Mother Lode

go into the sun on her own power and without any possibility of a message being sent.» «Can't see how some sombitch can send a stat while his lungs are blowing up in decompression,» Kim grumbled. «That's why my brother put me in charge of this operation,» Gordon said. «He wants things done right. « «If you don't want to put a hole in her with a laser.» Sam said, «how about if she gets busted open by accident?» Gordon made a face. He had to admit that an accident would be almost as good as what he had in mind. «An accident would be neat,» he said. «But it would have to be catastrophic and instantaneous.» It was Cherry who arranged the «accident» that would have smashed the Mother Lode in the collision of two asteroids. «You see,» Gordon said, his voice rising in anger, «I told you so. I said, 'Look, men, let's not be hasty.' « «You hear him say that?» Sam asked Kim. «I didn't. You hear him say that, Cherry?» «I didn't,» she said. «You hear him say that, Caryl?» «Well, maybe I didn't say it in words,» Gordon said, «but you know what I was thinking.» «Oh,» Kim said. «Well, sure.» He looked at Sam with his eyebrows raised. «We always know what you're thinking, Cap'n.» «Now what if she sent off a stat?» Gordon asked. «She was too busy saving her ass to think about sending off a stat,» Kim said. «What would she send? Help, help, a big rock tried to smush me?» Sam Maleska came to his feet. He was a big man, well over six feet, and he affected a huge, bushy, black beard that made him look quite uncivilized. «Cap'n,» he said, «with all respect, if you don't come to a decision pretty quick I'm gonna forget that you're the brother of the boss and take it on myself to kick a little ass.» «Are you threatening me?» Gordon blustered. «You hear me threaten the cap'n?» Sam asked, arms spread. «I didn't hear him threaten the cap'n,» Cherry said. «Did y'awl?» «Not me,» Kim said. «Me neither,» Caryl said, tossing her blonde locks. As it happened Caryl was on watch when the air lock of the Mother Lode opened and two flexsuited figures descended to the surface of the asteroid. She lost no time in waking the others. The captain assessed the situation and came up with a plan. It wasn't a good plan. Sam said to Kim, «This sucks.» But it was a plan. At last they were going to do something. Since there were five of them and only two members of the crew of the Mother Lode, it didn't really matter if the captain had come up with what was, really, a lousy plan. Five of them would handle two quickly and easily. «Listen and listen good,» Gordon said. Sam and Kim looked at each other and rolled their eyes. «We'll take them by surprise,» Gordon said. «Use a narrow beam on the saffers. We don't want to leave pieces of them scattered around. Just hole the suits and then we'll put them on board their ship and set the ship's generator to blink her into the sun. Everyone got that?» As it turned out it wasn't a bad plan after all, it was just that it didn't work for Gordon Plough and the crew of the Murdoch Miner. CHAPTER EIGHT There was nothing wrong with the Mother Lode's warning systems. For two days Erin and Dent checked and rechecked, working the old Century Series computer hard. When Erin was satisfied that Murphy's Law had been at work, that the tumbling slab of debris had, quite naturally, taken the very worst approach so that the bulk of the asteroid on which the ship sat blocked detection, she sighed, said, «Well, that's it,» and was ready to go back to work. But it seemed that the incident with the straying asteroid had changed their luck. Time and time again Erin eased the ship close to a grim, barren, spinning mountain of rock only to find that there were no heavy metals or if there were they were buried deeply. Mother was equipped only for shallow, surface mining. She didn't have the tools to drill a thousand feet into stone to test the source of some very strong readings on the detectors. When, at last, the instruments buzzed happily, having located gold deposits near the exterior of an asteroid with convenient level areas, she attached Mother to the rock with the strength of her field and was pleased when rich flakes and nuggets were extracted immediately. Soon the comfortable work routine had been reestablished. She had forgotten that Dent had well developed arms and a muscular chest with just enough hair to make him look masculine. The sensors on the digging arm sounded the presence of fossilized bone late in a watch. «Oh, damn,» Erin said, stopping the biter from deepening a trench. «There,» Denton said, pointing to the viewer screen. The bones were lighter in color than the matrix rock. Three arching bands were visible. «Nothin' to it but to do it,» Dent said. Erin followed him to the air lock, suited up. Mop was voicing his protest. «Guard the ship,» Dent told him. «Hush,» Erin said, as the dog continued barking. Mop did not hush. He barked energetically long after the inner hatch closed. «You'd think,» Erin said, as she stepped down onto the bare surface, «that you'd get used to this after a few times.» Denton lifted his helmeted head, turned a full circle. Near them, sunward sides reflecting dazzling light, were a few asteroids. Over them, under them, and to all sides there was the harsh glare of the core stars. «I won't miss this part of it when it's over,» Dent said. He was carrying the laser cutter. He positioned himself over the curving bones and began to melt away the matrix. Slowly a rib cage emerged. «Small,» Erin said. » 'Bout like a six- year-old child,» Dent agreed. «There haven't been any fossils where the gold is in veins,» she said. «Only in this softer rock.» «This type of formation must have been near the surface of the planet's crust,» he said. «Notice how it's layered, as if it were formed by sedimentary action. And I'd guess that the gold is a placer deposit, washed down from some mother lode.» The fossilized skeleton was disjointed, but below the rib cage lay a large pelvic bone and long thighbones. Arms, neck, and skull were not to be found. It took over an hour to free the bones and bag them. Erin headed back toward the air lock, Dent directly behind her. She reached out her hand to punch the entry code into the lock, but her finger did not make contact. She felt a sudden sense of disorientation. With nightmare slowness the Mother Lode lifted and drifted away from her outstretched hand. «Hey,» she cried out. Dent jetted away from the surface of the asteroid as Mother accelerated, moving toward the black emptiness of space. For a few moments it seemed that he would catch the ship, but she was moving too fast for the jets of the suit. He and the ship became glowing little stars almost lost among the vastness. Erin watched in shocked silence. The small brightness that was Denton Gale grew until she could make out his suited arms and legs. And then he was landing beside her. «Erin? Hey?» His voice was soft inside her helmet. An image was burned into her mind, the lop-eared, hairy face of Mop at the viewport on the bridge, his head jerking with silent urgency as he barked his alarm at being alone on a ship moving off into space. «Erin?» «I don't know.» «She was not under her own power.» «No. We'd have felt the force of the flux drive.» «What?» She took a deep breath. She had just over three hours to live, plus ten minutes on the suit's reserve air, and she was thinking more about a frightened, lonely little dog than about her own predicament. She shook her head. «Let's take a walk,» she said. For Mother did not leave under her own power. «As it happens,» Dent said, «I have nothing else to do.» The chemically activated jets which gave some degree of maneuverability to a suited spacemen had limited capacity. Dent's vain attempt to catch Mother had almost exhausted his fuel. They crawled from point to point, aided somewhat by the small amount of artificial gravity generated by the tiny flux units that powered the suits. The asteroid was a large one, perhaps a quarter of a mile in diameter. A half hour's air was used up before they reached a point that allowed a view of the side of the asteroid away from Mother's former position. Erin leapt up onto a large protrusion, missed her footing, fell slowly, arms windmilling. The fall saved her life, for as she fell a slash of light passed over her head. «Take cover,» she ordered, her voice calm in spite of the fact that she'd just been narrowly missed by a lethal beam from a saffer. As she landed lightly on her feet and bounced, her own weapon was in her gloved hand. To her right, at a distance she estimated at about two hundred feet, although distances were deceiving on the sharply curved and uneven surface, she saw movement. Her reaction was the result of training. She brought the saffer beam down from above the head of the space-suited man who had fired on her and saw the sizzle of death as the figure was knocked backward by the force. «Behind you,» Denton yelped. She whirled. Rock disintegrated beside her as she slipped to her left, swinging the saffer in a horizontal arc to cut the legs out from under a second assailant. As the integrity of the attacker's suit was breached, she saw a fine mist of blood and fluids spew out to dissipate into the vacuum of space. «My God,» Dent said in disbelief, «they were trying to kill us.» «Bet your sweet ass,» Erin said, swiveling in the stiff suit, examining the shadowy, rocky landscape carefully. There was no further movement. She edged forward and there was a ship, anchored to the asteroid by her field at a point directly opposite Mother's former perch. Denton crawled to lie beside her. «Mining vessel,» he said. «Probably has laser cannon.» «But why?» «Gold,» she said. «But there's enough for everyone,» Dent said. «They didn't think so.» «They wanted to kill us so that they could have all of the gold?» Dent asked. «What else?» «I can't believe that,» he said. «No one ship can possibly mine the whole belt.» «Believe it.» «In real life men don't kill for gold. That happens only in holo-dramas.» «Bullshit,» she said. «How many in her crew?» he asked, nodding his head inside the helmet to indicate the sleek ship. «Four, usually. She's a fleet type scout. I don't know what was done to her during her conversion to a mining vessel. I doubt if they made more crew space. Four men could work the equipment around the clock.» «They used their generator to negate Mother's field?» «What else?» she asked. «A Mule's generator is powerful, but that was a military ship before her conversion. With Mother's generator on low, just enough to keep us on the rock, one quick surge of power with the mining ship's field in reverse would send Mother off into space.» «They had to know, then, that we were not aboard.» «They knew.» «Then they know we're here.» «Yes, but now we know they're here,» she said grimly. Denton swallowed. Two men were dead. «Next thing to do is get you a weapon,» she said, starting to crawl toward the crumpled form of the man whose legs had been cut away. Denton reached the body first, bent to take the saffer from a gloved hand, gasped. «It's a woman,» he said. «So it is,» Erin said, looking at the ruined