Mother Lode

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 yield and increased refining costs. If you'll check your contract, you'll see that the standard ten percent charge is increased to twenty percent if there are certain impurities. However, the good news is that you have just over four-hundred-thousand credits worth, even if it wasn't pure stuff.» «Bullshit,» Erin said. She switched off. She dressed to go out. Mop was dancing, thinking that he was going to get to go. When she told him that he had to stay and guard the ship, he went into Erin's cabin and sulked, refusing to come out to say good-bye. She checked a town directory, hailed an aircab, gave the driver an address. It took a half hour for the assay office, licensed by the Haven government and the United Planets Department of Mining and Heavy Metals, to tell her that her gold samples were of very high purity, just a few points less than refinery pure. She had saved back the pretty little lightning bolt in gold that she had removed from its matrix rock and one nugget that she had selected at random. She went next to the Haven office of X&A and, after showing her discharge card, was immediately escorted into the office of an overweight X&A planetside commando wearing the leaves of a colonel. «Ah, Lieutenant Kenner,» he said, offering his hand, «you're a bit late, but I think we can waive the six month limit on separation from the service and get you your old rank and position back within one year.» «Thanks,» Erin said. «That's not why I'm here.» The colonel's face fell. «Well, have a seat,» he said. «What can I do for you?» «Colonel,» she said, «for years, ever since I entered the Academy, I've been told that the Service always looks after its own.» «That is very true,» he said. «I'm not sure, but I think I'm getting a royal screwing here on this wonderful little planet.» He raised his eyebrows, but not because of her language. Spacers were, he knew, an elitist bunch and they liked to show their toughness with shock talk. She told the colonel about her gold ore, showed him the assay figures from the government approved testing facility. He nodded and reached for a communicator. He winked at her and said, «Lieutenant, if you won't consider this a sexist suggestion, there's a pot of fresh coffee just outside the door. I'd love to have a cup, and you're more than welcome to join me. White and sweet for me, if you please.» She went out of the office and poured. She heard him ask for the Planetary Attorney General's office. She was back in the room, putting his coffee in front of him when he said, «Sam, how the hell are you?» It was good coffee and it was good talk she heard. He was only a groundbound colonel, but he was X&A, the voice of the most powerful agency in the civilized galaxy. He had the attention of Sam, the Attorney General. He grinned at Erin, winked as he listened. When he switched off he was still grinning. «Lieutenant,» he said, «I think that if you'll visit Mr. Murdoch Plough again in about two hours you might find that he has refigured the worth of your ore.» Erin rose, kissed the colonel on his cheek. He had the grace to blush. He laughed. «If you didn't leave any lipstick on my cheek, do it again. It's about time I made my wife a little jealous.» «It's true,» she said. «Yep,» he said, nodding. «We do take care of our own.» Murdoch Plough did not rise from his desk when she entered his office after being announced by his secretary. He looked up sullenly, stared at her for a long time before he spoke. «It seems, Lieutenant Kenner, that there was, ah, a bit of a mix-up in the assay of your ore.» The fact that he called her lieutenant told her that he had received some sort of a communication from on high. She nodded. He threw a gold-tone check across the desk toward her. She picked it up and read the figures—1,000,456.54 C. Over one million credits. On a certified check. «Thank you. I do appreciate the fast work.» Plough had evidently thought about the situation. «Will you be selling again, Lieutenant?» «There is that possibility,» she admitted. «We here at Plough are always interested in doing business,» he said. «I'll remember that,» she said, «while also recalling that you did your best to give me the business.» She turned and was gone before he could reply. An hour later, having survived a wild greeting from a lonely little dog, she was lifting the Mother for space. Two blinks away from Haven the routes crossed. A right turn took her back toward the galactic core and the mining belt. A left turn and she was on the way to X&A Central and a serious conference with the Service scientists. It was decision time. The generator didn't need charging, but she put it on refill mode to buy time to think, went into the exercise room, stripped to her briefs and walked as she thought. If she went to X&A on Xanthos and showed them Old Smiley, the friendly fossil skull, the rocks would be fenced off by an X&A electronic cordon and there'd be no more gold for Erin Kenner. She had a million credits. With a million credits she could find a quiet little backwater on a frontier planet and live comfortably ever after. On Xanthos, however, where the bright lights were, a nice apartment would cost five thousand credits a month, sixty thousand a year. A sporty aircar went for over a hundred thousand. A million wouldn't last her a lifetime on Xanthos, or on any other metro planet. It was a tough decision. She was, after all, a loyal citizen of the U.P. She'd just been shown, on Haven, that the Service took care of its own. X&A had paid for her education and had given her the training that had enabled her to navigate to the gold belt and back in safety. Being ex-X&A, she had her share of the induced xenophobia that haunted a race face-to-face in three dimensions with the big, unexplored dark. She shared the knowledge that entire civilizations, multi-planet cultures, had passed into oblivion before man fought his way into space for the second time. She knew why the United Planets maintained a huge, heavily armed fleet of ships in service and in mothballs. Although the power that had devastated the Dead Worlds was unknown and, therefore, doubly awesome, mankind hoped that his weapons would be adequate to face an emergence from deep space of things like those beings who could kill a world from the inside out. It was her duty to report her findings, of course. Perhaps study of the fossil remains in the belt would give man more information on what had happened to at least three advanced races who were no more. Ah, but there was another possibility. The skull she'd found could have been seeded onto the planet which had been shattered into asteroids. Old Smiley might be the only humanoid fossil in the whole belt. «Mr. Mop,» she said, shaking hands at Mop's request, «Wouldn't it seem to you that our friend can wait a few months longer for his moment in the limelight?» Mop sighed. «After all, he's been in cold storage in the middle of a rock for maybe a million years.» Mop cocked his head. «It would be nice, though, if you and I had some help out there, wouldn't it? With a couple of men to help us we could do two or three more loads in short order.» «Wurf,» Mop said. She thought about it. She considered going back to Haven and asking the X&A colonel to recommend a couple of good men, good workers. She quickly decided against that. One cabin on Mother had been converted into the mining control room. There was one bunk bed, high on the wall, in the mining room. Not enough space for two hired hands. And Mother was a small ship. To share a ship as small as a Mule two people had to be very good friends. Trouble was, all of her friends were still in Service. Except. «Hummm,» she said. «Uhhhh,» Mop said, looking for a belly rub as he rolled over. «You sort of liked Denton Gale, didn't you, Mr. Mop?» Mop grinned as she rubbed his chest and belly. «He acted civilized,» she said. Mop said nothing. «True, he was my father's friend, not mine.» «Uhhhh,» Mop moaned. «We could share the exercise room and the library with no problem, and he could sleep in the mining control room. What do you think?» Mop, having had enough rubbing, wiggled to be put down. She put him on the deck and he went to paw a chew bone from his personal dispenser. «You're a helluva lot of help,» she said. «Comes time for a heavy decision and you clam up.» Mop craw