Battlefield Earth Part 32

"Tell Chirk."

"Also," said Jonnie, "I need some experience operating over those mountains. The updrafts and downdrafts are very strong and in winter they'll be worse. I don't want you getting ideas if I fly around up there."

Terl put his paws protectively on the desk top as though to block a view into the drawer. Then he realized he was getting jumpy. Still, the longer he kept things in the dark, the less chance there was of the animal's talking to other personnel. He began to weave an elaborate fantasy to explain to others why animals were flying in the mountains.

"You seem to know an awful lot," he said suddenly.

"Only what you've told me," said Jonnie.

"When?"

"Different times. Over in Scotland."

Terl stiffened. True, he had been unguarded. Very unguarded if this stupid rat brain had picked it up....

"If I hear just one leak of this real project- through Ker or anybody else-' he tapped the control box in his pocket, "the smaller female is going to have a collar explosion!"

"I know that," said Jonnie.

"So get out," said Terl. "I'm far too busy for all this chatter."

Jonnie had Chirk copy the requisition on a duplicator and asked her to call Ker to help ferry the equipment. "Here you are, animal," she said when she was through and handed him the copies.

"My name is Jonnie."

"Mine is Chirk." She batted her painted eyebones. "You animals are kind of funny and cute. How can you be so much fun to hunt like some of the employees say? You certainly don't look dangerous. And I don't think you are even edible. Crazy planet! No wonder poor Terl hates it so. We're going to have a huge house when we go home next year."

"A huge house?" said Jonnie, looking up at this rattlebrain in wonder.

"Oh, yes. We'll be rich! Terl says so. Tah-tah, Jonnie. Bring me a sack of goodies when you want a favor next time."

"Thank you, I will," said Jonnie.

He went out with his warehouse-size list to get busy. He knew he had a new piece of the puzzle. Terl would not be here more than a year. Terl was going home and going home "rich."

Chapter 4.

"I am sorry, gentlemen," said Jonnie to his council.

They were seated on some bashed-up chairs in what had become Jonnie's combined quarters and office- a s.p.a.cious room that overlooked most of the area, chosen because it had whole windows.

Jonnie pointed to the stacks of books.

"I have searched through everything I can find and am unable to locate it."

Robert the Fox, Doctor MacDermott, the parson, and the schoolmaster sat glumly looking at him. He never tried to fool them about anything. One thing about MacTyler-he was honest with them.

Things had been going well, too. Almost too well. The young men were progressing marvelously in their ability to handle equipment. There had been only one casualty with the flying trucks- two trainees had been attacking each other's trucks in the air in simulated combat and one of the young lads had punched a wrong b.u.t.ton at the wrong time and hit the ground. He was lying in the infirmary now, leg properly set by the parson and attended by the clucking old widows; the flying truck, according to Ker who came over to fix it, was fit only to be cannibalized.

The three young men who looked like Jonnie had bruised hands from the schoolmaster's ruler; the schoolmaster kept them at the instruction machines from dawn to noon when they went off to study vehicles; they were learning Psychlo under heavy pressure and doing it very well.

Several young men had caught wild horses and broken them to ride, and they rounded up wild cattle and shot deer so there was no lack of food. Radishes and lettuce brightened their fare, proud trophies of the old women's garden.

In fact everyone was working like fury and the place looked like an ant hill all day.

"Perhaps," said Doctor MacDermott, "we could help you look." He gestured at the books. "If you'd tell us exactly what it is we're to be locating."

"It's uranium," said Jonnie. "The key to this battle is uranium."

"Ah, yes," said Doctor MacDermott. "It isn't harmful to humans but is deadly to Psychlos."

"It is harmful to humans," said Jonnie, pointing to a toxicology text. "Given too much exposure to it some humans die rather frightfully. But it apparently ignites the breathe-gas of Psychlos and makes it explode. It is uniformly fatal to them.

"These mountains," he continued, sweeping his hand toward the mountains outlined by the sunset behind them, "are supposed to have been full of uranium. I know definitely the Psychlos believe they are. You can't force a Psychlo up into them.

"The demon Terl is going to send us into those mountains to find, probably, gold. He has undoubtedly spotted some. We may or may not mine the gold. Probably we would have to, to keep going. But we could also mine uranium."

"And you can't locate any," said Doctor MacDermott.

Jonnie shook his head. "There's even lists of uranium mines. But they're all marked 'mined out,' 'mine closed,' that sort of thing."

"Must have been very valuable," said Robert the Fox.

"They list a lot of uses for it," said Jonnie. "Mainly military."

The parson rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "Would your own village people know anything?"

"No," said Jonnie. "They're one of the proofs that there is uranium up there. That's why I have not taken you gentlemen there, much as I would like to. I'm certain their illnesses and inability to reproduce have a lot to do with uranium."

"It doesn't seem to have affected you, MacTyler," smiled the parson.

"I wandered a lot and was not home much of the time. And some are affected more than others, perhaps."

"Heredity," said Doctor MacDermott.

"Over the centuries some of you may have developed a resistance or an immunity. They would not know?"

Jonnie shook his head. "I haven't gone up there because I don't want to stir them up- the recon drone flies daily. But one day soon I must find a way to move them. And a place to move them to. No, they would know nothing about uranium or they would have long since quit that valley."

"We do have to solve this problem," he continued. "It is the center of every plan."

Doctor MacDermott held out his hand. "Deal those books around and we will put aside some of our sleep and help you look."

Jonnie started handing them books in rotation.

"I think," said Robert the Fox, "we should send out some scouts. It is basic in the planning of any successful raid that one sends out some scouts first. How do you recognize this uranium?"

"Indicators are there in the mine books," said Jonnie. "But the main tool we do not have. It 's called a 'Geiger counter,' and though I've looked it up and have a vague idea of how one is made, the point is we don't have one."

"Perhaps," said the schoolmaster, "there may be one in some of these old villages. Do they have directories for factories?"

"I doubt such an instrument would be worth much after a thousand years," said Doctor MacDermott. "But I do see there a...goodness, but this has almost gone to pieces...a telephone? book...to 'Dev...Denve...' Telephones," he added for the others, "used to exist in cities. Here...'instruments...International Business Machines Research?' Oh, drat. The address can't be made out."

"The writing exists on many buildings there," said Jonnie.

Robert the Fox leaned forward. "As I say, it takes a scout. Scout before raid is the watchword. We must be very careful that the demons do not suspect us of snooping about."

"They have body heat detectors," said Jonnie. "That's how you escaped them clinging under a horse. They knew horses were running away. But the recon drone takes only pictures, and one should get under cover when he hears the rumble far off. The sound of a ground car, however, means real danger, for they have spinners that fly up in the air and look for heat. I have some covers that we can throw over ourselves to block heat, but we have to be very, very careful. I think it's best that I go."

"Na, na," said Robert the Fox, his accent thickening into dialect from sudden alarm. "We canna ha' ye dae thet, laddie."

The rest of the council also shook their heads.

The parson said, "You keep yourself safe, MacTyler. That's why we're here- to help you."

"The small demon..." said Jonnie.

"The one that came to fix the flying machine?"

"The same," said Jonnie. "His name's Ker. He told me an order had been issued, he said by the planet head, to forbid all hunting parties in this whole area and to restrict them all to the mining areas and compound. There was some talk, Ker said, of coming over here for some sport. So there aren't any demons wandering around and it's perfectly safe to go up to the Great Village on a scout- so long as we don't stay in sight of the recon drone."

"Scouts," said Robert the Fox firmly, "are not done by Chiefs. Raids, perhaps. Scouts, no! We will send young Angus MacTavish. All those in favor?" And Jonnie was firmly voted down.

Thus it was that young Angus MacTavish went scouting to Denver in a small ground car in the dark that night. He was peculiarly adept at operating machinery: he had taken piping and brought the water closer, and he had worked out how the water mains and sewers worked, and he had even gotten a couple of inside toilets working, to the amazement of his friends.

He was gone forty-eight hours and came back with a lot of wonders to report. But the International Business Machines Research Laboratories were in ruins that bore no fruit.

There was nothing there even vaguely resembling the Geiger counter that had been described to him. He had also located a "Bureau of Mines," but it had only decayed records. He discovered a "Prospector's Outfitter," and though he had found some stainless steel sample picks that he brought back, and an a.s.sortment of stainless steel knives that delighted the old women in their work, there had been no Geiger counter there either.

The council met again and grimly decided to carry on and get ready anyway, and the parson said a prayer that pleaded with the good lord to have pity on them and lead them somewhere, somehow, to a Geiger counter and uranium.

They also decided to send out more scouts, but without too much hope.

Chapter 5.

Jonnie awoke in the middle of the night to the abrupt realization that he knew where a uranium detector existed. The ore duster at the transshipment area! He had even spent apprentice time on it.

So, despite Robert the Fox's prohibition against his scouting, Jonnie was on a scout, dangerous or not.

Every few days he saw Chrissie. Each time he did, he made it a habit to ride around the minesite idly just to accustom the Psychlos to his being there. He would sit Windsplitter and wander around.

Today Chrissie and Pattie looked very forlorn. Jonnie had brought fresh meat and more deerskin for them to tan and sew. He had cut plenty of firewood- one of the Scots had unearthed a stainless steel axe from a village ruin, and it made such work remarkably fast.

He placed all this outside the wooden barrier to be taken in when Terl was "not busy" and could come out.

It was frustrating to talk through the wooden barrier and the cage bars. Chrissie and Pattie held up some buckskin shirts and breeches for him to admire and then repackaged them for him to take. He called to them that they looked fine. Pattie exhibited a new arrangement for their pitiful shelter- they could fasten nothing to the bars- and he said it looked much better.

What was he doing, they wanted to know. He said he was working. And was he all right? Yes, he was fine. And were things going well? Just fine. Difficult to carry on a conversation across a s.p.a.ce of forty feet through two screening barricades and under the surveillance of at least two b.u.t.ton cameras. Difficult to be calm and rea.s.suring when what he really wanted to do was blow the place up and get them out of there.

He had a picto-recorder on a strap around his neck. With a couple of buckskin thongs he had steadied it to his chest so that with a slight motion of his hand he could start and stop it without raising it to his eye. He had practiced doing that and had gotten pretty accurate at pointing it without looking through the finder. He requisitioned a dozen of the things and plenty of miniature discs. As he talked he took pictures of the girls and the cage from several angles, pictures of the switch box and wires. It was a risk, he knew.

He told Chrissie and Pattie he would be back and rode casually to a high point above the c.h.i.n.ko quarters. Seemingly idle, he took broad panoramas, both wide-angle and telephoto, of the minesite. He took pictures of the twenty battle planes lined up in the field, the distant cartridge fuel dump, and, beyond that, the breathe-gas storage dump. He took pictures of the morgue a hundred yards beyond the transshipment area. And he covered the freighter landing area and ramps and conveyor belt and control tower.

Then luck! He saw a freighter on its way in with a load of ore. He idled down off the knoll. As he pa.s.sed the cage, he felt a sudden need for cautiousness. He dismounted and slipped the discs he had already taken into the waiting pack, making it appear that he was just putting in some flowers.

Remounted, he wandered on down to the ore-dusting area. He let Windsplitter pause near tasty clumps of gra.s.s and at last came to the dust-coated area of transshipment.

The freighter had not unloaded yet. Employees were coming out and getting onto their machines. He rode up to the ore-dusting machine. The operator was not there. A hook was swinging from a crane and he pretended to duck it. But in actual fact he leaned over and pulled out a wire from the back of the machine's controls. He did not know its circuit, but with luck he would very soon.

The operator knew him slightly from his apprentice days but glanced at him with normal Psychlo disdain. "You better get that horse out of here! Ore coming in."

Jonnie backed Windsplitter off.

The freighter discharged with a dusty roar. The blade machines raced about neatening up the pile. The first load was ready for the buckets on the conveyor belt.

A red light flared. A horn went off.

The ore duster operator cursed and banged at his controls.

All activity stopped.

The air around the operator's dome and mask might well have turned blue from his cursing.

Char came rumbling like a tank out of the dome of the transshipment control office, shouting as he came.

Far off was the faint moan of another freighter coming in from an overseas minesite.

It was not a transshipment firing day, but schedules were about to ball up on freighter discharge.

Char was shouting for electronics repair, and somebody in the dome, on the loudspeaker system, was demanding to know where the duty electronics was.

Jonnie could have told them where duty electronics was. He'd seen the employee walking toward the compound fifteen minutes ago.