Выбрать главу

“Yep.” Nelson grinned. “Can't figure out why the government felt it had to force two million dollars on us. Almost like a paid vacation.”

“Well,” said Bowman, sipping a cup of coffee, “any ideas?” “Most of them relate to the guys who sold us this bill of goods,” said Nelson. He sighed. “At least it's only springtime. We've got a little time to mull the problem over.” “Think anything could be alive down there?” asked Bowman. Nelson shook his head. “I doubt it like all hell. Still, there's no way to be sure without landing. In which case,” he added, “there probably still won't be any life, including us.” “Very comforting,” said Bowman. “I appreciate the Republic's confidence, but I'm beginning to wish that they had bestowed it elsewhere. We can't land on the damned planet, we can't find any friendly natives to do our work, and we can't chart those goddamn explosions.” “The explosions are the tricky part, all right,” agreed Nelson. “If it weren't for them, we might actually get the job done.”

“If it weren't for them, there wouldn't be any job,” grunted Bowman. “I've had the computer working on them for the better part of three hours, and they're absolutely random. You could get two in the same spot an hour apart, or you might go half a century without one. And without being able to chart or predict them, there's no way we can get close enough to the surface to learn any more than we already know.” “I suppose we could just orbit the damned thing for a few weeks, and then return and tell them we

couldn't hack it,” said Nelson.

“And forfeit two million bucks?” demanded Bowman. “I'd say the cards are stacked against us, Milt,” said Nelson. “Item: The gravity is too heavy for us to land. Item: The air is both unbreathable and radioactive. Item: Even if a Pioneer-type ship could land, it would melt before it could take off again. Item: No permanent base could be set up, even if we solved all those problems, because the planet's temperature is going to double in another ten years. Item: If none of the preceding items were enough to dissuade us, we still don't know when an explosion will come along and blow us straight to hell and back. Item—” “Well, they never said it was going to be easy,” said Bowman with a smile. Three days later the smile was long gone and forgotten. The ship's sensing devices had logged 129 more explosions, and the computer had verified that all were totally spontaneous and patternless. “And if that isn't enough,” said Bowman, checking the readout, “it looks as if the planet is getting smaller by the minute. Not enough so you'd notice it, but enough so it will finally blow itself to pieces in another four or five thousand years.”

“Well, what next?” asked Nelson.

“I'm running out of ideas,” said Bowman. “I was up all night with the computer. According to our mechanical comrade, all we have to do is get a superstrong mining ship and develop immunities to heat, radiation, and things that go bang in the night.” A week later things weren't appreciably better. The two Pioneers had shot a dozen probes into the planet; one had been demolished in an explosion within minutes, and the others were deactivated by heat and radiation shortly thereafter. They had sent a mechanical drone out to take a sample of the upper layer of the atmosphere, and the gravity had pulled it to the planet's surface, destroying it before it could feed its findings into the computer. They had tightened their orbit, and had barely escaped with their lives. They had shot two nuclear devices into the planet's stratosphere and exploded them, with no noticeable effect in either creating or alleviating the natural explosions. And they had played 3,407 hands of blackjack, also without producing any solution to their problem. “You know,” said Bowman, “a person could go absolutely nuts trying to crack this planet. How the hell do you take a world that's having nuclear fits and turn it into a nice place to visit? Well, back to the drawing board,” he finished, turning to the computer. The drawing board was no help. There were simply no analogous situations stored within its memory banks.

“We could tie in with the Master Computer on Deluros VIII,” suggested Nelson. “It might know something that our baby is overlooking.” “Sure,” said Bowman sarcastically. “And pay out a million-dollar fee for the privilege. Hell, I'd sooner forfeit the contract. I hooked in once when I was a novice and spent my next five contracts paying it off.” “Then what do you suggest?”

“I don't know. We'll just keep trying. Sooner or later we've got to learn something about this goddamn

planet.”

Bowman was right. They did learn something, two days later. The Pioneers had sent off their last dozen probes with very little hope of any results, but one of them remained functional long enough to report the presence of life on or beneath the surface. “That's crazy!” said Bowman. “What in hell could possibly be living down there?'’ “We're not going to know until we can get our hands on some more probes,” said Nelson. “We've got to find some way to make contact with them,” said Bowman. “They're the only way we're ever going to beat this dizzy world. You know all that bitching I did about the Master Computer a few days ago?”

Nelson nodded.

“Forget it,” said Bowman. “This time I think we're going to need it.” Nelson offered no objection, and a few hours later their ship's computer was tied in. It fed the Master Computer every piece of data available about the planet and waited far the gigantic machine to hypothesize the makeup of the inhabitants. Its conclusion was less than comforting. “According to the Big Brain,” said Bowman, checking the readout, “the little bastards feed on energy. Which figures, I suppose; I don't know what the hell else they could feed on. But it also means that they're not going to bend over backwards to help us siphon it away from the planet.” He paused. “As long as we're still tied in, and in hock for half the contract, we might as well see what it says about landing our miners on the surface.”

It saidno about as emphatically as a computer can say anything. There was still time for one more question, so Bowman decided to see if the Master Computer could come up with any alternative to forfeiting the contract. It could.

“Well, I'll be damned!” said Bowman as he looked at the readout. “What does it say?” asked Nelson.

“It says, in effect, that since we can't bring Mohammed to the mountain, our alternative is to bring the mountain to Mohammed.”

“Translated from the Biblical, what does that mean?” “It means that instead of trying to land men on Bowman 29, we can funnel off the energy into a force field and send it across the galaxy.”