"If he warms up enough to get circulation in his limbs, he's likely to get blood poisoning," Liu warned.
Potter nodded. "Keep the temperature down in here," he said. A boyhood survivor of Atlantic winters in lobster boats on Earth's Narragansett Bay, Potter had seen plenty of frostbite. "If he does start getting circulation into those fingers and feet, the pain alone will kill him."
Potter crouched beside his frozen shipmate, trying to get something out of him. "Connolly," he called quietly. Brian, it's Emmett; where's Owens? Connolly, where's Miller?"
Connolly started babbling so suddenly Potter almost jumped. "Frank went to sleep in the ground car bay, I told him not to, I said there wasn't heat, not there, he went anyway, I woke up and went to check on him, but he'd locked the door, he said he wanted to be there because the door had a lock, and I had to go outside and go around to the ground car bay door, and it had swung open somehow and Frank didn't answer and I crawled in and he was solid, oh God he was solid as a statue, he was like marble, like blue marble, God forgive me I let him die in there I should have stopped him, should have ordered him, I-" Connolly's voice shattered into a keening wail, sobs wracked his chest, their sound filling the shuttle as the dying man brought his mined hands up to cover his face. In a moment, Connolly lapsed into unconsciousness.
Potter rose and went to the locker, removing apair of comically thick insulated mittens with a single index-finger sewn in. He pulled a rifle out as well, a flat-sided accelerator model with rocket shell projectiles for vacuum or zero-G environments.
"Bill," Potter said, "take another rifle. Mike, Mister Farrow, stay with Connolly and do what you can for him."
Potter and Liu left the second shuttle and crossed the landing zone toward the first. Byers' Star had slipped behind the Cat's Eye gas giant, and this side of the Cat's Eye moon was turning away from its parent world. Night was coming to their hemisphere, truenight, and the temperature was dropping to welcome it.
"Emmett, this guy is BuReloc." Liu was trying to reason with Potter, but still matching his stride.
"I don't give a rip."
They closed with the shuttle, its port list exposing the belly to them. Beyond the body of the craft they could see a man's legs moving about, and some kind of pole pacing them.
Too angry at the man's cheek to give any thought of ambush, Potter walked around the nose of the shuttle, and everything seemed to happen at once.
Miller was there, with something in his hands and a pile of broken, frozen dirt on the ground nearby. There were two graves, each marked with crosses. It was all Potter saw before Miller turned toward them, the long black cylinder pivoting before him.
Potter heard Liu say: "He has a gun." The Chief Engineer didn't shout, but simply raised his own accelerator rifle to his shoulder and fired in one smooth, practiced motion. Miller spun about and went down, and it was only then that Potter realized he had struck Liu's weapon down with his hand.
Liu snapped the weapon away and back-stepped. "Are you tying to get us killed?" Liu was almost snarling, but he recovered his composure instantly. "I–I'm sorry, Emmett; but he was-"
But Potter was going to the felled BuReloc agent. The 9mm rocket shell had hit him in the groin; Potter didn't need a great deal of imagination to think that Liu had been aiming for Miller's head until his blow had dropped the weapon's aim point. A little lower and to the left, Potter mused, and live or die, my friend, the Miller line would have ended with you.
Miller's teeth were squared in a rictus of agony, but Potter wasn't feeling especially charitable toward the man just now, and anyway he was curious about something. He turned Miller over, eliciting a gasp of pain from the victim, and lifted the cylinder Miller had been holding when he turned toward them. There was a foot-square metal plate at one end, and Potter held it up for Liu's inspection.
It was a shovel.
Miller sipped cautiously at the tea. His beard stubble was blue-black, and together with the dark circles under his eyes and sallowness of his skin, made him look as bad in shock as Connolly looked in the last stages of hypothermia. Miller was aboard the Shuttle Two, the warmth of the semi-operational craft bringing some color to his features and a lot of pain to his own near-frozen extremities.
"He wouldn't come inside," the BuReloc man said. "He seemed to think that I'd gone out and deliberately opened the bay door to the wind, to kill Owens."
"And did you?"
Miller sighed and lowered his head. "Christ, Potter, look at where my sleeping bag is; I'd have to crawl right over Connolly to get to the damn door. It must have come open in the night; probably hydraulic failure. Owens wouldn't feel it through his sleeping bag until the batteries gave out; his own body heat would have bled away after that."
Potter said nothing for a time, looking out the shuttle's forward window. "You buried Owens and Ike?"
Miller nodded. "Connolly wouldn't have anything to do with it. He wasn't going to let me do it, but they couldn't stay in here with us, and leaving them out might have drawn one of those big predators down from the hills. It wasn't a sentimental gesture."
Potter turned at that. "Maybe not. But plain markers, or none at all, might make me believe that. Crosses don't."
"That was kind of you," Farrow said quietly from the back. Miller shrugged, wincing at the pain any movement caused him.
Potter sighed. "Right." He turned to Farrow. "Tom, would you look after Brian and Mister Miller? We're going to see about getting Shuttle One flight ready."
Farrow moved to comply as Potter, Liu and Mike left the Shuttle once more.
"I'm telling you, Emmett," Liu began when they'd left Shuttle Two. "This BuReloc bastard is going to be the death of us all."
Potter said nothing except: "Wait and see."
Placing lifting jacks beneath the hull and leveling it off, they found that Shuttle One looked far worse off than it really was. The collapse of the landing leg into the sinkhole had severed half a dozen cables, but caused very little actual damage. Liu shook his head at the irony.
"If they'd had jacks and an arc welder, they'd have been back a week ago."
Shuttle One was operational and flight-ready in twenty hours, which suited Potter just fine, as the truenight of this hemisphere of the moon was now less than twelve hours away. During his watch, he made a cup of tea and sat beside the sleeping Miller, watching him.
"I think you're awake," Potter said quietly.
Miller opened his eyes. "What is it?"
Potter pursed his lips and studied the blank wall opposite. "Oh, many things. Like why was Ike up there in the hills with you at all?"
"He invited himself. I assumed he was told to keep an eye on me. Anyway, I didn't object to him coming along; traveling alone in these circumstances is idiotic."
"Yup. It's illegal, too."
"Right." Miller sneered.
Potter sipped his tea. "What did this predator look like?"
"Big. Shaggy mane. A lion with an attitude."
"Maybe like a bear?"
"Maybe. Probably. I don't know, I've never seen a bear."
Potter nodded. "And you drove it off with the rifle."
"That's right, so?"
Potter didn't answer right away, but only went back to his tea. "Do you hunt a lot, Mister Miller?"
"Not animals."
"I didn't think so. I used to hunt a lot when I was young. Sometimes, on Survey trips like this one, I'll stalk a local animal that looked game. In my years on Survey duty, I've seen a lot of strange animals that do a lot of strange things. But there's one thing I've never seen, Miller. Can you guess what it is?"
"Why spoil your fun?"
Potter smiled. "I've never seen an animal on an alien world that was afraid of man. They aren't capable of it, you see. How could they be? They've never seen a man before. Our scent is different, but not threatening, assuming they even smell us at all. They don't see us as a threat, they can't possibly. Like the American grimly bear. Do you have any idea how many
settlers it killed, and how many grizzlies the settlers had to kill, before the bears learned that man was dangerous? That man's rifles were dangerous? And grizzlies at least come from the same genetic soup as we do."
Potter shook his head. "Nope. You have to kill such animals, Miller. They don't scare. And it isn't because they're too stupid to be afraid of Man; they just don't realize how dangerous human beings can be."
There was a long silence, during which Potter finished his tea before concluding: "But I do."
Miller watched him silently.
"That was a clumsy lie, Miller. That contrived gesture of crosses for the graves was another." Potter stood up and tossed his cup away. "And they'll cost you. I'd have been happy to blow your head off for killing Ike, or just getting him killed. But this is better. I don't even care how or why you did it, now. I'm just looking forward to turning you over to the CoDo Bureau of Investigation for murder. Who knows? You might get lucky; maybe they'll sentence you to Involuntary Colonization and you'll get sent right back here." He went to the door and turned, silhouetted for a moment in the hatch. "Won't that be nice?"
"Potter," Miller said, "you know that won't happen. You can kill me and leave me here, and BuReloc will have your ass on general principle. You can take me back and turn me in, and BuReloc will squeeze the CBI, and I'll walk, and maybe BuReloc will have your ass anyway, just to make an example of tramp spacers who get delusions of moral grandeur."
"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, finally sure he could resist answering. "Yes. Worth billions for energy, weapons technology. . The moon's too valuable to use as a CoDo dumping ground, the deportees would 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 fuck-up 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 figured, 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 and 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, which craft's 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 dr
ift 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 backs 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 Indel-ink; 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 is that 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 alloy 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."
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