Dunne picked up his bazooka. Nike had hers loaded before he’d more than picked his up. She showed him that she’d put it on safely. He said, warningly, “No space-phones!”
She reached up to her helmet. A light glowed. She looked inquiringly at him. Nothing could be much more useless than a helmet lamp for a space-suit to be used in the Rings. But it was simpler to use a space-helmet with an unneeded feature than to get others made, particularly when so small a number would be required. But a helmet light meant something now, with the spaceboat backed into a cavern.
Dunne nodded. He leaned over until their helmets touched.
“I want to say,” said Dunne deliberately, “—something I only admit because I think we’re going to be killed. I want to say that I like you very much. I’d like to have you near me permanently. In short—”
But then he put her into the airlock. He said no more until the outer door opened. He fastened the lifelines for both of them. He saw her making ineffectual gestures, and he saw her face and realized that she was crying and trying to wipe her tears through a space-helmet.
Dunne made his way toward the cavern’s mouth. Nike suddenly stiffened, staring toward the back of the cave. She made a curious inarticulate noise, but only she heard it. There were painted symbols on the rocky wall.
But Dunne was facing away from them. He reached the bow of the lifeboat. He saw something solid in the all-enveloping mist. It was a donkeyship. It fled, and careened to turn and get back behind the giant mass of minerals. It was Smithers’ ship. It vanished.
A misty moving other object appeared almost instantly. It was Haney’s ship. Like a hawk after a sparrow, it flung itself in pursuit. Both ships disappeared.
Dunne shook his head inside his helmet. He found a place in which to brace himself, for the use of his bazooka. And then, practically from under his feet, Smithers’ battered ship came eeling out again. It streaked for the concealing mist. A thing came after it. Streaks of smoke—bazooka-shell smoke—came after it. One missed and went on uselessly on toward nothing whatever. But a second one struck and its shaped charge vaporized a hole in the metal and poured its whole explosive force into the donkeyship. A second bazooka-shell struck the donkeyship’s belly as it tumbled. A third hit.
Smithers’ battered ship began to come apart in space. The pursuer appeared, incredibly, from the mist to one side. It fired twice—three times more before the mist obscured it again. What wreckage remained connected together went on toward shining oblivion beyond the haze. Twice, Dunne saw a movement in that strange fog. It was each time a ship swirling and circling around its enemy. There were momentary flashings of light, explosions even brighter than sunshine on the dust of Thothmes’ rings. Shells were being pumped into the remains of the fragments of the wreck.
Then—nothing. Dunne waited, his bazooka ready, his features contorted with pure hatred. The hatred wasn’t on account of Smithers. It was because Haney and his companions had committed cold-blooded murder before his eyes, and he hadn’t been able to stop them. And Nike would presently be another victim.
Then Nike pulled at his arm. He touched his helmet to hers.
He said grimly, “If Smithers could track us and try to overtake us so we’d fight for him, then Haney’s donkeyship trailed us too. They’ll come back.”
Nike shook her head impatiently. “No! Not that! Come here!”
She threw the light from her helmet to the back of the cave. Catching onto one handhold after another, she dragged him half the length of the lifeboat. She pointed at the rocky wall where were the initials and numbers “JG-27.” Nike narrowed the beam. The light played on gray stuff. Friable stuff. There were actually greasy seeming crystals in view. They actually stuck out of the matrix! And Nike swung the light beam again.
There was an airlock door, made of the same plastic material as the bubbles used in the mining process of the Rings of Thothmes.
Nike touched her helmet to Dunne’s.
“This is it!” said her voice in the tinny, resounding helmet. “Don’t you see? JG—Joe Griffiths! And 27. That’s the year he found it! This is the Big Rock Candy Mountain!”
And it was. But as Dunne gaped at it, a shadow went past the cave mouth. Dunne jerked his head about. A donkeyship went past the cavern, no more than twenty or thirty feet from the lifeboat’s nose. From the airlock of this other ship, a man threw something.
The donkeyship went on. The object that had been thrown revealed its nature by detonating with a monstrous violence. It shattered the entire bow of the lifeboat, back through the miniature control room. The stern of the lifeboat was cracked, and it bow parts were smashed.
Haney’s donkeyship was out of sight. Dunne knew that peculiar raging frustration of a man who considers that right and justice and decency have been outraged and realizes that nothing can be done about it. He and Nike had just found the Big Rock Candy Mountain, a fit subject for fables and tales to the end of time. Therefore, they owned it. But they would own it only until the material needed for breathing gave out. There was no need for Haney to do anything more. They were dead. It would be completely, as well as figuratively, true in a very short time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was undoubtedly curiosity that brought about the final development of the situation. It was Nike’s curiosity, perhaps; but Dunne’s curiosity may have had a share in shaping the remaining events. Possibly he unconsciously had some hope that made him look alertly about him. Certainly Haney’s curiosity contributed. Or perhaps Haney didn’t so much want to make sure as he wanted to swagger in the presence of those who had opposed his purposes and frustrated some of his efforts, even if they happened to be dead when he swaggered. Possibly he had a freakish idea that such brilliance and talent as he’d displayed deserved a greater reward than merely being the husband of Nike’s second cousin once removed, and thus collateral descendent of Joe Griffiths. He may have had a notion that this was the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that wasn’t likely.
Haney moored his donkeyship to one of the freakish metallic formations on the surface of this fifteen-hundred-foot Ring-fragment. He relaxed in absolute assurance of complete success in all his undertakings. The brother and sister, to whom his wife was a second cousin once removed, were dead. Their deaths had come about in the Rings, where there was no law. The highest court on Horus had officially determined that they had no jurisdiction over events, properties, or crimes in the Rings of Thothmes. Therefore, all must be well. But—just possibly—there might be crystals in the wrecked lifeboat. It would be interesting to see. It might be a good idea to remove the bodies of Dunne and Nike and send them away as Ring-fragments to find their own orbits and stay in them forever. And it was really possible that Dunne might have some special, large, unusually valuable abyssal crystals he’d hidden from his partner when he came upon them. Haney would have cheated any partner he had; it seemed reasonable to see if Dunne had done the same.
Therefore, after a leisurely, self-satisfied contemplation of all his affairs, Haney took his companion and went to look at the wreckage of the lifeboat. They made the journey with much care and very little exertion.
Meanwhile, Dunne and Nike faced the fact that in every respect but one they were already dead, so they went through the plastic airlock to see what the interior of the Big Rock Candy Mountain was like.
There was no gravity, there was no air in the considerable cave beyond the plastic entrance. Nike’s and Dunne’s helmet-lights showed them that there was a strong resemblance between this cave and a plastic bubble. Cracks and crevices had been sealed by plastic. There was a living space, floored with planks brought here from Horus—several scores of millions of miles away. There was furniture attached to the plank flooring, which in turn was fastened to the rock beneath. There was an upholstered chair with ribbons to be knotted across the knees to hold a person in. There were lamps with elaborate if not very tasteful shades; they were fastened to the tables on which they stood. There was even a painting hung on a wire stretched across the center of the cavern. The floor and furniture were placed as in theatres “in the round,” with no walls anywhere, so the floor and furniture could be seen from any direction.