by John F. Carr
Now the rest of them looked around, eyes rolling red in bearded red faces. There was an apprehensive pause. Miners knew about trapped gasses. They were waiting. Waiting. Waiting for the quake. Nothing happened.
The spell broke.
“That’s a load of tamercrap and you know it, Johnson! You’re just trying to spook us so we let you go.”
Once again the hands grabbed him. They dragged him away from the trike, toward the workings at the edge of the lake. The ground shuddered gently, briefly. Another attempt by the straining crust to relieve the enormous tidal pressures.
“Wait a minute! Did you feel that?” he shouted. They slowed again.
“I didn’t feel nothin’.”
“There! Look at the lake!” Look at it!”
This time they stopped. The milky surface of the lake was starting to curdle as small bubbles and streaks of brown appeared.
Frantically he pulled loose from the hands holding his arms. He had to make them understand. High ground was their only hope.
“Run for it! Run for the rim! It’s gonna blow!”
He turned and ran upslope amid shouts and confusion.
“Johnson’s running!”
“After him!”
“Give me a line-of-fire!”
Johnson was halfway up the slope, and the first gunburst had gone crackling into the underbrush beside him, when the lake erupted. There was a soft, foamy roar, like all the surf in the world breaking on the shores of the Southern Sea. He stopped and turned.
The lake bubbled and foamed. The foam became a crown, became a wall of brownish white, became an expanding mound, filling the volcanic crater like the head on an enormous pitcher of beer. The wall grew until it halfway filled the crater, reaching almost to his astonished feet. The displaced air howled past his ears, flapping the unhooked sides of his jacket. A fine mist blew from the top of the foam and lifted over the crater edge.
It looked like wisps of steam.
Two heads appeared, gasping and choking above the foam. The two men underneath them staggered out of the foam upslope toward Johnson, heads and faces bleeding from blind falls in the blinding foam. They staggered and fell in the first empty spot. It was Damson and Linton, the two men nearest to Johnson when he started running, but now both were interested only in staying alive.
Almost as quickly as it had formed, the foam disappeared. One moment the crater was awash with whitish brown foam, the next it was as they had always seen it. Except five men were lying on the shore of the lake, gasping in the deadly fumes of the now-invisible gas. One other was half in the lake, head under water.
Haven’s eternal wind was rapidly swirling new air into the crater, but there was no telling how long before the bottom layer became breathable.
Johnson’s lungs were still straining from the climb. Even this high on the crater wall there was enough CO2 to hinder breathing. The two men at his feet would probably be all right. The others still needed help, might survive if he could find some way to get them air.
He looked around, beating his muddled brain to find an idea. The crawler was sitting next to the puddler, three or four meters above the level of the lake. If he could get to it, he could use the medicinal oxygen. There was no time to waste, but he was still having too much trouble breathing to move very fast. The men on the crater floor could not live much longer.
He turned and started along the crater wall. You couldn’t call it running. It was more of a rapid stumbling, hampered by the slope and three days of saddle sores. Johnson moved around the crater wall until he was just above the crawler.
Four deep, deep breaths and he plunged downslope towards it. Two meters down, breathing strong, coughing at the stink. Six meters. Eight meters, and his eyes started to smart and the air he sucked in no longer satisfied his needs. Now the real race began. He held his breath and kept going, bounding and sliding his reduced weight sideways down the slope in the low gravity. Ten meters, and he was at the crawler, his knees crackling and buckling as they tried to stop his forward motion; weight may change, but mass is forever.
He slammed into the side of the cab, cracking his ribs on the grab-bars, scrambled aboard, fumbling the door closed with unresponsive hands and rapidly narrowing vision. Oxygen first. He pulled the walkaround bottle out from under the drivers seat, pulled the mask over his head, and started gasping. Now to move the crawler. The starter clicked, the motor whined up to speed, then lugged heavily as it tried to drive the crawler straight up the slope with the brake still set.
He swore, turned the wheel, popped the brake, and almost fell out the unlatched door as the big machine roared and spun around on the steep slope.
Moments later the crawler was next to the fallen bodies. Johnson braked and dashed back to Medical. No time for finesse. He cracked the valve on the largest oxygen tank and let it start filling the compartment. Then he grabbed more walkaround bottles, jumped out the driver’s side, and started pulling people in through the door.
Ten minutes later he roared the crawler over the outer edge of the crater and onto the trail for camp. Damson and Linton were in back, weakly pressing on chests to try to restore breathing. Coughing and gasping filled the cabin behind him, horrible but reassuring.
At least some would survive. Now that they knew how treacherous the volcano could be, countermeasures would be easy. Perhaps they could work in breathing gear. That might even be comfortable, given Haven’s thin atmosphere. Maybe there was another, better, solution. He smiled into his mask and squinted into the slowly glowing dawn. The hard part was understanding the problem. What followed was merely engineering.
What followed was two hours of touch and go field medicine by Johnson and any of the surviving miners with any medical training at all. Fred Parker was dead, he had not survived his fall into the lake. George Rasmussen would forever be a little slow in comprehending even short sentences with short words. His family would need looking after.
The others survived with no immediately apparent after-effects, except for acute embarrassment whenever they looked at Johnson.
Frank Damson summed it up at the meeting next day. “We all thought you was just a loner, Jonnie. An’ we figured you was out to do all this for yourself as a way to get back to Earth. After you disappeared an’ Dit was found dead, we figured you had decided to grab off a shimmer stone an’ bribe your way back.”
He looked around at the nodding heads. “What I’m tryin’ to say is, we was wrong, an’ that came close to bustin’ up the company. Now we know better, an’ we think you oughta’ go back to running the whole show. Will you do it?”
Johnson stood up, stiff, still tired, and, for the first time in over a decade, happy.
“Well… friends… we might go bust. We might never find another shimmer stone. Or that volcano over there might wake up some night and decide to kill us all.” He smiled. “I think I’ll take that chance.”
— 13 —
STEPPE STONE
William F. Wu
2055 A.D. Earth
A huge green tent had been set up on a mountain slope in Dongbei, the region that had once been called Manchuria and long before that had been part of the Mongol Empire. The tent stood high on a level ridge that overlooked the Northeast China Plain, where a mix of tilled farms and open grazing land lay calm in the distance. On a cold, clear morning, lines of miners and their families shuffled slowly into the tent.
Cholony Chuluun, whose name meant Chuluun, son of Cholon, drew his betrothed, Tuya, with him in a long line of fellow miners. They were ethnic Mongols whose ancestors had once lived and ruled here. Now, along with Manchu, Korean, and Hui peoples, they were a shrinking minority after the generations-long migration of Han Chinese from the south. Today, the huge Anaconda Mining corporation had declared a day off from working the mines, but required the miners and their loved ones to come into the tent to hear a company representative speak.
Now comprising three provinces of China, Dongbei had an extreme climate. In th
e short summer, the blazing heat and stifling humidity were almost tropical, while the long winter brought Arctic cold and relentless dry winds over the mountains from the north and northwest. With a terrain of fertile plains, rugged mountains and forests, Dongbei offered tremendous natural resources to be plundered. While the rich came to enjoy ski resorts and river cruises, the descendants of ancient nomadic tribes toiled in the factories and, especially, down in the mines to draw out rich mineral ore.
During the long, slow progression into the big tent, Chuluun kept looking out at the farms and grazing land in the distance. He breathed in the cold, thin air of the mountains and looked up at the blue sky above him. As always, he wished he could spend every day in the open air.
Inside the green canvas tent, Chuluun and Tuya sat along the left side, about halfway back from the dais. He had known for most of his young life that he had little future in the mines. Everyone who worked the mines knew what this presentation was about, though Chuluun had never heard the pitch before. Somewhere off-world, Anaconda had mines that needed working. Every so often, they made a pitch at different Anaconda locations around Earth.
Tuya, whose name meant “light,” as in a ray of light, shifted in her seat and smiled up at him. “At least it’s a day off work,” she said.
“Yes, it’s good.”
Truly, he thought, she was the only ray of light in his dreary life. Petite and pretty, she was also a tough-minded, hard-working miner herself. Like Chuluun, she was the offspring of miners who had died early from the heavy labor deep underground. Also like Chuluun, she understood that as Mongols, they belonged to a shrinking ethnic group historically feared and despised by both the Chinese and Russians, both of whom were now in the ascendant. She wore her long, black hair in two looped braids, which gave her an innocent, old-style appearance that belied her cynical awareness of their bleak future in the mines of Dongbei.
Chuluun barely listened to the beginning of the lecture. He did not care about the introductions of company representatives, or the way they complimented each other. If anything, he was glad to have a day when he could simply sit and rest, instead of work. As one speaker after another stepped up to the podium and droned on, his mind drifted to the re-enactments he enjoyed on the rare days of celebration.
Even in these hardscrabble mining towns, the glory days of the Mongolian people were remembered. They no longer lived a nomadic life, but some were still farmers and herders, down on the steppes. During holiday celebrations, young and old journeyed down to the grasslands of traditional Mongolia to dress in the clothes of the time of Genghis Khan. Freed from the darkness of the mines, they raced their horses and shot arrows from the saddle. They practiced swordplay, wrestled, and drank.
Chuluun, with a muscular, broad-shouldered frame and a true zest for his moments on horseback, had won many of the competitions. Tuya, too, was an excellent rider. Like the women of old, she had shot arrows from horseback, wrestled, and drank in the women’s competitions. In the contemporary competitions, she had shown her skill with a rifle from the saddle.
“We need people like you on the planet Haven,” said the speaker at the podium. “For a new life and a new chance!” The Anaconda representative was a forty-something man in a black suit. He was speaking in Mandarin Chinese, which everyone in Dongbei learned in school as the official language of China.
At the words “new life,” Chuluun glanced up for the first time. At home, he and Tuya and their friends all spoke Mongol. He had learned in his young life that Anaconda speakers, always talking in Mandarin, rarely offered anything to the ethnic minorities in Dongbei.
“I want you to understand why I’m here,” said the speaker. “Let me be blunt. Anaconda must have good, strong, healthy people to work in our mines. The Bureau of Relocation can always find ordinary people for ordinary work. But the planet Haven has rich mines in a climate similar to this one.” He paused for effect, looking out over the crowd. “You have already proven yourselves. You work in the high altitude in long, cold winters. You can do this work.”
Chuluun wondered about this place called Haven. He had heard about it, but he had never met anyone who had returned from Haven to Earth. While he knew better than to trust an Anaconda speaker, he saw little future in the life he had—and little future to offer Tuya.
“After this meeting ends, we will have individual recruiters ready to meet with you and answer questions. But this is the heart of the matter: Your transportation will be covered in advance. Your room and board will be supplied in barracks until you have the money to make your own arrangements in one of the towns near the mine to which you are assigned. In return, you will work off your debt in only two years of work in the mines.” The speaker paused and lowered his voice. “Many of you know that Haven is also the only source of shimmer stones. After you work off your debt, you will be free to prospect on your own, as many people do already.”
A low murmur ran through the crowd.
Chuluun’s heart pounded. Shimmer stones, harder than diamonds, were the rarest gems anywhere. Even a small one would give him the chance to take Tuya out of the mines and live free in the open air. Two years to pay off his indenture, and hers, would be nothing compared to a lifetime in the Dongbei mines with no future. Then he could prospect on his own. No matter how many years it took, if he could find a good-sized shimmer stone, or just a few little ones, he could pay their way back to Earth and have a good life here—not as a miner, but perhaps as one of the idle rich, who cruised the rivers of Dongbei in summer and skied down the slopes in winter.
“Chuluun?” Tuya whispered.
He felt her clutch his upper arm. When he turned, he found her looking up at him, her eyes wide with hope.
2056 A.D. Haven
Cholony Chuluun saw the old man eyeing him almost from the moment the new transportees were herded into the Anaconda men’s barracks for new miners on Haven, near the town of Last Chance. The new bunch, all ethnic Mongols, Manchu, Korean, and Hui peoples, had indentured themselves for the journey from Earth and now lived in a camp named Redemption #4.
The other man had come on a much earlier ship and was very much an old-timer who lived in Redemption Town. Introducing himself as Timury Bataar, meaning Bataar, son of Timur, the old man had a short, stocky build and long white hair that matched a long, trailing white mustache and beard. He spoke to many other newcomers, but he gave most of his time to Chuluun, son of Cholon.
Each night, after the new workers dragged back from the mines, Bataar offered Chuluun, whose name meant “stone,” small bits of advice on life in his new home. Chuluun accepted the advice, found it useful, and thanked him politely, wondering what he wanted in return.
He got his answer one night in the mess hall over bowls of some gruel based on grains he could not identify, with fatty chunks of tough meat that no amount of stewing had softened.
Speaking Mongolian, Bataar sat on a low stool looking up at Chuluun. “I have been asking about you. You are a man of certain skills and the right look. Perhaps you are as strong and steady as your appearance suggests.”
Chuluun said nothing. He studied Bataar, whose name meant “hero.”
Around them, the other transportee newcomers ate, shouted, and jostled one another. In the tired yet boisterous crowd, no one cared about Chuluun and Bataar.
Chuluun had a favor to ask, but he had been waiting for the right moment. He watched the grizzled man and waited.
“So you are a horseman. A true Mongol.” Bataar grinned, his compliment apparently genuine. Despite his age, he had full, strong teeth, slightly crooked. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, and his movements showed he was still healthy and strong.
“I worked in the mines of Dongbei,” Chuluun said cautiously. “Most of us on the transport worked together. We knew we could mine here. In Dongbei, we worked in a cold climate in thin air.”
“Ah, but you rode in the celebrations. In the re-enactments.”
Chuluun fought down a smile, not wan
ting to admit this truth yet. He had not told Bataar about Tuya, his ray of light, either. They had been separated because they were not yet married. She was in the Anaconda barracks reserved for women. They did not yet have the money for their own place in Redemption, which was crowded with prospectors, merchants, con artists, and ruffians.
“Do you know how many people find a shimmer stone?” Bataar leaned forward on the stool, looking into his eyes.
“Of course they’re very rare. But if you move enough of the right ore, your chances grow. I’m willing to move that ore.”
“You think well, my young friend. You can see a problem and a solution. But anything you find will belong to Anaconda.”
Chuluun said nothing. Every miner, and every straw boss and manager, knew stones could be hidden, smuggled, or stashed in some way. So each miner finished his shift with a personal search. Yet stones still slipped into the black market.
“I have a two-year contract with Anaconda,” Chuluun said finally. “Then I can prospect on my own.”
“Yes, yes.” Bataar nodded, as though he had heard it all before. He looked into Chuluun’s eyes. “You have been here a short time. Have you asked how many of these men have survived two full years in the mines? Or how many had to extend their contract to three years or five?”
“Extend their contracts? Why?”
“You were told about the company store.”
“Yes, for more food, or a small heater…clothes. We can buy little things. Why?”
“You want more than a blanket and this lousy food, then you will spend money faster than you earn it. And for those who die in the mines, Anaconda just replaces them. The company doesn’t have to pay them off. They just bring in more transportees.”
Chuluun studied the old man. Everything he had just been told fit all the travails of life Chuluun had ever known. Yet he was still glad to be here. He could live without even simple luxuries. Still young and healthy, he believed he could handle the heavy labor. In Dongbei, he and his ray of light had no chance of a new life. He still believed, on this strange, cold planet, that he could find a shimmer stone.