Treasure of Tau Ceti

by John Rickham

  “Now I really have a rival,” she declared, as Lowloo sat by me and managed to consume a bowl of protein soup quite neatly. “Next thing you know, she’ll be after my clothes, and then looking for some way to discard that lovely fur.”

  “I doubt it,” Carson said innocently. “She’s a lot prettier the way she is than most women I can think of. It’s more likely that you’ll try to grow your own personal mink coat.”

  He was right. Although a little shorter than Fiona, and slimmer, Lowloo’s shape, enhanced by the sheen of her pelt, compared well with any human young woman. Where the fur stopped, at wrist and ankle and over her stomach and bosom, her skin was as satiny pink as any girl’s. Her face betrayed her as alien, of course, but that, too, was pretty— once you grew accustomed to it.

  “Next item.” Carson was still restless. “Alan was right about the waterspout. That way is not possible. But there may be another. Fiona, you need sleep, plenty of it. Alan and I will catch a few hours, and then I’m taking him with me to try something. I’ll leave Lowloo with you, just in case.

  “All right,” she said, and gave me a stern look. “Don’t let him run you down, will you? Once he gets an idea he doesn’t know when to stop.”

  It was still twilight when he called me, but I’d had four hours, and felt reasonably fit. Without explanation, he led the way until we were again at the tunnel mouth. Then, from his pack, he produced a plastic pot and paint brush.

  “More research equipment,” he murmured, grinning. “Luminous paint. You take it. When I say ‘Mark,’ make a small ring on the roof. That way we will at least be able to find our way out again. Clear so far?”

  “I’m with you,” I said, “in theory. But where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” He produced his gyro-compass now, and studied it. We set away, and this time we diverged from the way we had first taken. I knew that much because we started going down. He was like a hunting dog casting about for scent, halting at intersections, going a few paces, coming back often, and every once in a while instructing me to mark the ceiling. An idea grew in my mind, but I kept quiet about it because it suffered from one serious flaw. We went on slowly but steadily. After a long while we struck a space where the passage opened wide into a chamber some f if-teen feet either way, and high. Here he made me stay where we had entered until he had circled all around it, and located another passage directly opposite. Then I was able to mark the two doors carefully, and we went on. Only a few yards, this time, and he came to a halt.

  “Stay there,” he said, and moved slowly along by the smooth wall, then stopped, deep in thought. Then he came back again, passed me as he went in the opposite direction, halted, and came back. Now he was intent on the gyro. He laid it on the floor, adjusted it delicately a time or two, then pointed at the wall.

  “There!” he said softly. “Make a mark. And now”—when I’d done that—you know what I'm up to, surely?”

  “I think so. By arts and skill known to you, but which I can only admire, because I'm no good at figures at all, you’ve found the point in this rat—run of passages that is nearest to that treasure chamber.”

  ‘That’s right. Not a lot to it. I keep data, as you know. I am therefore able to say, with assurance, that I am now pointing straight in the line of the chamber, the blow-hole, the cleft in the seawall, and the sea. That’s the easy bit. Now comes the hard part. I’ll need that brush, and some peace and quiet. I have figuring to do. Navigation,” he murmured as he started to make delicate little dabs on the wall, is a matter of habit and practice. But this is not a ship, and I do not have a computer standing by to help me. So I have to do it the hard way, which is also part of training. I mean, there can always come the time when you have to figure your way out of a spot with all auxiliaries dead. What I have to tell myself is that I am just as smart as any computer—only a lot slower.” He was dabbing little symbols and frowning, then studying the gyro, and dabbing more, all the while he spoke. And then, staring a moment, he sighed and returned the brush to the pot.

  “That’s it. I don’t like it much, but figures can’t he bent here. We are thirty eight feet away from that treasure chamber, in that direction and at an angle of dip of eight degrees below horizontal.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. “And I mean that. I am always awed by people who can juggle with figures. But Carson— thirty eight feet of solid rock?”

  “I know,” he said softly, “and I have been thinking about that, too. You learn all sorts of tricks, and you never know when one might come in—like this. Watch me.” He unhooked his beamer and squatted down in the crook of the wall, waving me down by his side. Holding it in a curious way he gave a quick tug and wrench, and the barrel came away in his hand. He laid it aside and produced a slim screwdriver from his bag.

  “That’s the focus-tube,” he explained, “what you’d call the barrel. This is the beam-set button, on the grip—and this is where it works, inside. There is a safety-stop so that you can’t fine it down more than so much. You can get down to a beam half-an-inch diameter with a spread-cone of three degrees of arc. And that’s all. Because if you squeezed in any more you’d stand a chance of melting the focus-tube, see? But, if I adjust this locally—like that—I can now tune in that beam not just narrower—but to reverse cosine. In other words it will come to a point about thirteen inches ahead of the output diode. That—I have to warn you—is dangerous. In effect, you are squirting energy into a corner it can’t get out of, so it builds up fast, it bursts Out eventually—and God help anything that happens to be in the way. Particularly the guy holding it. So the trick is to use that energy as fast as it is being concentrated, to use it on something else. That’s what I propose to do now, in a moment.”

  He stood again, took the paint once more, and made a mark in the angle of the roof immediately above my mark, then drew a thin straight line down, all the way to the floor. Deliberately, he drew another vertical eighteen inches to the left of that, and another to the right of it.

  “There’s our door,” he murmured. “Now we’ll try to open it. Pray—cross your fingers—do anything you can that you think will help,” and he laid down the brush and took up the beamer once more.

  IX

  HE HELD THE awkward looking weapon close to that black surface, high up in the corner of the wall, took a breath, then pressed the firing stud. A pale blue finger of radiance leaped out, impinged on the rock, splashed a ring of yellow stars, and then sizzled like frying bacon. “That’s it!” he murmured, and drove the beam deep, the blue finger burying itself in the rock while yellow particles spouted furiously out, to drift away and die in mid air. When the bared coils were no more than an inch free of the surface, he hesitated a moment, then started down, slow and steady. Spouting yellow fire ran all around the beam. Sparks came cascading out, but there grew a deep narrow notch in that wall, all the way down to the floor. He shut it off, stepped aside, and did it all over again with the left vertical. I was so tense, watching him, that I coughed, and jiggled the light I was casting for him, hut fortunately it did not put him off. Then he moved to the right and did it a third time, all the way down to the floor. At that point he stopped and turned to me. And I stared.

  “Carson! I hope that black on your face and arms is just dust. Not some kind of radiation burn?”

  “Eh?” He dabbed at his wrist, then grinned, and it was a dazzle against his sooty face. “Not burns. I’d have felt those. Not with this stuff in any case. No, it’s dust. Monomolecular dust, at that. And it’s going to be a problem I had not allowed for. Main thing, though—this works!”

  “Depends what you mean,” I said. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but so far as I can see, all you have done is to cut three grooves a foot deep, hail an inch wide, and six feet long. At that rate, driving a forty foot shaft will take us years!”

  “Think so? We’ll see. I’ll admit the dust is a factor I hadn’t considered, and there are one or two other points, but let’s get a time est
imate right now. How long would you say I’ve been cuffing, so far?”

  “I make it something under ten minutes.”

  “Right. Watch this now, and time me.

  With deliberate care he started again, only this time he used that blue pencil of flame to slice across the left-hand panel, high up. Dropping about three inches, he did it again, and again, steadily—and the air was now thick with haze. He kept on until he had sliced the whole of that left-hand panel into three-inch segments. With only a moment to straighten his shoulders, he did it all over again with the other panel. And then he shut off the flame and stood away, turning a glossy black stare on me.

  “Forty five minutes all told,” I said, trying not to sound defeatist. He cocked his head aside in thought, then nodded.

  “We’ll cut that a bit, with practice. And the beamer-pack maximum output. With any luck at all, that’s three cuts per charge. Three feet! That’s not at all bad. But now let’s complete the work.” He rummaged in his pack once more. This time he brought out a short stout chisel and two of the familiar extension tubes, twisting them together to make a long crowbar effect. And then he proceeded to make me feel foolish. Sliding the chisel blade into the topmost horizontal cut, he gripped, jerked down hard and sharp, there was a whip-crack snapping sound, and he laid the chisel aside to seize and draw out a square slab of rock eighteen inches wide, three inches thick, and a foot broad. This he stood on edge by the wall. Then he did it again, only this time he inserted the chisel into the next gap before hauling out the cut slab. While I watched in awe, and helped out by shifting the cut blocks away from his feet, he systematically stripped that wall until there was a neatly cut recess, one foot deep. He stepped back in satisfaction.

  “I give you the point,” I said, and he shrugged.

  “That’s just a start. How long, altogether?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Practice and teamwork might cut it, but let’s allow for accidents and delays. Gall it a foot every two hours. Seventy-six hours!”

  “If Zeb will let us alone that long.”

  I have a notion about that, too. Come.” He picked up his gear and we started back, but only as far as the big chamber. He made a gesture. “Our new home. If we take everything we might need out of the boat and stow it here, then submerge the boat so that Zeb’s men won’t fall on it by accident—we can stretch that seventy-six hours quite a bit—and he’ll never know we’re here.”

  This time I didn’t waste words on admiring him, I thought hard. And I found a snag. And I told him.

  “Good for you.” He chuckled. “That’s the help I need. What?”

  “Power for the beamers. Do we have enough spares to last out?”

  “We don’t,” he admitted, “have that kind of spare at all. But I’ve an idea or two to work on. Let’s get back.”

  Dawn was just flickering into glory as we sighted the boat, and the light was strong enough to betray our filthy condition, so we plunged into the water and sluiced away the dirt before going aboard. The black stuff was face-powder fine, but it rinsed off readily, and we were quite respectable by the time we woke Fiona and told her, over breakfast, what had been achieved.

  “There’s another snag,” he announced, as soon as we had finished telling the tale. “I remind you, I was guessing at those distances down there.”

  “Immaterial,” Carson assured her. “Your direction was accurate—and the inner cavern you found was just above sea level, which is a fixed value.” Although calm enough in appearance, he seemed to be humming powerfully on the inside. I could feel it, and so could Fiona. In a moment when his back was turned she gave me a rueful shrug and pantomimed shielding her head and ears from an explosion. I knew exactly what she meant. He started on her.

  “I leave it to you,” he said, “to figure out all the small, the light, the easily-carried items we are going to need. Alan and I will take care of the big stuff. Lowloo, my dear, I have work for you also. Will you help us?”

  She nodded excitedly and he smiled, then, very carefully, he explained just what she was to do. “Find a place up on the rock side, as high as you can without taking risks, without dazzling your eyes. Take shelter from the light but keep your eye always on the sea—that way! Keep watch. A boat will come, a boat like ours, only larger. As soon as you see it, howl as loudly as you can, and then run quickly to the tunnel and go inside.”

  He made sure that she understood, and then sent her away with Fiona, carrying small items we would need. For me there was harder work, as we stole sections from the air-conditioning unit, and the auto-chef, and everything else that might ease our stay underground. We had plenty of food. And Carson had schemes for jury-rigging a heavy-duty power-pack from the auxiliary plant directly to the working beamer so as to provide us with an eight-hour spell rather than just two hours—and he had provisional plans for some kind of mask and tube to give us breathing freedom from the dust. But it was the dust itself that had him worried. For three very strenuous hours we all worked, and none harder than he did, and yet always his mind came back to that dust. He emphasized the point at one stage, as he paused to inspect the layout in the big chamber, which we were calling by now, the living room.

  “We’re not wearing anything right now,” he pointed out. “I suggest we maintain that, and stop wasting our supplies of clothing. Our skins will wash, but clothing will be ruined within minutes.” He got no argument from us, but we knew what was on his mind, and that going naked was only a palliative. We needed water, lots of it, and handy. The problem exercised my mind, too, but I couldn’t dwell on it too much because he kept us busy—for three hours. And then, as he and I were combing the engine room of the craft one more time for odd prizes, we heard the long-awaited, dreaded signal. Lowloo’s howl was far and faint, but quite distinct.

  “Here we go!” he muttered, and we worked without further words, shutting and clamping down all the ports and hatches on the deck, checking on all inlets, he tripping the sea-cocks to the tanks immediately, so that we had to work fast. And then scrambling ashore as the deck came awash, to stand by and pay out the cables until our craft bubbled and went down to a ledge some twenty feet below. All that had been worked out ahead of time. There was an external control panel by which we could pump her out again quite easily, if and when we needed to. The “if and when” was my mental phrase, but Carson seemed confident enough that all would be well. We ran for the tunnel mouth, not madly but we didn’t linger. From time to time we cast curious glances to sea, but it wasn’t until we achieved the ledge by the actual entrance that we were high enough to confirm Lowloo’s eyesight. It was Zeb’s craft, sure enough, out on the skyline and moving steadily. Lowloo met us just inside.

  “Yes?” she queried, and Carson nodded.

  “Quite right. You did well. At any rate”—he added cheerfully—”it clears the air, doesn’t it? We know the score now. Then, for a long breath, he peered at that distant boat, frowning over some thought. “Better part of an hour. I wonder! In you go, Alan, I’ve just had a notion.”

  We found Fiona in the living room, busy stacking and arranging everything to be handy and safe. “I heard the call,” she said, looking up, “but I figured there was nothing I needed to go and look at.”

  “There is now,” he said. “Come and learn something of the stonemason’s art by watching us.” He went on ahead, leaving Fiona to stare at me with a “What now?” look in her eye.

  “Search me!” I pantomimed back, and we followed him to the cutting face. A light-cluster shone full on the broken wall, and the working beamer now had a feed-in cable from a heavy-duty power-pack, an arrangement which would give us eight hours of cutting time instead of two. As he hefted the beamer, he looked back at us and grinned.

  “Take off your sandals,” he said, “and wristwatches, please. Al] right, Fiona, watch me, please. Closely.” And she stood close as he started to cut. Now that I was alerted to it, I could see the dust coming as a fine haze against the light, bu
t rack my brains as hard as I could, I did not see the point in me stripping off my watch and foot-coverings. He stopped when he had cut one panel into horizontal strips, and turned to pass the beamer to me.

  “Don’t go too far away, Neil, or else we won’t be able to see you at all!”

  “Quite right. Don’t you get too far away either, it’s your turn next.” Then, as I started my level cuts—and found that it wasn’t nearly as easy as he had made it seem—he worked with the chisel, cracking and drawing out the slabs in quick time. It was close work, but we were able to manage it side by side. Then, when I’d made my panel ready, he instructed me to pass the beamer to Fiona and her to cut a panel while I cracked mine.

  “Timing,” I warned her, “is the key. If you drag it too fast, the beam boils up out of the cut—and if you linger too long, the rock does likewise.

  She did very well considering that she was working a foot in past me in a space no more than eighteen inches wide. As she completed her second vertical and began slicing, she coughed and muttered over her shoulder, “I thought someone said something about dust masks?”

  “Later, perhaps,” Carson said, and halted her. “Switch off. That’s all for now. No, don’t rub. That black is precious. Listen carefully. By now, Zeb and his gang should be landing. I would very much like to see what they do. In other words, to spy on them a while. And three pairs of eyes beat one, any time. Is it on? I mean, you can’t deny we’re dressed for it!”

  Fiona sighed, cleared her throat, and then she had to smile. It was a dazzling sight. “I should know you by now. You never do anything without good reason. Am I really as black as you two?”