This time Pete was sure he saw a suited figure. He snapped a shot quickly and saw the suit itself in the flash—saw it knocked to the planetoid’s surface before the light died. “I hit one of 'em!”
"Good shooting. That one’ll be out for a little while.” “Is that all these things do—knock a man out?” “They aren’t rightly things to hurt a man directly, Pete. It’s much more to the point to wreck the suit. Try to crack the helmet, ruin the blower, or knock out the air and heating unit. That finishes the man inside unless he can get to his ship in time. A hit anywhere else won’t do much more than stun him for a while—but sometimes that's all you need to do, too Even if they hit us, all we have to do is close the port and get out a spare suit. These pellets won’t hurt the ship.”
He sent another tracer pellet outside. “Looks like they're going to be stubborn. Well, I've got a trick up my sleeve.” He went over to the outer panel and pressed a stud. A moment later, the shielding plates slid back from the vision-ports of the Claymore, and shafts of light shot out.
"They're running!’'
Clay looked out to see five suited figures, one assisting a sixth, making short jumps that carried them just far enough without sending them off the asteroids surface.
“Danged if they aren’t.” The Clays watched as the suited figures passed out of the cones of light. Alan picked up his speaker. “Looks like they’ve had enough, eh, Ogden?”
“Not any too soon, either,” came back the answer. “They were inching up on me, and the further I backed, the further I was from my ship. . . . There they go!”
A brief spurt of rocketfire indicated that the attackers had gained their ship and were losing no time in clearing out. Clay walked to the edge of the exit-port and jumped down easily, motioning Peter to follow. “Let’s see how our friend is.”
“Well!” came Ogden's voice. “Would you look at that? There's your explanation, friend. No wonder they ran!”
The Clays swept their eyes around the sky, then gasped at sight of a large, fighter-type rocket nearing the asteroid. “Must have seen it before I did,” Ogden said.
“Is it going to land?" asked Pete.
“Don't think so. Fighters usually don't bother on asteroids this size. They just take up orbits around an asteroid, and the men come down with candles. .. .
“I sure appreciate your help, friends,'' Ogden's voice went on. “I was one danged fool to get caught in a spot like this—better luck than I deserved to have someone near enough to help. . . . Ever see that ship before? It's new to me.”
“Looks as if we’ll find out soon,” Clay said. The exit-port on the fighter opened, and they saw a single, suited figure framed in the opening. Lights from behind him shot down to the surface, sweeping around until they played upon the Clays and the approaching prospector. Then the figure stepped off the edge of the port into space, floated easily for an instant. A faint spurt of light came from a point near the figure's gloved hand, then it was moving downward toward the surface, now seeming as if it were sliding slowly down one of the spotlights.
“Hello! Hello!” came another voice in their suits. “Dave Ogden, are you all right?”
“Sure, I'm okay now. These folks came and held ’em off until they saw you coming; you sure scared them plenty. Who are you?”
“Captain Harry Ezzard of the Asteroid Miners' Association Guard. Who’s with you, Ogden?”
“Alan and Peter Clay, from 20-47,” answered the prospector. “Whats this here Asteroid Miners’ Association, Ezzard? Never heard of it.”
“Let’s go to your ship where we can talk, Ogden, and I’d like to see you, too, Messrs. Clay. I want to get as much information on those claim jumpers as possible, and I’ll be glad to answer any of your questions there.”
Ezzard turned out to be a short, stocky man with a crisp manner of speaking. He declined Ogden’s offer of refreshment, although the Clays were happy to accept. Pete saw that the prospector’s ship was just about the same as the Claymore, both inside and out.
Pete sucked chicory through a tube and decided that the rescue had been something of a letdown. Somehow, shooting longmen out into the dark, and hoping you’d see something to shoot at eventually, didn't seem very exciting. Ogden had congratulated him upon his hit, but seemed to feel that it had been more good luck than anything else. The prospector added that it did require skill to take advantage of the opportunity.
“The Asteroid Miners’ Association,” Ezzard was saying, “is a protective society which, we hope, will cover the entire Belt. Our headquarters are in Cerestown, but only the paper work is done there. So far we have a half-dozen fighting ships like this, and about twenty scout-rockets in the guard. The scouts patrol the Belt, help out in accidents, or follow leads when we’re on the track of jumpers. There’s a scout following that rocket which just left here. We want them to think they’re getting away and see if they lead us to something bigger.”
“You mean you’re a police force, then,” Clay said. “The guard is,” Ezzard amended. “That’s only part of the Association. There has been quite a bit of shady work afoot. I can’t go into details, but a number of miners have been defrauded of their claims by thieves posing as businessmen. Others have had “accidents’ which laid them up long enough for claim jumpers to take possession of their mines. In many cases the jumpers could afford expensive legal action where the miners could not.
“The Asteroid Miners’ Association offers free legal aid to any member, and there is no limit to this help when a fraud is being attempted. We do what we can for any miner in a jam, of course. We aren’t choosy on that score. The Association is also keeping as full and accurate records on all aspects of asteroid mining as we can get. Were trying to cover more territory than the Claims Office.”
Ogden was a lean, sad-looking man. He rubbed his chin. “It sounds like good sense to me,” he said, “and I, for one, am sure glad something like this has sprung up. How does a man join—and what does it cost him? You can’t do all this for nothing.”
“The guard is working with the Martian Patrol,”
Ezzard replied. "Its to Mars' advantage not to have to send out ships and men herself when an emergency comes up. Anyone can join the Association. Dues are low, but there's a small tax on your profits. The Association has taken over the assessment office, and the tax on each cargo is taken care of at the time. If you don't have any luck, don’t bring in anything you can sell, there’s no tax, and your membership is still good.” “Hey,” said Peter, "is the Association called ‘Ama,’ for short?”
Ezzard grinned. “Yes, we do call it that; I thought you hadn’t heard of us.”
Peter explained about Glen Abend, and Clay added information on his neighbor. Ezzard nodded seriously and took a notebook and stylus out of his pocket. "We’ll get after that, Mr. Clay, and I’d appreciate your giving me any information you uncover. This isn't a new thing, I regret to say.”
“What do you think happened?” Clay wanted to know.
"I couldn’t hazard a guess without investigating further. We're a bit new at police work. One of the first things we learn is not to start spouting theories on what happened to whom, and so forth, before we have as much information as we can get. All that you have told me only suggests that Abend is missing. As to why he's missing—my job isn't to make guesses but to uncover facts.”
“Well, dang it,” said Ogden, "this is good enough for me. I'd sure like to join the Association, How do you do that?”
Ezzard took some plastic tickets out of his pocket. “Just fill out one of these and give me a chit for your dues. I peel off the bottom to turn In to headquarters, and seal the stub on your chit. That seal will establish your membership in case anything happens to me before I can turn in your card."
Ogden took the guardsman's stylus and started to fill out the plastic ticket, which was in the shape of a circle with a hole in the middle. “Most miners prefer to wear it around their necks," Ezzard said. “Next time you re in Cerestown go to
headquarters. They'll need more information. Right now, your thumbprint on the ticket—both sides—will do.”
Clay was about to speak, but Peter caught his eye and blinked rapidly. Alan Clay’s eyebrows lifted slightly as he read “Stall,” but otherwise his expression remained the same.
“You two ought to join up,” Ogden observed. “We’ll drop around to headquarters as soon as we get back to Ceres,” Clay told him. “Right now, we have to be on our way, if we’re going to get to our mine in time to do any work.”
Peter was glowing inside as they took their leave. Clay hadn’t questioned his message—he’d accepted it the way a partner does in a situation like that. He wondered if his father had noticed the things that he, Pete, had—things that just didn’t seem to add up right. And there was something else that he couldn’t put his finger on. . . .
Chapter 3 What Are You Doing Here?
THE claymore curved into the orbit of Asteroid 20-47, a bread crumb of a world, somewhat more than five miles in diameter. It didn’t rotate on its axis like a planet, so there was no “day” or “night.” The faint glow that passed for daylight slowly crept across its jagged surface, the deeper shadows of “night” creeping along behind. It took a full “year” for the light and shadow to ran its course. There was a difference—as Peter, whose eyes were becoming accustomed to twilight-vislon, was beginning to notice. You could see a few things outside the range of your own lights in the “daylight" area, the side that always faced the sun. In the ‘"night” Section all was darkness-only the stars and the great bulks of Jupiter and Saturn were visible, with their moons. At this time of the year, he could see both planets, the “gas giants." as they were called.
He was getting used to the acceleration and deceleration blasts, too—those moments when it felt as if a monstrous hand was squashing him into his seat. He turned his head slowly toward his father, as Clay jabbed the button for the last smoother-shot.
Clay smiled. “You’ll always feel it, Pete, but the time will come when you don't notice it so much.”
The Claymore settled down onto the surface of the asteroid, scraping a bit, but the landing was reasonably smooth. On a world this size you could only pick an approximate location. Your ship’s lights carried to the rim and continued on out into space. They outlined rock formations which you had to learn to recognize. Clay and Abend had fastened signs at important points all around the little world—highly polished little plates of metal that would reflect lights.
Peter and his father cut the lights, except for the nose lamp, and climbed out, looking around until they saw a sign. One arrow pointed in the direction of the Clay mine; a double arrow showed the way to Abend's claim.
“Well take a look over Glen's layout, first," said Clay. “Don’t jump; we want to get a good look all along the way." He started forward in a slow shuffle, which took him but a few inches off the surface at each step, training his hand-flash on the ground.
Pete followed, wondering exactly what they were looking for. He realized, though, that Clay might not be able to tell until they found it. It was slow going, almost as slow as the shuffle from Cerestown to the rocket field. Ordinarily, they would have jumped from highpoint to highpoint.
Beyond the second sign was a fairly level area, a valley about a half-mile long. “Here's where we'll find it, I suspect," said Clay, as they moved along.
A little while later he stopped, trained his hand-flash on the surface and pointed. "A ship’s been here.” Peter looked in the direction of Clay’s pointing finger, then bent down to examine the cold, rocky surface.
"Ships can t land without making marks,” said Clay, “and they’re distinctive marks. They aren’t like any other kind you’ll find here. A meteor hitting will make a solid dent, but a ship scrapes along. You follow those scrapings, then look for sear-marks of the smoother blasts.”
“But you can’t tell how long ago the signs were made,” Pete objected.
“That’s true; but I came this way last week when I went over to see Glen—while you were loading. These marks weren’t there then. You see, Pete, I’m on the lookout for any unusual signs all the time.” “Could be the Abendland, though, couldn’t it? Couldn’t Glen have come back?”
Clay studied the sear-marks again—a wide area that showed up distinctly in the bright light of their hand-flashes.
“Nope,” he declared, “look there.” He pointed to another seared area. “The two are too close together. These were made when the ship took off. It had two rear underside tubes—that means a rocket larger than the Abendland or the Claymore. We only have one rear tube underside.”
“Well,” said Peter, thinking rapidly, “suppose someone were going by close, and found they were too close. Couldn’t a ship our size fire its forward tube twice to get clear, and leave the same kind of marks?” “Not on this asteroid. Just one blast would lift them off far enough so that the second, even if it were fired immediately after, wouldn’t show as strongly. You might see it, but you could tell the difference right away. These two blasts look pretty much alike to the naked eye. It’d take magnification to tell the differences. You’d find differences, because no two rocket blasts are exactly alike. No two of anything are exactly alike right down to the last detail, even if they look the same on the surface. . . . Nope, this wasn’t the Abendland; it looks as if Glen s had visitors.”
They made their way to Abend’s claim, where a large cavern gouged out of the fissure-rock showed that more tons of Asteroid 20-47 had been carted away. Both mines were on the daylight side of the little world. A newcomer might not be able to say that what the Clays now saw wasn’t the original form of the asteroid’s surface at this point—unless he noticed telltale drill holes, and so forth. There was no rubbish; used containers and other items were popped into the miner s sack and taken back to Cerestown for reclamation. In this civilization, no scrap of metal, plastic, or anything else was thrown away. These people came from Mars, where the first rule for survival was “Waste Nothing!” Alan Clay and Peter learned that when they were children. It was part of the Martian way of life. On Ceres waste could be a life-and-death matter; out here there was no doubt. Many a miner found salvation in his “junk-pile” when the unforeseen happened.
Claim jumpers and pilferers—men who worked others' mines for short periods in the owners’ absence, gradually building up a cargo—were no exception to the rule. Pilferers had an extra reason for being careful—they didn’t want to leave any evidence.
Peter's eyes caught a small piece of metal. He bent down, picked it up and put it into the pouch of his suit, thinking that Glen had overlooked something this time.
“Nothing here,” Clay said. “I'll call Barb and see if she's heard anything.”
Peter listened as Clay started calling, “20-47 Abend, 20-47 Abend, 20-47,” then pausing and repeating the signal. It was some time before he heard another speaker reply, “20-47 Marlene.” Alan reported their findings briefly, mentioning the episode on Asteroid 34-91.
“I heard from Ama,” Barbara Abend told them. “They say a search is being made, but they have nothing to report yet.”
“Let us know if he shows up,” Clay said, by way of good-by. He cast a final glance around the rocks, lined with veins of copper ore, then started off toward his own claim.
The guide of the asteroid miners was Lee Tung’s Mineral Occurrences, issued in a loose-leaf folder. It was revised annually on the basis of reports from the miners. Each year, purchasers of the book were sent revised pages which they inserted into their folders, returning the outdated sheets.
Alan Clay had studied Tung’s volume, as well as market reports sent out by the Metals Department, which outlined present needs. At the time he started prospecting in the Belt, the list of metals noted as “in short supply” included lead. Tung informed him that on Earth the occurrence of lead in metallic state was so rare as to be of little more than scientific interest. On Earth, lead was usually found in various compounds, the most common b
eing lead sulfide, or galena, which contained 86.6 per cent of lead to 13.4 per cent of sulfur. Less rich compounds were cerus-site (carbonate of lead, 77.5 per cent rich) and anglesite (the sulfate, 68.3 per cent rich).
Out here, pure mineral lead did occur; miners had found it. But Clay looked for the three usual forms, and on Asteroid 20-47 he found limestone filled with galena crystals. It wasn’t the richest occurrence of galena, either, but there was enough to make a living and accumulate a reasonable profit. Within a few months, he’d been able to send for Peter.
The limestone cliff which was the Clays’s claim jutted up at a crazy angle, and Peter would have felt dizzy working on it had they been on Mars. Here the gravity was so low that he could stand upside down in relation to another man without noticing any particular difference. He’d carved out a wide enough shelf to give himself ample standing room. Now he worked an electric drill into the rock around him, cutting at sharp angles, and breaking off chunks which floated slowly down to the “floor” at the bottom of the cliff. A few hundred feet away, Alan Clay worked in much the same manner.
It was no longer a temptation to Pete to see how fast he could get a hopperful of crystal-filled rock to take back to the ship. He grinned wryly as he remembered his first day’s work.
Clay had shown him the simplest way to handle the drilling and breaking, then left him on his own, saying to call out if anything went wrong. Pete went to it with a will. He had taken two hopperfuls back to the ship, and was on his third, before Clay filled one.
By the time they knocked off for lunch, he was still leading Clay two-to-one. His father looked at the smile on Pete's face and grinned. “Think you can show the old man up all through the shift, partner?” He chuckled. “We’ll be here for two more days. Bet you an E-string that I finish leading you by a dozen hoppers.”
Music was an important thing in Martian social life. Everyone learned to play an instrument as a child; many were amateur composers. The “classical” period of Earth’s Western music history, with its emphasis on structure, was just suited to the practical-minded tastes of Mars. Publishers on Earth found Mars a steady market for microfilm scores of eighteenth-century chamber music. On Ceres, “sessions” took place nearly every night, in the apartments of miners or in public areas. Peter played the violin, while Alan Clay was a cellist.
Mystery of the Third Mine Page 3