Tales

by E. C. Tubb

  “After I’ve heard what you’ve got to say.” I sucked at the cigarette and relaxed, listening to him talk.

  “I was stuck when I met you, Jim. I won’t deny that. I was watching for you. I’d heard about what had happened to your claim. I’d a little money and no ship. You had a ship and no money. I thought it would be a good idea for us to become partners.” He hesitated. “I didn’t realise that you didn’t know what you were saying. We made the deal and then you passed out. The Field Supervisor knew you and let me take out your ship.”

  I didn’t believe him. Not about the watching for me and the rest of it, but about us making a deal. I’ve never I’ve never yet been so drunk that I didn’t know what I was saying. I stood up and walked forward towards the controls. The fuel gauge registered full. I checked the water. Full. I opened the locker and stared at the ranked cans of rations. Harry, whatever his reasons, had done what I couldn’t do. He had restocked my ship and got it into space. I returned to the bunk, pulled my feet off the floor, and gripped the edge just in time to prevent my drifting up to the ceiling.

  “Where are we?”

  “Three hours out from Central and heading towards Morgan’s Cluster.”

  “That where we’re going?”

  “No.” He sat down beside me and rubbed his chin again. “Well? You still haven’t told me.”

  “We’re partners,” I said. “For this trip only unless you give me good reasons. I don’t like running in double harness.”

  “Maybe that’s your trouble.” He hesitated and gnawed his lower lip. “Look, Jim, at the moment you’re sore at Consolidated for jumping your claim. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  I just stared at him.

  “Have you ever looked at it from their viewpoint? They don’t know you, probably have never even heard of you or your claim. To them you’d just be another prospector making a nuisance of himself with a ridiculous accusation. I’m talking of the company, Jim, not the local agents.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No it isn’t. A company has no soul, no heart, no jaw to take a swing at. A company is impersonal. Consolidated exists to make money for its shareholders. To do that it has to be efficient, and that means buying rich claims as cheap as possible and selling what they take out of them for all the traffic will bear. That’s business.”

  “So it’s business. They rob me blind and it doesn’t matter because it’s business. What are you trying to do, Harry? Whitewash them?”

  “They don’t need whitewashing. Consolidated has poured billions into its investments in the Belt and they want to keep clean. Under Earth law they have to keep clean. If they don’t, then they’re in trouble.” He looked at me. “Your claim was worth say, fifty thousand credits?”

  “Call it a hundred.”

  “All right then, a hundred. Compare that to the billions Consolidated have spent out here, and the profits they hope to make. Do you think it would pay them to gyp you out of a lousy hundred thousand?”

  “Perhaps not me,” I admitted. “But I’m not the only one. Add us all up and you’re not far short of a million or so. That’s big money whichever way you look at it.”

  “Consolidated’s turnover runs close to eight hundred millions a year,” said Harry quietly. “It still doesn’t make sense. In fact, this claim jumping business is the last thing they want. It hurts their reputation.”

  “I’m crying,” I said. “I’m really sorry for them.”

  “You’re still bitter,” he said. “You’re not able to think straight and you won’t be until you get some sense. Why don’t you sleep on it?”

  “What about the ship?” It was all I owned in the universe. If anything happened to it I was right back in the gutter sifting swill for something to eat. Harry pressed me back onto the bunk.

  “Relax. I’m an experienced pilot. Nothing will happen to it.” He grinned down at me. “Just give your brains a chance and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  I swore at him as he left me.

  *

  A second sleep washed the traces of the dope from my system and cleared my mind. I even did some thinking about what Harry had told me, but it didn’t do me any good. It certainly didn’t give me the hundred thousand I’d lost, but that was past, and, if I hoped to keep operating, I had to find some pay-rock, and fast.

  I’d spectoed a couple of boulders and was swinging the thermite gun around to a third when Harry joined me from the other half of the living quarters. He watched as I shot a thermite charge to the rock, read the spectrographic pattern revealed by the vapourising of a fragment of the surface, then looked into my face to see the result.

  “Any good?”

  “No.” I gestured towards the spectro screen. “Read it for yourself. Nothing but rock, a little iron, a trace of copper and other stuff.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” He didn’t look at the screen. “Thought about what I was telling you?”

  “Maybe.” I swung the gun towards a promising looking mass, then relaxed as the radio emitted a droning pulse pattern. “Too late. Someone has set up their marker.” I glowered at it as we swept past. “That’s Consolidated’s pattern. They own every damn rock in the vicinity.”

  “Why not?” Harry handed me a coffee bulb and sucked at the nipple of his own. “Who else would buy them? You can’t blame them for laying in a stock of raw material.”

  I sucked at the coffee and didn’t answer. Outside, dim against the stars, the jumble of asteroids which constituted the Belt moved with silent dignity as they had done for countless years. On the control panel the radar blipped as it registered the rocks and little green flecks crawled over its screen.

  “It gets you, doesn’t it?” Harry stood beside me. “There’s adventure out there, and excitement, and the means to build a thriving community out here in the Belt. Fuse the debris after extracting the minerals, set up a few domes, pulverise the rock to make soil and, in a few years, we could have our own settlements in the Belt. That’s Consolidated’s long term policy.”

  “That’s generous of them.” I didn’t trouble to hide my sneer. “Then what? They fix the rents and cost of staples, and get what they’ve always wanted. A nice little slave state right under their thumb. That’s not for me.”

  “You’ve still got that chip on your shoulder, haven’t you, Jim?” He stared down at his coffee bulb. “Look, get some sense for a change. Have you ever stopped to wonder why the company pays a fair price for your claims? If they were what you think they are they could beat you right down and you couldn’t argue. They don’t. Do you know why?”

  “We wouldn’t sell to them, that’s why?”

  “Wrong again. Who else would you sell to? Consolidated’s the only company in this decant. How else would you be able to buy food and fuel if they didn’t buy?”

  “All right, so I’ll ask the question. Why do they pay?”

  “So that you can go out and find more claims.” Harry grinned at me. “Simple, isn’t it? Basic economics. It’s cheaper for the company to let independent prospectors find the pay-rock than to employ their own. You work harder, take more risks, provide your own ships and fuel, need no insurance, claim no compensation in case of injury.” He shrugged. “Why go on? Boil it down to man-hours against money received and you independents work for peanuts. The company pays you a fair price because they can’t afford to let you go out of business. They need you.”

  “Fine way they’ve got of showing it.”

  “Consolidated isn’t responsible for what happened to you, Jim. Some smart-Aleck operators have seen the chance to work a racket and they’re doing it. The company know it, but what can they do? On the surface everything is legal. Can they refuse to buy? Can they accuse the recorder of theft? And they need the raw materials, Jim. They’ve got to have them to stay in business.”

  “More whitewash, Harry?”

  “No, Jim. I’m just trying to show you how gutless you are.”

  My fist had travelled almost t
o his mouth when I managed to stop myself. He was an old man, and the old, like fools and children, are entitled to certain liberties. Also, he was my partner, and you don’t quarrel with your partner while in space, not if you want to return alive you don’t.

  “It’s easy to blame the company, isn’t it, Jim? They’re big and bad, and everyone knows it. But what about blaming yourself for a change? You’ve been gypped, not by the company, but by a few men who are working together at your expense. The company can’t stop them. Law is law, and they operate under the legislature of Earth. But you don’t; you operate under the legislature of the Belt.” He stared at me. “Those men can only get away with what you let them. If you don’t kick, then why expect others to? This claim jumping isn’t new—you told me that yourself, but what have you done to stop it?”

  “It wasn’t my business,” I said. “In the Belt we keep our noses clean.”

  “And so you got robbed. Still want to keep your nose clean, Jim?”

  I didn’t answer.

  *

  In two weeks I tested twenty-seven rocks and not one of them was worth the cost of the thermite charge. We passed others, plenty of them, but they were all radio-marked as registered claims. Morgan’s Cluster filled the radar screen with green fire and I sweated as we dived through the erratic orbits of the fifty-eight asteroids which had caused Morgan’s death. I had to use more fuel than I liked. In the Belt we use the oxy-alcohol mixture, not the atomics of the interplanetary ships. There’s a good reason for it. We don’t have to worry about radiation; we can get all the thrust we need from it, and we can breathe the same stuff we use for fuel. Some prospectors drink it, too, but they must be tired of life.

  As a partner, Harry turned out to be almost useless. For one thing he couldn’t read a spectroscope without fiddling around with a stack of matching plates. For another he didn’t seem to know how erratic some of the rocks are. I had to stand by for long periods and, finally, I had it out with him.

  “You’re no prospector,” I told him. “Why did you say you were?”

  “Did I?”

  “Perhaps not, but you acted like one. Why didn’t you tell me you were a greenhorn?”

  “Would you have accepted me if I had?” He rubbed the bristles on his chin and his eyes crinkled a little around the corners. “Would you?”

  “You know damn well I wouldn’t.” I didn’t have to tell him why. When two people work together you get so that you begin to trust each other. That’s all right when you’re both experienced and know what you’re doing. But to rely on a greenhorn is the same as committing suicide. That’s why I liked to operate on my own. If a man can’t trust himself, then there’s no one he can trust. Also, even though it was hard going, the profits were that much bigger.

  “Mad at me, Jim?”

  “Yes.” I tried to get in a temper, failed, then shrugged. “What’s the use? I’m stuck with you now, so shouting about it won’t make any difference. But why go through all that performance? You could have grub-staked me and stayed behind at Central. An old man like you shouldn’t be out in the Belt unless he has to.”

  “I wanted to come,” he said sharply. “And a man is only as old as he feels.”

  “You can feel like a two- year-old,” I said brutally. “But that don’t make your bones any less brittle or give you a new pump. When we start real work it’s not going to be easy.”

  “I’ll make out.”

  “That’s what you say now, but I’ve seen old timers flop out before.” I scowled at the radar screens. “What made you head out this way to begin with? I thought that you knew of an unexamined area.”

  “I’ve got better than that, Jim.” His eyes crinkled again as he looked at me. “I know where there’s a rock loaded with pay-stuff.”

  That just about did it. You hear the “lost asteroid” gag in every bar in the system, and I’d heard it so often that I no longer listened. Old timers mostly, trying to cadge the price of a drink or, if they think they’ve landed a sucker, a down payment for a set of co-ordinates dreamed up in an idle moment.

  I told Harry that, and a lot more beside, and I wasn’t gentle with him. He heard me out, rubbing his chin and looking down towards his feet and, when I’d run out of words, he stared at me instead.

  “Finished?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Then listen to me for a change. I wasn’t just making noises when I spoke about Consolidated, and I’m not making them now. There is a rock out there loaded with rich stuff and we’re going to find it.” He smiled at my expression. “I’m not crazy and I’m not trying a racket. The asteroid is there. I can even give you the assay, and it’s worth about a hundred thousand credits at market valuation.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” I stepped to the controls. “Give me the coordinates and let’s set up our marker.”

  “Not so fast, Jim. You can have the claim but only if you work for it. In other words, I want to make a deal.”

  “A deal?” I let my hands fall to my sides. “Let’s have it.”

  “The last time you made a rich strike you were gypped. What makes you so sure the same thing won’t happen this time?”

  “Not a chance. They...” I broke off because I’d just realised what Harry was getting at. He nodded.

  “That’s it. The deal is that you smash this claim-jumping racket in return for the claim. In other words, if you can hang onto it, it’s yours. Well?”

  “Sounds good,” I admitted. “But there’s one more question. You’re no prospector, Harry, and you talk like a man with sense. Who are you?”

  “An officer of Consolidated. Surprised?”

  I was.

  *

  The rock was where he said it would be, and the spectroscopic reading gave it a value about what he’d said. It had a marker on it, too, a Consolidated one, but Harry put it out of commission as soon as we touched down.

  “This is an old claim,” he explained. “The title’s ours, but that doesn’t matter. We’ve moved it since then and the co-ordinates will be different.” He grinned. “So will the assay.”

  We’d taken off our suits and were resting after going outside. Carrying oxygen as fuel as we do, and cramped for space as we are, the little ships have no air-lock. It’s quicker and more convenient to evacuate the ship while working, and wear suits all the time. The only trouble with that was that it made the ship cold and I shivered over the heaters as I sucked hot coffee.

  “What happens next?”

  “I go back with the false samples and register the claim. If our friends follow their pattern they will send a ship out here, change markers and fix the records. When I return they will warn me off. If I make a complaint I’ll be laughed down. You know how it is.”

  I knew. I’d been through it all before.

  “It’s a rich claim,” said Harry thoughtfully. “At least, it will look that way on the assay. I’m an old man and they’ll think I’m easy meat. I can’t see how they can resist the temptation.”

  “You’ve forgotten something,” I said. “They’ll know that we were partners. How will you explain that?”

  “You died,” he said calmly. “An unfortunate accident. You can guess what they’ll think.”

  I could. More than one partner had met with an unfortunate accident just after striking it rich. That was another reason why I liked to operate alone.

  “They’ll use it against me, of course,” said Harry. “They will probably threaten me with the law; anything to make me shut up and accept my loss.” He grinned at me. “They’ve got plenty of precedent to go on; they know that they can get away with it.”

  He needn’t have said that. I was becoming less and less proud of how I’d been rooked without doing anything about it. I got down to business.

  “How will we clear it all up?”

  “That’s up to you,” he said pointedly. “I’ll leave you behind on your claim. When the jumpers arrive you do what you think best. I’ll come out as if to make
the double check and see what’s happened.” He hesitated. “Look, Jim, I’d like to help you but I can’t. All I can do is to set the trap. Officially, Consolidated can’t enter into this. Unofficially, we’ll be behind you all the way. But it’s up to you.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I said bitterly. “Make faces at them? The last time I had trouble I was up against three men, two of them paid goons. Polite words won’t persuade them to change their minds.”

  “Then don’t use polite words.”

  “All right then, I’ll throw rocks.” I reached for a cigarette and sucked the tip to brightness. “You played this too smart, Harry. Why didn’t you tell me what you had in mind back at Central?”

  “If this scheme is going to work at all then it’s got to be done quietly.” He sat down on the edge of the control panel. He didn’t twitch or jerk or occupy his hands. He sat as an old man sits, serene and calm, and as if he had all the time in the universe. “Consolidated can’t touch these characters; we’ve got to stay clean. The law won’t touch them without evidence, which no one is willing to give. The prospectors complain and get drunk, then forget it as one of those things. Nobody gives a damn for the other fellow, so nobody has the guts to do anything for a long-term profit. It’s up to you, Jim.”

  “I told you before. I’m no Crusader. Why should I get my head broken for someone else?”

  “This time you’re doing it strictly for yourself,” he reminded. “For one hundred thousand credits. It’s worth that much to Consolidated to clean up this mess before it gets out of hand.”

  And then I got it. For a moment I’d been tempted to swallow his line without ques-tion, but suddenly the picture became clear. Philanthropy? Not on your life. Consolidated were scared. And I knew why.

  “You’ve waited two years to get upset about what’s going on,” I said. “Now, all of a sudden you start taking an interest in the poor prospectors and the claims they’ve been gypped out of. That’s the bunk, and I know it. You’re worried about your own skin and want to use me to save yourselves. Am I right?”