War World Discovery

by John F. Carr

  “I suppose there’s a third choice.”

  “Of course. Keep your mouth shut. I don’t profit from this escapade; it’s my job. But you and your crew could stand to gain a great deal from what I learned out there. If you’re smart. Just sit tight, shut up and wait for the Survey bonus checks to start rolling in. At the very least, I can promise you that your frostbitten Mister Connolly will even be able to afford some pretty advanced prosthetics and a lot of the very best physical therapy.”

  Potter looked at him, his face an impassive mask, then nodded again. “Good night, Miller.”

  It was six hours later, and darker than ever. The sky outside was black with snow-laden, lowering clouds that sealed the tops of the mountain ranges, a layer of ephemeral paraffin topping a jar of secret preserves. Neither the light of Byers’ Star nor Cat’s Eye’s radiant energy penetrated to the land beneath. The valley was a great bowl, and the lid was on. The repaired Shuttle One was nearly ready for takeoff; aboard Shuttle Two, the survey crew’s temporary home, most people still slept.

  Miller awoke at the prick of a needle into his thigh. He spun about to grasp the handgun kept tucked beneath his left arm, but found only his armpit.

  “Live a little longer.” The voice was an anonymous whisper in the dark, followed by a flat click of a hammer being pulled back; Miller recognized the sound of his own pistol. “Convince me you’re just trying to warm that hand.”

  “What is it?” Miller felt the pain in his hip going away, and with it any sense of urgency or resolve.

  “What did you and Ike find up in the hills that was worth killing him for?”

  Miller tried not to answer, but immediately realized there was no real point. He no longer had any control over what he said. “Ore” The words grunted past his best efforts to stop them. “Crystalline—ore—in the rocks.”

  “Good. And what kind of crystalline ore was it?”

  “Diamonds.” Miller found himself unable to suppress a sly giggle.

  “No, now really.”

  Miller’s eyelids were heavy, but he wasn’t sleepy. “Half-diamonds,” he said, almost grinning now. Whatever they’d used on him, it was hideously strong stuff. “Half-life zircons.” And this time he really did laugh out loud, but a mitten was abruptly stuffed into his mouth. Shortly thereafter, a finger burrowed hard into the bullet wound in his groin.

  Miller returned from the euphoric place he’d been drifting toward with the subtlety of a train wreck. Tears brimmed over his eyes and coursed down his cheeks as he gasped for air, getting only more mitten. After long seconds, the gag was removed.

  “Now,” the voice said, and Miller’s soaring pain rendered it still more anonymous: “One more time; what was the crystalline ore you found in the hills?”

  Miller gagged, unwilling to believe that the pain was receding again, until the hollow ache in his bowels faded enough to prove it to him. “Zirconium.”

  A finger tapped his wound, light as a feather; it felt like an anvil dropped from orbit. “Nothing special about zirconium,” the voice pointed out.

  “Hafnium!” Miller gasped. “The ore is a new form of zirconium crytolite; it’s loaded with hafnium, twenty times the amount found in the richest terrestrial samples. Almost eighty percent hafnium.”

  The voice was silent. “We are talking about the hafnium used in nuclear reactor rods, aren’t we, Mister Miller?”

  Miller nodded.

  “And you took samples of this ore, to prove to the CoDominium that you weren’t crazy?”

  Miller asserted every iota of his will, until he couldn’t resist answering. “Yes. Worth billions for energy, weapons technology… The moon’s too valuable to use as a CoDo dumping ground, the deportees could wind up owning the Grand Senate in a few decades.”

  The voice said nothing, and Miller could feel the drug pulling him farther and farther away. A tiny flare as another needle entered his arm.

  “I don’t think so, Mister Miller,” the voice said. Then something like: “Not the deportees,” but Miller couldn’t be sure, for by that time he was dead.

  *

  *

  *

  Potter looked down into Miller’s sightless, staring eyes.

  He thought he should be able to compose some poetic statement on the irony of life and death and justice, but all he could think of was what a monumental fuckup this mission had turned out to be.

  Potter had awakened before anyone else to find Miller dead. Connolly too had passed away while they slept. Liu had taken Mike and Farrow with him to make the final preparations for leaving, and Potter had stayed behind to prepare the bodies for burial. He was the captain, after all, and it was his responsibility to bury his men.

  Potter crouched next to Miller and tried to close the eyes; the lids kept parting, widening to finally expose the bright, blue, dead pupils.

  I always thought they stayed closed, Potter mused. The Captain of the Fast Eddie turned to Connolly’s corpse. That figures, I guess. Underfed, no way for his body to keep itself warm. Your body never gets a chance to starve to death in this kind of cold. And we knew he’d lose that foot, maybe both, and most of his fingers. Poor Brian was probably better off… Potter stood up, looking back once at Miller.

  But this is different.

  On impulse, Potter opened Miller’s sleeping bag down to the toes. Down flowed out, filled the cabin, floating to rest on Connolly, Miller and Potter alike. It looked as if Potter had won a particularly deadly pillow fight, or as if the snow had come in after all. The lining of Miller’s bag had been slit open in a dozen places. Potter checked the heater packs at the feet and in the hood; both were still running high enough to rule out death from shock. The dressing on the BuReloc man’s hip was bloody, but not enough to indicate he’d bled to death. Maybe, despite the heaters, the cold.…

  Potter felt something under the bandage; a hard chip about two inches long. He reached beneath the bloody dressing and pulled out a key.

  Potter recognized it instantly as a storage box key from one of the ground cars. Scraping off the dried blood revealed the number “1”; no surprise there. Miller must have been carrying it when he was shot, then had the presence of mind to hide it under the dressing; not a place anyone would be eager to search.

  Potter rose and pocketed the key. He would collect Farrow and Liu and Mike and get them to help bury Connolly and Miller, but first he wanted to check out the key. He left the shuttle and crossed the landing zone, giving a wide berth to Shuttle One, whose lifting jets were being test-fired for the next five minutes.

  The ground car was resting outside; although they had no crew weight problem any longer, Chief Engineer Liu had decided it would be prudent to leave it behind anyway. Snow was beginning to drift around its fat tires already, a prelude to the moon’s eventual claim on all that they would leave behind.

  Potter brushed snow away from the door to get it open, looking forward to getting inside the cab and away from the roar of the shuttle’s lift-jets.

  The cold vinyl seats were blocks of ice, leaching the heat from his buttocks and the back of his thighs. Behind the driver’s seat, Potter found the right box inserted the key and opened it.

  Inside was a fist-sized lump of cloudy crystal bearing several marks in Indelink; numbers, angles, three-letter abbreviations. Survey marks. Well, it was ore, clearly, but as to what sort, he had no idea. He slid backwards out of the cab, still holding the rock up before him, and turned to look into the muzzle of a very large revolver.

  Chief Engineer Liu’s other hand was open and extended.

  “I’ll take that, please, Emmett.”

  Potter handed him the crystal without a word.

  “What is it, Liu? What kind of crystal?”

  “Hafnium-rich zirconium ore.”

  Potter thought a moment, suddenly remembering what he knew of hafnium: Mixed with tantalum carbide, hafnium was one of the most refractory substances known, immune to temperatures below 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The allo
y was used in nuclear reactor control rods throughout the CoDominium. More importantly, it comprised the ablative heat shields and armor for hundreds of CoDo exploration and military vessels.

  “But,” Potter voiced his thoughts, “why? It’s common as dirt; literally. You can get this stuff from beach sand.”

  Liu nodded. “Yes. On Earth. But Earth is run by the CoDominium Senate, and you know how; no scientific research, nothing that might allow the Soviets or the Americans to gain any advantage over one another.” Liu turned the rock in his hands. “And of course, there are all those political undesirables, and all those new colony worlds that are going to have to start showing a profit somehow.” His eyes met Potter’s. “That will mean forced relocation, or ‘CoDo-sponsored colonization,’ if you prefer. All those colonies will need power, and the CoDo isn’t going to spend money on solar arrays or hydroelectric structures when it can just dump a pre-fab reactor station and move on. That means an awful lot of reactors, Emmett, and the ships which carry them have reactors of their own, and ablative shielding. And this,” Liu held the stone up between them, “this is where it will come from.”

  Can I keep him talking? Potter thought. Will the others see, realize what’s going on? “Did Miller know? Would he have killed Ike to keep it a secret?”

  “Miller knew,” Liu said. “Else why didn’t he bring anything else back? As for killing Ike; well by the ounce, even by the pound in a one-planet economy, hafnium’s not so valuable. But Miller’s analysis markings say this stuff has twenty times the hafnium of terrestrial zirconium, and at an already higher purity.”

  “How is that possible?” Potter asked, trying to sound interested in anything but Liu’s weapon.

  Liu shrugged. “Higher vulcanism on this moon, probably, along with the godawful tidal pressures from the gas giant’s gravity. Who knows? Xeno-Geology was Miller’s field, not mine. Step back, please, Emmett. You can see it just fine from where you are.”

  Potter nodded, then looked up at the Chief Engineer. “So, which Company are you working for?”

  Liu smiled ruefully “The one that’s going to make me a Vice President.”

  “You’re going to kill me, then?”

  “Jesus, Emmett, I’m not a barbarian. Let’s just go home and collect the Survey bonus.” Liu smiled “If I get the kind of deal I think I will, you can even have my share of the bonus.”

  Potter ignored him, concentrating instead on the fact that, despite his chatty, conversational tone, Liu had not lowered his weapon. “Did you kill Miller?”

  After a moment, Liu nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

  “And Connolly?”

  “No. No need.” Liu caught himself. “I mean there wasn’t any reason for me to.”

  “And if there had been?”

  Liu sighed. “Don’t be difficult, Emmett. I can fly the Fast Eddie home without you if need be.”

  “Six months is a long time to be alone.”

  “I’ll pass the time calculating my interest-income statements on the ship’s computer. He caught himself again. “Besides, Mike and Farrow will be along, too.”

  He’s going to kill us all. Potter finally had to admit it to himself. Liu’s aim had not strayed a particle from the center of Potter’s chest. Company board member or sole Survey bonus recipient; or both. Why share any of it?

  With nothing to lose, Potter sighed and reached for the pistol.

  *

  *

  *

  Mike came running at the sound of the gunshots. He could see nothing, but he knew the difference between the reports of an accelerator rifle and a firearm; there weren’t supposed to be any firearms in the Fast Eddie’s stores. Farrow raced down the ramp of the shuttle after him.

  They passed under the craft to see Chief Engineer Liu and Captain Potter grappling in the snow, leaving a thin smear of reddened ice in their wake. Mike ran toward them, but his foot came down on something and his ankle twisted, throwing him off his feet. He hit the frozen ground hard and heard the gun go off again.

  Mike looked to see that he had tripped on some white rock, and having no weapons he grabbed the stone and scrambled toward the men.

  Chief Engineer Liu was pressing a gun against Captain Potter’s stomach. Potter was already bleeding from two wounds, when Mike heard a third shot, this one muffled by the Captain’s parka. Mike brought the rock down on Liu’s skull, and the Engineer rolled off Potter’s chest, stunned.

  Liu hadn’t dropped the gun, and seemed to be trying to regain his bearings, so Mike swung the rock with his might against the Engineer’s temple. The left side of Liu’s forehead collapsed, his eyes rolled completely back, and he fell to the ground dead. Mike dropped the rock and went to Potter, lifting the Captain just as Farrow arrived.

  “Emmett,” Farrow whispered hoarsely. “Emmett, can you make it to the ship?”

  Potter didn’t answer; he was beginning to feel the cold through his parka, and tried to fumble for the coat’s heat controls, but his hands wouldn’t obey. “Rock,” he said.

  Mike and Farrow shared a look, and the Basque engineer gestured with a nod toward the stone he had used to kill Liu. The Fast Eddie’s master quickly brought the rock to Potter.

  Potter tried to push it away. “Liu was a Company man. Precious ore. Mountains filled with it.” He wanted to tell them to bury it, to throw it out the airlock from orbit; never to let the Companies or the CoDominium know it existed, but he was so tired; the fight with Liu had worn him out, and he was so cold. He needed to sleep, just for a little while.

  Mike seemed to understand, though. Passing Potter’s bulk to Farrow, Mike stood and put the zirconium ore on the ground where the frozen marsh that comprised the landing zone had been softened by the morning’s test-firing of the shuttle engines.

  Mike put his boot over the bloody rock and pushed it beneath the gluey, crunching surface. After a moment, there was no sign it had ever been there.

  Potter looked at the mountains in the distance, at the dark, fierce storm clouds, the first snowflakes beginning to fall.

  No two alike, he thought. He closed his eyes.

  “He was a good man,” Mi’huelo said to Farrow.

  Farrow nodded. “He was my friend, Deacon,” Farrow said.

  Mi’huelo looked back over his shoulder. “I wonder what that stone was?” The Basque spoke idly, but his tone was cultured, educated.

  “I don’t know, Deacon.”

  Mi’huelo shrugged. “No matter. If this—Company man—was interested in it, than all the more reason to deny his masters the chance to despoil another world.”

  He knelt to help Farrow pick up the body of Captain Emmett Potter, who although not a Harmony, had been a harmonious man. To the Harmonies, who try to harmonize with all things, such a man was highly regarded; the Universe being ultimately in harmony. Those few with the capacity to harmonize naturally were cherished as better parts of its Song. In that perfect song, the Universe sent to the faithful just such voices the faithful required to help them sing it.

  And so, they believed, it had sent Emmett Potter; for he was the means through which Mi’huelo Costanza, Deacon of the First Church of the New Harmony, had been guided to this seemingly insignificant moon. For the Harmonies, too, had their secret scouts among the survey ships of the CoDominium.

  Deacon Costanza now knew this seemingly insignificant moon could be made to resonate with that Harmony for which he and all the others of his order strove. Conditions on this harsh and unforgiving world would be a perfect place for the Harmonies to gather in solitude and security, for a little while, at least; for who else would want such a place? Deacon Costanza could see no reason for this place to stir greed among men, and here they might live in solitude, unmolested by the anthrocentric CoDominium, with its planet-raping Americans and their equally rapacious Soviet partners.

  The Deacon and Acolyte Farrow buried Captain Potter and First Officer Connolly next to Icaorius and Owens, who had been good, true friends; alongside Ike, who had also
been a Harmony. The bodies of Liu and Miller they left for the ravens, or whatever their equivalents were on this world, to nurture any scavengers that might roam the skies of the new world, as those buried would nurture the scavengers that moved within the ground.

  Then, preparing to leave, Mi’huelo turned for one last look at the land around them, now disappearing behind curtains of snow, falling faster by the moment.

  “What did you say Owens called this place?” Mi’huelo asked Farrow.

  Farrow thought a moment: “A garden spot, your Eminence.”

  Mi’huelo shook his head, smiling. “You see, Thomas? All things harmonize, if only we seek to accept them as part of the Song. Consider the four men buried there, and the two who lie exposed nearby. Theirs were lives claimed by this harsh world that might one day yet become a haven for us Harmonies.”

  “Creation willing,” Farrow repeated, nodding. There was so much to understand, but he thought that perhaps today, he had just picked up one thread of one strain of the Music here.

  “Remember,” Mi’huelo went on, “as a part of the Song, this place may claim the lives of many more as it plays its part in that music.” He put his arm across Farrow’s shoulders. “The lives of men are only notes in that movement, and it is only the aggregate effect of those notes which may be fully apprehended. These six, Thomas, these six are the first strains in the movement that contributes the story of this place to that song.

  “The deaths of these men are the first blossoms of Spring in this world. Their bodies the bone-white seeds, and their blood the bright-red blossoms of the ultimate Harmony, the attainment of which we can only seek, and whose real nature can be known only to itself.

  “Kneel beside me, Thomas, and let us seek some small measure of that Harmony.”

  The steel floor of the airlock was cold against their knees, its hardness a further challenge to their concentration. No matter; counterpoint was important, too.