A Mind For Trade Part 12

"Hold." Ali's voice sharpened. Then he laughed, and tabbed the mute as he swung around on his seat. "Fascinating."

Rip distrusted the arch to Kamil's mobile brows, and even more so his sardonic smile. "You mean troubling."

"How perceptive of you, my good pilgrim," Kamil said in a falsely congratulatory tone. "Or are you merely reading your mystery beams?" He tapped his skull.

Rip ignored the rhetorical question with the stolidity of long practice. Because it was a rhetorical question, meant merely to be goading, to make Rip as angry about the psi business as Ali himself was. Rip knew that Kamil did not for a moment believe that any of the other three were suddenly adept at reading minds.

"Thorson will be out of range soon," he said, glancing at one of the corn-readouts. "Is there a problem?"

"Yes, but there's nothing we can do about it," Ali said, his tone changing to business. He tabbed a couple of keys, and a number came up. "Two minutes and forty seconds until the helmet corns are out of range. Short of getting our blasters and hijacking a flitter to go after them, whatever Lossin and his accomplice are planning shall be carried out."

""Accomplice? What's this?"

Instead of answering, Ali keyed the com-log, and played a short portion. Dane's voice filled the Queen's cramped control deck, describing the sh.e.l.lboat's controls. Rip listened, puzzled, as Thorson went on to talk about the weather scope they had, and how it was tracking a gigantic storm on the other side of the world. He rambled on a bit on how the Coriolis effect seemed to interact with continental features on this world-then Ali cut him off mid-sentence. "Got that?" he asked, goading again.

Rip ignored him, thinking rapidly. "Planetwide scope. Comsats! And of course we wouldn't necessarily pick them up on our equipment." He indicated Ali's console.

"Not unless we were looking. Which we haven't been, lest we alert those pirates."

"But the North Star should have found them," Rip said, rubbing his chin. "Tang Ya's one of the best comtechs in Trade-he wouldn't miss something like that. Particularly as the sats have to be tuned to one of North Star's pre-set frequencies."

"But they've kept radio silence," Ali said.

Rip shook his head. "d.a.m.n. I wish I knew what all this meant. Just one talk, one straight talk with the Old Man, instead of all this indirection and second-guessing-and now, with those pirates up there listening to every word, we won't even get that."

"Jellico plainly doesn't trust our Traders, so he hasn't let on about the comsats," Ali said, restless again. He got up and paced back and forth in the tiny s.p.a.ce, making the control deck seem even more cramped. "But we're not dealing with Jellico or the pirates. We're dealing with these Traders, with a ready-made planetary corn-system. The question here is, why didn't we find this out right from the start?"

"Did Tooe find out?" Rip asked, trying to think back.

Ali started to speak, then hesitated, his lips parted.

"Don't," Rip said. "Whatever went on in that conversation with the Tath, I will guarantee there was nothing important that she didn't report. Thorson vouches for Tooe. We have to trust her, at least."

Kamil smiled unwillingly. "I guess I'm becoming too habit-bound in my old age. We twelve were a stable unit for so long that my first instinct, is not to trust the motives of anyone new. First Rael Cofort, and now Tooe. So what does that leave us with?"

"Questions only," Rip said firmly. "We've already learned that we can't trust our interpretations of their motives. They think too differently from us. When Tooe gets back from their camp, I'll brief her."

"When she-" Ali paused, looking down at the console. An insistent light blinked. He tapped it, then the speaker connection.

"Tazcin here." The leader's deep voice rumbled.

Rip keyed the exterior port-screen, and saw the flitter waiting outside, well within the perimeter of the floodlamps.

Jasper Weeks popped his head through the hatchway a moment later. "They're here," he said. "Want to help me get the equipment outside?"

"With you," Ali said, casting a strange smile over his shoulder at Rip.

In silence Rip watched the two men, now clad in their winter gear, carry out their scanning equipment to the waiting flitter. Tooe appeared briefly, hopping out to offer her help. Rip saw Tazcin-or what he took to be Tazcin. The Tath were too hard to tell apart, unless they were standing in their customary row.

Row. It tugged at a memory.

Ali had first responded negatively to that impa.s.sive row of Tath standing shoulder to shoulder, as if they were hiding something-or confronting someone. Rip's mind flickered to their bunks.p.a.ce in the camp, all four crammed together, and then he had it.

They lived in an artificial environment, a habitat in s.p.a.ce, with its finite living area. Hadn't he read in some drab history text somewhere in his youth about early Terran experiments with living in habitats, and how artificial environments tended to either drive people crazy or else cause them to alter their perceptions of personal s.p.a.ce?

That was it. Terrans needed room around them. Tooe obviously didn't, judging from how close she used to stand, until she herself learned to keep herself at a comfortable distance. But the Tath, habitat-dwellers all, naturally required little personal s.p.a.ce. In fact, they probably felt more comfortable standing close together. It had nothing to do with threat or defense, any more than the Terrans' standing at arm's length from one another had to do with threat or defense-though someone not used to it could be excused for surmising that the arm's length was a necessity for freedom in drawing and firing weapons.

And if they saw our sleeprods that first night. Rip knew he was onto a real insight.

This very well could be the main impetus behind the mutual wariness.

He wished all the others were there to. discuss his ideas with, then he shrugged. Soon enough.

Meanwhile, he could get them recorded in his log. Keying his console to life, he flexed his fingers and started typing.

Dane and Johan stared in dismay at the forbidding low rock dome harsh-lit in the mining boat's lights.

"Fourteen islands only," Lossin said. "Most so close to the limit that conditions must needs be ideal before we go out to them. This one is Number Two. Work there is still yet to do."

Stotz shook his head slowly, his mouth grim. The evidence was clear: mining cielanite was tougher than they'd figured.

No, not mining, Dane thought. The mining-slugs were largely autonomous. What did they look like? Various horrific images flitted through his head, remembered from the trashy tri-D vids he'd watched so eagerly in his youth. Doubtless they were some sort of organic machines, something Terrans rarely saw, except depicted as monstrosities on vids. But Dane remembered the engineer's earlier reaction. Stotz wouldn't just grin about them if they were really terrible.

No, it was getting the ore they produced that was hard. The only ore the Tath mining devices could reach was in these volcanic domes, forced up by magma. Some domes were too far away to be reached except when the moons' complex cycle reached its longest between high tides. The mining-slugs needed the very tidal scouring that tended to carry away the ore, but too long a high tide would carry away all of the ore brought up by the biomechs, which made scheduling even more complex.

That was if the weather stayed relatively calm. And if no one was sick.

"No trees on any of these dome islands?" Stotz asked abruptly.

"None. We a.s.sume cielanite content in the extractable range inhibits their growth, for the trees are thick on islands with no useful ore, or with ore content registering only in deep layers."

"And you don't risk setting up camp on an island with no trees?"

"We know only that the Floaters move around trees, but never go among them. There is rarely fog in the trees. The Floaters stay near land. We a.s.sume they spend their nights out here over these islands, where there are no trees."

Siere spoke. "We haff recorded thisss fog moving rapidly over the watersss as the sssun setsss, before our inssstruments loossse sssight of them."

"Don't show up on infrared, eh?" Stotz murmured.

It was a rhetorical question, Dane knew, nevertheless Lossin grunted affirmation, and Siere said, "Yesss. Thisss isss true."

Stotz glanced at the time-they all did. The engineer gave a soft grunt, and Dane saw his brow clear, as if his mood had changed.

His manner was one of antic.i.p.ation as he said, "All right, then. Let's unstow the ore-bots and get to work."

They pulled on their heavy-weather gear. Dane worked quickly; he hated the way the cold got into his clothes and chilled his flesh.

But when he got a glimpse out the viewport of the sh.e.l.l-boat, he forgot about the weather. He'd never seen anything like this before. The boat seemed to be crawling up on the beach, like an amphibious landing craft. The motion was strangely smooth, and Dane could hear no hint of an engine sound now. Instead, there was a strange rhythmic hum as the sh.e.l.lboat moved out of the surf and beached itself. Peering back out of the huge viewport on his side, he could see a long track of strangely patterned sand extending behind the vessel back to where the wind-whipped waves obliterated it. Finally the craft stopped moving, and the only sound was the wind.

The back of the sh.e.l.lboat lowered, like a ramp. As they got out, Dane looked around to orient himself and saw that they were facing the sea. Chill wind buffeted his face, and in the distance was the flicker of lightning-something that he hardly noticed anymore, so familiar was it.

Dane's boots sucked and squidged in the mucky sand as he walked around to the side of the sh.e.l.lboat, leaned forward, and peered at its underside. The scales on the underside of the boat were moving slightly, in unison. He reached out to touch one.

"No!" Lossin's voice boomed. "The motor scales are very sharp!"

Dane pulled back his hand. "It moves like a snake!"

"Snake?" Lossm repeated. "Good for short distances only."

"Thorson?" Stotz waved an arm, and Dane mucked his way back to the door of the sh.e.l.lboat. He looked in, and a sudden laugh shook him when he saw- "-haggis on legs." Stotz grinned.

The bots were standard eight-legged motivators-like the guy-bots that had moored the Queen-with a universal machine platform on top, but where Dane had expected some sort of complicated digging equipment to be mounted was a huge, brightly colored bag flopping over to one side, with an articulated flexplas snout-jutting from one side.

"The tartan plaid of the collector bags is in honor of your duel with the Shver on Harmony, Dane," said Stotz. He chortled at the reaction his surprise had caused, then looked up as an especially severe blast of wind buffeted them. "But we'd better get to work."

Quickly he demonstrated how the ore-bots worked. The snout was actually a powerful vacuum tube, with a Tath-supplied cilia fringe that helped it dislodge the ore eggs from where the mining-slugs deposited them. A small camera in the tip of the snout relayed an image to the operator, who walked behind the ore-bot and worked from the image on-screen to guide the snout.

They walked the bots over toward the dome, which Dane recognized immediately as exfoliated granite flaking off in big chunks.

"Must look upward," Lossin said. "Rock falls often, and workings of the mining-slugs accelerates the process."

Just then Dane caught sight of something bright yellow glistening in one of the cracks in the dome. He stepped away from his bot, which automatically went into idle mode, and approached it cautiously. It was moving!

He looked up to see Stotz grinning at him. "Behold the fabled mining-slugs!" he said.

Dane leaned over to look closer, then pulled back abruptly as the thing raised one end as though to look him over. It was a giant slug! At least four feet long, it had no eyes, and glistened all over with an oily sheen.

"Touch not," Lossin said, coming up beside them. "This outer substance is great corrosive, which makes it possible for miner-device to bore through rock."

As he watched, there was a clanking sound, and something rolled away from the other end of the slug.

"There you go," said Stotz. "Cielanite ore." He pointed at the familiar joined-sphere shape of the ore-bodies they'd first seen at the Trader camp.

"Ore eggs!" said Dane.

"Pretty much," agreed the engineer. "So you know what that makes these," he continued, waving at the ore-bots.

Dane started laughing. "Egg collectors." Then he sobered quickly as Lossin looked down at the chronometer strapped to his furry wrist.

"There is not much time," the Tath said. He looked around. "Much of the ore has been washed away-we will have to climb higher."

As they walked on, Lossin described the difficulty of finding ore. Dane noted that that was the only slug they saw, and Stotz explained that most of the ore lay deep in cracks. Lossin nodded emphatically as the engineer demonstrated with his ore-bot.

The next period of time was highly unpleasant. The wind ripped at them, never steadily, but in sudden gusts and jolts that made it even more difficult to maneuver on the wet, rocky ground. Dane nearly lost his balance several times, and that was before they began climbing behind the bots, which nuz-zled into the deep creva.s.ses and cracks in order to sniff out ore eggs left by the Tathi mining devices.

When they had reached the ma.s.s limit for the speed and fuel required of the return trip, Stotz and Lossin called a halt. Dane said nothing, but his reaction was pure relief as they returned the bots to the sh.e.l.lboat and boarded it.

The wind was slowly rising to gale force, Dane noticed, as they began to pick up speed. The ride became rougher and rougher, making him wish the sh.e.l.lboat was a ground-effect vehicle, despite the fact that would have reduced its payload considerably.

Heavy rain smote them abruptly, a watery stream that made the ports impossible to see out of. Lossin was guiding entirely on radar by the time they neared their island, but all too often the entire screen went white as a series of lightning bolts ripped through the sky. In haste-no one needed to speak it-they closed the boat down, got it anch.o.r.ed, and piled into the flitter.

The tide, whipped up by the storm, was heaving just behind the floor of the cave. One good wave, Dane thought as he threw himself into his pod, and they'd all be swept out onto the rocks. No one could fight that force.

Lossin hit the ffltter controls, and the little ship rose and jetted out of the cave, just as below them a great dark swell surged into the cave and smashed against the walls, washing around the secured boat.

The next time they came, precious hours would be spent in transferring the ore to the two flitters. No mining could be done until that was complete.

Dane's thoughts narrowed to the viewscreen ahead as Lossin fought steadily against a shrieking gale. The flitter shuddered and shook, its Tath pilot fighting for every meter of distance.

The fuel gauge dropped rapidly as the engines howled in protest. After a time, Dane began to wonder if the weather or the fuel gauge would get them first.

Visibility was near zero, so Dane watched the console readouts as Lossin fought the little craft. Directly ahead of Dane sat Stotz, his back tense with his silent concentration on Lossin's hands. Dane spared a glance at the medic, who sat quietly, his eyes half-closed. Of them all, he seemed the least ill at ease. Though he might be misreading, Dane thought to himself. He'd already learned not to trust his second-guessing.

"Nunh." The grunt came from Lossin.

And seconds later light shone on the slanting rain, highlighting the individual drops until they looked like liquid fire. A moment later the Queen herself appeared, first gleaming wet and silver in her own lights, then glaring brightly in a flare of lightning far overhead.

The flitter nosed directly up the Queen's ramp and lurched inside.

Someone closed the outer hatch just as the flitter settled to the deck.

The engines spun down to silence, which was deafening after the continuous pounding their hearing had taken. Dane rubbed his ears as he climbed out behind Stotz.

The engineer said to Lossin, "We should drive you back to your camp."

Lossin shook his s.h.a.ggy head. "Not needed. Storm is worse, and you will not be able to avoid trees." He pointed outside. "We go directly to trees, where the storm is less. We will be fine."

They left immediately; dawn was less than an hour away, though the storm made it impossible to tell.

Stotz disappeared immediately in the direction of his lair. Dane heard him yelling for Jasper and Ali.

Dane stopped at his cabin to shed his wet winter gear and put it through recycling, then he climbed up to the galley deck in search of something hot to drink-and news.

There he met Tooe, Mura, and Rip Shannon. All three were silent and tense.

Dane had been about to offer a report on the mining excursion, but he felt the words slip from his mind. "Problem?"

Rip jerked his chin up sharply, his usually pleasant face un-characteristically grim. "Compiled a suitable report for the North Star, something that could be read by the pirates."

"Right. And they came into com range, and." Dane prompted.

"Nothing."

"What?"

"That's just it," Rip said. "Nothing. They should be here-* He got up and pointed to a dot blinking on an orbital path called up on the computer screen. "But there's no sign or signal. Nothing."