Mother Lode

there are certain impurities. However, the good news is that you have just over four-hundred-thousand credits worth, even if it wasn't pure stuff.» «Bullshit,» Erin said. She switched off. She dressed to go out. Mop was dancing, thinking that he was going to get to go. When she told him that he had to stay and guard the ship, he went into Erin's cabin and sulked, refusing to come out to say good-bye. She checked a town directory, hailed an aircab, gave the driver an address. It took a half hour for the assay office, licensed by the Haven government and the United Planets Department of Mining and Heavy Metals, to tell her that her gold samples were of very high purity, just a few points less than refinery pure. She had saved back the pretty little lightning bolt in gold that she had removed from its matrix rock and one nugget that she had selected at random. She went next to the Haven office of X&A and, after showing her discharge card, was immediately escorted into the office of an overweight X&A planetside commando wearing the leaves of a colonel. «Ah, Lieutenant Kenner,» he said, offering his hand, «you're a bit late, but I think we can waive the six month limit on separation from the service and get you your old rank and position back within one year.» «Thanks,» Erin said. «That's not why I'm here.» The colonel's face fell. «Well, have a seat,» he said. «What can I do for you?» «Colonel,» she said, «for years, ever since I entered the Academy, I've been told that the Service always looks after its own.» «That is very true,» he said. «I'm not sure, but I think I'm getting a royal screwing here on this wonderful little planet.» He raised his eyebrows, but not because of her language. Spacers were, he knew, an elitist bunch and they liked to show their toughness with shock talk. She told the colonel about her gold ore, showed him the assay figures from the government approved testing facility. He nodded and reached for a communicator. He winked at her and said, «Lieutenant, if you won't consider this a sexist suggestion, there's a pot of fresh coffee just outside the door. I'd love to have a cup, and you're more than welcome to join me. White and sweet for me, if you please.» She went out of the office and poured. She heard him ask for the Planetary Attorney General's office. She was back in the room, putting his coffee in front of him when he said, «Sam, how the hell are you?» It was good coffee and it was good talk she heard. He was only a groundbound colonel, but he was X&A, the voice of the most powerful agency in the civilized galaxy. He had the attention of Sam, the Attorney General. He grinned at Erin, winked as he listened. When he switched off he was still grinning. «Lieutenant,» he said, «I think that if you'll visit Mr. Murdoch Plough again in about two hours you might find that he has refigured the worth of your ore.» Erin rose, kissed the colonel on his cheek. He had the grace to blush. He laughed. «If you didn't leave any lipstick on my cheek, do it again. It's about time I made my wife a little jealous.» «It's true,» she said. «Yep,» he said, nodding. «We do take care of our own.» Murdoch Plough did not rise from his desk when she entered his office after being announced by his secretary. He looked up sullenly, stared at her for a long time before he spoke. «It seems, Lieutenant Kenner, that there was, ah, a bit of a mix-up in the assay of your ore.» The fact that he called her lieutenant told her that he had received some sort of a communication from on high. She nodded. He threw a gold-tone check across the desk toward her. She picked it up and read the figures—1,000,456.54 C. Over one million credits. On a certified check. «Thank you. I do appreciate the fast work.» Plough had evidently thought about the situation. «Will you be selling again, Lieutenant?» «There is that possibility,» she admitted. «We here at Plough are always interested in doing business,» he said. «I'll remember that,» she said, «while also recalling that you did your best to give me the business.» She turned and was gone before he could reply. An hour later, having survived a wild greeting from a lonely little dog, she was lifting the Mother for space. Two blinks away from Haven the routes crossed. A right turn took her back toward the galactic core and the mining belt. A left turn and she was on the way to X&A Central and a serious conference with the Service scientists. It was decision time. The generator didn't need charging, but she put it on refill mode to buy time to think, went into the exercise room, stripped to her briefs and walked as she thought. If she went to X&A on Xanthos and showed them Old Smiley, the friendly fossil skull, the rocks would be fenced off by an X&A electronic cordon and there'd be no more gold for Erin Kenner. She had a million credits. With a million credits she could find a quiet little backwater on a frontier planet and live comfortably ever after. On Xanthos, however, where the bright lights were, a nice apartment would cost five thousand credits a month, sixty thousand a year. A sporty aircar went for over a hundred thousand. A million wouldn't last her a lifetime on Xanthos, or on any other metro planet. It was a tough decision. She was, after all, a loyal citizen of the U.P. She'd just been shown, on Haven, that the Service took care of its own. X&A had paid for her education and had given her the training that had enabled her to navigate to the gold belt and back in safety. Being ex- X&A, she had her share of the induced xenophobia that haunted a race face-to-face in three dimensions with the big, unexplored dark. She shared the knowledge that entire civilizations, multi-planet cultures, had passed into oblivion before man fought his way into space for the second time. She knew why the United Planets maintained a huge, heavily armed fleet of ships in service and in mothballs. Although the power that had devastated the Dead Worlds was unknown and, therefore, doubly awesome, mankind hoped that his weapons would be adequate to face an emergence from deep space of things like those beings who could kill a world from the inside out. It was her duty to report her findings, of course. Perhaps study of the fossil remains in the belt would give man more information on what had happened to at least three advanced races who were no more. Ah, but there was another possibility. The skull she'd found could have been seeded onto the planet which had been shattered into asteroids. Old Smiley might be the only humanoid fossil in the whole belt. «Mr. Mop,» she said, shaking hands at Mop's request, «Wouldn't it seem to you that our friend can wait a few months longer for his moment in the limelight?» Mop sighed. «After all, he's been in cold storage in the middle of a rock for maybe a million years.» Mop cocked his head. «It would be nice, though, if you and I had some help out there, wouldn't it? With a couple of men to help us we could do two or three more loads in short order.» «Wurf,» Mop said. She thought about it. She considered going back to Haven and asking the X&A colonel to recommend a couple of good men, good workers. She quickly decided against that. One cabin on Mother had been converted into the mining control room. There was one bunk bed, high on the wall, in the mining room. Not enough space for two hired hands. And Mother was a small ship. To share a ship as small as a Mule two people had to be very good friends. Trouble was, all of her friends were still in Service. Except. «Hummm,» she said. «Uhhhh,» Mop said, looking for a belly rub as he rolled over. «You sort of liked Denton Gale, didn't you, Mr. Mop?» Mop grinned as she rubbed his chest and belly. «He acted civilized,» she said. Mop said nothing. «True, he was my father's friend, not mine.» «Uhhhh,» Mop moaned. «We could share the exercise room and the library with no problem, and he could sleep in the mining control room. What do you think?» Mop, having had enough rubbing, wiggled to be put down. She put him on the deck and he went to paw a chew bone from his personal dispenser. «You're a helluva lot of help,» she said. «Comes time for a heavy decision and you clam up.» Mop crawled under the control chair to eat his tidbit. She turned left, but not to go to Xanthos. Soon she was blinking rapidly down established routes. At beacons she encountered other ships lying on charge. Mother's sensors warned her of the presence of vessels in her blink line, but the Mule was not equipped with the highly advanced detection gear that had become standard issue for X&A ships after Pete Jaynes rediscovered how to tune a blink generator to frequencies other than standard. Such equipment would have told her as soon as she left Haven that she was being followed one blink behind by a sleek deep space miner equipped with a Unicloud computer and the latest detection equipment. The deep space miner was still with her ninety days later when she blinked past the administration planet and toward New Earth. CHAPTER FIVE Perhaps it was her proximity to civilization that brought out a feeling of guilt as Erin blinked the Mother Lode into orbit around New Earth. Before asking for landing instructions she sent a blink to X&A Central on Xanthos inquiring about the whereabouts of the Rimfire. Her intention was, at that moment, to settle for what she had, to go to her former commanding officer, Julie Roberts, and put Old Smiley into the captain's capable hands. However, Rimfire was on the opposite side of the galaxy, preparing to penetrate inward toward unknown areas. Going to X&A Central to turn over her discovery to strangers had little appeal and left room for cupidity to reassert itself. Mother settled gently onto her gear at the same hardpad assigned to her when John Kenner first brought her to Old Port. She told Control no, she did not want to renew the monthly lease on the hardpad, that she would be only a temporary visitor. Mop was in familiar territory. He scampered around the hardpad and greeted beloved bushes with a gaily hoisted leg before leading the way at a frantic run toward Denton Gale's workshop. He arrived at the door ahead of Erin, announced his presence with frantic barking, and leaped into Denton's arms, wiggling, whining, licking Denton's hands and face in delight when the door was opened. Mop was still demanding attention when Erin reached the office. «Hi,» she said. «Now if you were as glad to see me as this little rascal—» Denton said, grinning. «Well, I can't wriggle my rear as fast as he does,» she said, moving her hips. «Fine fellow that you are, Moppy,» Denton said, «on her it looks better.» He ruffled the dog's hair, pulled on his scrubby tail, put him down on the floor, said to Erin, «Come on in.» It was early autumn on New Earth. Erin, Mop, and the Mother Lode had been gone almost a year. She had scanned the areas surrounding the port on the way down, had seen little change except that the new owner of the Kenner home had built white fences around the entire property. Denton Gale had not changed. He still looked