Battlefield Earth Part 36

"Oh, that. Yes."

Jonnie knew he was losing him.

To Terl, it wasn't a screen in front of him- it was the face of Jayed.

"I haven't shown you the core," said Jonnie. He tilted the portable lamp and brought the core out of his pocket.

It was an inch in diameter and about six inches long, pure white quartz and gleaming gold. Jonnie tipped it about so it sparkled.

Terl came out of his abstraction. What a beautiful specimen!

He took hold of it. With one talon he delicately dented the gold. Pure gold!

He fondled it.

Suddenly he saw himself on Psychlo: powerful and rich, living in a mansion, doors open to him everywhere. Talons pointing on the street with whispers. "That's Terl!"

"Beautiful," said Terl. "Beautiful."

After a long time, Jonnie said, "We'll try to get it out."

Terl stood up in the narrow drift, and dust eddied in the lamp. He still fondly gripped the core.

"You keep it," said Jonnie.

Suddenly it was as though the core were hot. "No, no, no!" said Terl. "You must hide it! Bury it in a hole."

"All right. And we'll try to mine the lode."

Yes, said Terl.

Jonnie breathed a pent-up sigh of relief.

But at the drift entrance before they parted, Terl said, "No radio contacts. None. Do not overfly the compound.

Skim the mountains on the east; fly low leaving and arriving at this base. Make a temporary second base in the hills and do your shifts from that.

"And stay away from the compound! I'll see the females are fed."

"I should go over and tell them they won't be seeing me."

"Why?"

"They worry." Jonnie saw that Terl couldn't comprehend that and amended it quickly. "They might make a fuss, create a disturbance."

"Right. You can go once more. In the dark. Here, here's a heat shield. You know where my quarters are. Flash a dim light three times."

"You could just let me take the girls over to the base."

"Oh, no. Oh, no, you don't." Terl patted his remote control. "You're still under my orders."

Jonnie watched as he rumbled off and vanished in the night. Fear was preying on Terl. And in that state Terl would vacillate and change his mind.

It was a troubled Jonnie who went back to the base.

Chapter 2.

They were overflying the lode area, Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the three near-duplicates, and the shift leaders. They were high up. The air was crystal and the mountains spread grandly about them. They were looking for a possible landing site back from the chasm.

"Aye, 'tis the devil's own problem," said Robert the Fox.

"Impossible terrain," said Jonnie.

"No, I don't mean that," said Robert the Fox. "It's this Terl demon. On the one hand we have to keep this mining going and fruitful, and on the other, the last thing we want is for him to succeed. I know very well he'd kill us all if he lost hope. But I'd rather be dead than see him win."

"Time is on our side," said Jonnie, turning the plane for another pa.s.s over the edge.

"Aye, time," said Robert the Fox. "Time has a nasty habit of disappearing like the wind from a bagpipe. If we haven't made it by Day 91, we're finished."

"MacTyler!" called Dunneldeen from the back. "Put your eyes on that s.p.a.ce about two hundred feet back from the edge. A bit west. It looks flatter."

There was a bark of laughter from the others. Nothing was flat down there. From the edge and back the terrain was tumbled like a miniature Alps, all stone outcrops and sharp-toothed boulders. No place was flat enough even to set this plane down.

"Take over, Dunneldeen," said Jonnie. He slid sideways and let the Scot into the pilot's seat. Jonnie made sure he had control and then went into the back.

He picked up a coil of explosive cord and began to put himself into harness. The others helped him. "I want you to hold about ten feet above that spot. I'll go down and have a try at blasting it flat."

"No!" said Robert the Fox. He gestured at David MacKeen, a shift leader. "Take that away from him, Davie! You're not to be so bold yourself, MacTyler!"

"Sorry," said Jonnie. "I know these mountains."

It was so illogical that it stopped Robert the Fox. He laughed. "You're a bonnie lad, MacTyler. But a bit wild."

Dunneldeen had them hovering over the spot and Jonnie wrestled with the door to get it open. "Proves I'm a Scot," he said.

The others didn't laugh. They were too tense with concern. The plane was making small jumps and jerks and the sharp ground bobbed up and down below. Even here, two hundred feet from the edge, there was wind.

Jonnie was lowered to the ground and let the pickup rope go slack. Not too much blast or that cliff would sheer off again. It might even break off downward. Jonnie examined the ground and chose a sharp tooth. He girdled it with explosive cord, getting it as low and level as possible. He set the fuse.

At a wave of his hand, the pickup rope tightened and yanked him into the air. He hung there, spinning in the wind.

The explosive cord flashed and the roar racketed around the mountains, echoing.

They lowered him again into the wind-whipped dust and with a spike gun he drove a spike into the rock he had blasted loose. A line came down to him and he put it through the eye of the spike. If he had judged correctly the tooth should sheer away.

He was hauled up higher. The plane's motors screamed. The rock came away.

They lowered the pickup line and he cut the haul cord with a clipper.

The huge rock bounded into a hollow, leaving a flat place where it had stood.

For an hour, grounded and hauled away alternately, Jonnie worked. Some of the blasted rock fell into nearby hollows. Gradually a flattish platform fifty feet in diameter materialized two hundred feet back from the cliff edge.

The plane landed.

David, the shift leader, crept over the broken ground to the crack thirty feet in from the edge. The wind buffeted his bonnet. He put a measuring instrument down into the crack that would tell them if it widened in the future.

Jonnie went over to the edge of the cliff and with Thor holding his ankles tried to look under it and see the lode. He couldn't. The cliff face was not vertical.

The others clambered around seeing what they could.

Jonnie came back to the plane. His hands were sc.r.a.ped. This place had to be worked with mittens. He'd ask the old women to make some.

"Well," said Robert the Fox. "We got down."

The daily recon drone rumbled in the distance. They had their orders. The three near-duplicates of Jonnie dove for the plane and out of sight. Jonnie stood out in the open.

There was plenty of time. The sharp crack of the sonic boom hit them like a club as the recon drone went overhead. The plane and ground shook. The drone dwindled in the distance.

"I hope the vibrations of that thing," said Dunneldeen, emerging, "don't split the cliff."

Jonnie gathered the others around him. "We have a supply point now. First thing to do is pound in a security fence so nothing can slide off, and construct a shift shelter. Right?"

They nodded.

"Tomorrow," said Jonnie, "we'll bring two planes. One loaded with equipment and the other equipped to drive rods. We'll try to construct a working platform to mine the lode, balanced on rods driven into the cliff just below the vein. Survey up here right now what equipment we need for safety reels, ore buckets, and so on."

They got to work to mine the gold they didn't want but had to have. Gold was the bait in the trap.

Chapter 3.

Jonnie lay in the dead gra.s.s on a knoll and studied the far-off compound through a pair of Psychlo infrared night gla.s.ses. He was worried about Chrissie.

Two months had gone by and he felt their chances were worsening. The only blessing was that the winter snows were late: but not the winter cold, and the wind sighing through the night was bitter.

The huge night gla.s.ses were icy to the touch. The binocular character of them made them hard to use- the two eyepieces, being Psychlo, were so far apart he could only use one at a time.

The faint light of the dying moon reflected from the snow-capped peak behind him and gave a faint luminescence to the plain.

He was trying to see her fire. From this vantage point he knew by experience that he should be able to. So far he could not find even the tiniest pinpoint of it.

The last time he had seen her, two months ago, he had piled the cage with wood, given her some wheat to boil, and even a few late radishes and lettuces, all from the old women's garden. She had a fair supply of smoked meat, but it would not last forever.

He had tried rather unsuccessfully to cheer her up and give her confidence he himself was not feeling.

He had also given her one of the stainless steel knives the scout had found, and she had pretended to be amazed and delighted with it and the way it could sc.r.a.pe a hide and cut thin strips of meat.

In all these two months, he had not heard from Terl. Forbidden to go to the compound, having no radio contact, he had waited in vain for Terl to come to the base.

Perhaps Terl thought they had moved. True, they had put an emergency camp near the minesite down in a hidden valley. They had moved extra machines, supplies, and the three shifts for the lode and one of the old women to cook and wash for them. There was an abandoned mining village there and it was a short flight to the lode.

The efforts to mine the vein were not going well. They had driven the steel bars into the cliff and tried to build a platform, but the wind, meeting resistance, kept flexing the rods at the point of contact with the cliff and the section there would become red hot. It was daredevil work. Two rods had already broken and only safety lines had saved Scots from plummeting a thousand feet to their deaths. Two months' work in bitter and ferocious winds. And they had only a few pounds of wire gold to show for it- gold grabbed, as it were, on the fly.

This was the fifth night he had lain here and looked in vain for the fire that should be there.

Five nights before, not seeing the fire, they had sent a scout.

There had been a row with the council and the others when they found he was determined to slip down there himself. They had literally barred the door on him. Robert the Fox had become cross with him and shouted into his ears that Chiefs didn't scout. They might raid, but never scout. It was too dangerous for him; he was not expendable. He had argued and found the rest of the council taking Robert's side. And when other Scots heard the raised voices they came and stood around the council- as they had a right to do, they said- and added their arguments against his taking senseless risks with his person.

It had been quite a row. And they were right.

They had sent, as a compromise, young Fearghus. He went off like a shadow through the cold moonlight and they waited out the hours.

Somehow young Fearghus got home. He was badly wounded. The flesh of his shoulder was seared like beef. He had gotten almost to the small plateau in front of the cage. The moon had set by then. There was no fire in the cage. But there was something new at the compound-sentries! The area was patrolled by one armed Psychlo near the cages and one or more guards walking the perimeter of the compound.

The guard at the cage had fired at a shadow. Fearghus had gotten away only by howling like a wolf in pain, for the sentry supposed he had shot a wolf, common enough on the plains.

Fearghus was in the makeshift hospital now, shoulder packed in bear grease and herbs. He would get well, clucked over by one of the old women. He was triumphant rather than cowed, for he had proven the majority opinion right.

The other Scots, singly and in groups, informed MacTyler that the point was proven beyond any doubt. A Chief must not go on scout; raid yes, scout no.

The parson had consoled Jonnie. In Jonnie's quarters when they were alone, the parson had patiently explained. "It isn't that they feel you can't do it, nor even actually that maybe they themselves couldn't go on if something happened to you. It 's just that they're fond of you, laddie. It 's you who gave us the hope."

Lying in the tall gra.s.s using binoculars built for an alien face, Jonnie did not feel much hope.

Here they were, a tiny group of a vanishing race, on a planet itself small and out of the way, confronting the most powerful and advanced beings in the universes. From galaxy to galaxy, system to system, world to world, the Psychlos were supreme. They had smashed every sentient race that had ever sought to oppose them, and even those that had tried to cooperate. With advanced technology and a pitiless temperament, the Psychlos had never been successfully opposed in all the rapacious eons of their existence.

Jonnie thought of the trench, of the sixty-seven cadets with pathetically inadequate weapons trying to stop a Psychlo tank and dying for it, taking with them the last hope of the human race.

No, not the last hope, thought Jonnie. A thousand or more years later, here were the Scots and himself. But what a forlorn forlorn hope. One casual sortie from that compound with one old Psychlo ground tank and the hope would be ended. Yes, Jonnie and the Scots could probably attack that compound. They could probably wipe out several minesites and even end this present operation. But the Psychlo company would sweep in and extort a revenge that would end it all forever. hope. One casual sortie from that compound with one old Psychlo ground tank and the hope would be ended. Yes, Jonnie and the Scots could probably attack that compound. They could probably wipe out several minesites and even end this present operation. But the Psychlo company would sweep in and extort a revenge that would end it all forever.

Yes, he had a potential weapon. But not only did he have no uranium; he didn't even have a detector. He had nothing at all to tell him where to look or even whether something was uranium. He and the Scots had a very forlorn hope indeed.