Miners in the Sky (17 page)

Dunne fired again, and the little rocket-shell hit Haney’s follower in the chest. It went through his space-suit… his body and flamed for seconds thereafter.

He could see that Nike was struggling to rise and fight beside him. He suddenly realized that they were not dead. There’d been a standing figure in a space-suit in the cave when he entered it. Now two helmet-lamps played on it and bazooka-shells hit it. But the figure beside Dunne fired. It was Nike. Dunne fired simultaneously. And then Haney realized from where Dunne had been shooting. He aimed crazily and pulled the trigger. The hurtling tiny rocket-shell missed Dunne by yards. It went over his head. It struck gray matrix-stuff in the wall. A portable bazooka and shell, like this, would burn through three inches of solid steel. This one flared an abyssal crystal.

And there was light.

. The brightness of that light ended everything. It was in the cave wall behind and above Nike and Dunne. It was the most terrible light in the universe. A thousand thousand strobe lights fired together might provide a comparison.

But there could be no equivalent. The light of the one abyssal crystal turning all its stored energy to blue-white glare was the most violent, the most searing, the most blinding light in the universe. Dunne and Nike were made sightless for minutes.

But Haney who’d fired the bazooka-shell, did not see its reflections. He looked, as he fired, where the shell should strike. And he saw the light direct. He was looking when it appeared.

Dunne heard him scream, but Dunne was blinded too for the time being. Nike had no sensation of anything but an intolerable brilliance. It was minutes before either Dunne or Nike could see anything. Then the bright disks of their helmet-lights revealed Haney. He seemed to be trying to see. But he couldn’t.

When Dunne and Nike could see again quite clearly Haney was still unable to tell light from dark. He’d looked at the light from a crystal breaking down.

He would never see anything else again.

There were several donkeyships on the spaceport of Outlook when Dunne brought the donkeyship to a landing. Everybody was in the pickup ship, feasting on its foods and drinking its drinks; they didn’t notice when Dunne arrived, and therefore there was no excitement.

Dunne made his way into the ship by the personnel-lock. Presently he was in the skipper’s cabin.

“I’ve got a passenger for you,” he said curtly. “Man named Haney. And I want to send some crystals to Horus.”

He dumped a quantity on the skipper’s desk. It was not all that he and Nike had, of course. It wasn’t a tenth, or a hundredth. But the skipper’s mouth dropped open.

“I’ve found the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” explained Dunne as curtly as before. “Naturally, I don’t want to stay out here in the Rings. I’d be followed everywhere, and ultimately killed, so I’m going to drive my donkeyship to Horus. I want extra oxygen and food and such items. I think it would be wise for you to give me my stores quickly and let me get away before they—” he nodded in the direction of festivity—“hear about it and get too hard to handle.”

The pickup-ship skipper found it still more difficult to speak after he’d taken a second look at the crystals Dunne had spilled on his desk.

“Here’s a list of supplies,” said Dunne matter-of-factly. “When they’re ready, I’ll get Haney in a space-suit and turn him over to you. He’ll tell you everything. He can solve a number of murders that have only been suspected. He’s very anxious to talk. And—oh, yes! I want to make a will and get it witnessed. Two wills, in fact. And—”

He wanted a considerable number of things. At least one was quite unprecedented in the Rings. But the large crystals on the skipper’s desk were very powerful arguments for giving him whatever he wanted.

The feasting in the pickup ship’s main cabin went on longer than usual, this trip, because Dunne was receiving preferential treatment. There were two wills to be witnessed. Dunne wanted to be sure that if anything happened to him, the proceeds of what he’d turned over to the skipper would go to Nike. And Nike was very firm about a similar arrangement for Dunne. And then she composedly observed that for a will to be valid, certain circumstances were desirable. The relationship between testator and legatee, for example.

… But it appeared that the captain of a space-ship, like the skipper of old-time ocean-going ships, had the authority to perform marriages. Would the pickup-ship skipper perform one now, so these wills would hold in case of need?

When it was finished, Dunne got ready to start the donkeyship for Horus. It belonged to him. He had a bill of sale from Haney. He got a repetition of the acknowledgement from the man who’d tried so earnestly to kill him. Nike watched with becoming gravity.

“I’ll see you off,” she said, “because it’ll be weeks before we’re both on Horus!”

“I’ll put a big new crystal in the drive,” said Dunne, “to get there quicker. We’ve plenty!”

She nodded. She went out of the pickup ship with him. They marched together—magnetic boot-soles clanking—across the spaceport of the donkeyship. She went into the ship and removed her helmet. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. She smiled at him.

“Alone at last!”

He kissed her. It was very satisfactory.

Then Nike said firmly, “I’m not going back to the pickup ship. I’m going with you! I only suggested the will stuff and the formal marriage so I could refuse to let you go away by yourself!”

Dunne grinned. “You stowed aboard me once. I thought I was arranging a very sneaky shanghaiing. So I might as well lift off.”

The donkeyship did lift off. In minutes it was a speck, and after that it seemed not to exist at all. But though absent in fact, it was definitely present on the pickup ship even an hour later, at least as the subject of impassioned conversation. The pickup ship’s skipper had introduced Haney to the main cabin. He swaggered, though he had to feel his way from chair to chair. He boasted of what he’d accomplished while he was in the Rings. There were growlings. But he was blind. Nobody would kill a blind man, even where there was no law.

They did, though, threateningly demand clues to the whereabouts of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. And he couldn’t give them. He was no astrogator. His companion in the donkeyship had done the astrogation, and Haney was too much absorbed in his need to swagger to bother with that sort of thing. He boasted of what he’d done.

Which was quite intelligent of Haney. He was the husband of a second cousin once removed of Nike. He knew her and he knew the other collateral relatives. They would instantly disown and ignore him to try to avoid the onus of what he’d done. And the only place on Horus where Haney could be sure of support
and
an admiring audience for his blustery boasts of villainy. The only possible future for Haney would be as a man serving life for murder, swaggering before lesser criminals.

And there was one other place in the Rings where there was much agitation over Dunne and. Nike and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Oddly enough, it was at the Mountain. Certain very peculiar creatures had been making a scientific study of recently discovered, systematic, and apparently intelligent noises to be picked up by electronic apparatus from the Rings. They were an expedition sent to study the new noises and their meaning and origin.

They’d found the origin. Animals of previously unknown type were responsible. And the creatures at the Big Rock Candy Mountain were making a final on-the-spot analysis of their discoveries.

The reaction was similar to a long-continued shudder. There was proof—not suspicion, and not evidence, but proof!—of horrifying acts of violence practiced by the previously unknown bipeds. The bipeds actually used violence against each other! They carried violence to the point of destroying each other! And this, of course, made it unthinkable that gooks could ever have any commerce with them. Gooks did not kill each other. The bipeds must be shunned. Fortunately, they seemed to be totally uninterested in the lovely gas-giant world on which gooks lived such peaceful and contented lives. The decision to send an expedition to find the cause of these novel-type radiations—it was very wise! Humans could be avoided, now. And they would be! It was very fortunate that they weren’t encountered by accident…

So the gook exploration-ship went back to Thothmes with enormous relief. The crew of the expedition shuddered whenever they thought of men killing things. But when men actually killed each other=—they and all their race must be avoided. Gooks will make very certain that’ they never come into contact with men again!

*
   Perhaps in a century or two, or perhaps not for a thousand years, a donkeyship will be found floating in the Rings of Thothmes and this mystery will be solved. One can guess that one of the partners in the murder of Joe Griffiths was, in turn, murdered by his partner. And one can also guess that the murdered partner had taken measures so that if he were left behind in the Mountain, that the ship would never reach port. This is only a guess, but it seems possible.    M.L.