Mother Lode

ity which made her deck down regardless of her position. Standing outside, the breath of the nuclear furnace that was the nearest star raising the temperature on the surface of her suit, Erin felt momentary dizziness as she looked up at Mother. She took a deep breath. The hiss of air was loud inside her helmet. On all sides around her the shattered remnants of a world kept pace, most of them tumbling slowly. She was in the middle of an eerie sea of motion made up of the glaring, brutal, unfiltered sunlight reflecting off sunward planes and angles and the absolute blackness of space that was echoed on the dark sides of the asteroids. And over and under and to all sides were the cold, many-faceted faces of the core star fields. In the shadow of the ship the suit's coolers changed tone as their function was reversed to heating. The light attached to her helmet came on automatically. She pointed it by moving her head, approached the extraction arm, stepped down into the trench. It was pleasing to her to see the light bouncing off flecks of pure gold, but that pleasure passed when she focused her attention on the thing that was partially exposed near the biting end of the arm. She placed the work kit on the barren stone, removed a hand-held, laser powered cutter, a tool developed especially for mining. A sensor guided her to a setting that would not harm the fossil bone. She applied the laser to the matrix rock around the skull experimentally, saw that the setting was perfect. The enclosing rock melted away. For a few minutes she forgot her appalling isolation, did not lift her eyes to see the harsh sunlight or the crowded stars, concentrated on the job at hand until she could lift the skull free. She placed it on the rock at the side of the trench and cleaned it with the laser beam. She had not been wildly interested in the subject matter covered in the one course in paleontology that had been required at the Academy. Following the fossil record of the evolution of the Tigian tiger was, at best, dull. Only a few days had been allocated to the discussion of the work being done by technicians in anti-radiation gear on Old Earth, where the hardened remains of the Old Ones, man himself, were being unearthed. Before going extravehicular, she had punched in orders for the scant material on the development of man. The skulls of the Old Ones, Earthmen, were identical to those of modern man. This had inspired various interpretations. One cynical school of thought had it that God had given up on man, that after the Destruction He had determined that man was His greatest failure and had abandoned any further development. Others, more upbeat, believed that, as the Bible said, man had been created in God's image, and was thus perfect, needing no evolution from the form that had been developed prior to the Destruction. The mutation of the Old Ones into Healers, Power Givers, Far Seers, and Keepers after the Destruction was, depending on one's viewpoint: 1. The power of God exemplified, since divine miracles were required to preserve life on earth. 2. The work of the evil one, perverting the perfection of God's finest creation into ugly and malignant forms. Fortunately, the first view, or more moderate adaptations of it, prevailed in U.P. society, allowing the mutants from Old Earth to be valued and welcome members of the race. But the fossil skull that grinned at her, all teeth intact, eye sockets black and empty, was not that of some mutated form or of some alien. Her knowledge was limited. She was not an expert in the field, but she'd looked at pictures just minutes before exiting the ship and the images were fresh in her mind. This fellow had been the guy next door. He was man. Modern man. And that was very damned interesting since, if she remembered correctly, it took a few million years to turn living bone into stone. She used the mining laser to check the area where the skull had spent an eon in sleep. She melted out a lightning bolt of pure gold and held it in her hand, but there was no sign of other fossilized bones. Mother spoke to her. The husky voice of the computer said, «You have been extravehicular for one hour and twenty-eight minutes.» No problem. She had four hours worth of air and a ten minute reserve. She melted out another small vein of gold, put it into her specimen pouch, examined the rock near the trench, said, «Well, to hell with it.» The suit's coolers sizzled into action as she stepped back into the light. She looked up and around. The skull in the pouch on the outside of the flexsuit pressed against her thigh as if reminding her that once it had housed the soft, mysterious things that made up an intelligent brain. The stars pushed down, dazzling her eyes. The tumbling rocks of the asteroid belt seemed to be moving toward her. She ran in pure panic, clambered up the steps, mispunched the combination to the lock, screamed out good, solid, spacer profanity that had originated in the less desirable areas of a score of planets. Her frantic eyes looked up, saw Mop sitting on the little ledge of the control room viewport, his mouth open, his tongue hanging out. «Hi,» she said, calming enough to punch the right combination into the lock. The outer hatch closed with an unheard but felt clang. Air hissed into the lock. The inner door opened and she peeled out of the suit, first removing the two samples of gold and the skull from the outside pouches. «Well, my friend,» she said, holding the skull in both hands, for it was, after all, heavy stone. «I can't say I care too much for the garden spot where you decided to spend eternity.» She was just a little bit ashamed of herself. Mop greeted her as if she'd been gone for ages, leaping, making mock attacks, hoisting his rear and lowering his head between his front paws in his «look-at-me-I'm-charming» pose. She ruffled his soft hair, picked him up. He threw himself over onto his back in the crook of her arm with a gusty sigh and allowed her to rub his chest and belly. When he had had enough he began to wiggle. She put him down, punched up a very stiff drink, sat in the control chair. Mop took his place on the console and lay down, his head held up alertly, ready for conversation. «Mr. Mop,» she said, «looks to me as if this belt of rock was once a planet of considerable size.» Mop said, «Wurf.» «Which makes you think, doesn't it?» She took a long sip of her drink. «The U.P.'s planet buster could have done this to a planet. Did, as a matter of fact, to a few Zede worlds during the Zede War, but that was just a thousand years ago, and our friend, there—» she shifted her eyes to the skull—» is very damned definitely more than a thousand years old.» Mop lifted his right paw, asking for a handshake. She complied, held the paw. «What we should do, I guess, is send a blinkstat back to X&A right now.» Mop cocked his head. «Yeah, you're right,» she said. «We've got everything we own tied up in this expedition. Dad's money, too. Everything wrapped up in this Mother. I don't know how much gold we've got aboard, but I do know this. We report our friend, here, to X&A and this whole belt will be off bounds until it's searched for other fossils. That means that you and I wouldn't live long enough to get back to digging gold.» She had released Mop's paw. He scratched her hand gently, demanding her touch. She held his paw again. «What I think is this,» she said. «I think we will wait to mine this particular rock. What I mean, sir, is this.» Mop cocked his head. «We haven't even seen this rock, have we?» Mop didn't say anything. «If you ever want me to take you go—» His right ear shot up. «—you'd better agree with me.» «Wurf,» he said. «Good,» she said, nodding. «And we won't see it until we're good and damned ready to see it, will we? If you ever want to go?» «Wurf,» Mop said. «Because our friend there has waited an eon or two already. I think he can wait until a nice, deserving young girl and a rather splendid pooch are so rich that the U.P. tax men can't take it all away from us.» She picked Mop up and ruffled the blond hair on his head. «So rich that waiters will bow and shop women will give us shit-eating grins. So rich that we'll buy you a diamond-studded collar. Would you like that?» «Ummmmm,» Mop said, meaning, «rub my belly, Erin.» She had to go back out again to place a coded beeper in the trench before she covered it over with debris. She did it quickly, without looking up and around at the silent, watchful stars or the slowly tumbling remnants of a world. When she was aboard once more she moved ship, found a nice pocket of gold, and went to work. Three weeks later the cargo space of the Mother Lode was heavy with ore. The generator was fully charged. Mother went flashing back down the blink routes toward civilization. The latest edition of the United Planets' Directory told her that the best place to sell her gold was a mining world on the coreward frontier of the U.P. sector. She punched a query into the computer and the old Century hummed and chuckled and came up with routes to the fourth planet of a class G sun a few thousand light-years away. She had let her hair grow during the months in space. She felt that she was a bit old, at thirty, to wear her ash blonde tresses shoulder length, but there didn't happen to be a hair care center nearby, so she blinked into communicator range of a rather cold looking planet called Aspiration and got landing instructions for the port in the principal city, Wiggston. She was told to stay aboard until customs checked the ship. Mop, able to see paved pads, snow, a few scraggly trees, buildings, and other items that might need irrigating, was going bananas, leaping and whining to go out. Erin tried to reason with him in vain. She called Wiggston Control. «Look, fellas,» she said, in her sexiest voice, «I've got a little dog over here who is about to burst something internally because he wants to go outside so badly. We've been in space for a few months. May I have permission to walk around outside on the pad?» «Let me speak to your captain,» the controller said. «You're speaking to the captain.» Silence. «Wiggston Control, this is the Mother Lode, « she said in irritation. «Permission to walk my dog, if you please.» «Your animal must go into quarantine,» the controller said. «The hell you say.» The controller's voice was harsh. «Do not open your hatch, Mother Lode . Do not allow your animal to exit the ship under any circumstances until our animal importation people are at your ship with a sealed transporter to take your animal to quarantine.» Silence on Erin's part. Then, «How long is your quarantine period?» «Six months.» «Permission to lift ship,» Erin said. Silence. «Wiggston Control, Mother Lode. I request immediate permission to lift ship.» «Permission refused,» the controller said. «You have broken the laws of Aspiration. Your animal must be put into quarantine.» «You and the horse you rode in on,» Erin said, as she pushed instructions into the computer. Mother quivered and lifted. An angry voice was on the communicator. Erin turned it off and juiced the flux drive. Mop whined as the g forces pushed him down onto the console forcefully. Just in case the good people of Aspiration were really assholes, Erin turned on the detectors. If anything looking like an armed ship came toward her she was ready to blink to hell out of there, although blinking while in a planet's gravitational well was against the rules. However, no ships appeared. She kept Mother's flux drive pumping full power until she was well clear and then punched in a blink. «What do you think?» she asked the Mop. Mop, freed of the g forces of the quick getaway, lifted his head and looked pitiful. «Sorry about that,» she said, «but I don't think you'd have liked an Aspiration prison for pooches.» The U.P. Director said that there were refineries on Haven, a planet just a few blinks down the routes. This time she was more careful, checking on Haven's attitude toward small dogs before going down. «Tell your captain,» the controller at Havenport said, «that your ship and crew and the little dog are welcome in our city.» «You're speaking to the captain,» Erin said. Silence. «Ah, good, Mother Lode, you have clearance to land on pad A-10. Make your approach vertical from 90 angles. What service do you require for your ship?» «Nothing more than offloading,» Erin said. Hardpad A-10 was near the eastern edge of Havenport, and it was lined with green lawns, shrubbery, and trees. Erin cracked the hatch as soon as Mother had settled, put a harness and leash on Mop just to be sure his enthusiasm could be controlled, and went out into air that smelled of the refineries smoking up the skies around the city. Mop was whining in his excitement. After a few satisfying, leg-lifting efforts, he looked up at her as if to say, «Why are you doing this to me when there are trees just over there?» «All right, buster,» she said, taking off his leash. «But you stay close.» Mop tore around in circles. He'd learned to run quite well on the moving belt in the exercise room, but there was no substitute for grass, open spaces, the occasional planting that needed hiked-leg attention, and trees. After a quarter hour of watching a busy little dog checking each object that rose above the level of the lawns for messages left by fellow canines and leaving volumes of meaning himself, she clapped her hands to bring Mop running and took him back aboard ship. There were two messages on her communicator, both from refinery representatives. She returned the calls. Yes, good yielding gold ore was very welcome on Haven. The price, U.P. standard, thirty-two credits per troy ounce of refined gold less ten percent for the cost of refining. Both reps offered the same price. She called one other refinery, pretended to be a reporter for a Xanthos-based holo-magazine, and was told that the going price for gold was thirty-two credits per troy ounce less ten percent for refining. She rewarded the first man who had called her by selling him her cargo. She supervised the offloading. Mop, on a leash, cringed at the noise. A cleaning crew went to work in the cargo hold as soon as the ore was offloaded. She and Mop followed the ore carriers to the refinery and visited the office. The man who had originally contacted her was six-four, weighed in at a solid-muscled two-hundred-ten, had a go-to-hell cowlick in his sandy hair and a lopsided grin that, he felt, was irresistible to all persons of the female persuasion. «What's a sweet little thing like you doing coming into Haven all alone with a cargo of gold ore worth a few hundred thousand credits?» he asked. «I'm not alone,» she said, rubbing Mop's blond head. «And I had hoped a million or so credits, not just a few hundred thousand.» His name was Murdoch Plough. He grinned. «Well, we'll see.» He reached out. «Cute little feller, ain't he?» Mop growled deep in his chest. «No, Mop, you can't eat the nice man,» Erin said. «Real killer, is he?» «His father was a Tigian weretiger,» she said. He laughed deep in his chest. «Well, we'll know in a few hours, little lady. I hope it is a million, but I sure can't figure out why a sweet little thing like you wants to go traipsing around out there in the big dark all by her sweet little self.» She stood up. «Oh, I find it rather restful,» she said. «You can call me aboard Mother Lode when you've completed the refining.» «Now you don't want to go running off,» he said, coming around his desk quickly to take her arm. Mop growled. «Easy, killer,» Murdoch said. To Erin he said, «Look, you've been in space a long time. It would be my pleasure to buy you a real steak and to show you the sights of Havenport.» «Thank you,» she said. «I have some housekeeping to do aboard ship, and I want to restock some food items.» «I can handle that for you,» Murdoch said, letting his hand travel up her arm. «I can handle it myself,» she said. «And I'd appreciate it if you'd quit handling my arm.» He laughed. «Now, little lady—» Mop lunged from his position in Erin's right hand and sank his sharp little teeth into Murdoch's index finger. Murduch yelped and leaped back. «Isn't it odd, Mr. Plough, that nobody will listen when I tell them what a mean little son-of-a-bitch my dog is?» Mop growled deep in his chest. «I'll be waiting for your call, Mr. Plough,» Erin said. Murdoch Plough called late the next day. He did not use her name. «We have your check ready for you, Captain,» he said. «Good,» Erin said. «How much?» «Well, I have some bad news for you,» he said. «When we put the ore through the refining process, we discovered that most of the gold content was of very low purity. Lots of contaminants, you know. It lowered the