Miners in the Sky

by Murray Leinster

  But Dunne was facing away from them. He reached the bow of the lifeboat. He saw something solid in the all-enveloping mist. It was a donkeyship. It fled, and careened to turn and get back behind the giant mass of minerals. It was Smithers’ ship. It vanished.

  A misty moving other object appeared almost instantly. It was Haney’s ship. Like a hawk after a sparrow, it flung itself in pursuit. Both ships disappeared.

  Dunne shook his head inside his helmet. He found a place in which to brace himself, for the use of his bazooka. And then, practically from under his feet, Smithers’ battered ship came eeling out again. It streaked for the concealing mist. A thing came after it. Streaks of smoke—bazooka-shell smoke—came after it. One missed and went on uselessly on toward nothing whatever. But a second one struck and its shaped charge vaporized a hole in the metal and poured its whole explosive force into the donkeyship. A second bazooka-shell struck the donkeyship’s belly as it tumbled. A third hit.

  Smithers’ battered ship began to come apart in space. The pursuer appeared, incredibly, from the mist to one side. It fired twice—three times more before the mist obscured it again. What wreckage remained connected together went on toward shining oblivion beyond the haze. Twice, Dunne saw a movement in that strange fog. It was each time a ship swirling and circling around its enemy. There were momentary flashings of light, explosions even brighter than sunshine on the dust of Thothmes’ rings. Shells were being pumped into the remains of the fragments of the wreck.

  Then—nothing. Dunne waited, his bazooka ready, his features contorted with pure hatred. The hatred wasn’t on account of Smithers. It was because Haney and his companions had committed cold-blooded murder before his eyes, and he hadn’t been able to stop them. And Nike would presently be another victim.

  Then Nike pulled at his arm. He touched his helmet to hers.

  He said grimly, “If Smithers could track us and try to overtake us so we’d fight for him, then Haney’s donkeyship trailed us too. They’ll come back.”

  Nike shook her head impatiently. “No! Not that! Come here!”

  She threw the light from her helmet to the back of the cave. Catching onto one handhold after another, she dragged him half the length of the lifeboat. She pointed at the rocky wall where were the initials and numbers “JG-27.” Nike narrowed the beam. The light played on gray stuff. Friable stuff. There were actually greasy seeming crystals in view. They actually stuck out of the matrix! And Nike swung the light beam again.

  There was an airlock door, made of the same plastic material as the bubbles used in the mining process of the Rings of Thothmes.

  Nike touched her helmet to Dunne’s.

  “This is it!” said her voice in the tinny, resounding helmet. “Don’t you see? JG—Joe Griffiths! And 27. That’s the year he found it! This is the Big Rock Candy Mountain!”

  And it was. But as Dunne gaped at it, a shadow went past the cave mouth. Dunne jerked his head about. A donkeyship went past the cavern, no more than twenty or thirty feet from the lifeboat’s nose. From the airlock of this other ship, a man threw something.

  The donkeyship went on. The object that had been thrown revealed its nature by detonating with a monstrous violence. It shattered the entire bow of the lifeboat, back through the miniature control room. The stern of the lifeboat was cracked, and it bow parts were smashed.

  Haney’s donkeyship was out of sight. Dunne knew that peculiar raging frustration of a man who considers that right and justice and decency have been outraged and realizes that nothing can be done about it. He and Nike had just found the Big Rock Candy Mountain, a fit subject for fables and tales to the end of time. Therefore, they owned it. But they would own it only until the material needed for breathing gave out. There was no need for Haney to do anything more. They were dead. It would be completely, as well as figuratively, true in a very short time.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was undoubtedly curiosity that brought about the final development of the situation. It was Nike’s curiosity, perhaps; but Dunne’s curiosity may have had a share in shaping the remaining events. Possibly he unconsciously had some hope that made him look alertly about him. Certainly Haney’s curiosity contributed. Or perhaps Haney didn’t so much want to make sure as he wanted to swagger in the presence of those who had opposed his purposes and frustrated some of his efforts, even if they happened to be dead when he swaggered. Possibly he had a freakish idea that such brilliance and talent as he’d displayed deserved a greater reward than merely being the husband of Nike’s second cousin once removed, and thus collateral descendent of Joe Griffiths. He may have had a notion that this was the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that wasn’t likely.

  Haney moored his donkeyship to one of the freakish metallic formations on the surface of this fifteen-hundred-foot Ring-fragment. He relaxed in absolute assurance of complete success in all his undertakings. The brother and sister, to whom his wife was a second cousin once removed, were dead. Their deaths had come about in the Rings, where there was no law. The highest court on Horus had officially determined that they had no jurisdiction over events, properties, or crimes in the Rings of Thothmes. Therefore, all must be well. But—just possibly—there might be crystals in the wrecked lifeboat. It would be interesting to see. It might be a good idea to remove the bodies of Dunne and Nike and send them away as Ring-fragments to find their own orbits and stay in them forever. And it was really possible that Dunne might have some special, large, unusually valuable abyssal crystals he’d hidden from his partner when he came upon them. Haney would have cheated any partner he had; it seemed reasonable to see if Dunne had done the same.

  Therefore, after a leisurely, self-satisfied contemplation of all his affairs, Haney took his companion and went to look at the wreckage of the lifeboat. They made the journey with much care and very little exertion.

  Meanwhile, Dunne and Nike faced the fact that in every respect but one they were already dead, so they went through the plastic airlock to see what the interior of the Big Rock Candy Mountain was like.

  There was no gravity, there was no air in the considerable cave beyond the plastic entrance. Nike’s and Dunne’s helmet-lights showed them that there was a strong resemblance between this cave and a plastic bubble. Cracks and crevices had been sealed by plastic. There was a living space, floored with planks brought here from Horus—several scores of millions of miles away. There was furniture attached to the plank flooring, which in turn was fastened to the rock beneath. There was an upholstered chair with ribbons to be knotted across the knees to hold a person in. There were lamps with elaborate if not very tasteful shades; they were fastened to the tables on which they stood. There was even a painting hung on a wire stretched across the center of the cavern. The floor and furniture were placed as in theatres “in the round,” with no walls anywhere, so the floor and furniture could be seen from any direction.

  And the cave had two occupants. There was a spacesuit standing upright. In it there was what had been a man. He stood, because there was no gravity to make him fall. Lying on dried-out-brittle cloth, there was another spectator; he had been murdered many years ago. Neither of these spectators were alarming. They were pathetic. Dunne turned Nike so she did not have to look.

  “That’ll be Joe Griffiths,” he said wryly, “and a certain member of a donkeyship team who probably managed to trail him there. That somebody killed Griffiths, and then somebody killed somebody else, which left only one of them to own the Mountain.* But why he never showed up with a donkeyship load of crystals, I’ll never know!”

  Nike stirred. She faced the peculiar, useless airlock through which they’d come. Dunne felt her startled movement. She reached up and turned off her helmet-light. Then his.

  Some light appeared where the lifeboat so nearly blocked the entrance to the cave. The light changed. There was nothing outside to change it. It changed again. Something was moving at the mouth of the cave. It could only be human movement.

  Dunne drew a deep breath. In
the blackness of the cavern, now, he plucked Nike off her feet. He launched himself and her for the back of this peculiar rocky hollow. They floated, until his outstretched hand stopped them just before they collided with the stone wall.

  Now his eyes and Nike’s were beginning to adjust to the darkness. Some light did filter in, past the lifeboat and beyond where the now useless airlock stood. Dunne and Nike had been long enough in this darkness to be able to see a little of what occurred. They could see vaguely what their helmet-lights had shown clearly.

  He and Nike made noises, but only inside their spacesuits. They were breath-stoppingly loud. A metallic clanking seemed qualified to wake the two motionless figures who had been in this ultimate of treasure chests for years. But there was no air to carry sound. No noise came from outside.

  Helmet-lights came into the outer part of the cave. Somebody had seen the painted “JG-27” and realized that they’d found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. The helmet-lights were round disks of brightness, slipping frictionlessly over every object they illuminated. The wall-less living room appeared—a plank floor with gimcrack furniture fastened to it. Then the helmet-lights moved, and steadied, and moved again, to limn out the incredible area of gray matrix and occasional dull gleams of imbedded crystals.

  Haney and his companion—only Haney left his donkeyship for the pickup ship on Outlook—Haney and his companion went mad with delight and triumph. There could be no value set on the riches in plain view. It would have been ridiculous to speak of the money value in terms of millions. A larger order of magnitude would be necessary. Here were as many abyssal crystals in one place as all the Rings of all the ringed planets had yielded up to date. And the market would not be glutted. It couldn’t be. There could never be too many abyssal crystals.

  In the darkness Dunne pulled Nike down to shelter behind a mass of rock. He stood up. Helmet-lights crossed and crisscrossed. The emotions of the men who’d found the greatest treasure known in the galaxy found expression. He heard inarticulate noises. He heard gaspings. He heard cursings. He heard the most horrible of blasphemy and obscenity.

  And Dunne found himself raging because if Nike turned on her space-phone she would hear them.

  He turned on this space-phone and shouted, and his own voice was deafening in the resounding space-helmet. It would be no less numbing in theirs.

  “Quiet!” he snapped. Instantly, disks of light went crazily about the cavern, hunting for him. “I doubt you’ll have it any other way,” said Dunne grimly, “So—”

  A light fell on him and a bazooka flashed. But when there is no weight, one must be braced in order to aim a bazooka. The rocket-shell went sliding crazily to a wall of black stone. It burned out in glaring blue-white flame. He felt Nike moving beside him. He raised his own weapon and fired. More glaring blue-white radiance. From the blackness of the tomb—which it was—the cave in the Big Rock Candy Mountain became lighted as brightly as if from a nearby sun.

  Dunne fired again, and the little rocket-shell hit Haney’s follower in the chest. It went through his space-suit… his body and flamed for seconds thereafter.

  He could see that Nike was struggling to rise and fight beside him. He suddenly realized that they were not dead. There’d been a standing figure in a space-suit in the cave when he entered it. Now two helmet-lamps played on it and bazooka-shells hit it. But the figure beside Dunne fired. It was Nike. Dunne fired simultaneously. And then Haney realized from where Dunne had been shooting. He aimed crazily and pulled the trigger. The hurtling tiny rocket-shell missed Dunne by yards. It went over his head. It struck gray matrix-stuff in the wall. A portable bazooka and shell, like this, would burn through three inches of solid steel. This one flared an abyssal crystal.

  And there was light.

  . The brightness of that light ended everything. It was in the cave wall behind and above Nike and Dunne. It was the most terrible light in the universe. A thousand thousand strobe lights fired together might provide a comparison.

  But there could be no equivalent. The light of the one abyssal crystal turning all its stored energy to blue-white glare was the most violent, the most searing, the most blinding light in the universe. Dunne and Nike were made sightless for minutes.

  But Haney who’d fired the bazooka-shell, did not see its reflections. He looked, as he fired, where the shell should strike. And he saw the light direct. He was looking when it appeared.

  Dunne heard him scream, but Dunne was blinded too for the time being. Nike had no sensation of anything but an intolerable brilliance. It was minutes before either Dunne or Nike could see anything. Then the bright disks of their helmet-lights revealed Haney. He seemed to be trying to see. But he couldn’t.

  When Dunne and Nike could see again quite clearly Haney was still unable to tell light from dark. He’d looked at the light from a crystal breaking down.

  He would never see anything else again.

  There were several donkeyships on the spaceport of Outlook when Dunne brought the donkeyship to a landing. Everybody was in the pickup ship, feasting on its foods and drinking its drinks; they didn’t notice when Dunne arrived, and therefore there was no excitement.

  Dunne made his way into the ship by the personnel-lock. Presently he was in the skipper’s cabin.

  “I’ve got a passenger for you,” he said curtly. “Man named Haney. And I want to send some crystals to Horus.”

  He dumped a quantity on the skipper’s desk. It was not all that he and Nike had, of course. It wasn’t a tenth, or a hundredth. But the skipper’s mouth dropped open.

  “I’ve found the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” explained Dunne as curtly as before. “Naturally, I don’t want to stay out here in the Rings. I’d be followed everywhere, and ultimately killed, so I’m going to drive my donkeyship to Horus. I want extra oxygen and food and such items. I think it would be wise for you to give me my stores quickly and let me get away before they—” he nodded in the direction of festivity—“hear about it and get too hard to handle.”

  The pickup-ship skipper found it still more difficult to speak after he’d taken a second look at the crystals Dunne had spilled on his desk.

  “Here’s a list of supplies,” said Dunne matter-of-factly. “When they’re ready, I’ll get Haney in a space-suit and turn him over to you. He’ll tell you everything. He can solve a number of murders that have only been suspected. He’s very anxious to talk. And—oh, yes! I want to make a will and get it witnessed. Two wills, in fact. And—”

  He wanted a considerable number of things. At least one was quite unprecedented in the Rings. But the large crystals on the skipper’s desk were very powerful arguments for giving him whatever he wanted.

  The feasting in the pickup ship’s main cabin went on longer than usual, this trip, because Dunne was receiving preferential treatment. There were two wills to be witnessed. Dunne wanted to be sure that if anything happened to him, the proceeds of what he’d turned over to the skipper would go to Nike. And Nike was very firm about a similar arrangement for Dunne. And then she composedly observed that for a will to be valid, certain circumstances were desirable. The relationship between testator and legatee, for example.

  … But it appeared that the captain of a space-ship, like the skipper of old-time ocean-going ships, had the authority to perform marriages. Would the pickup-ship skipper perform one now, so these wills would hold in case of need?

  When it was finished, Dunne got ready to start the donkeyship for Horus. It belonged to him. He had a bill of sale from Haney. He got a repetition of the acknowledgement from the man who’d tried so earnestly to kill him. Nike watched with becoming gravity.

  “I’ll see you off,” she said, “because it’ll be weeks before we’re both on Horus!”

  “I’ll put a big new crystal in the drive,” said Dunne, “to get there quicker. We’ve plenty!”

  She nodded. She went out of the pickup ship with him. They marched together—magnetic boot-soles clanking—across the spaceport of the donke
yship. She went into the ship and removed her helmet. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. She smiled at him.

  “Alone at last!”

  He kissed her. It was very satisfactory.

  Then Nike said firmly, “I’m not going back to the pickup ship. I’m going with you! I only suggested the will stuff and the formal marriage so I could refuse to let you go away by yourself!”

  Dunne grinned. “You stowed aboard me once. I thought I was arranging a very sneaky shanghaiing. So I might as well lift off.”

  The donkeyship did lift off. In minutes it was a speck, and after that it seemed not to exist at all. But though absent in fact, it was definitely present on the pickup ship even an hour later, at least as the subject of impassioned conversation. The pickup ship’s skipper had introduced Haney to the main cabin. He swaggered, though he had to feel his way from chair to chair. He boasted of what he’d accomplished while he was in the Rings. There were growlings. But he was blind. Nobody would kill a blind man, even where there was no law.

  They did, though, threateningly demand clues to the whereabouts of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. And he couldn’t give them. He was no astrogator. His companion in the donkeyship had done the astrogation, and Haney was too much absorbed in his need to swagger to bother with that sort of thing. He boasted of what he’d done.

  Which was quite intelligent of Haney. He was the husband of a second cousin once removed of Nike. He knew her and he knew the other collateral relatives. They would instantly disown and ignore him to try to avoid the onus of what he’d done. And the only place on Horus where Haney could be sure of support and an admiring audience for his blustery boasts of villainy. The only possible future for Haney would be as a man serving life for murder, swaggering before lesser criminals.

  And there was one other place in the Rings where there was much agitation over Dunne and. Nike and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Oddly enough, it was at the Mountain. Certain very peculiar creatures had been making a scientific study of recently discovered, systematic, and apparently intelligent noises to be picked up by electronic apparatus from the Rings. They were an expedition sent to study the new noises and their meaning and origin.