Miners in the Sky (2 page)

Another ship. Two more. Many! The emptiness about Outlook became filled with short-wave conversation. Suddenly there were jests, there were jokes, and there was exaggerated, change-hungry laughter. Some of the jokes had been old before space-travel began. Very few of them were genuinely new, but men howled with laughter at them. There were questions, Did so-and-so still do this or still do that? Did somebody else still have nightmares and start fighting in his sleep? Remember the time—? Had anybody seen so-and-so? He wasn’t here last pickup ship. Was he here now?

Questions like that weren’t approved. They didn’t fit the mood of Outlook at pickup-ship time. The men now aground waited impatiently to get out of the rotund little ships that had been mere movable prisons for many weeks past. They didn’t want to hear that this or that team of donkeyship men had vanished. The presumption could only be that they were dead.

There was also a tacit agreement not seriously to ask what luck others had had. Anybody who boasted would practically invite less-fortunate others to trail him when he left. They’d want to know where he found the precious crystals all the galaxy bid for, But there were always two questions asked of everybody as they arrived. The first was, had they seen any gooks? This was considered very humorous. Had anybody seen any gooks? Laughter. The other question was, had they found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. This was excruciatingly amusing to men waiting hungrily to get out of their ships if only for minutes.

Dunne knew that these things went on, though he hadn’t yet reached Outlook. They were traditional.

Then his drive-detectors picked up the booming sound of the pickup ship. Its drive sounded quite unlike that of a donkeyship, It was bringing oxygen and food and mining supplies and mail, but mostly it was bringing a change, a relief, a temporary forgetting of life in the Rings of Thothmes. It was coming from Horus, the next planet out from the sun.

Its drive-sound, as the detectors reported it, was a deep-toned rumble. It came swiftly nearer. The voices of men aground on Outlook stopped abruptly. Dunne felt the desperate impatience everybody knew at moments like this. He wanted to fling his ship into top-speed, crazy rush to get to Outlook first. But he held himself in check. He heard the pickup ship’s drive stop, and reverse, and he knew that the large space-vessel was matching velocity and approaching the slowly rolling mountain with care through the haze of moondust floating in space. He drove on and on, and a confused notification appeared on his radar screen. There was something very large ahead. It was too far away to be identified, but he knew what it had to be. Outlook. He heard the pickup ship’s drive go on for half-seconds, and other half-seconds, and he knew that it was maneuvering to match velocity and rate-of-turn with the mountainous mass of nickel-steel.

There was an abrupt spurt of full-power drive, and then everything stopped. The communicator brought in fresh excited babblings of the men who’d come here to meet this ship. The pickup ship was aground.

Hilarious questions assailed the pickup ship. How was the weather on Horus? How did the Panthers make out in the planetary series? Did the pickup ship have any cold beer? Men shouted orders for civilized meals that they wanted to describe item by item; it could be guessed that in their past isolation they’d dreamed of special dishes unavailable in the Rings, and by the time the ship arrived they were waiting as hungrily for some special foodstuff as for the oxygen and other needs the pickup ship came to Outlook to satisfy.

Dunne came in, checking Velocity with fierce, full-power reversals of his ship’s drive. He hovered over the clustered donkeyships, arranged in an. incomplete circle on the nearly level space which was the spaceport of Outlook. He was sighted. Ribald greetings came to him from the childishly excited space-miners of the Rings. Who was he? Why was he late? Had he seen any gooks? He was too late. All the food supplies on the pickup ship were already spoken for. What was the news from the Big Rock Candy Mountain? References to that fabled Golconda were jokes, of course, but not altogether jokes. There was actually something, somewhere in the Rings, which had been christened the Big Rock Candy Mountain because it held the answer to every man’s dream of riches and magnificence. Dunne knew a little more about it than most, because his partner Keyes was the nephew of that Joe Griffiths who’d found it, and brought out untold wealth, and who’d gone back to get still more, and was never heard of again. Keyes didn’t want the relationship known because there’d be suspicion that he had. special useful information about the Mountain and was in the Rings to make use of it.

But the Big Rock Candy Mountain was part of the ritual on Outlook. There were men who believed in it implicitly, and accepted every mouth-watering detail of the tradition. Some believed in it with reservations. But nobody wholly disbelieved, because there was fact behind the legend. There was no miner in the Rings who didn’t dream of finding riches incalculable in some Ring-fragment he was sure to come upon eventually—perhaps before the pickup ship came again.

Dunne curtly gave his name and settled down on a place just beyond the donkeyships around the spaceport’s edge. It wasn’t one of the better landing places. He could see all that went on in the spaceport, but nearby there were crazy upcroppings of the kind usually called metal trees. They weren’t trees, but they were metal; and because of them, a man in a space-suit could get close, to Dunne’s donkeyship unseen. But it was the best place left.

Voices babbled at him, struggling for humor and for wit. Dunne, eh? How many kilos of crystals had he brought back? The question was genial mockery. A gram of crystals wouldn’t be despised, and ten grams was a fair average for the Rings. A kilogram would be spoken of with awe for years to come if anybody actually brought in so much. In any case, no man would answer such a query, not even on Outlook with the pickup ship nearby. Someone asked how Dunne’s new partner liked the Rings? Who bossed the ship? This last was reference to the psychological warfare that often developed when two men were imprisoned together for weeks or months on end. Some men came to hate each other poisonously under such circumstances. Sometimes one partner arrived at Outlook fiercely demanding that the partnership be dissolved. And it was done, on the pickup ship. Sometimes two sets of partners switched companions, to find out later that the situation was not relieved.

Dunne was known to have Keyes as a partner. Keyes was relatively new to the Rings. There were humorous queries. Had they fought? How had Keyes made out in the Rings? Hey, Keyes! How’re you doing? Is Dunne a tough character to get along with? They say he’s scared all the time he’s out of the ship in a space-suit. Does Keyes make you do all the out-of-ship work?

The talk was ridiculous. It was childish. But it expressed the frantic impatience of the men in the donkey-ships for a change of any sort, any new sight or voice, Keyes didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was back on the ring-fragment he and Dunne had discovered. The voices called for Keyes, to tell him hilariously of alleged tricks and chicaneries an experienced space-miner like Dunne might practice on him. But Keyes wasn’t there to answer.

Dunne grimly got his ship to ground and anchored with its magnetic grapples. Voices called again for Keyes.

Dunne said curtly, “He’s not here.”

Voices said, “What happened?”

Dunne said, “He’s not here!”

Then he realized that he’d made a grave mistake. If he’d said that Keyes had cracked his faceplate when out of the ship, it would have been better. That was a perfectly credible accident. It might or might not be believed, but nothing would be done about it. Or if he said he’d killed Keyes, it would have been nobody’s business. But he shouldn’t have refused to give any explanation at all. That would lead to guesses. Guesses might be dangerously dose to the truth—that Dunne and Keyes had found a rock too precious to be left unguarded while one of them went to the pickup ship for air to breathe.

There was a sudden silence. For a full half-minute the space about Outlook was startlingly still. Then somebody said something in a dry voice about the pickup ship taking its time. Other voices joined in. There was a sudden, absolute avoidance of the subject of Keyes. Because men would be making guesses. Dunne realized that he’d made an appalling blunder. Possibly half, or more than half, of the space-miners on Outlook would be debating whether or not to try to trail him when he went away. Their guess would be unanimous that Dunne and Keyes had found riches. Some would guess at enormous riches. A few would even guess at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Then a booming voice spoke from Dunne’s communicator. It was the ultra-powerful transmitter of the pickup ship. It said, growling: “All right! I don’t hear any more drives. Maybe we’re all here. Let’s get to business. Who landed first?”

A voice answered hilariously. It named a name. Another voice gave another name, very curt and businesslike. It had been second to arrive. There were other voices. A voice said, “Smithers.” There were other voices giving other names. An unctuous voice said, “Haney.” Dunne kept count. When it was time, when every other ship had answered, he said, “Dunne.”

There was a pause. The names were being checked. Mail was doubtless already sorted, but men who had wives or kindred to write to them devoured mail just as men in prison do. But as for checking the names, Dunne could have done it himself. It was simply a matter of comparing the names just given with the names on the pickup ship’s last visit. There was a difference between the lists. Some ships didn’t answer.

There was no comment. Nobody could know what had happened. When a ship dropped out of sight, it dropped out of sight. That was all. Nobody had to go to the Rings. It was their own decision, and they bought their own donkeyships and came to the Rings in full awareness that the death rate among space-miners was thirty per cent a year. The planetary government of Horus sent the pickup ships to supply their needs and bring back the treasure—the abyssal crystals—they found. But the pickup ships weren’t here to prevent or punish crime. That simply wasn’t practical. So Dunne wished bitterly that he’d said he’d killed Keyes instead of giving an excuse for guesses. In the Rings no governmental authority went outside the hull of a pickup ship. But curiosity had no limit.

“Okay,” said the pickup ship’s booming voice. “Let’s get at it!” It read off a name. It was the first name recorded. “Waiting for you, now!”

A pause. Then a man in a space-suit clambered out of a donkeyship. He carried a parcel. He went across the relatively flat surface of glittering metal. Magnetic-soled space-boots accounted for the fact of walking. A ladder reached down from the pickup ship. He climbed it. He was inside the larger space-vessel for some minutes. He came out and went leisurely over to the donkeyship from which he’d emerged.

The pickup ship boomed a second name. Another man in a space-suit came out of another donkeyship. He went in the pickup. He came out and went back to his own small craft. Donkeyship by donkeyship, as the ship from Horus called their names, men went to the large and infinitely welcome pickup ship. They carried parcels—small parcels—into it. They came out without them.

The man who’d said his name was Haney went in, swaggering even in his clumsy space-suit and with his magnetic-soled boots clinging as if sticky to the metal under him. Another man—the one who’d answered “Smithers.” Then Dunne answered to his name, and went. He was the last, because he’d arrived last. He turned over a parcel of abyssal crystals to the pickup-ship skipper. They were the reason for everything that happened in the Rings. He made the formal statement that he and Keyes had found a ring-fragment marked such-and-such, but obviously abandoned. They’d painted their own initials and a year on the rock. They were working it.

“Yeah!” said the clerk who took down his statement. “I remember them!” He spoke of the former owners of that fragment. “Doin’ well, they were, when they just didn’t come back.”

Dunne said, “Mail?”

He didn’t expect any, but Keyes should have a letter. He had a sister on Horus and was deeply concerned about her. Not to get a letter on the pickup ship would disturb Keyes. Dunne asked for a second look. There was no letter.

Dunne gave his order for oxygen and supplies. It would be made ready for delivery presently. He went back to his ship. A pause, seemingly for no particular reason. The booming voice of the ship said: “Any more? Any more coming in?”

It was a call for any donkeyship that might still be on the way to Outlook. The call could be picked up an astonishing distance away. But there was no answer. Silence. The voice from the pickup said dryly:

“All right, boys! Come aboard and spend your money!”

Instantly there was activity all around the spaceport’s edge. Men emerged from each of the ships. They headed for the ship from Horus. Now there was no silence. They babbled via their space-phones as exuberantly as before the pickup ship’s arrival. They were starved for conversation with strangers. They were ravenous for experiences they did not have in their ships. There were two men from each of the ships, except Dunne and that of the man named Smithers.

They trooped to the ladder of the supply-ship. They clambered up like small boys let out of school. They chattered like schoolchildren. Those who’d had mail were most exuberant of all. They went into the big cargo-lock which had room for all of them and had been pumped out earlier. As individuals they’d used a smaller, personnel lock. Now All crowded into this big lock, and the outer door closed. Air came in, turning misty from the chill of its own expansion into the vacuum of the lock. Then the inner doors opened and they were in the Ship. They made yapping noises at the sight before them.

All of this was standard. All of it was familiar. Every man had been through it before and each one was anticipating every item which his ordinary life—life in the Rings—did not provide.

There was food spread out on tables, waiting for them. There were white cloths and silver. There were drinkables. There was artificial gravity set at a little less than was customary in donkeyships. With space-suits stripped off, everybody felt lighter. Everything in the pickup ship made for euphoria. Only so. often did pickup ships come to Outlook, and only then could the men who sought and found mines in space live for a little while as their dreams demanded. Without this, they’d forget what they were working for and become less than human. With it, they knew the sensations of children.