by Earl
“No, and the less, the better.”
l Harrington passed by the obvious defiance. “It has come to my notice that in the past five moon days, three claims of considerable importance were filed by both the U.S.R. and the M.M., those of the M.M. having the priority by some few hours.”
“Well . . .?” The whole demeanor of Pruma bespoke defiance.
“Doesn’t it seem odd in the face of your statement that mineralogists of our two worlds meet very seldomly, that they filed the same claims within hours of each other?”
“Why . . . you . . .” With an effort the Martian controlled his fiery temper. His voice held a world of hatred. “Kruno Harrington, you are insolent and suspicious and hardly worthy of any hospitality from me. I must ask that you forbear asking questions of that sort.” Harrington was stumped. His authority, though calling for a lot of respect and attention, was incapable of forcing a citizen of the M.M. to answer personal questions. Then there was his chief’s warning ringing in his ears, “if ever you used diplomacy before, be sure to handle it with gloves in this matter.” He could easily see that Sul Minto Pruma was not easily intimidated by the badge that he wore on his arm, and that things could be brought to the pass of open enmity by injudicious policy.
If I only had something on him, some little thing, I could get past his guard,” Harrington thought to himself. “As it is . . .”
“I beg your humble pardon, Kruno Pruma,” he said aloud, “no doubt there is just the laws of coincidence to explain the filing of those disputed applications. In any case, that is said and done. I come primarily to find some trace of Harvey Wood. As long as you have assured me he has not been here, it must be that he died out in the vacuum.”
“A very logical conclusion,” agreed the Martian, somewhat mollified by the retreat of the earthman. “I lose certain of my men every moon day, and I go not to Kruno Soderstrom and ask him ‘did so and so come here, on your word of honor?’ ”
Harrington, calm of face, inwardly raged at the choice sarcasm in the “damned Ginzie’s” voice and words.
“Yes, this is a dangerous game you are playing,” Harrington returned. As Pruma looked at him, anger clouding his face again, he continued, “Moon mining is about the most dangerous game of life, not so, Kruno Pruma?”
The Martian calmed himself although suspicion was written all over his face. “You are right, earthman, if it weren’t for the big pay, it wouldn’t be worth the risk.”
“May I, as a matter of personal interest, look about your place?” Harrington’s voice was as guileless as that of a child.
Pruma seemed to hover between uncertainty and suspicion. It being a personal request, he could refuse without violating the respect due to an S.I.S. agent on matters of business. But something decided the Martian to grant the whim of the earthman; perhaps it was in atonement for his ill-graced welcoming; but Richard could not for one minute acknowledge that. “Ginzie” and “trickery were one and the same words to him.
“Yes . . . I’ll have one of my men conduct you around.”
An hour later, Harrington stepped into Overseer Pruma’s office to say goodbye, thanked him for his courtesy, and went to the air lock. He hastily looked around the room, saw that no one was in it, and took his suit from its hook. Minutely he examined the fabric, inch by inch. Then he looked over the helmet. When he came to the oxygen tanks in back, he stopped short and whistled softly.
Just as he had suspected, the unit for breathing had been tampered with. One of the slender metal tubes which carried the precious oxygen to the helmet bore the marks of a pliers. It was hardly noticeable except at close range. The tube had been bent slightly out and then bent back again to its original position so that it was apparently untouched. But Harrington knew that even that slight bending had weakened the metal enough so that the terrific cold of the outside would snap it and end the wearer’s life in an instant. Then Pruma was afraid of him! There must be something he feared would be disclosed by the S.I.S. agent! Harrington exulted momentarily. He had something to go by!
But the needs of the moment chased all other thought from his mind. Looking up and down the rack of suits, he was surprised . . . very pleasantly . . . to see another suit of Tellurian make and size hanging there. Hastily he plucked it down, gave it a quick examination, and grinned satisfied. From his old suit he carefully unscrewed the damaged oxygen line from the helmet and the tank, and deposited it in a pocket of his uniform. Precious burden to him! In a few more minutes he had walked out of Kranto and headed for Station No. 7.
As he walked rapidly along the sands of the Mare which stretched between the stations, he wondered how it came that an earthman’s suit hung in Kranto. He caught his breath as he thought of one possibility. It could be Harvey Wood’s! Lucky thing for him to have found it because it saved him the necessity of walking back to Station No. 7 in a Martian suit, much too big, and distasteful to the delicacy of Harrington’s regard for things Martian. He would have considered that a taint long to blot his conscience, for with his numerous contacts with the Martians, he had never found anything he liked about them. They were a tribe of “damned Ginzies” to him, from the highest down to the lowest, except for an occasional south country Martian who actually partook of some humanity in Richard’s critical mind.
CHAPTER IV
A Second Visit
l It was in the early hours of morning as reckoned by earth time, although on the moon the sun had hardly moved since Harrington had arrived, that the lone wanderer entered the air locks of Station No. 7 and betook himself straight to bed. He sauntered into Soderstrom’s office sometime before the noon meal.
After the morning greetings, the overseer opened the conversation.
“I hope that in spite of my prejudices to the contrary, you had a pleasant visit at Kranto?”
“Quite pleasant,” assured the S.I.S. agent and His voice betrayed to Soderstrom not the slightest hint of prevarication.
“Did you . . . find out anything?
“Nothing much. Apparently Harvey Wood never entered Kranto. His body, I suppose, lies somewhere out in the vacuum.”
Soderstrom nodded eagerly. “I was convinced of that from the first.” He turned to the papers on his desk.
If you will pardon me for a while, Mr. Harrington, I have some imperative matters to attend to at present. You will have dinner with me?”
Harrington nodded aquiescence, thanked the overseer and left. It lacked yet two hours of noon, and he decided to pay his space ship a visit. He found it intact, air gauges registering, internal heat at the minimum it was maintained when unoccupied. Inside he took off the suit, rummaged around in his private belongings for some minutes, and again stepped out into the vacuum. He paused a moment to look fondly at his trim little cleaver of the ether. Bertha stood out in black lettering on either side. “Little Bertha” he affectionately called her, and indeed sometimes he drove her at lightning speed through space, when it pleased him to compare her to a cannonball, although no cannonball had ever gone as fast as the ship.
He arrived back just in time for the noon meal, when everyone in Station No. 7 and, in fact, on the moon (excepting, of course, the Martians, who had different periods) was his own master for two hours.
The overseer and his guest had dinner in the former’s private quarters. In three years’ time, Soderstrom had managed to equip his rooms with those things which make earthly habitations dear to a human. He displayed a good deal of artistic taste in the variety and placement of the pictures, figurines, statuettes, and artificial flowers. The S.I.S. man gazed approvingly around and complimented the other on his cozy suite.
“One could easily forget he is on the moon in these rooms, Mr. Soderstrom.”
The jovial face of the overseer broke into a genuine smile of pleasure. “Thank you . . . immensely . . . Mr. Harrington. I have tried to make my stay here as pleasant as I could so that I could be in the peaceful frame of mind necessary to good work, as the rulebook of the socialistic d
octrine of lifework prescribes as essential.”
Harrington’s lips curled slightly at the reference to the rules of socialism. His natural love of freedom often prompted him to hold the strict bonds of socialism in slight contempt. His advanced thought, on the other hand, curbed this impatience at a government so exacting for he realized that it was far better than the old capitalistic system of cut-throat competition in a world of so many beings. Harrington had stored away in his active brain his idea of a perfect world, as near as it was possible to attain, as far above socialism as that system was above capitalism. Many and many a time he sighed as he realized that he would never live to see or find such a world where its citizens were as free as the air they breathed.
Harrington ate heartily of the well-laden table of foods, limited in variety, but unlimited in quantity. He was surprised to see fresh vegetables before him. Soderstrom proudly explained that they had the most perfect refrigerators right there on the moon. “We simply store the fresh vegetables and meats in a chamber connected to the outside vacuum and they are preserved indefinitely!” Richard nodded admiringly.
Their appetites appeased, the two men lounged on the luxurious divan and smoked the harmless cigars of that period, free from all injurious ingredients.
Mr. Soderstrom, how many men are here in Station No. 7?”
“Of the men alone there are 146 at present, not counting you and Harvey Wood. Then there are 58 women.” Soderstrom, in trivial conversation, was a perfect host; his voice was unaffectedly friendly and melodious.
“How many men go out in the vacuum each day to the different mines in those big sealed mobiles?”
“There is a force of about 50 men that spends all its time right here in Station No. 7. They are the assayers, ore-sorters, cooks, repair men, etc. The rest are the true miners and labor out in the vacuum.”
Harrington seemed puzzled about something. “Would you mind describing in full the process of mining on the moon, from filing the application to shipping the ore?”
“Glad to,” smiled the genial overseer, relieved that the S.I.S. man was in a mood for conversation not pertaining to his commission. “First of all, a mineralogist scouts around quite haphazardly till he comes upon what to his experienced eye is likely-looking terrain, or rather, lurrain. He picks up, or chops up, samples, takes a careful measurement of the latitude and longitude by the sun or by the stars if it is night, and returns to his station. The samples are turned over to the assayer, who reports the assay to me.
“If the ore proves rich enough in metal of value, the official application is sent to the Moon Mines Council. When this comes back with the Council’s seal, work is begun on the claim. Machinery is sent over there in due time, set up, and digging started.
“Once the set up is complete, two men can handle the work. At present Station No. 7 is working 45 claims within a radius of 200 miles. Station No. 26, on the other side of the moon just about, which, by the way, is no different than this side,” Harrington smiled, “operates 122 claims, an all time record. The metal most exploited is platinum, with rhodium a close second.”
l “Do you know that a short hundred or so years ago platinum was more valuable than gold?”
Harrington arched his eyebrows in surprise. Platinum, which was hardly as valuable as tin, pound for pound, was at one time more valuable than gold? How commodities changed!
“Several of the stations also have claims containing that wonderful beryllium.” The latter metal at that time was just coming into its own as the most useful of all the metals. “The ores are brought to the station, then, and here the force of graders sort out the various types and kinds, label them, and pack them for shipment.”
“Simple enough except that the vacuum outside asserts its independence once in a while and takes away a life, eh, Mr. Soderstrom?” Harrington was watching his face.
“Yes . . . that is an ever present danger. Despite our constant inspection of suits to see that they are in perfect condition, every once in a while a man is reported missing. Sometimes we find the body, frozen, puffed out, blotched with lumped blood; usually we don’t.” Soderstrom shuddered slightly in remembrance of such sights. “Once, four years ago, when I was assayer at Station No. 14, a ground mobile was found with seven dead men in it. A meteorite had pierced it.”
The listener shook his head in sympathy. He ruminated for awhile.
“Where do the returning ore-carriers and those going out enter this station? As I come to think of it, I haven’t yet seen any in motion.”
“There is another lock to our left from here, the back door, it may be called, which is much larger than the one you came through. It easily accommodates the wide ground mobiles. A force of men working a claim usually stays out two weeks; they are fully stocked for longer than that period of time with oxygen and food and water. Our water, incidently, comes from earth, there being none in this dried up rock called the moon. The men out mining constantly work in suits except at mealtimes and rest periods, when they enter the big mobiles, which are miniature apartment houses.”
“Your machinery is all rocket-driven, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Water power, wind power, steam power, gasoline power are things unknown, in fact, impossible on the moon.”
“Have you heard of the new invention deriving its energy from the heat rays of the sun, transforming them directly to electrical energy?”
“Rumors of it have reached me here,” nodded the overseer eagerly. “Such a contrivance would be ideally suited to the moon where the rays of the sun beat down with undiminished intensity, as does not obtain on earth. I hope the day comes they will perfect the invention.”
“Speaking of sun rays and such, what protection have you miners from the harmful cosmic rays which must be constantly deluging you here on the airless moon? You know, we space rovers take our ‘cosmo-pills’ regularly as soon as we leave earth to build up resistance to the rays.”
“Why . . . we go you one better here, Mr. Harrington,” chuckled the overseer. “Our food is always impregnated with the ‘cosmo-powder’ so that we need have no fear on that score.”
Harrington nodded his head approvingly. Trust the intelligence of the Bureau of Mining back on earth to think of everything. The unfaltering accuracy of the government of socialistic Telluria, however distasteful its mastership was to Harrington, always elicited his earnest admiration. A glance at the clock brought him to his feet.
“Well, Mr. Soderstrom, duty intrudes in our little chat. I am going over to Harvey Wood’s burial ground, if it is that, and look around there. I can’t report back to my chief unless I can honestly say I am certain how he died . . . and where he died.”
“As you choose,” agreed the overseer resignedly, “But please be careful, as much for my sake as for your own, if you climb any hills or mountains. The slightest mark or dent may ultimately let the vacuum in. I don’t want the whole S.I.S. here inquiring why a certain Richard Harrington died on the moon, as I’ve heard happens when one of your number meets an untimely death.” He looked seriously at the other as he spoke. “That absolute cold and vacuum is like a crouching lion and his equally vicious mate, watching an unwary victim.”
Harrington hastened to assure that he would use all precaution, reminding Soderstrom that it was never the policy or failing of the S.I.S. to be careless or rash.
In fifteen minutes Harrington stepped outside the last seal into the blazing sunlight. Hardly had the door closed when he extracted a small round box from his outer pocket with his gauntleted hand and held it up to his helmet as he walked back and forth at right angles to the path between Station No. 7 and Kranto. The needle was motionless. Harrington stuck it back into his pocket. Soderstrom was not connected with Sul Minto Pruma by low-wave radio, at least not at present. Richard hastened to the “burial ground of Harvey Wood,” as he had told Soderstrom. But he didn’t head in the direction of the Riphaean Mountains; he headed straight for Kranto.
A second time he entered the o
ffice of the Martian overseer. He was out at the moment and the attendant gruffly asked him to sit down and wait. Harrington complied, but as the door closed behind the Martian, he sprang up, jumped over to the desk, and hastily opened drawer after drawer, peering hurriedly at the contents of each. With a smothered cry of triumph, he pulled a pliers out of the last drawer, placed them in his coat pocket and sat down. He loosened his gun in its holster, while he kept an eye on the door, and then assumed an indolent pose.
When Pruma entered, he saw a languid earthman with a peaceful look on his face lolling in the chair.
“Sun shine upon you, Kruno Pruma,” spoke the visitor as the Martian haughtily stood before him.
“Fortune favor you.” He glowered at his guest. “You are back again. What suspicion brings you this time?”
“Your kind welcome to my previous visit whetted my appetite for more of Martian hospitality,” answered Harrington bitingly.
“Bah!” Pruma turned his back and seated himself at his desk. “You are pleased to be humorous . . . but your humor is as out of place as you are, Kruno Harrington.”
“Kruno Pruma,” Harrington’s voice had lost its silky touch. It sparkled with flint and determination. “Harvey Wood is within Kranto, alive or dead! I have come to rescue him if alive, avenge him if dead!”
The Martian half arose in furious anger . . . and then sank back in his seat with jaw agape as he saw what Harrington held up in his hand. He saw a slender metal tube and a pair of pliers.
“You recognize these pliers. They are yours. You ought to recognize this tube, you bent it with the pliers. See . . .?” Harrington showed how the jaws of the pliers fitted into the corrugations on the tube. He turned a stern face on the Martian. “Pruma, you have made a mistake. You didn’t expect to see me alive. You have attempted the life of an agent of the S.I.S. Do you, realize what that means?”
