Miners in the Sky

by Murray Leinster

  Dunne curtly gave his name and settled down on a place just beyond the donkeyships around the spaceport’s edge. It wasn’t one of the better landing places. He could see all that went on in the spaceport, but nearby there were crazy upcroppings of the kind usually called metal trees. They weren’t trees, but they were metal; and because of them, a man in a space-suit could get close, to Dunne’s donkeyship unseen. But it was the best place left.

  Voices babbled at him, struggling for humor and for wit. Dunne, eh? How many kilos of crystals had he brought back? The question was genial mockery. A gram of crystals wouldn’t be despised, and ten grams was a fair average for the Rings. A kilogram would be spoken of with awe for years to come if anybody actually brought in so much. In any case, no man would answer such a query, not even on Outlook with the pickup ship nearby. Someone asked how Dunne’s new partner liked the Rings? Who bossed the ship? This last was reference to the psychological warfare that often developed when two men were imprisoned together for weeks or months on end. Some men came to hate each other poisonously under such circumstances. Sometimes one partner arrived at Outlook fiercely demanding that the partnership be dissolved. And it was done, on the pickup ship. Sometimes two sets of partners switched companions, to find out later that the situation was not relieved.

  Dunne was known to have Keyes as a partner. Keyes was relatively new to the Rings. There were humorous queries. Had they fought? How had Keyes made out in the Rings? Hey, Keyes! How’re you doing? Is Dunne a tough character to get along with? They say he’s scared all the time he’s out of the ship in a space-suit. Does Keyes make you do all the out-of-ship work?

  The talk was ridiculous. It was childish. But it expressed the frantic impatience of the men in the donkey-ships for a change of any sort, any new sight or voice, Keyes didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was back on the ring-fragment he and Dunne had discovered. The voices called for Keyes, to tell him hilariously of alleged tricks and chicaneries an experienced space-miner like Dunne might practice on him. But Keyes wasn’t there to answer.

  Dunne grimly got his ship to ground and anchored with its magnetic grapples. Voices called again for Keyes.

  Dunne said curtly, “He’s not here.”

  Voices said, “What happened?”

  Dunne said, “He’s not here!”

  Then he realized that he’d made a grave mistake. If he’d said that Keyes had cracked his faceplate when out of the ship, it would have been better. That was a perfectly credible accident. It might or might not be believed, but nothing would be done about it. Or if he said he’d killed Keyes, it would have been nobody’s business. But he shouldn’t have refused to give any explanation at all. That would lead to guesses. Guesses might be dangerously dose to the truth—that Dunne and Keyes had found a rock too precious to be left unguarded while one of them went to the pickup ship for air to breathe.

  There was a sudden silence. For a full half-minute the space about Outlook was startlingly still. Then somebody said something in a dry voice about the pickup ship taking its time. Other voices joined in. There was a sudden, absolute avoidance of the subject of Keyes. Because men would be making guesses. Dunne realized that he’d made an appalling blunder. Possibly half, or more than half, of the space-miners on Outlook would be debating whether or not to try to trail him when he went away. Their guess would be unanimous that Dunne and Keyes had found riches. Some would guess at enormous riches. A few would even guess at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

  Then a booming voice spoke from Dunne’s communicator. It was the ultra-powerful transmitter of the pickup ship. It said, growling: “All right! I don’t hear any more drives. Maybe we’re all here. Let’s get to business. Who landed first?”

  A voice answered hilariously. It named a name. Another voice gave another name, very curt and businesslike. It had been second to arrive. There were other voices. A voice said, “Smithers.” There were other voices giving other names. An unctuous voice said, “Haney.” Dunne kept count. When it was time, when every other ship had answered, he said, “Dunne.”

  There was a pause. The names were being checked. Mail was doubtless already sorted, but men who had wives or kindred to write to them devoured mail just as men in prison do. But as for checking the names, Dunne could have done it himself. It was simply a matter of comparing the names just given with the names on the pickup ship’s last visit. There was a difference between the lists. Some ships didn’t answer.

  There was no comment. Nobody could know what had happened. When a ship dropped out of sight, it dropped out of sight. That was all. Nobody had to go to the Rings. It was their own decision, and they bought their own donkeyships and came to the Rings in full awareness that the death rate among space-miners was thirty per cent a year. The planetary government of Horus sent the pickup ships to supply their needs and bring back the treasure—the abyssal crystals—they found. But the pickup ships weren’t here to prevent or punish crime. That simply wasn’t practical. So Dunne wished bitterly that he’d said he’d killed Keyes instead of giving an excuse for guesses. In the Rings no governmental authority went outside the hull of a pickup ship. But curiosity had no limit.

  “Okay,” said the pickup ship’s booming voice. “Let’s get at it!” It read off a name. It was the first name recorded. “Waiting for you, now!”

  A pause. Then a man in a space-suit clambered out of a donkeyship. He carried a parcel. He went across the relatively flat surface of glittering metal. Magnetic-soled space-boots accounted for the fact of walking. A ladder reached down from the pickup ship. He climbed it. He was inside the larger space-vessel for some minutes. He came out and went leisurely over to the donkeyship from which he’d emerged.

  The pickup ship boomed a second name. Another man in a space-suit came out of another donkeyship. He went in the pickup. He came out and went back to his own small craft. Donkeyship by donkeyship, as the ship from Horus called their names, men went to the large and infinitely welcome pickup ship. They carried parcels—small parcels—into it. They came out without them.

  The man who’d said his name was Haney went in, swaggering even in his clumsy space-suit and with his magnetic-soled boots clinging as if sticky to the metal under him. Another man—the one who’d answered “Smithers.” Then Dunne answered to his name, and went. He was the last, because he’d arrived last. He turned over a parcel of abyssal crystals to the pickup-ship skipper. They were the reason for everything that happened in the Rings. He made the formal statement that he and Keyes had found a ring-fragment marked such-and-such, but obviously abandoned. They’d painted their own initials and a year on the rock. They were working it.

  “Yeah!” said the clerk who took down his statement. “I remember them!” He spoke of the former owners of that fragment. “Doin’ well, they were, when they just didn’t come back.”

  Dunne said, “Mail?”

  He didn’t expect any, but Keyes should have a letter. He had a sister on Horus and was deeply concerned about her. Not to get a letter on the pickup ship would disturb Keyes. Dunne asked for a second look. There was no letter.

  Dunne gave his order for oxygen and supplies. It would be made ready for delivery presently. He went back to his ship. A pause, seemingly for no particular reason. The booming voice of the ship said: “Any more? Any more coming in?”

  It was a call for any donkeyship that might still be on the way to Outlook. The call could be picked up an astonishing distance away. But there was no answer. Silence. The voice from the pickup said dryly:

  “All right, boys! Come aboard and spend your money!”

  Instantly there was activity all around the spaceport’s edge. Men emerged from each of the ships. They headed for the ship from Horus. Now there was no silence. They babbled via their space-phones as exuberantly as before the pickup ship’s arrival. They were starved for conversation with strangers. They were ravenous for experiences they did not have in their ships. There were two men from each of the ships, except Dunne and that of the m
an named Smithers.

  They trooped to the ladder of the supply-ship. They clambered up like small boys let out of school. They chattered like schoolchildren. Those who’d had mail were most exuberant of all. They went into the big cargo-lock which had room for all of them and had been pumped out earlier. As individuals they’d used a smaller, personnel lock. Now All crowded into this big lock, and the outer door closed. Air came in, turning misty from the chill of its own expansion into the vacuum of the lock. Then the inner doors opened and they were in the Ship. They made yapping noises at the sight before them.

  All of this was standard. All of it was familiar. Every man had been through it before and each one was anticipating every item which his ordinary life—life in the Rings—did not provide.

  There was food spread out on tables, waiting for them. There were white cloths and silver. There were drinkables. There was artificial gravity set at a little less than was customary in donkeyships. With space-suits stripped off, everybody felt lighter. Everything in the pickup ship made for euphoria. Only so. often did pickup ships come to Outlook, and only then could the men who sought and found mines in space live for a little while as their dreams demanded. Without this, they’d forget what they were working for and become less than human. With it, they knew the sensations of children.

  Dunne felt all the urge to extravagance of behavior that the other men felt, but his partner Keyes was in a plastic bubble, many hundreds of mist-miles away, waiting for him to come back. He reminded himself. Their rock had been found by another donkeyship team, and the initials and year of its discovery was painted on it. GK-37 was the marking. But that pair of Ring-miners had disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to them. But the fragment went unworked for two solar years. Then Dunne and Keyes found it, and put their initials and the year on it. “DK-39.” Now Keyes stood guard against someone else appropriating it, and waited for Dunne to get back with food and oxygen. If Dunne didn’t come back, Keyes would die, If he were delayed too much, Keyes would die after so many days, hours and minutes. His oxygen would be finished. Dunne had to keep that in mind. He did.

  The donkeyship men rushed upon the tables. They gulped down filled glasses. They devoured the food. Donkeyships carried no fresh food—fruits, meat, vegetables. Such things took up too much room, and they’d be impossibly expensive to ship from Horus to the Rings. So the pickup ship provided one banquet. It helped men endure the Rings, and therefore it was profitable to the planetary government of Horus. Very much of the budget for that planet was earned by men who lived in donkey-ships and worked the Rings. The crystals they found made it possible for freighters to ply between star-clusters. They furnished the means by which great passenger-liners went singing through the void.

  Dunne ate. He drank. But he did not rejoice. He’d made a grave blunder in failing to account for the absence of Keyes. It would have been sufficient to say that he was dead. It would have caused no. trouble if he claimed to. have murdered Keyes. But he’d aroused suspicion of riches.

  Actually, he’d just delivered to the pickup ship a full double handful of crystals. Against their value he’d ordered oxygen and—food and water and mining supplies, all of which had been brought millions of miles from Horus. Now he waited to get started back to. Keyes with them. The others from the Rings made merry. They acted as if made drunk by the mere spaciousness of the pickup ship and by the hydroponic-tank fragrance of the air, and especially by having mail to reread presently and new companions to talk to now.

  Everybody talked at once, and at the top of their voices. Everybody made exaggerated gestures. They babbled. They cracked jokes—stale ones, but nobody minded—about gooks. They talked about the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Then they were likely to search with their eyes to make sure that Dunne hadn’t slipped away. They sang songs—several of them at the same time. They stuffed themselves. They were slightly insane. But none of them were unwise enough to boast of the quantity of greasy crystals they’d brought in, nor did anybody let slip the slightest clue to where they worked floating rocks with initials and numerals painted on them.

  Only Dunne didn’t talk. He’d made a mistake and even in this festivity he was being watched every second. His problem had become multiplied by a mere slip of the tongue.

  Presently a ship’s officer went quietly past Dunne. He beckoned unobtrusively. He moved on. Dunne, after a moment or two, followed him.

  The pickup ship’s officer waited beyond the first closed door, He regarded Dunne sharply when he appeared.

  “You’re Dunne?”

  “Yes,” said Dunne defensively. “What’s up? Did you find some mail for us after all?”

  “No. You’ve got a partner named Keyes,” said the ship’s officer.“Where is he?”

  “He’s back at a rock we’re working,” said Dunne. One could speak freely to a pickup ship’s officer. They were chosen with great care. They had to be dependable because too much wealth passed through their hands, and the government took a part of it. They had to be capable of trust.

  The officer said skeptically, “Look here! There’s no law in the Rings. You know it! If he’s dead—”

  “He isn’t,” said Dunne irritably. “We found a rock. It was worked before and abandoned, or the men died, or something. Anyhow we’re working it. I brought in a double-handful of crystals from it. You can check that! Our rock is too good to leave unguarded. But we needed oxygen and food. Somebody had to come here to get it. If Keyes had come, he might never have found me again. So I came. I can find him again. I don’t like it, but there wasn’t anything else to do.”

  The ship’s officer said vexedly, “The devil! Do you know anything about Keyes?”

  “He’s my partner,” said Dunne. Men who’d been partners and weeks or months isolated in the Rings were apt to know pretty well everything about each other.

  “His sister—”

  “I mailed a letter to her,” said Dunne. “I put it in the mail when I ordered my supplies and turned over my crystals. Keyes wrote it for me to mail to her.”

  “I know,” said the ship’s officer. He shrugged. “She’s read it. She wants to talk to you.”

  Dunne stared. It was, of course, completely impossible. Women didn’t come to the Rings! He said angrily, “Is that your idea of a joke?”

  “She came on the ship to talk to her brother. She has a round-trip passage. Naturally!”

  It was necessary for anybody going to the Rings to have their return passage paid. Even men heading out to the Rings in donkeyships—a matter requiring very much stored fuel and foodstuffs—paid in advance for passage back to Horus if they should need it and were able to make use of it. That was a condition required of them if they were to deal with the pickup ships.

  “It’s crazy!” said Dunne fiercely. “It’s lunacy! Why the devil—”

  “She wanted to see her brother,” said the pickup ship man distastefully. “He should have been here with you today. If he’d been here, it wouldn’t have been crazy. Since he isn’t here, she wants to talk to you, This way.”

  He led Dunne through another doorway and then another. Ships for long-distance travel were large, because size didn’t matter in space—only mass; a lightly built ship could be roomy. But a donkeyship had to be small to be maneuverable.

  Here was a passenger lounge, It was luxurious, But Dunne didn’t look at the room. He stared at the girl who stood there, waiting for him. He recognized her from. a picture Keyes had had. Keyes’ sister, Nike. She looked frightened. She looked tense and strained and nerve-racked. She searched his face almost desperately.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dunne. “You brother should have come with me, but we both thought somebody ought to stay with the rock we’ve found, And he wasn’t sure he could find his way back to it. So I came.”

  “I—have to talk to him,” said the girl unsteadily. “I—I simply have to!”

  Dunne fumbled in his pocket. He brought out the receipt for the double-handful of crystals he’d turned ov
er less than an hour ago.

  “Look!” he said. “This represents money. Your brother and I have some credit with the Abyssal Minerals Commission. I can give you an order on them for money for another round trip. So you’ll go back to Horus and come out again next trip. I’ll have your brother here to talk to you. All right?”

  Nike was very pale. She shook her head.

  “No. I can’t wait to talk to him. It has to be soon. Now.”

  “He’s two and a half days from here,” said Dunne, “and the pickup ship won’t wait for me to go and get him.”

  She swallowed. She held up, the letter he’d put in the mail for her. Somebody had broken all sorts of regulations to give it to her here.

  “He thinks a great deal of you,” she said shakily. “Very much! I know what he’d tell me to do if he knew I were here. So—I’m going back with you. To see him. I have to!”

  “No,” said Dunne. “Your brother wouldn’t tell you to do that! Not to go riding in the Rings! Anyhow, I won’t take you. You’ll have to do as I said. Go back, come again, and I’ll have him here to talk to you or do whatever you please.”

  “But I have to talk to him—now! I must!”

  “Not with me you mustn’t,” said Dunne grimly. “See here! You say your brother trusts me. Wouldn’t he trust me to tell you the right thing to do? Wouldn’t he expect me to give you the same advice he would?”

  “Yes…” But she looked at him as desperately as before. Then she said, shaking a little, “But—the trouble is that I have to see my brother! I—have to!”

  “Unfortunately, you can’t!” Dunne scowled. He came to a decision. “I’m going to be here in the ship until my supplies are ready. That’ll probably be an hour or. more. You write your brother a letter. I’ll give it to him. Meanwhile, I’ll arrange your passage back to Horus and back out here again. And while you’re travelling, he’ll think over whatever your problem is; and when you get back he’ll be all set to tell you exactly what to do. That’s the most I’ll do. It’s the most I’ll even think of doing!”