In a swift foray, he and Dunneldeen swooped down to the U.S. Mint. They had made very sure there were no ground cars or planes as the afternoon faded. They landed in a park in the cover of giant trees and sped on silent feet to the Mint.
The place was still. It had been scouted before, but once more they went over it just in case the Psychlos had missed a vault. Inside they found nothing.
They lingered outside in the darkness. Dunneldeen amused himself by prying into the mounds that had once been cars, wondering what they looked like in the days when they could run. Jonnie was thinking about the views Terl had shown him. He went around to the back and played a mine lamp on the ground so it would reflect a dim light up.
Shortly, he was looking at the largest mound. It came to him that this must be the tank the battle plane had destroyed. The nonexistent tank.
He lifted some turf—blown sand and grass had overlaid it. He cut the turf very carefully so it could be laid back and leave no sign of disturbance. The thing wasn’t an ordinary car. It was so thickly built that it had endured the rust of time. The metal was twisted where it had burned out. He had never seen anything like this. It had a slot one might fire out of, but that would be its closest resemblance to a tank. The window frames had bars over them, a bit like a cage. What was this thing? He pried a section of metal aside with a mine crowbar and got inside. The interior had been blackened by fire and floor plates had warped. He pried up a floor plate.
Half a minute later, a smiling Jonnie was making a bird call and beckoning for Dunneldeen. He took the Scot inside.
As one might piece together, when the Psychlo attack came, the U.S. Mint had sought to evacuate its vaults.
GOLD! How much?
In extremely heavy ingots, there it had lain neatly for a thousand years. Overlooked, for everyone thought it was a tank.
They estimated its weight with excited heftings. And then their excitement dimmed.
“It’s less than a tenth of a ton,” said Dunneldeen. “Would Terl be satisfied with that?”
Jonnie didn’t think so. In fact he knew Terl wouldn’t. It was also far less than suited their own project.
“A tenth of a loaf is better than none,” said Dunneldeen.
They packed the two hundred pounds of gold in the plane and put the “tank” back together and scattered snow on it and around it to cover tracks.
They now had about three hundred pounds in gold.
They needed a ton.
It was enough to make one take up alchemy, the mythical conversion of lead to gold, said the historian when they returned. And in fact he spent hours that night fruitlessly studying just that.
The parson made a visit to Jonnie’s village to prepare the people for the possibility of withdrawal into the old base. He told Jonnie his Aunt Ellen sent her love and for him to be very careful in the wild places he went. Jonnie detected the parson was sweet on Aunt Ellen and privately wished him luck.
They felt bad they couldn’t warn other peoples on this planet.
If they failed, man might indeed become extinct.
8
The shift that went on duty at the end of Day 86 began like any other shift. The vein had been narrowing lately—pinching out. They tried not to be hopeful, but shift ends, when they had not found the pocket yet, were always a bitter disappointment.
Dunneldeen, recovered from the cave-in, was operating a chattering spade bit, sweat streaming off him in the closed, hot confines of the drift. He had a sudden illusion that a drop of sweat had turned color as it dropped into his eye. He switched off the spade bit to clear his vision. He looked again in front of him through the swirling smoke and white dust. The illusion was still there.
But it wasn’t an illusion!
A single round spot of glowing yellow marked the shining white vein.
He put the spade bit against it and turned it on. The chattering edge bit further. He shut it off and walked closer to the vein.
He stood stock-still and then let out a blasting whistle to stop the shift.
He pointed. And then bedlam broke loose!
It was gold!
They had finally hit the second pocket!
The shift abruptly left off shouting and every bit and drill they had down there began to cut into the vein.
The wire gold began to blossom against the white.
An excited call went to the duty watch in town, and in a handful of minutes they had the third shift helping them.
The town went wild.
Every Scot and even two of the old widows helped form a human bucket line out of the mine; weighing, sacking, and loading bag after bag of mixed wire gold and quartz. To the devil with the odd bits of rock. The gold was like twisted springs and small cages of gleaming yellow.
Before sunset on Day 88 they had the whole pocket out.
Sixteen hundred forty-seven pounds, it weighed out, subtracting the rock.
Adding to that the 306 pounds they already had, it made one 1953 pounds.
It was short of a ton but it would have to do.
The project was on its way!
They began to oil their assault rifles.
The parson prayed long and earnestly for their success. There were no parallels for odds such as these.
9
Terl waited, trying to be casual, in front of the U.S. Mint. It was two hours after sunset on Day 89. It was good and dark; there would be no moon these next three nights.
The weather on this cursed planet was on the edge of spring. There had already been a warm day or two. All the snow was gone. It was reasonably warm tonight and he had been prepared to wait. Animals were pretty stupid about time.
He was leaning against a flatbed truck he had driven in from the base. It was a shabby relic, not even on the inventory. It wouldn’t be missed. He had prepared it carefully.
But, right on time, there were the animals.
With only a pinpoint of light, pointed at the ground, their vehicle rolled up and stopped a few feet from Terl.
It was heavily laden. So they had kept their part of the bargain after all. Yes, animals certainly were stupid.
There were three man-things in the cab. But Terl couldn’t restrain his eagerness. He walked over to the flatbed and began to poke talons and a light into the sacks. Wire gold! Unrefined, unmelted, a bit of the white quartz clinging . . . no, here were some melted chunks.
He remembered himself and stood back and played a radiation detector on the sacks. Clean.
He estimated the load by a practiced glance at the pistons that supported the body over the driving mechanism. Allowing for the slight weight of the man-things—maybe four hundred pounds—and for the debris, he must have about nineteen hundred pounds here. Recent trade papers told him that gold in its scarcity at home had soared to 8,321 Galactic credits an ounce. This load was worth about . . . he was very good at figures in his head . . . about C189,718,800.00. Several dozen fortunes!
Wealth and power!
He felt very expansive.
The animals hadn’t gotten out of the cab. Terl went to the side of it and flashed a subdued light into it. These fellows all had black beards!
Actually, it was Dunneldeen, Dwight and another Scot.
Terl went through a pantomime seeking to ask where the animal Jonnie was.
The pantomime might or might not have been comprehensible, but Dwight, who spoke Psychlo, knew exactly what was meant. Purposely speaking in broken Psychlo, Dwight said, “Jonnie not can come. Him have accident. Him hurt foot. He say we come. Much apology.”
Terl was a bit taken aback by the information. It upset his planning. But yes, in the recon drone pictures this afternoon he had noticed an overturned blade scraper at the site and had seen no sign of the blond-bearded Jonnie, who for months had always been visible. Well, no matter. It didn’t upset much. It just delayed getting rid of the females. A hurt foot wouldn’t stop that animal’s “psychic powers” if he touched the females ahead of time. And if aroused, they
could cause mischief. No mischief that he, Terl, couldn’t handle.
“We help transfer sacks to other truck,” said Dwight.
Terl had never intended that. “No,” he said, making wide explicit motions—rather hard to see in the dark—“we just swap trucks. You get it? I keep your truck. You take this truck.”
The three Scots piled out of the huge cab of the Psychlo truck they had brought and got into Terl’s.
Dunneldeen took the controls. He started the motors and made a wide sweep in the street, turning back the way they had come.
Terl stood with a waiting smile upon his mouthbones.
The truck went up to the corner and turned into a side street, out of sight of Terl.
Dunneldeen hastily punched in the numbers to keep it going down the slope.
He looked sideways to make sure Dwight and the other Scot had the door open.
“Go!” he barked.
The other two dove out the door.
Dunneldeen shot his own door open and in a rolled ball hit the soft turf of the street.
He glanced back. The other two were up and running for cover, a pair of darker blurs in the dark.
He yanked a heat-detector shield out of his belt and began to run to an alley. He made it.
The flatbed went on down the street for another hundred yards.
It exploded with a battering, violent concussion that blew in the buildings on both sides of the street.
Back at the gold-laden flatbed, Terl chuckled. He could hear the patter of pieces beginning to hit as they returned to earth for blocks around. There was a roaring sigh as some buildings collapsed. He was pleased. He would have been more pleased if the animal had been in it. He didn’t have to go and look. He wouldn’t have found anything anyway. The distance-fused demolition charge had been placed under the cab seats.
Terl got in the laden truck and drove to the smelter he had rigged.
He had done number five of seven alternate, possible actions in booby-trapping and sending the truck back. It had been dicey precalculating the options.
The teams in antiheat capes drew back from the surrounding buildings. They collected Dunneldeen and the other two and went off for stage two. Would they be this fortunate next time? Dicey indeed outguessing a mad Psychlo.
10
The workroom in the ancient smelter had been all set up by Terl. The windows had been shuttered and the doors made snug. The only piece of equipment of the original man-setup that he was using was the huge metal cauldron in the middle of the floor, and this too he had reworked, surrounding it with Psychlo speed heaters.
Tools, molds and molecular sprays were all laid out.
The marking equipment was that of the morgue down at the compound.
Terl parked the flatbed in front of the unlighted door and with practically no effort at all carried in ore sacks six or eight at a time and emptied them into the cauldron.
He hid the flatbed, came in and barred the door, and checked to see that all the shutters were in place. He did not notice a newly drilled hole in one. He turned on the portable lights.
With practiced ease he darted the point of a probe around the interior to make sure there were no bugs or button cameras. Satisfied, he laid the equipment aside.
The instant it clattered to the bench, an unseen hand unfastened an ancient ventilator door and placed two button cameras in advantageous positions. The ventilator door, well oiled, was shut again. A bit of dust, dislodged in the action, drifted down across a lamp beam.
Terl looked up. Rats, he thought. Always rats in these buildings.
He turned on the speed heaters of the cauldron and the wire gold and lumps began to settle down and shrink. Bubbles began to form. One had to be careful not to overheat gold; it went into gaseous form and much could be lost in vapors. The roof beams of this old smelter must be saturated in gold gas that had recondensed. He watched the thermometers carefully.
The yellow orange content of the cauldron went liquid and he turned the heaters to “maintain.”
The molds were all laid out. They were for coffin lids ordinarily used in manufacture, for coffins were a local product, made in the shops of the compound.
Terl held a huge ladle in mittened paws and began to transfer liquid gold into the first lid mold.
Two hundred pounds of gold per coffin. Ten coffin lids. He worked fast and expertly, taking care to spill none. The hiss of the molten metal striking the molds was pleasant to his earbones.
How easy all this was! The company insisted on lead coffins. Now and then an employee died in a radiation accident on some far planet, and after some messy experiences such as coffins falling apart in transshipment or creating minor accidents with radiation, the company, fifty or sixty thousand years ago, had laid down exact rules.
Lead was a glut on the market on Psychlo. They had lots of that. They also had plenty of iron and copper and chrome. What were scarce were gold, bauxite, molybdenum and several other metals. And what was absent, thank the evil gods, was uranium and all its family of ores. So the coffins were always made of lead, stiffened up with an alloy or two such as bismuth.
He only had to make lids. There were stacks and stacks of coffins in the morgue. One of the reasons he had to be secretive was that it would look a bit silly for him to be making more coffins and bringing them in.
Presently he had nine lid molds full. It was a bit tricky on the tenth. The cauldron was down to the bottom and a residue of rock was mixed in the dregs.
He had to be speedy with all this, for it had to be done before dawn. He speed-chilled the dregs and dumped in a demijohn of acid to dissolve the rock and sediment left. Then he speed-warmed it again. The clouds of boiling acid looked good to him. He was in a breathe-mask, so who cared. He spooned the dissolved dregs out and reheated the gold.
By scraping very carefully, he was able to get the last lid fairly full. He made up the weight with a bit of melted lead.
While the lid molds cooled, he cleaned up the cauldron and ladle and made sure there were no splatters on the floor.
The lids weren’t cooling fast enough and he put a portable fan to them. He gingerly tapped one. Good!
With care he tapped the lids out of the molds and laid them on a bench. He got out a molecular spray and fed a lead-bismuth rod into it and began to paint the gold with a lead-bismuth covering. About seven lead-bismuth rods later he had ten leadlike coffin lids.
He took off his mittens and gathered up the marking equipment that usually stayed in the morgue. He pulled a list from his pocket.
With great neatness, he marked ten names, company worker serial numbers, and dates of death on the lids.
It had taken some trouble getting ten bodies. There were the three sentries blown up by the exploding gun. There was Numph. There was Jayed, blast him. But a mine safety program being run over in medical had kept casualties down from normal, and there had been only three mine deaths since the last semiannual firing. This left Terl two bodies short.
One he had acquired by casually dropping a blasting cap into a shot hole before they tamped in the explosive. He had thought to get two or three with this but he only got the explosives expert.
The other one had been rather involved. He had loosened the steering bar of a tri-wheeler. The things were quite high-speed and ran around lots of obstacles. But he had had to wait three boring days until it finally spilled and killed the admin personnel riding it.
So he had his ten names.
He punched them into the soft metal of the lids with the marker. He inspected them. Two showed gold through and that would not do. He got out his molecular spray and sprayed lead-bismuth over them. Fine.
He made a test with a claw point. The covering didn’t scratch. It would probably also stand up to the handling of fork trucks.
He then took a marker and made a small X, hard to see unless you looked for it, on the lower left-hand corner of each lid.
Time was getting on. He rapidly scooped up his equipm
ent and disengaged the speed heater from the cauldron. He looked around. He had everything.
He turned out the lights, pulled the truck in front of the door, and loaded two or three lids at a time. He dumped the equipment on it.
He went back in, took a bag of dust and scattered it around the room, flashed his lamp about one more time to make sure, closed the doors, and happily drove off.
In the smelter, the ventilator opened and the button cameras were retrieved with a quick hand. The hole in the shutter was repaired.
Terl drove rapidly to the compound. It was now very late but he had, as of recent weeks, made a practice of driving about the compound as though doing rounds and the sound of the motor would alert no one.
It was very dark.
He stopped at the morgue. Without lights he carried the ten lids inside. Then he drove the truck to the nearby scrap dump and dug the equipment into and under another pile of scrap.
He walked back to the morgue, closed the door, and turned on the lights. He probed the place for bugs.
He did not notice a small hole drilled through the thick wall or the button camera that appeared there right after his probe.
Terl lined up ten coffins from the stacks of empties. He took off their lids and dumped them back of the stack. He moved the ten around so they would be in position to be picked up by the forklifts on Day 92.
From the shelves he yanked down the ten bodies and dumped them with thuds into the coffins.
Jayed’s was the last one. “Jayed, you silly crunch, what a crap lousy I.B.I. agent you were. It ain’t smart, Jayed, to come in here worrying your betters. And what did you get for it?” Terl picked up the lid he’d made, checked the name. “A coffin and a grave burying you under the phony name of Snit.”
The glazed eyes seemed to regard him reproachfully.
“No, Jayed,” said Terl. “It will do no good to argue. None at all. Neither your murder, nor that of Numph, will ever be traced to me. Goodbye, Jayed!” He slammed the coffin lid down on Jayed.
He covered the rest of the coffins with his lids. He checked the small Xs.
Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 Page 40
