The Billion Dollar Boy

by Charles Sheffield

  "Nobody's sure. Some people say that what you are seeing is just a natural phenomenon, no more alive than a reef. I don't believe that. Look at it. Doesn't that sounder seem to act alive?"

  Shelby stared. It was easy to imagine a living creature, wriggling its way through the gas plumes that stretched between the reefs. Then he reminded himself of where he was. Although there was plenty of gas and dust around them by interstellar standards, this was still close to a perfect vacuum. A human would die in a minute here without a suit. How could anything make a home in the cold of open space?

  "The reefs are the absolute best places in the whole Cloud to find sounders," Grace went on in an excited whisper. "They're drawn to the reefs somehow, though no one has any idea how they can appear from nowhere or where they come from. We know that where there happen to be two reefs close together, chances of seeing one are better. That's why I wanted to bring you outside today, before the Harvest Moon travels on. It's exactly what I hoped we might find. Isn't it just great?"

  It was not the word Shelby would have chosen. The corry was still moving closer, and now more details were visible. The slow rotation of the object—creature?—in front of them allowed him to gain an idea of its size. The body trailed out in space, a tapering kilometers-long sack. He could see black lines along its length, and a curious pattern of individual white dots on the side that formed the shape of a running stick-figure man. At the front end the dark eye, which now he saw as an open octagonal maw, was huge. It could easily swallow up not only the corry, but the whole of the Harvest Moon.

  If the sounder felt inclined to take such an action, there was little that a corry—or a harvester—could do but try to run away. Shelby had learned during his first days on board the Harvest Moon that no ship in the Messina Cloud carried any form of weapon.

  "Grace, what is it?" he whispered. "And what is it doing?"

  "The rakehell crews call them space sounders. I thought at first that this one was feeding, because the regions close to the reefs seem to be their feeding grounds—and the mouth is open. Now I'm not so sure."

  "Feeding? On what?"

  "Gas, dust, whatever it feels like. I don't know."

  "Has a space sounder ever eaten a rakehell?"

  Grace snorted at him. "Of course not! Why would it eat a ship? Or a corry, either, if that's what you're worried about."

  "How do you know? Isn't it true that rakehells are lost all the time?"

  "Sure they are—when they go too near a reef and try to thread the eye, like the Witch of Agnesi did. I don't know if the sounders realize that our ships exist at all, but if they do they're not unfriendly to them. There have been cases where a sounder flew within a couple of kilometers of a rakehell, took a good look around as though it was sniffing for something it couldn't find, and then just flew away again. Even when the sounders are feeding they don't get upset by the presence of ships. They're completely harmless. Admit it, Shel, you were scared."

  "I still am." Shelby was staring at the sounder, which in his view had come uncomfortably close. He could see a fringe of glowing deep red around the gaping maw, and a steady dilation and contraction that gradually increased in amplitude. "How do you know it's harmless—harmless all the time?"

  "Oh, all right." Grace moved her helmet, turned her radio back on, and gestured to him to do the same. "I'll take us farther away if that will make you feel better. But I wish I knew what this one is doing." Grace pointed to the pulsating maw. "I've never heard a report of a sounder's mouth changing like that. When they feed they usually just get wider and wider."

  To Shelby's relief—the gaping mouth was becoming more and more active—the corry began to retreat from the sounder. The movement was imperceptible at first, but gradually he noticed a decrease in apparent size. He was just starting to breathe easy when the acceleration reversed direction.

  "Now what are you doing?" Since Grace was holding the controls, he felt quite helpless.

  "Look at it, Shel! We can't leave now. The rakehells have never reported anything like this. It's shrinking instead of growing."

  Shelby looked and realized that she was talking about the sounder's mouth. The great maw was closing in, tightening and puckering down to a small black pinpoint. No longer was it big enough to swallow the corry. As he watched it became smaller yet, shrinking until it was almost invisible.

  And the corry was flying in, closer and closer.

  "Grace! No nearer."

  "Oh, all right. But we really don't have to worry."

  As she spoke, he saw another change. "Grace! Back off!"

  A swelling was appearing on the sounder's octagonal front end, just as though the tiny mouth was now blowing a shimmering black bubble. As the corry retreated the bubble grew from nothing to become a sphere a couple of meters across. There was a sudden crackle of sound on the suit radio. The bubble separated from the sounder, to hang floating free in space.

  And then it was the sounder that had turned and was retreating from the corry. Shelby heard Grace's cry over his suit radio, "It's sounding!"

  Space was again thick-flecked with luminous sparks and filled with a diffuse blue fog. The sounder vanished into that glowing mist, while the same shreep-shreep-shreep that had announced the sounder's presence came again, fast diminishing in both pitch and volume. Within thirty seconds the sound became inaudible. Space returned to its usual clarity. Shelby stared and stared, but the sounder had vanished.

  Beside him, Grace was gasping with excitement. "That's an absolute first. I've heard plenty about sounders feeding, but never of one throwing up."

  "How do you know what it was doing?"

  "What else could it be? You saw it. Come on, it's safe to take a look now. The sounder's long gone."

  The corry crept forward, until the apex was almost in contact with the black sphere. Grace swung easily up the struts, until she was close enough to reach out and touch it.

  "Grace! Don't do that. It might be dangerous."

  "Phooey. I've never seen anything less dangerous in my whole life. Now, if you'd said valuable."

  She had her faceplate almost at the surface of the sphere. As Shelby watched, she reached out and plucked something off it. She held it high in triumph.

  "Here's something better than your stupid electronic fund transfers. Here's real wealth."

  Even in the dim glow of the Messina Dust Cloud, the fist-sized object that she held shimmered and sparkled with its own internal light.

  "You wanted to know what a Cauthen starfire looked like?" She thrust it toward him. "Well, now you do. Touch it!"

  Shelby reached out gingerly and took the object in his gloved hand. Even in low gravity it had a strange feeling of mass and solidity. He held it close and peered into the smooth surface, seeing hidden fires there.

  "It's beautiful!"

  "Beautiful? Shel, it's more than that. Ever since cloud exploration began, people have wondered where the Cauthen starfires and the shwartzgeld—the black glitter stuff it was stuck in—originated. Now we know. They're spit out by the sounders. And only we know."

  Shelby's instincts told him that she was wrong on the last point. Chances were the rakehell crews already knew everything that they had just learned, and a lot more. Anyone with an ounce of commercial sense and a pinch of paranoia would keep such knowledge a close secret.

  But there was no stopping Grace. "Shel," she went on. "Don't you see what this means? We're going to be rich!"

  In her excitement she put her arms out and hugged him. It was a curiously distant embrace, with two airtight, insulated suits between their bodies, but still Shelby pulled away. In his world, girls did not go around hugging boys.

  "I thought everyone on the Harvest Moon had a share of everything," he said to hide his embarrassment.

  "They do, and they'll do well from this. But it isn't like regular cargo. Cauthen starfires and shwartzgeld are covered by rakehell rules—finders' fifty. That means you and I get fifty percent between us, and everyone
shares the other half."

  "I didn't do anything to deserve a quarter share. And I'm already rich."

  "You still don't get it. I don't mean pretend rich, Shel, or little-bit rich. I mean real rich, rich rich. You and I are going to be rich-rich." She grabbed the starfire out of his hand and clutched it to her chest. "Ooh, it's so gorgeous. I don't mind selling the shwartzgeld, but I wish I could keep this forever."

  "Why don't you?"

  "How can I? It's worth more than my whole share. We'll have to sell it."

  "I'll buy it for you."

  "If only you could! Anyway, it's a sweet thought."

  She leaned forward and touched her suit visor to his. It seemed like a trivial thing, but it must have had some ritual meaning in the Cloud because he saw her cheeks blush to a fiery pink behind her faceplate. She pulled back and said hurriedly, "We really ought to bring the find on board, and start back. If we don't, Muv will begin to worry and then she'll get mad."

  "She'll probably be upset anyway, when she finds out where we went. I mean, when we show up with that"—he gestured to the great lump of shwartzgeld—"won't she know we could only have got it at the reefs?"

  "She won't be angry when she sees what we have. Shel, even if we don't collect another gram of transuranics this whole trip, the Harvest Moon will make a profit. Muv will be too pleased to worry about anything."

  Shelby, helping to maneuver on board the corry the great mass of black glitter, was not so sure. But when they got back to the harvester it seemed at first as though Grace was right. There was half an hour of excitement and rejoicing. Then Lana Trask took Grace off to her own quarters, for a quiet word.

  Shelby did not learn, then or ever, what passed between them. But when Grace came back she did not look like the girl who had found gold at the end of the rainbow.

  Chapter Eight

  IF GRACE imagined that her newfound wealth would change everything on the Harvest Moon, it did not take long to discover that she was wrong. The shwartzgeld was tucked safely away in a cargo hold. Grace was allowed to hold on to the starfire, at least until the harvester returned Sol-side and it was time to sell the cargo and pay everyone's share. She announced that she was going to carry the stone with her everywhere. She dismissed the rumor that starfires carried bad luck with them, unless you immediately took them Sol-side through the node network.

  "Stupid rakehell superstition," said Grace to Shelby. She sniffed and held the starfire close, so that she could peer into its changing depths. "What do rakehells know?"

  And after a long day in which Doobie and Grace and Shel talked endlessly of reefs and rakehells and sounders and starfires, and Scrimshander Limes looked on wide-eyed, and Uncle Thurgood snorted his disdain and disapproval of anything so far removed from traditional mining, the harvester and its crew went back to the routine but necessary business of tracking down and collecting stable transuranics.

  Shelby was at last permitted to make his first solo trip out in a corry. He set a complete circle of cable and collectors around the Harvest Moon, waited the necessary twelve hours, and retrieved the plastic bags. He tested one, slowly and carefully.

  Lana Trask had done it again. Every sack was filled to bursting with high-grade transuranics.

  Shelby cruised back to the harvester after a perfectly routine mission, high on his own success and ready to describe his feat in detail to anybody who would listen.

  Finding such a person was not so easy. Jilter Clute was working the cargo hold separators with assistance from Doobie and made it clear with a growled "Get lost" that regardless of teenage preferences there would be no interruptions. Lana Trask was off in isolation, sniffing the Cloud currents and plotting the harvester's final approach route to the Confluence.

  Confluence rendezvous was only six days away, and that event seemed to be much on Grace's mind also. Shelby could talk to her, but two or three vague replies were enough to convince him that she was not really listening.

  Logan was even worse. He lacked the right circuits and could not even simulate interest or enthusiasm for what Shelby was telling him.

  Desperation produces strange solutions. Shelby sought out Uncle Thurgood. He knew that Thurgood was working on his corry, brought into airdock to remove the layer of sticky tar that reflected his latest misadventures in the Messina Cloud. Thurgood was dressed in a dirty boiler suit, and his flushed face seemed redder than ever in its frame of white side-whiskers. Predictably, he was not alone. Shelby could hear the bellow even before he reached the entrance of the dock.

  "What are you telling me, that you think I might steal from you?" There was a furious scraping noise, of a strut suffering violence from file and rasper. "That you don't trust me?"

  "Never. I would never think any such thing." Scrimshander Limes was pawing ineffectually at the lattice with a blunt scraper.

  "Then what's this nonsense about taking your share separate from mine when we get Sol-side?"

  "Well." Scrimshander sounded bewildered but persistent. "I know you don't care to visit the Kuiper Belt mines. You have told me so yourself, many times. But I thought I might find them interesting. We will have more money than usual, you say, because of what Grace and Shelby brought back. So rather than trouble you, I thought I would just take some money from my share and use it to go to the Kuiper Belt by myself."

  "Never!" Thurgood Trask smashed at the birdcage lattice with his file. The struts twanged like harp strings, and bits of tar sprayed off and stuck to his face and bald head. "Scrimshander Limes, that is the most ridiculous, stupid, wrongheaded, addle-minded, pea-brained notion you've had yet. And you've had some doozies!"

  "You mean you would like to go with me?"

  "I do not mean that I would like to go with you! I mean I don't want you going off to the Kuiper Belt mines at all, alone or with me or with anyone else. I don't want you even thinking of going to the Kuiper Belt mines. There's a hundred better places for you and me to visit when we reach Sol-side."

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "Well, there's—let's see, I guess there's—" Thurgood, gazing wildly about him for inspiration, caught sight of Shelby standing at the entrance. "Now, what the devil are you doing here?"

  Shelby shook his head. "Nothing." Thurgood Trask in his present mood would be worse than no audience at all.

  "Then if you have nothing to do, don't do it here. We happen to have men working. "Thurgood, speckled black and filthy from head to foot, scowled horribly. "And we are engaged in a private conversation."

  "Sorry." Shelby retreated, as Thurgood Trask started in again on his companion.

  "Where to go, you ask? I'll tell you where we can go. Where he came from—Earth! How about that? If you want to go somewhere different when we're Sol-side, we'll go to Earth."

  "I suppose we can do that." Scrimshander sounded more puzzled than ever. "But Thurgood, you've said time and again what a terrible place Earth is."

  "When did I ever say any such thing? I never said any such thing!"

  But he had. Shelby, hurrying away, recalled Uncle Thurgood's fiery speeches on that very subject. "Earth? I'll tell you all about Earth!" He would emphasize the accursed word each time he mentioned it with a bang of his big fist on the galley table. "It's the worst planet in the known universe, Earth is. The poor devils there are penniless and starving, but they stay there. Why? That's what I'd like to know. Why?"

  Then Thurgood would glare around the table as though daring anyone to answer his question. Shelby would remain silent. He was biding his time, and that time would come when the harvester returned Sol-side.

  Now, though, Shelby was baffled by what Thurgood was telling Scrimshander. Had he suddenly changed his mind about Earth? Also, Uncle Thurgood had once waxed absolutely lyrical to Grace and Doobie about the wonders and delights of the Kuiper Belt. And what was it that Grace Trask had said? That her uncle had mined for twenty successful years in the Kuiper Belt, and there weren't enough volatiles in the whole Messina Cloud to wash the or
e dust off his mining boots.

  It was a mystery. But that mystery had to wait until the next day, when Shelby and Grace were hidden away in Doobie's cabin at his invitation. Doobie had taken advantage of a moment of inattention by Thurgood Trask and stolen a dozen pies, piping hot and ready to eat, that Thurgood had just finished baking.

  "Payback time," Doobie said as he shared them out. "He'd have done the same thing to us if he'd found ours in the galley."

  They were sitting on Doobie's bed, which a combination of disorder and accumulated clutter made the only usable surface in his cabin. Even that was touch and go, because the bed was all hummocks and lumps. The good news was that a few pie crumbs would make little difference to its condition. Shelby, who before reaching the Harvest Moon had never in his whole life made a bed, had in his first days aboard been learning the technique from Doobie. He had stopped when Grace found out about that and collapsed into laughter.