Heuser pulled out another metallic tape from their seismic integrator. Handing it over to Nightwind, he said, “Is there any way of telling how large the cavern inside is?”
Nightwind shook his head. “No way from the few detectors we sank. The best way of finding out is to go look.”
“And how,” asked Richards, “are you two gents plannin’ on looking? It’s a week’s drive around the base of this monolith. And we don’t have that much water to spare. Things have gone more or less accordin’ to the time table I gave, and we’ve got six-eight days worth of water left. And that’s not taking any emergencies into account.”
“What emergencies?” snapped Heuser, his eyes flashing.
“Any emergency. This planet has all sorts of nasty tricks in its repertoire. It’ll dance all over your heads, then bury your corpse without a bit of remorse if you slack up.”
“So we work from here. I figure out … source of information … couldn’t have scouted too far from here. But rather than looking, let’s try getting inside by a little judicious use of explosive.” Nightwind indicated a case still unopened in the back of the cabin.
Richards’ eyes widened. “You mean I’ve had a case of explosives in here all the way from Rhylston? I ought to make you walk back! You could have gotten us all killed! See those lightning storms? Ever hear of electrostatics? The electrical potential gradient could have set off the explosives at any time!”
“Calm down. I’m not that stupid, PR. I’m a pretty fair demolitions man and know the job. This stuff isn’t set off by detonators or electrical shock. And it’s certainly not set off by heat.” Nightwind repressed the urge to wipe his forehead. He knew the desert suit would handle the sweat and keep him cooler, but the tickly feeling and a lifetime of instinct were hard to fight.
“So what sets it off?”
“Pure chemical reaction. Two blobs of relatively inert material are mixed together into a paste, then the paste is spread over the area we’re blasting. We wait. About an hour later — boom! It’s as safe as we could get. A magnetically activated explosive would go off the first time you upped this little aircar. Photosensitive explosive is out of the question. There wasn’t any way of carting around the equipment needed for a compressive-explosive material. I decided this was the easiest and safest, if not the best for the job. Frankly, a handful of good plastique would have been better than a kilo of this stuff but, as you pointed out, the electrostatic discharges around here are severe. Look, PR, I want to get back to Rhylston in one undamaged piece, too.”
“Sorry,” apologized the guide. “Some of you greenhorns do silly things. And silly things kill people on the frontier. But I keep underestimatin’ you two, it seems. You been kickin’ around the frontier a long time, or I’d lose money betting on that.”
Heuser smiled, his lips a thin line. “You’d win a bundle. Rod and I have been to a lot of planets, seen a lot of strange things. And we’re going to see more. We’ve got to keep alive to do it.” He bent over and hefted the case of explosive material and started out the irising door.
Nightwind joined him a few minutes later. He pointed to a relatively flat area on the face of the rock cliff. “I think that looks like a good place for the Devil’s Fang to get a cavity. You handle the primer, and I’ll work on the rest.”
“Anything I can do? You don’t mind if I watch?” said Richards, coming out of the aircar for the first time.
“Why don’t you take that vee-channel steel and bend it into an arch?” said Heuser, busy with his gooey explosive.
“Bend that channel steel? Hell, I can barely lift it.”
“Sorry,” Heuser said insincerely. The smile on his lips showed he was still getting even with Richards for doubting their competence. As soon as he had properly mixed his half of the explosive, he passed it over to Nightwind and hefted a length of the steel. He gripped it, then began tensing the powerful muscles in his upper arms and shoulders. His desert suit appeared as if it would rupture when his small body expanded under the strain — but the steel bent like tin.
He completed a six-meter arch of the steel and positioned it against the relatively smooth area they had chosen. Nightwind began filling the vee of the steel channel with explosive. When the detonation occurred, the vertex of the steel would be driven directly into the rock. It was tough enough to cut deep into the stone and shatter the space enclosed by the arch. It was an easy way of opening a passage into the cavern. If the first blast didn’t work, a second could be tried.
Nightwind finished and carefully removed all traces of the puttylike explosive from his gloves. “I think something should happen in about half an hour. The color of the explosive is a clue as to when the blow will occur. It changes color from a pasty white to a chocolate — like this — then it turns almost black before it goes off. Let’s get in the aircar and go off a klick or two and watch the fireworks.”
“You don’t have to ask twice,” declared Richards, obviously glad to get away from the curve of explosive. “Just be sure you get all that off your gloves. I don’t want you blowing up my aircar-with me in it!”
“Don’t worry,” assured Heuser. “We’ve got another chemical to clean up with. It neutralizes this stuff entirely.”
“You boys are marvels. Greenhorns don’t usually know their minds like you do. And what did you expect to find out here? And who was this ‘source of information’ you’re so tight-lipped about? And — ”
“And let’s get away before we join a few metric tons of rock in coming apart at the seams,” said Nightwind. He had to laugh when Richards paled and ran for the aircar without another word.
Parked behind a sand dune fully a kilometer away from the scene of their handiwork, the trio marched to the top of a rise and peered at Devil’s Fang through their goggles. The intense heat was beginning to hammer down on the desert. The sun hung in the sky overhead like a laser, its beam directed fully on them. No matter how Nightwind manipulated his goggles, he couldn’t get a decent view of the mountainside. The heat haze obstructed his view so completely even the very tip of the towering rock spire seemed to dance.
“I make it about ready to go off. Check, Rod?” said the cyborg.
“More or less. The problem with that junk is timing. It’s not very accurately timed. But then, we have to trade one item off for another.”
“You two sure you know what you’re doing?” asked Richards. “You never answered me a while back about who put you onto this. I bet it was that professor guy here a year or so back — the one duKane led out. What’d that old bastard find out here? Enough to cut a man’s throat for in the night? DuKane was too desertwise to buy it like they claimed.”
“We don’t know anything about this duKane, and I assure you we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting any professor,” Nightwind said suavely. “We thought this might be a waste of time and money, but we’ve got enough of each to spend right now.”
“Especially the time,” supplied Heuser. “The money, now that’s something else.”
Richards stroked his chin, a futile task through the veiling filter over his mouth and nose. He looked toward Devil’s Fang as if the pile of stone might supply answers he wanted. Not finding divine revelation in the distance, he turned back to Nightwind. “Is this big enough to split three ways? Say, for my experience out in the desert plus all the equipment?”
Nightwind looked at the man but couldn’t tell very much about his expression. The goggles were polarized to protect hidden eyes from the harsh actinic glare of the sun, and the rest of the face was covered by the desert.
“You might end up with nothing if all we find is a hole in the ground. Why are you suddenly so interested in speculating? You’re giving up an assured ten thousand a day in return for … what? A piece of space?”
Richards laughed. “I got you two pegged as smart operators. You’re not the types to come to Rhyl for a bit of blue sky prospecting. Damn few ever come to Rhyl for prospecting since there’s nothing worth mining
here. The satellite survey showed that. And you two homed in on Devil’s Fang when you didn’t know anything else about the planet. That means something big’s hidden out here. And a hollow mountain … well, now, I don’t know much about geology, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. I go with winners and the pair of you got the look.”
“What do you think, Heuser? Should we cut him in for a third or let him bleed us for the ten big ones a day?”
“Cut him in, I say. If it’s as big as we hope, we’ll still have plenty. And if there’s nothing, we’re ahead the money for this little vacation.”
“Some vacation,” mumbled Nightwind. Then, louder, he told Richards, “You get a third of whatever we find. And I’m leveling with you when I say we don’t know what it will be — or won’t be.”
His words were drowned out by the distant rumble of explosion followed by a rockslide. Nightwind spun back to face Devil’s Fang. He turned up the magnification on his desert goggles and studied the area. Dust billowed up hundreds of meters into the air, obscuring the site of the explosion.
“That looks like a good blast. Let’s get some food, then check it out,” said Nightwind.
Richards was obviously anxious to rush out and have a look at the handiwork. He said, “Let’s forget about the food. I’m too excited. I want to see what’s inside that mountain!”
“Later. After the dust settles, after the rocks stop falling and when all of the explosive has gone off.”
“It didn’t all go off? How can you tell?”
“I can’t. This stuff depends on chemical reaction rates. Maybe I mixed some of it differently from that which did go off. I can’t tell. In another hour, all that’s going to blow will have blown. And if any of it is waiting, I’d rather be eating lunch than standing on top of it.”
“A good point, Nightwind, a very good point,” agreed the guide.
An hour later the aircar settled down, and Richards killed the engines. They clambered out the door and went to check what should be their passage into the bowels of the planet. All three stopped, shoulders slumped, when they saw the pile of rock over the intended doorway to the mountain’s interior.
“Hell, it’s a good hour’s work moving all that rubble,” complained Heuser.
“An hour? A year, you mean. It’ll take a bulldozer to move some of that rock. I don’t guess another explosion would do anything more than stir up some dust, would it?”
“No. This is where I earn my keep. Just stand back so you don’t get hit by flying rocks and let me do some work.” Heuser went to the pile of loose stones and began tossing the debris away from the side of the towering mountain.
Nightwind settled down and watched as Heuser tirelessly picked up and dumped aside large boulders, stones large enough to give a normal man a hernia. The small cyborg worked steadily for an hour until the top of the rock slide was cleared away. He hefted another boulder no human should be able to roll, much less lift, and hurled it away. Satisfied, he brushed off his hands and walked back to where Nightwind and Richards sat in the shadow of the aircar.
“If you two are rested, why don’t you go in first? I hate caves. They give me claustrophobia.”
“How did you do that?” marveled Richards. “For an hour you did more work than a hundred men could do in this sun. And,” he said, struggling to move a rock Heuser had casually tossed aside, “The weight! What kind of man are you?”
“Small but mighty. Now are you going in or do I have to do that, too?”
“Take it easy, Heuser. I’ll check out the front door.” Nightwind produced a small atomic light and scrabbled up the slope to the hole into Devil’s Fang. He shined the light around, then motioned the others to follow. He called, “You’re not going to believe this unless you see it for yourselves.” He vanished head first into Devil’s Fang.
Richards and Heuser exchanged glances, then Heuser said, “When Rod says something like that, believe it! Let’s go!”
They squirmed through the passageway blasted into the mountainside. Richards held firmly to Heuser’s ankle, complaining, “I can’t see! Guide me, will you?”
“Humph, some guide you are!”
The cyborg had little trouble seeing. His infrared vision clearly revealed the trail left by Nightwind. Then, he no longer needed his extended vision.
Dumbfounded, he stood up beside Nightwind. The two of them paid no attention to Richards’ creative swearing. The sight stretching out to infinity before them removed any desire to respond. Words simply weren’t sufficient for what they saw.
Richards scrambled free of the small tunnel and said, “Damnit, why didn’t you… Great Gods of Space! I never…”
For long minutes they stared at the city in front of them. The spidery arches soared from the smooth inner walls of Devil’s Fang to support kilometer tall buildings. The buildings were constructed of what had to be jade and sapphire and diamond, so brilliant were the reflections. Streets gleaming a dull gold laced between the edifices like rivers of saffron. Structures like giant cats’ cradles surged upward in a static art form.
In sharp contrast were spider webs of color, never resting, always changing hue and shape in response to some alien maestro’s orchestrations. Even the beams of light seemed to take on a texture of their own. The men were totally amazed at the complexity of the holographic display.
And the silence was a thing oppressive. Visually beautiful, the city still chilled the soul. There was something unnatural about the lack of sound. No sound, no movement except for the kinetic sculpture on the far side of the city; no indication of life marred the fairyland of rainbow colors.
“This makes the Sigma Draconis find seem trivial,” whispered Nightwind. “No one’s ever found a city — deserted — like this before. Think of the treasures locked up down there!”
“But where are the people who built it?” asked Heuser, his voice barely a whisper. “What happened to them? A race great enough to construct a city like this must have survived!”
“Why? PR said the sun began to heat up, and the planet’s climate changed dramatically in the span of a couple hundred years. Perhaps this was their last attempt at survival. The desert might have killed them or the heat or some weird mutated plague caused by the increased radiation from the sun. The only answers are down there.”
“On Rhyl,” said Richards, his voice as low as Heuser’s, “all this on Rhyl! Who’d have thought it?”
“There’s no need to whisper. This isn’t a library or a hospital,” said Nightwind, forcing himself to raise his voice to a normal pitch.
“No, but it feels like a tomb,” responded Heuser. “It’s creepy, this place. And I just noticed the light. Where does it come from? Your light is turned off.”
Nightwind stumbled over some loose rocks and made his way to the cavern wall. The entire rock was crusted with a tiny mosslike growth. He peeled a section off and held it in his hand. The phosphorescent glow was obvious as he cupped his other hand over the palm containing the soft, clinging moss.
“It looks as if the residents either planted this or found it growing naturally. It’s an easy answer to free lighting.”
“I never saw anything like that in all my years on Rhyl. Just finding a moss that glows in the dark is enough to get your name in the history books,” said Richards.
“We’re not here for getting our names remembered by historians. If this place really is a tomb, that means there aren’t any people around to mind us claiming salvage on the property.”
“But an archeological find isn’t … oh, I begin to see. You got that prof’s map to this place. He was the one who found it. But why didn’t you know what he’d found?”
“He was dead when we, uh, appropriated his notes,” explained Heuser. “He never wrote down exactly what his find was. Only that it was, and I quote, ‘a find utterly beyond belief,’ end of quote. We thought it was treasure. I suppose, in a way, this is the most precious treasure of all.”
“A monument to a dead culture,”
Nightwind finished for his friend. “Seems a shame to desecrate a tomb. I never was much for grave robbing, but on the other hand, the dead don’t require as much as the living. I think we’re entitled to helping ourselves.”
“Still,” protested Richards, “a scientific discovery…”
“A third, PR, a third or nothing. Unless you have a driving desire to see your name in some dusty history of Rhyl as the rediscoverer of a city. Or would you rather split a third of all we can cart off? What’ll it be, fame or fortune?”
Richards looked out across the vast subterranean city, then, without a further word, started walking down the slope. His decision was obvious. Words of praise on a history tape didn’t fill an empty belly. Riches from an abandoned city would buy the finest of foods, the headiest of wines, the lushest of pleasures a human could desire. He didn’t have to consider long before determination set his shoulders straighter, made his stride longer.
Nightwind smiled. He had seen men hooked on the lure of riches before. Ruefully, he realized he was as addicted as any of them had been. He was just a little bit smarter, a little bit quicker, and most important, still alive. He knew when to abandon the hunt in favor of life. No amount of wealth could lure him to death.
Risk was acceptable. Nothing important was ever gained without some measure of risk. But blind greed was as bad as complete caution. Nightwind tempered his drive for adventure, for wealth, with the proper amount of respect for the unknown.
He checked his needlegun, making certain it slipped easily in its holster. The atomic lantern seemed an unnecessary encumbrance, but he kept it anyway. A dark corner might require illumination. If nothing else, the cylinder provided an adequate club. Nightwind couldn’t believe the city was as abandoned as it appeared. There wasn’t the empty quality to it possessed by a tomb. Living presence seemed to nudge at the corners of his mind, making him edgy and even more alert to danger.
“Let’s join our partner, Heuser. PR seems to have been bitten by the bug of sudden wealth.”
Sandcats of Rhyl Page 7