Mother Lode

face and wisps of blonde hair behind the clear mask. «A woman.» «Not a very well trained woman,» Erin said. «And you are,» he said bitterly. «Better thank God that I am.» He was silent. «All right, people,» Erin said, looking at the ship. «Where are you?» As if in answer, rock shattered in eerie silence so close to Demon's head that he rolled away in panic. Erin's eyes followed the lance of the saffer beam to a shadowed alcove between two rocky protrusions. She saw movement. «There are two of them,» she said. «Where?» She pointed. «What are we going to do?» Denton asked. «I think it might be a good idea if we kill them before they kill us.» «Maybe we can talk to them.» «Go ahead. Step forth in peace,» she said. He was silent. «In less than two hours we've got to be aboard that ship,» she said. «I think those two over there might have something to say about that.» «Probably.» She looked around, nodded to herself. The attackers had already shown themselves to be unskilled, even a bit stupid, but, as Denton had pointed out, not too many people went around murdering others these days. A certain lack of experience had been evidenced by the attackers, which was fortunate for Erin Elizabeth Kenner and Denton Gale. «What I'm going to do,» she said, «is jet off behind that rise over there. I want you to keep up a fire on their position. Keep their attention on you.» «I've never fired at a person.» «I think now is the time to start.» «Let's try to contact them by radio.» «Listen, damn it,» she said, «I want you to lay down a covering fire on them now.» Denton's saffer sent a beam of concentrated energy that shattered rock and caused a stir of movement in the shadows. Erin pushed the jet controls and shot upward and outward at a shallow angle. Every muscle was tensed as she waited for fire to lance into her body, but then she was in the protection of the rocks and could relax her sphincters. Denton was firing at roughly five second intervals. She took a survey of the terrain and lifted off once more. From the rear, she soared over the concealed position of the unknown enemy. An overhanging ledge protected them. She fired as she moved forward, seeking a point where her beam could lance under the overhang. The two suited figures looked up, saw her. One of them leapt into the open and took a two-handed stance, his saffer aimed directly at her. She pushed a button to activate a jet to turn her so that she could fire at the man in the open, hit the wrong one, sent herself spinning. She was an easy target, spinning around suspended just above the two would-be killers. «Denton,» she cried out. Fire lanced out from Denton's position. The man who had been drawing a bead on her burned. She corrected her spin, aimed her weapon downward only to see Dent use the last of his jet fuel to put himself in firing position. The fourth man died while he was trying to get situated to shoot at Erin. «Hold your fire,» she sent to Dent. «They're dead.» Denton was standing quite still, saffer dangling from his gloved hand. One of the dead was a brown-haired woman and it was evident that he was greatly affected by the knowledge that he had killed her. Erin saw that his eyes were wide, that his lips were trembling. «You did well,» she said. «You saved my life.» «I never killed anyone before.» «Do you think I make a habit of it?» «You were so cool, so unconcerned.» «You couldn't have driven a nail up my anus with a sledge hammer,» she said. «You are so damned dainty.» «Thank you, love.» She moved away, turned back. «If you're ready to quit bleeding over those bastards who tried to kill both of us—» They approached the ship from her stern, moving with great caution. The last hundred yards was in the open. She bled half of her jet propellant into Dent's suit. Side by side, they soared to the cover of the ship's flux mount. «What if there's someone inside?» Denton asked, as they moved slowly and carefully toward the outer lock. Erin didn't answer. She examined the lock. «No way we'll figure the combination,» she said. The suit's air timer showed that she had thirty-seven minutes before going on reserve. She lifted her saffer. «If the inner hatch is open you'll get explosive decompression,» Denton warned. «Yep,» she said, narrowing the beam to a pinpoint cutting frequency. Metal gave off gases that quickly disappeared into the merciless vacuum of space. A rush of air through the hole that she'd cut in the hatch scattered the residue left from the cutting operation. «The inner hatch was closed,» she said. In the air lock she turned as the outer hatch slid shut, stuffed the hole where the lock had been with a cloth used to wipe dust off the glass of her helmet. «Here goes,» she said, putting her hand on the air control. Denton lifted his gloved hand and tried unsuccessfully to cross his fingers. Air hissed into the lock. The makeshift patch held, although, as the lock filled, escaping air made a whistling noise. The inner hatch opened. Erin, weapon at the ready, stepped into the suit closet. It was empty. She opened a door cautiously and moved into a corridor. «Well, you're back,» Gordon Plough said. Erin whirled. A uniformed man was standing in a doorway, a saffer dangling from his right hand. Erin's arm moved only slightly. Gordon Plough died before he had time to understand that his plan had not worked, at least not for him. He had one nanosecond of puzzlement as to why one of his own crew was lifting a saffer at him. «Damn, Erin,» Dent protested. «Look in his right hand,» Erin said harshly. Denton walked to the dead man, saw the weapon in his hand, swallowed, looked away quickly. Erin made a quick check of the rest of the ship. There were permanent quarters for four crew members and a temporary setup for another. Five in all. All of them accounted for with four dead outside on the surface of the asteroid and one in the corridor. Erin approached the computer, a first generation Unicloud, not state of the art but years newer than Mother's old Century Series. There were files for the usual star charts. The ship's papers gave her the name, the Murdoch Miner, and told her that the ship was registered on Haven in the name of the Haven Refining Company, the firm that had bought her first cargo of ore. She got a mental picture of Murdoch Plough, tall, self-centered. So, she thought, he hadn't taken it so lightly after all when X&A put the strong arm on him and forced him to pay a fair price for her gold. «Well, I guess that's it,» Denton said. «I guess it's back to the nearest civilized planet to call—» He shook his head. «Who do you call? You can't call the nearest policeman.» «X&A,» she said. «The Service handles any crime in space.» She was pushing buttons. «Time enough for that later. Right now we've got to find Mother. « «Oh, hell, poor Mop,» he said. «I'll bet he thinks we've deserted him for sure.» She lifted ship. The Miner was much more agile than the old Mule. She circled past the asteroid and headed out into the big empty roughly on the vector followed by Mother. The Miner's state of the art detectors had the Mule on screen within seconds. After that it was a matter of closing with Mother, of sending Denton out into the void again. «Put Mother down where she was when it all started,» she told Dent. «And you?» His voice was slightly distorted by space as it came from Mother by radio. «Beside you,» she said. She refilled her suit's tanks, left the outer hatch of the Miner open when she left her. «How's Mr. Mop?» she asked, as she stood on the bare rock. «I think he was happy to see me.» «I need your help out here, Dent.» «All right. Let me get suited up.» «I wouldn't ask, but I can't do it all alone.» He emerged from Mother into full sun that glared off his suit. She was already moving one of the bodies toward the Miner. «Bring the woman,» she told him. An hour and a half later they had put all four bodies, two men and two women, aboard the Miner to join the body of the man Erin had killed aboard ship. «What are you going to do?» Denton asked. «Lock onto her and take her back to the nearest U.P. planet?» They were standing near the mining ship with the crowded core star fields gleaming harshly over them. Starlight reflected off the treated glass of their helmets. Erin took a deep breath. «Why did we come out here, Dent?» «Am I supposed to answer?» «I wish you would.» «For gold.» «For how much gold?» «For enough so that neither one of us would ever have to worry about money again.» «Have we gathered that much gold?» «Nope,» he said. «But listen, Erin—» «Why did they—» she moved her gloved hand in the direction of the Miner— «come out here?» «For gold.» «And they were perfectly willing to kill us to get it. All of it.» «Where are you going with this, Erin?» «Do you have any idea what sort of red tape we'd have to go through if we show up on Haven or some other U.P. planet with five dead people?» He shook his head. «I'll tell you this. You'd be old and gray before you finished filling in forms, being tested to see if you were telling the truth, and answering questions. I don't have time for that. I didn't ask these people to follow us out here and try to kill us.» «I don't think I'm going to like this,» Dent said. «I'm ex- X&A, and I'd still be put through the wringer,» she said. «I've paid my dues. I spent six years on Rimfire. I don't want to spend two years explaining to a board of inquiry how we got lucky enough to kill five people who were trying to kill us.» «What do you have in mind?» he asked doubtfully. «I'm going to go aboard and program a timed blink into that computer,» she said, and her eyes turned toward the nearest sun, an atomic furnace that would swallow the Murdoch Miner and her dead easily and with finality. «I don't know, Erin. We're walking the line by not reporting Old Smiley and the other bones. I'm not sure I want to go that far across the line.» «Then just go on back to Mother and tell Mop I'll be along shortly and I'll take care of it. Your conscience will be clear.» He grunted once, twice, shook his head. «No,» he said, «you've done enough. You took charge. You saved our lives. You wait here.» He disappeared into the bowels of the ship. A few minutes later Erin's hair tried to stand on end as the blink generator was activated. Denton came hurrying out of the air lock as if he were being pursued by the ghosts of the Miner's dead. «Thirty minutes,» he said. «Plenty of time for us to get back to Mother and get the hell out of here.» They bounced and jetted their way back to the ship in silence. When the inner air lock hatch opened, Mr. Mop went wild with joy on seeing them both, walking on his rear legs, gnawing on them playfully. Erin picked him up and scratched his belly. Dent went on through to the bridge and soon Mother lifted away. «It just occurred to me,» she said, «that they might have left some trace of their presence on the asteroid.» «Not to worry,» he said, positioning Mother so that they could see the Miner on her rocky perch. He checked his watch. «About—now,» he said. The Miner and the asteroid winked out of existence. Mother's sensors followed the blink. The mass of ship and rock