“I had my chance to be a hero,” said Doctor MacDermott, “and I muffed it!”
“You did just fine,” said Andrew. “Just fine.”
Jonnie got out of the plane and walked over to the canyon edge. They followed him. The shift crew was also staring down, their faces shiny from the perspiration of strain. It had been a wild thing to watch.
Shaking his head, Jonnie looked down a thousand feet to where the edge of the staircase was imbedded in the bank. The flying platform had vanished under the ice. The snow around the place was pockmarked with the impacts of broken bits and blackened from the explosion.
Jonnie faced Dunneldeen and the crew. “That,” said Jonnie, “is that!”
The shift boss and Dunneldeen said, almost in chorus, “But we can’t quit!”
“No more of these acrobatics in thin air,” said Jonnie. “No more hanging over this edge with our hearts in our throats. Come with me.”
They followed him back to the pad. He pointed straight down. “Below us,” said Jonnie, “that vein is extending into the cliff. It’s a pocket vein. Pockets of gold probably occur every few hundred feet. We’re going to put a shaft down to that vein. Then we’re going to drift along that vein underground to the cliff edge and try to recover that gold from behind!”
They were silent. “But that fissure out there . . . we can’t blast: it would knock the face of the cliff off.”
“We’re just going to have to use drills. Point drills to go in with parallel holes. Then vibrating spades to literally cut the rock. It will take time. We can work hard and maybe get there.”
Underground? It dawned on them it was a great idea.
The shift boss and Dunneldeen started making plans to fly in drilling machinery and scrapers and bucket conveyors. Waves of relief began to spread. The shift change crew flew in and when they heard about it they cheered. They had hated hanging by their heels in greedy space with little return to show.
“Get it set up and rolling before the next pass-over of the drone,” said Jonnie. “Terl’s gone crazy but he’s a miner. He’ll see what we’re doing and hold off. It’s like taking rock out with teaspoons, so we’ll work this all three shifts around the clock. It’ll be easier to work underground in this weather anyway. We’ll use the dig-out to enlarge this flat space. Now where’s a transit so we can get the exact direction down and over for the dig?”
The sound of the plane revved up. Dunneldeen was going back for pilots and equipment.
We might make it yet, thought Jonnie.
3
A worried Zzt watched Terl and a swarm of mechanics working over the old bomber drone.
The huge underground garages and hangars resounded with the whine of drills and clang of hammers.
Since the last semiannual personnel intake, Zzt had gotten his mechanics back; aside from exchanging recon drones for refueling every three days (a drone he considered useless), his work was not backlogged. Terl had left the transport chief and section alone until now. Terl himself had serviced the twenty battle planes in the outside field. So aside from this present unexpected project, Zzt had little about which to complain.
But this idiocy! The bomber drone? He knew he had better speak.
Terl was in the huge plane’s control room working with presets of buttons. He was covered with grease and sweat. He had a small remote keyboard in his hand, and he was punching settings into the main panels of the ship.
“Scotland . . . Sweden . . .” Terl was saying, consulting his tables and notes and pushing ship buttons. There were no seats in the place, for it would never be piloted, and Terl was hunched uncomfortably on a balance motor housing.
“. . . Russia . . . Alps . . . Italy . . . China . . . no. Alps . . . India . . . China . . . Italy . . . Africa . . .”
“Terl,” said Zzt timidly.
“Shut up,” snapped Terl, not even looking up. “. . . Amazon . . . Andes . . . Mexico . . . Rocky Mountains! Rocky Mountains one, two, and three!”
“Terl,” repeated Zzt. “This bomber drone has not been flown in a thousand years. It’s a wreck.”
“We’re rebuilding it, aren’t we?” snarled Terl, finishing his presets and standing up.
“Terl, maybe you don’t know that this was the original conquest drone. It was the one that gassed this planet before our takeover.”
“Well, I’m loading it with gas canisters, ain’t I?”
“But Terl, we’ve already conquered this planet a thousand or more years ago. You release kill gas now, even in just a few places, and it might hit our own minesites.”
“They use breathe-gas,” snapped Terl, shouldering by Zzt and walking back into the huge plane. Workmen were trundling up big gas canisters from deep underground storage. They had to burnish them gingerly to get the crud of ages off them. Terl energetically directed the workers hooking them in place. “Fifteen canisters! You’ve only brought fourteen. Get another one!” Some workmen rushed off and Terl was hooking wires up to the canister release valves, muttering to himself, checking color coding.
“Terl, they only kept this drone as a curiosity piece. These things are dangerous. It’s one thing to remote-guide a recon drone with its small motors—they don’t override the controls! But this thing has motors like a dozen ore freighters. The signals it sends back to a remote get overridden by its own motors. It could charge around and release gas almost anyplace. They’re too erratic for competent use. And once you start them you can’t stop them. Like transshipment firing, they’re irreversible.”
“Shut up,” said Terl.
“In the regulations,” persisted Zzt, “it says these things only get used in ‘most extreme emergency’! There is no emergency, Terl.”
“Shut up,” said Terl, going on with his wire matching.
“And you’ve ordered it permanently parked in front of the automatic firing bay. We need that for servicing ore freighters. This is a war drone, and they only use them for primary attack on a planet and never use them afterward except in a withdrawal. There is no war, and we’re not withdrawing from this planet.”
Terl had had enough. He threw down his notes and loomed over Zzt. “I am the best judge of these things. Where there is no war department on a planet, the security chief has that post. My orders are final. This drone gets parked at the hangar firing door and don’t you move it! As to control,” he shook the small one-foot-square box in front of Zzt’s face, “all it needs is the date setting and fire buttons pushed in and there’s nothing erratic after that! This drone will go and do what it’s supposed to do! And it stays on standby!”
Zzt backed up. Dollies were moving the huge old relic over to the firing door where it would be in the way of everything and leave no other door to service freighters.
“Those were awfully funny locations you were punching in,” Zzt said faintly.
Terl was holding a big wrench. He walked closer to Zzt. “They’re man-names for planet locations. They’re the places where man-animals were left.”
“That little handful?” ventured Zzt.
Terl screamed something and threw the wrench at him. Zzt ducked and it went clanging across the hangar floor, making workers dodge.
“You’re acting kind of insane, Terl,” said Zzt.
“Only alien races ever go insane!” screamed Terl.
Zzt stood aside as they dollied the ancient drone to the firing door.
“It’s going to stay right there,” yelled Terl at nobody in particular. “It’ll get fired anytime in the next four months.” And for sure on Day 93, he smiled to himself.
Zzt wondered for a moment whether he ought to shoot Terl when they were in some quiet place. Terl had restored weapons to the employees, refilled the weapon racks in compound halls, let them wear belt guns again. Then he remembered that Terl had an envelope parked somewhere “in case of death.”
Later, Zzt mentioned it privately to Numph. Zzt liked to hunt and the bomber drone would wipe out most of the game again. Numph had also liked to
hunt once.
But Numph just sat there and looked woodenly at him.
The bomber drone, the one originally shipped in to gas and conquer the planet, remained standing at the firing door, in everybody’s way, filled with lethal gas, preset, just requiring a few punches of the remote Terl kept in his own possession.
Zzt shuddered every time he passed it. Terl had obviously gone stark raving mad.
That night in his quarters Terl did feel spinny. Another day and he had gotten absolutely no clue as to what Jayed was up to, what the agent was looking for.
Terl followed the recon drone photos. The animals were burrowing underground now, which was smart. They might possibly make it, and if they didn’t, he had his answers.
He looked in on the females every evening, throwing wood and meat at them. Sometimes he found packages outside the cage door—he chose not to think about how they got there—and threw them in too. He’d fixed the water, but so it overflowed. The bigger one was sitting up again. He never saw them without being nagged by the puzzle of “psychic powers.” He wondered which one of them sent out the impulses and whether they could be read on a scope. Oh, well, as long as the animals up in the mountains worked, he’d keep these females alive. It was good leverage.
But on Day 93, ha! He could not count on the animals not talking. He could not count on the company or government not catching up with him. The animals had to go, and this time all of them.
Terl fell asleep floundering around in a half-conceived possibility. Jayed was denying him gold. It was Jayed’s fault. But how did one commit the perfect murder of a top agent of the I.B.I.? It made one’s head spin to try to work it out. Meantime he would be the model of efficiency. He had to look like the greatest, most cautious and alert security chief the company had ever known.
Was he crazy, really? No. Just clever.
4
Jonnie was going home.
In a canyon above the village meadow, they unloaded four horses and a pack from the freight plane. The breath of the horses hung about them in small, thin puffs. The horses, very recently wild, had not liked the ride and stamped about and snorted when their blindfolds were removed. The air was clear and frosty at this altitude. Snow from the recent storm covered the world and silenced it.
Angus MacTavish and Parson MacGilvy were with Jonnie. A pilot had come along so that the plane could be moved in case the visit lasted longer than a day. The recon drone had already gone by when they took off from the base and the plane should not be there when it passed again.
A week ago Jonnie had awakened in the night with the sudden realization that he might know where some uranium was. His own village! He had no great hope for it, but the signs were there in the illness of his people. Possibly there was no great amount, but also possibly, there was more than that single rock from Uravan. He felt a trifle guilty for having to have an ulterior motive to go home, for there were other reasons. His people should be moved, both because of their continuous exposure to radiation and also because they should not be exposed in any future bombing.
Jonnie and his men had scoured the mountains for another possible home, and only yesterday had they found one. It was an old mining town on the western slope, lower in altitude, open through a narrow pass to a western plain. A brook ran down the street in the town center. Many of the buildings and houses still retained glass. Wild cattle and game were plentiful. But even better there was a large, half-mile-long tunnel behind the town that could serve as refuge. A coal deposit was on the hill nearby. The place was beautiful. It had no trace of uranium in it.
Jonnie did not think the people of the village would move. He had tried before as a youth and even his father had thought he was just being restless. But he had to try again.
Angus and the parson had insisted on coming with him. He had explained the dangers of exposure to radiation to them and had not wanted to put them at risk. But Angus simply waved a breathe-gas bottle and promised to check it out ahead of them and not be foolish about it, and the parson, being a wise and experienced member of the clergy, knew Jonnie might need help.
They knew better than to simply fly a plane into the meadow. The people had seen recon drones all their lives, but a plane close up might terrify them.
Part of last night had been spent planning. Angus and the parson had been briefed: there would be no action that might alarm the people, no talk of monsters, no frightening tidings about Chrissie. It would be strange enough to be seen entering from the upper canyon, for the pass on the eastern side of the meadow and all such passes were now choked with snow.
And so they rode, three mounted men and a heavily laden pack horse, down into the meadow. The horse’s hoofs made little sound in the loose snow. The deserted cabins on the outskirts were dilapidated and forlorn. Only a whiff of pungent woodsmoke was in the air. Where were the dogs?
Jonnie drew up. The corral where horses were kept was empty. Then he listened carefully and heard a stamp in the old barn sheds beyond: there was a horse there, possibly more than one. He looked toward the pens where wild cattle were usually driven in before the first snow: there were not many cattle there, not enough to last through the winter.
Angus slid down and, as he had promised, did a test for radiation. There was no reaction directly ahead of them.
Where were the dogs? True, they were not used to anything coming in the back door of the valley. But it was strange.
Jonnie rode on toward the courthouse below them. Angus made another test ahead of them. There was no reaction.
An old hound came out of a ruin and looked at them with half-blind eyes. It came forward cautiously, belly deep in the snow. It approached Jonnie, sniffing hard, wisps of vapor rising from its nose.
Then it began to wag its tail, coming closer, wagging harder and harder until the tail was almost whipping the dog’s face as he doubled on himself with greeting. The hound began to yelp with welcome.
Three or four more dogs sounded down in the village center.
Jonnie dismounted to pat the hound. It was Panther, one of his family’s dogs. He walked on, leading the horse, the dog rheumatically trying to cavort about him.
A gaunt-eyed child peered at them from the corner of a building and then ran off, stumbling and falling in the snow.
Jonnie stopped at the courthouse and looked in. The door was off its hinges and the place was empty and cold; snow had drifted well into the main room. He came out and surveyed the scene of the quiet, ruined village.
He saw smoke coming from the roof of his family’s house and walked over to it. He knocked.
There were sounds within and then the door cracked open. It was his Aunt Ellen. She just stood there, staring through the slit. Then, “Jonnie?” and then, “But you’re dead, Jonnie!”
She opened the door wide and stood there crying.
After a little she wiped her eyes with a doeskin apron. “Come in, Jonnie. I kept your room . . . but we gave your things to the young men. . . . Come in, the cold is getting in the house.”
“Is there illness in the village?” said Jonnie, thinking of his companions.
“Oh, no. Nothing unusual. There was a deer seen on the hills and the men are all up there trailing it. There’s not too much food, Jonnie. Not since you went away.” Then she realized it sounded like an accusation. “I mean . . .”
She was crying again. Jonnie felt a tug at his heartstrings. She was growing old before her time. She was gaunt, her face bones showing too plainly.
Jonnie brought in Angus and the parson and they warmed themselves at the fire. Aunt Ellen had never seen a stranger before in her life and she was a little frightened. But she acknowledged the introductions and then busied herself getting them some hot soup made from boiled bones, and they said it was very good. She stopped flashing questioning glances at Jonnie and was pleased with them.
“Chrissie found you?” she finally ventured to ask.
“Chrissie is alive,” said Jonnie. “So is Pattie.” No alarm,
don’t alarm them.
“I’m so glad! I was so worried. But she would ride off! Your horse eventually came back, you know.” She started to cry again and then came over and gave Jonnie a violent hug. She went off to prepare beds for them in case they spent the night.
Jonnie went out and found the small child who had spotted them and sent him up the hill to recall the party that had been after the deer.
It was past four when he finally got the town council assembled. He was surprised that it was only old Jimson and Brown Limper Staffor. The third member had died recently and no other was appointed. Jonnie had gotten a fire going in the courthouse and propped the door back up.
He introduced Angus and the parson, and the town council acknowledged them a bit worriedly; like Aunt Ellen, they had never before seen strangers. But Angus and the parson withdrew inconspicuously to the side.
Jonnie made his business known to the town council. No alarm. He told them he had discovered the valley was unhealthy and that was why they had so few children and so many deaths, and that he had originally gone off to find a better location and had finally done so. The new town was very nice; it had water available in the main street and less snow and more game and better houses and even some black rock that burned very hot, and it was a very nice place. It was a good plea and very well presented.
Old Jimson was interested and looked very favorable. He consulted with Brown Limper, as was correct.
Brown Limper held old grudges against Jonnie. Look what had happened. Jonnie had gone off and this had drawn away Chrissie and Pattie—probably to their deaths—and now here was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler turned up a year and a half or more later with some demand that they move their homes. These were their homes. They had always been safe here. And that was that.
They took a vote. It was a tie. The town council didn’t know what to do.
“There used to be a village assembly, a town meeting,” said Jonnie.
“There hasn’t been one in all my life,” said Brown Limper.
“Yes, I know of those,” said Jimson. “One was held thirty years ago to change the location of the stock pens.”