Miners in the Sky

by Murray Leinster

  Nike looked at him strangely. “What was that queer noise?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dunne. “Nobody knows. It’s been heard before. Back at the pickup ship there was a man named Smithers who insists it’s gooks. Unfortunately there’s no other evidence for the existence of gooks.”

  The air-freshener began to whirr. Dunne cut it off. There was only silence in the lifeboat. Outside, in the mist, donkeyships hunted for it. They had been outfitted very carefully to detect masses of rock or metal floating suspended in emptiness. They had been designed to discover solid objects in just this filmy glowing haze. And the lifeboat was a solid object. If it remained still, it would have been possible for the hunters to examine every fair-sized floating object in a hundred cubic miles, or a thousand, or ten thousand, and very certainly find it. But it was moving. And unless it was detected by its motion, after so long, ten thousand cubic miles of space could contain it anywhere; and after so much more time it could be anywhere in a hundred thousand cubic miles. Ultimately, its motion could have taken it anywhere within a million cubic miles of emptiness—all of which would have to be searched to be sure of finding it.

  In the lifeboat there was silence. The radar didn’t hunt for anything. The communicator didn’t report anything. The lifeboat drifted on the course and at the speed it had possessed when Dunne had turned off all equipment. It was self-blinded and self-deafened. All Dunne could do was wait.

  But it was nerve-racking to know that at any instant one of his pursuers might blunder on the lifeboat or that it might collide with one of the Ring-fragments it was the purpose of men in the Rings to mine. The feeling was of blind and helpless suspense, with no way to know if it had been discovered within the past half-second. It could not even find out whether its now-raging pursuers were within yards of it or searching futilely hundreds of miles away.

  If it were found and challenged, it would not hear the challenge. It wouldn’t know of threats. At any instant an angry spaceman; yards only from the lifeboat, might carry out a threat to destroy it. A bazooka shell could detonate against its hull now, or now, or now, because it did not answer threats or promises.

  Nike swallowed. Then she said unsteadily, “This feels queer!”

  Dunne nodded. He said drily, “It’s a nasty feeling. They know we’re somewhere in the Rings. They know we’re coasting. But they’ve no idea in what direction or how fast. And every one of them is scouring space for us alone. They’re not cooperating. They don’t trust each other. They can’t. Here in the Rings it isn’t possible to be a pleasant character. We’re here to get rich before we’re killed. We may be killed by accident, or by somebody who wants something we’ve got. If we do get rich, it may be by accident, or by taking something somebody else has got. We’re not nice people, here in the Rings!”

  She moistened her lips. “My brother said something about it. But he made it seem like—adventure. Danger, yes, but thrills. And he said that you—”

  “He was trying to keep you from worrying,” Dunne said in the same dry tone. “So he praised me. But a man doesn’t live long in the Rings if he practices many of the virtues. If every man here were, noble and self-sacrificing and helpful to the rest, it would be a very nice business. But put one cutthroat among the lot of us, and we all have to turn cutthroat in self-defense. So we’re a pack of scoundrels.”

  The lifeboat floated on. Nothing happened. Outside, in the mist, many donkeyships blundered about trying to make something happen. They sheered off from each other’s drive-fields because they did not want to find each other, but the lifeboat. Hours went by. Two. Four. Ten. Sixteen.

  “H-hadn’t we better—listen?” asked Nike. “To see if there is anybody—?”

  “No,” said Dunne. “This is not pleasant, though I’m getting used to it. But they won’t think we could possibly wait this long without trying to find out how we stand in the chase. That’s why we have to do it.”

  Again there was silence and stress and unrelieved tension. The inside of the spaceboat was brightly lighted. There were no viewports in the cabin section. There was nothing that needed to be done. There was nothing that could be done except wait. And waiting was a horrible, unending strain. The lifeboat had undoubtedly appeared as a blip on more than one radar screen among the searching donkeyships. But it radiated nothing. It merely floated in shining emptiness. So far they’d disregarded it. But if any other ship came near enough, it could be seen through the mist. If it were seen, angry men would demand that Dunne lead the way immediately to the Big Rock Candy Mountain—or die. And he couldn’t lead them there.

  There was one alternate possible happening, though. Haney might blunder within the distance in which the lifeboat could be seen visually. He’d not waste time demanding anything. He’d destroy the lifeboat while they did not even know he was near.

  Twenty hours after Dunne had cut off all contact with the cosmos outside the lifeboat’s hull, Nike said nervously, “Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm to look out the viewports!”

  “No harm,” agreed Dunne. “But very little good.”

  Nike went into the control room. She looked out each of the ports in turn. She saw nothing but the featureless dust-mist outside. Perhaps she could see half a mile, but she couldn’t tell. There was nothing on which to focus one’s eyes. The rings were unsubstantial. There was nothing real to look at. The haze was so completely uniform that the viewports might have been closed by blankets-lighted from behind-in contact with their transparent plastic. It was as nerve-racking as a blindfold would have been. It seemed that at any instant some dark shape must appear, swimming through the fog…

  She went back to the main cabin, shivering.

  “It’s—awful,” she said shakily.

  “You could get used to it,” Dunne told her. “You’re already used to things you couldn’t have imagined on the way to Outlook. The thing is, you can adjust—even to being scared.”

  She stared at him. “I can’t imagine you frightened!”

  “Say, uncomfortable, then,” he told her. “The longer we stay undiscovered, the better our chances of staying undiscovered. I think the odds are well in our favor, now.”

  She was silent. He looked at his watch.

  “In an hour I’ll try listening in on the universe,” he said. “If there’s nothing to hear, I think we can go about our business. We’ll have lost our trailers. And, as it happens, I think we’re not too far from where we’re bound.”

  “You mean we can go and get my brother?”

  He nodded. But he did not look at her. “We can try.”

  “And then—he can go back to Horus with me?”

  “If you want to try it in this lifeboat. I wouldn’t like to try it—without extra supplies. It’s a long run. A lot depends on how many crystals he’s found. The next pickup ship would be a better way to travel. I pretty well cleaned our account with the Minerals Commission to get this boat. If your trouble calls for money—”

  “I don’t know what it calls for,” said Nike unhappily. “I have to ask him.”

  Dunne nodded grimly. He began to pace up and down the cabin of the lifeboat. There was much more room here than in a donkeyship. But a donkeyship was built for highly special work in a highly special environment. The mining of abyssal crystals from their gray matrix required operations quite unlike the proper demands on a space-liner’s lifeboats.

  The hour he’d mentioned went by. It seemed to last for centuries. Then Dunne went into the control room. He looked out the viewports, without expectation. He flipped on the communicator. Moments later, he turned on the radar.

  He saw nothing but mist out the viewports. The radar showed nothing especially menacing. The communicator picked up only appropriate sounds, faint rustling sounds that came by short-wave from the sun. Small, crackling, crashing sounds considered to be lightning bolts in the atmosphere of the planet Thothmes. That was all.

  No. There was a faint series of sounds from the speaker. They weren’t drive-no
ises. They were musical. The effect was eerie. The sounds were barely audible, monotonous, “tweet… tweet… tweet…”

  They stopped abruptly. Nike barely whispered. “That’s the same sound…”

  “Supposedly,” said Dunne, “it’s the noise of a gook ship, creeping about the Rings to spy on us men and snipe at us when the chance comes.” He added humorously, “Anyhow, that’s supposed to be the reason donkeyships sometimes vanish without explanation.”

  He felt a certain definite reluctance to do what he now must do. He hadn’t wanted Nike to think of any possible linkage between the blowing up of his donkeyship and what happened to Keyes, guarding the rock-fragment that was too valuable to be left unwatched. He’d thrust the suspicion away from his own mind as well as he could, but it was back.

  The drive of the lifeboat began its moaning, humming sound. The boat surged ahead. He set the controls. He watched the radar screen, again working. He listened to the speaker over his head. Nike stood just behind him. He stood still, watching and listening, his hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching because he was very much afraid of what he was going to find out. He was fairly confident of his astrogation, but he didn’t like to think of what it might lead him to.

  Presently, at the very utmost limit of the radar’s range, there was the beginning of an indication of something solid. Dunne swung the lifeboat in that exaggerated fashion needed for a change of course in space.

  “Is that it?” asked Nike anxiously.

  “Perhaps,” said Dunne.

  His tone was unconsciously cold. The birdlike twittering he’d heard was unnatural. It was wrong. Somebody knew where Keyes was. That last, alone, could add up to disaster. Dunne smelled disaster. Something was wrong. Very wrong!

  The lifeboat moved on, pointing on a course that seemed to have no connection with the direction of its motion. But the radar image began to take recognizable shape. There was still nothing to be seen out the viewports. That was merely pure golden haze. But the radar said that the lifeboat was moving toward something solid. Then it said toward something large. Then it said something near.

  “It’s our rock, I think,” said Dunne quietly. He spoke into the communicator’s transmitter. “Keyes?”

  There was no answer. He spoke again. Then he fell silent until the featureless haze ahead began to show a formless darkening at one particular spot. Then he said, very carefully, “I don’t like this, Nike. Watch, will you? I’m going to get into my space-suit.”

  He went back. Nike, her heart in her throat, watched ahead while she heard Dunne getting into the suit which allowed him to work and move outside of the ship in emptiness. The last time, he’d stood in an airlock door and fired bazooka shells at donkeyships that trailed him. Now—

  The dimness took shape. Nike said tensely, “We’re very close!”

  Dunne came waddling into the control room, working himself swiftly into his space-suit, He reversed the lifeboat’s drive. The small space-vessel came to an almost complete stop only fifty yards or so from a mass of stony stuff many times the volume of the lifeboat. It was seventy feet high—“high” being the longest dimension of any object in space where there was no up or down. It was totally irregular in form. There were painted letters and numbers on it. Its mineral nature was obvious. The lifeboat drifted very, very slowly toward it.

  “Aren’t you going to call again?” asked Nike anxiously.

  “There are detectors,” said Dunne. “They should tell him we’re here.”

  His voice was unnatural. This was wrong. It was very wrong. It was appalling.

  The big, irregularly shaped lump of stone turned slowly in emptiness. There was a slash of gray along one side. It was that friable matrix material in which abyssal crystals were always found. The stony mass turned further. There was a bubble—a fifteen-foot dome of plastic, welded by its own nature to a hollow part of the stony surface. Inside it there were objects. A small-capacity air-freshener. Oxygen tanks. Mining equipment. A sleeping bag with its light-hood that allowed a man to provide himself with darkness to sleep in, even in a bubble in the Rings. There was something inside the sleeping bag, but the hood was pulled up.

  “There he is!” said Nike, her voice trembling. “In the sleeping bag! See? He’s asleep!”

  Dunne didn’t recognize his own voice. “I’m afraid not,” he said harshly. “It’s your brother, yes. But—he wouldn’t be asleep. No. He’s not asleep.”

  He wasn’t. He was dead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dunne anchored the lifeboat to a projecting knob of faceted stone, casting a loop from the airlock door with a spaceman’s—specifically, a space-miner’s—trick of getting the loop into existence and then floating it to the thing to be gripped. It caught, and he gently brought the lifeboat close. He knotted the rope and went back into the lifeboat. Nike waited there, totally pale.

  “Listen to me!” said Dunne sternly. “I’m going to see what’s happened. You stay here! You can listen. If you hear a drive or more of those twitterings—I’ll be back! I’ll hear it too in my headphones. But you stay here. Leave the lock-door alone. You can watch through the viewports, but don’t do anything. Not anything!”

  She nodded, watching his expression with something of desperation in her own.

  “Do you think he—”

  “I don’t think anything yet,” said Dunne. “He should have heard us arrive. There was plenty of oxygen. I’ve got to find out what’s wrong.”

  He went into the airlock again and checked—as always—the sealing of his helmet to the vacuum-suit. The suit ballooned out as the airlock pumped empty. There’d been much trouble with space-suits in the early days, when men tried to use full-pressure air in them. They swelled and the suit-arms tended to swing out widely, so that a man in a vacuum-suit was spread-eagled by the air pressure inside. He was like a man-shaped toy balloon, incapable of any purposeful motion. But with only three pounds pressure of oxygen instead of fifteen of oxygen-nitrogen mixture, all suits were manageable. Dunne checked his steering-jet—not to be used if it was possible to avoid it. He checked his belt-weapon. He fastened a lifeline. He went out of the lock, trailing the line behind him.

  With no gravity he couldn’t very well walk. So he crawled toward the bubble, clutching an extrusion of its surface, testing it, and then trusting to it while he reached for another handhold. This was abyssal rock; and where the lifeboat was nearest, it had slowly crystalized under unthinkable pressure. The stone crystals were six to ten inches in length. The rock. as a mass was an intricately interlaced agglomerate of such crystals, ranging through various shades of brown. They had sword-sharp points and edges. A man could rip his vacuum-suit on any of a hundred keen-edged projections in a crawl of a dozen feet.

  All about lay the sunlit mist. There was no solidity anywhere away from this rock and this spaceboat. The gaunt, glittering Ring-fragment and the lifeboat were the only things on which one could focus his eyes. They floated, rotating with enormous deliberation, linked together by a slender cord.

  Dunne reached the bubble. It had been established here to make room for those activities a donkeyship has no room for. There was much gray matrix to a very little crystal-stuff. Much matrix had to be crushed and sifted to recover the crystals it contained. When there was enough material to be worked, one set up a bubble. One brought the gray matrix into the bubble in sacks, and there crushed it and made a first cleaning of the crystals. When there were many tons of the friable gray stuff to be worked, a bubble was much more practical than taking it into a donkeyship.

  Dunne arrived at the bubble. He searched its interior with his eyes. He stayed outside.

  Nike watched from a viewpoint in the control room. Nothing changed inside the bubble. The sleeping bag did not stir. Nothing stirred. Dunne looked like a human fly creeping on something mysteriously suspended from nowhere, from which he could fall to infinity if he missed a single handhold.

  He pressed on the expanded plastic of the bubble. It push
ed in. It did not push out again when he took his hand away. Nike watched, uncomprehending. Dunne made further exploration, still not attempting to enter by the fragile-seeming metal frame and plastic doors which provided an airlock into the bubble. On the farther side of the bubble he halted. He did something Nike could not see. He crawled back to the airlock and entered it.

  Here his actions were extraordinary. He crawled around the inside edge of the bubble, where the dome came down to the rock and where nobody would ordinarily try to move. Still nothing moved, anywhere in the dome. He went around to the back of the sleeping bag, ignoring its motionless occupant.

  He backed away with an object in his hands. There were wires attached to it. He’d detached them from outside the bubble. Now he removed the wired object from within. But he did not touch the sleeping bag nor lift its hood until all of these preliminaries were completed.

  Now he lifted the hood and looked steadily down at what it had hidden. He replaced the hood. He went out of the airlock door, carrying the object from behind the sleeping bag.

  In emptiness, then, he threw it away from the rock and the lifeboat together. He drew his belt-weapon. When it was two hundred feet away he fired at it.

  The thing he’d brought away from the sleeping bag shattered itself to bits, with a monstrous blue-white flame of explosive. But there was no sound. There was no air to carry sound.

  Dunne went sombrely into the lifeboat. Nike faced him as the inner lock-door opened. His expression was that of angry, bitter grief when he took his space-helmet off.

  “We’re too late,” he said savagely. “Much too late.”

  “He’s—dead, then,” said Nike. She swallowed. She became even paler. “When you didn’t come back right away, I thought it was bad news. When you—exploded that thing… I knew.”