Even if he had been able to restart the elevator, Kinsolving didn’t like the notion of rising a dozen levels only to have it repeat the power loss. A second time would completely destroy the brakes — and undoubtedly kill him.
Kinsolving looked up into the darkness. A tiny spot of light showed at the mouth of the shaft. Kinsolving wondered if this meant sunrise or the carbon-arc spotlight. He hadn’t worn his watch and had the feeling of considerable time passing. Sighing, he reached down to his belt and pulled free the com-link and plugged it into the respirator’s circuitry. He toggled the call button.
“Are you there, Ala? Come in, Ala. I’m trapped on level nineteen. Elevator’s not operational.” Even as the words came from his lips, fat blue sparks jumped up from below as the final elevator circuits shorted out.
“Ala, come in. I don’t want to climb almost two kilometers to the surface. Can you send help? Over.”
The com-link’s indicator lights shone but otherwise gave no evidence of the device working. Kinsolving toggled the button a few more times and got a soft hiss indicating that the unit still functioned. But he got no response from above.
Cursing, he slung the com-link once more at his belt and reached up to grab the plastic rungs of the escape ladder leading to the surface. His shoulders protested the strain and by the time he had gone up four levels Kinsolving felt faint and nauseated. He rested on level fourteen and once more tried to raise Ala Markken.
When he failed, he again began to climb. This time Kinsolving got two levels before tiring. He curled up in the middle of the stoop and, shivering and cold and aching, dropped off into a heavy sleep that was more a coma.
The rumble of equipment coming down the shaft woke Kinsolving. The rush of hot air past his face and the concussion from an explosion far below him knocked him back a dozen paces. He sat down heavily and simply stared, dazed and unable to move.
The gases and heavy dust filled level twelve and obliterated what vision he had through his respirator lenses. Kinsolving worked on them a few minutes and succeeded in activating the infrared sensor in the left eyepiece. One-eyed, he moved through the dense fog until he came to the shaft. Shining his hand flash downward availed him nothing, but the IR eyepiece gave a chilling picture of destruction — and what would have been his death if he’d remained on any of the lower levels.
The heavy-lifter had fallen from level one and crashed into the top of the elevator cage, totally destroying its locked brakes and plunging it to the lowest level — under water. The collision between the falling heavy-lifter and the stalled, disabled elevator had produced a minor explosion and enough heat to dispel the bone-chilling cold, even seven hundred meters up-shaft.
Kinsolving sucked in a deep breath, took off the respirator long enough to wipe away the sweat damming up against his bushy eyebrows, then put the heavy mask back on. The stale air coming through the filter bothered his sinuses and made his nose clog and begin dripping, but he knew it was better than not breathing at all. One glance at the air quality indicator mounted at the edge of the shaft told him how deadly Deepdig number two had become.
Looking up the shaft, Kinsolving saw a steady bright light. Definitely daylight, he decided. Once more he pulled out the com-link and, holding it out into the shaft to prevent signal damping by the heavy rock, he called, “Ala, come in, Ala. This is Bart. Are you there? Is anyone there?”
The mocking hiss gave no indication that any human lived above. Kinsolving wondered if there’d be any alive in the shaft much longer. His arms and legs had turned to lead and the brief rest hadn’t given him back lost strength.
“Up we go,” he said. As he climbed, he worried over the theft of the rare earths, Ala Markken, their last vacation together on the seacoast, the number of days left until his contract was completed, anything to keep from thinking about the pain gathering in joints and muscles.
Level ten came and went. Barton Kinsolving rested. And once more he tried the com-link.
No good, he finally decided. The receive mode might work — the hiss told him that much. But somewhere in his travails he had damaged the transmitter circuit. His luck had been like that lately. The one item to fail was always the vital one.
Two more levels. Rest. Weakness flooded him just as the water did the mine tunnels below. Darkness. The sun setting? Or had he fallen into unconsciousness? Kinsolving couldn’t decide.
More climbing. One level. Rest. Two. Two more. Voices echoing from above. The sound of heavy-duty cycle pumps laboring to remove water from the flooded levels.
Kinsolving had no idea what level he had reached. Four? Two? He swung in from the shaft and the interminable plastic rungs and fell to the floor at the feet of a dozen technicians.
He didn’t even remember them carrying him back to his quarters.
Sunlight fell across his face, warm and soothing. Kinsolving moaned slightly as he rolled over in bed, this small motion enough to activate every pain center in his body.
“Don’t move, Bart,” came Ala’s worried voice. “The doctor did the best he could, but he said there really wasn’t much wrong with you. Just exhaustion. He gave you a light sedative.”
“Not much wrong?” Kinsolving fought to sit up. Weakness surged and threatened to rob him of bodily control. He pushed it back, refusing to give in. “He ought to be inside my skin. Bet a kilo of cerium he wouldn’t say that then.”
“What happened?” the woman asked. She sat on the edge of his bed and took his plasti-skin bandaged hand in hers. “You went down in the shaft, then we lost contact.”
“I took along a com-link. Thought that would let me stay in touch. I must have hit it. Transmitter went out.”
“Nina found it hooked onto your belt. It was her unit.”
“Have you done a dump on its memory? I want a full — ”
“Calm down, Bart.” The expression on Ala's lovely face made Kinsolving wary.
“What happened to the unit?”
“I checked it out. The circuitry was entirely destroyed. Nothing recorded from the minute you took it from Nina.”
“Nothing?”
Ala looked away, then her dark eyes came back and fixed squarely on his. “Nothing,” she said.
“There’s more. What’s happened?”
“You … the heavy-lifter. It fell down the shaft. I don’t know how it happened. Weak stanchion, I just don’t know.”
“It missed me. I was resting just inside the shaft on level twelve.”
Ala nodded slowly. Kinsolving didn’t like that look on her face at all.
“Who ordered it into the mine? It wasn’t due for another three days.”
“I'm sorry, Bart,” she said. “I’m responsible. I thought we might lower the heavy-lifter and salvage some equipment.”
“What caused it to fall?”
“We’re checking into that. A new recruit might have missed a few of the security dogs. Or maybe the bolts weren’t fastened tightly enough. We don’t know yet. But we will. I promise!”
“What more’s gone wrong at the bottom?” Kinsolving asked, changing the subject. “I started the auxiliary pumps and had two levels drained. I remember hearing the primary pumps before I passed out.”
“The levels are flooded again, Bart. All the way up to fifteen. I’ve put in a request to headquarters for complete rescue equipment. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”
Kinsolving said nothing. When he had started the auxiliaries, the water had gone down swiftly. With all pumps functioning, level twenty-three should have been dry once more.
“Who was in charge? While I was below?”
The question took Ala by surprise. “I was,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d gone down, though. You should have told me. Taken a command com-link instead of Nina’s. Something!”
Kinsolving sensed a mixture of emotions fighting inside the woman. He reached out a bandaged hand and lightly brushed her cheek. A tear had formed and had begun a slow track down.
“Don’t cry,” h
e said. He bent forward gingerly and kissed her.
“I’ll be in central control. You rest, Bart. The Lorr agent-general will be out tomorrow to investigate. You’ll have to deal with him. You know how they are about humans.”
Kinsolving knew. The Lorr dealt only with those in charge and refused to acknowledge the presence of any human underling. He had never decided if they ran their own society in this way or if it merely showed contempt for those they considered inferiors. Kinsolving didn’t like the Lorr agent-general personally but he had some sympathy for their position. Allowing another race to exploit valuable resources might seem ridiculous, but Kinsolving had found that the Lorr lacked the mining equipment and technology, and pride kept them from buying it from humans.
Kinsolving settled back on the bed, sunlight warming his aching body. He closed his eyes and listened intently. For a long minute, Ala Markken stayed beside his bed. Then she left quickly. The click of the door sliding shut told him she had gone.
Kinsolving opened his eyes cautiously and looked around the room. All seemed intact, nothing disturbed, nothing added.
The uneasiness mounted within him, however. Something was amiss. It took careful study to find the answer. His desk com-link had been turned around so that it faced a blank wall. His first thought was that Ala had stood beside the desk to use it, but that wasn’t physically possible. She would have had to bend over the top of the com-link. Better to turn it around or leave it where it had been.
Hating himself for being so paranoid, Kinsolving carefully rose from the bed, moving slowly and making no sound. On bare feet he went to his desk and studied the side of the com-link facing his bed. The small scratches on the side plate showed how it had been tampered with.
What had been placed inside? Kinsolving guessed that it was a sensitive audio pickup since the opaque casing of the com-link didn’t provide for visual spectrum optics. He looked closer to be sure no foptic cable poked out; it didn’t. This wasn’t a good job of spying, done hurriedly and with whatever material was at hand.
Who had done it?
Kinsolving didn’t want to face the answer to that question.
Moving carefully, he pulled on clothing and slipped into the sanitary chamber. Kinsolving finished dressing, wincing at the leftover agony arrowing into his body from the ordeal in the mine. Climbing through the small window and dropping to the ground outside, he made his way to the records computer behind central control.
As he silently passed the opened door of the control room he saw Ala Markken hunched over the com-panel. He couldn’t hear her words but judging from her expression she was speaking with someone she’d rather avoid.
Kinsolving entered the empty records room and went directly to the storage computer. He settled in a chair and tried to make himself comfortable.
“Couldn’t afford a pneumatic chair,” he grumbled, regretting the earlier economy on his part. Kinsolving reached out and called up production records, set up correlations, comparisons, ran charts, did a complete workup of mine output.
Two intense hours later, he sat back in the chair. His body still hurt, but a deeper agony now possessed him. The theft of the high grade rare earth oxides from the mine had been more extensive than he’d thought. The lifting masses failed to match the reduced ore masses by a factor of two. Fully half of everything mined at Deepdig number two had been stolen.
Seeing the evidence of the heavy-lifter and the empty ore storage bins on level nineteen had alerted him to this possibility. What hurt the most was his analysis of the person most likely to have done it.
He had suspected any of a half dozen people. All had opportunity, even if he couldn’t understand what they would do with such massive amounts of stolen ore.
Any of six could have been responsible, and might be implicated. But Kinsolving had pinpointed the one person definitely a thief.
Ala Markken.
Barton Kinsolving felt sick to his stomach as he stood and went to confront her with the evidence.
CHAPTER FOUR
Barton Kinsolving’s legs wobbled under him as he made his way into the control center. Ala Markken hunched over the computer console and worked feverishly, then vented a deep sigh and leaned back. The light from the terminal caught her face and turned it soft, giving a vulnerability that Kinsolving now wondered about. He loved her, but his work seemed without mistake.
She had stolen a considerable amount of rare earth ore from Interstellar Materials — and had tried to kill him, not once but twice. Kinsolving stared at her, the light brown halo of hair floating about her and turning her into something more than mortal.
Ala stiffened slightly, sensing his presence. She turned and saw him standing beside the doorway.
“Bart, you shouldn’t be up yet. You’re not well.”
“You thought the drugs would keep me out for another week, didn’t you?” His tone carried a steel edge that made Ala stiffen even more.
“What are you saying? Of course the drugs would put you to sleep. You need it after all you’ve been through.”
“After all you’ve put me through.”
Her eyes narrowed. To her credit Ala Markken didn’t try to argue, to profess ignorance. She turned back to the computer console and tapped in an access code. The parade of data told her the complete story of Kinsolving’s probing.
“You’d never understand, Bart,” she said softly. “I argued with them at first, but they won me over. I thought you might come around to our way of thinking, but it’s not in you. I see that now.”
“Why, Ala? You’re well paid. Back on Earth eighty percent of everyone is jobless, on some form of dole. Most are merely existing.”
“Subsistence living, they call it,” Ala said bitterly. “We deserve more.”
“You have more!” Kinsolving cried. He sank down to a chair. His legs had turned rubbery and he didn’t know if he could continue much longer.
“Me? Oh, yes, I have more than most of those on Earth. I have a job and a good one.”
“Why did you steal the ore, then?” Kinsolving blinked at her expression.
Ala covered it quickly. She said, “There’s always need for more money. The rare earths are better than any currency. I can retire in another few months.”
“You could have retired after stealing one storage bin of ore,” he said. “A hundred kilograms of ore would reduce to enough to keep us all in luxury for the rest of our lives. It’s more, Ala, it’s got to be more. Why?”
“How much do you think I’ve stolen?”
‘You’ve been doing it for years. I couldn’t tell for sure but it looked as if you had started immediately after arriving. Four years of theft.” Kinsolving shook his head. His tongue felt fuzzy and thick. His head pounded like the ground under a rocket exhaust and the aches in his body returned to slowly drain him of stamina.
“I have expensive tastes. You know that, Bart.”
He sat, trying to keep from fainting. The only thing that allowed Kinsolving to keep some semblance of rationality was his driving need to find a way out for Ala. Condoning theft from IM wasn’t really possible, he knew, and she would have to confess to the crime, but there had to be mitigating circumstances, some way to keep her from prison — or worse.
Kinsolving had heard that off-planet justice often entailed the death penalty He tried to remember the covenants of business that IM worked under on Deepdig. Were such crimes the responsibility of the company or the Lorr?
“The Lorr,” he said, all strength draining from his body. He slumped forward. “I’d forgotten about them. Stealing the ore means IM hasn’t been paying severance taxes due the Lorr.”
“They have strict penalties, Bart,” Ala Markken said softly. “They might execute me.”
“No, no, that won’t happen. We … we’ll tell Humbolt.”
“He’ll see that I’m punished,” she said, almost seeming to enjoy taunting him.
“You’ll have to stand trial somewhere. I’d prefer it in IM court with
Earth laws rather than letting the Lorr try you.”
“The Bizarres,” she mused. “They seem to be the problem, don’t they? Who was hurt? Not IM. Only the Bizzies aren’t getting their blood money. Is that so bad, Bart?”
“Yes,” he said with returning fire. “IM signed an agreement with them. We have to honor it.”
“They’re only aliens. And they only want to hold Earth back, keep us in grinding poverty. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d be masters of the stars now, not second-raters begging for crumbs.”
“That’s not true and you know it. We caused our own problems on Earth, and we can work through them.”
“If the Bizzies would let us.”
“They couldn’t care less about us. We’re almost beneath their contempt.”
“Exactly!”
“Ala, please. You broke the law and you must pay for it.” Kinsolving wiped cold sweat from his forehead and closed his eyes for a second to try to still the violent hammering in his temples. The ache had turned to pain.
‘You love me. I love you, Bart. Let’s see if we can’t hide this. What does it matter to the Lorr? I’ll see that you get a cut. You’ll be rich!”
Anger flooded Kinsolving and burned away aches, pain and weakness. “If you think that’s all I want, you’re wrong, Ala. Completely wrong.”
“What have you done?” she asked suspiciously, seeing his new resolve.
“I’ve alerted Humbolt. Sent a message packet to GT 4.”
“No.” The single word barely came from her mouth.
“I don’t like him, but — ”
“You fool! The Lorr intercept every message packet and read the contents.”
“I coded it.”
“They know all our codes. All of them!”
Ala Markken fell back heavily in the chair and just stared at Kinsolving. He tried to read the emotion of that look and failed. It wasn’t love or hate; it was inscrutable and all the more disquieting for that.
The Lorr investigators arrived at the mine less than an hour later.
The Stellar Death Plan (Masters of Space Book 1) Page 3
