Mother Lode

led under the control chair to eat his tidbit. She turned left, but not to go to Xanthos. Soon she was blinking rapidly down established routes. At beacons she encountered other ships lying on charge. Mother's sensors warned her of the presence of vessels in her blink line, but the Mule was not equipped with the highly advanced detection gear that had become standard issue for X&A ships after Pete Jaynes rediscovered how to tune a blink generator to frequencies other than standard. Such equipment would have told her as soon as she left Haven that she was being followed one blink behind by a sleek deep space miner equipped with a Unicloud computer and the latest detection equipment. The deep space miner was still with her ninety days later when she blinked past the administration planet and toward New Earth. CHAPTER FIVE Perhaps it was her proximity to civilization that brought out a feeling of guilt as Erin blinked the Mother Lode into orbit around New Earth. Before asking for landing instructions she sent a blink to X&A Central on Xanthos inquiring about the whereabouts of the Rimfire. Her intention was, at that moment, to settle for what she had, to go to her former commanding officer, Julie Roberts, and put Old Smiley into the captain's capable hands. However, Rimfire was on the opposite side of the galaxy, preparing to penetrate inward toward unknown areas. Going to X&A Central to turn over her discovery to strangers had little appeal and left room for cupidity to reassert itself. Mother settled gently onto her gear at the same hardpad assigned to her when John Kenner first brought her to Old Port. She told Control no, she did not want to renew the monthly lease on the hardpad, that she would be only a temporary visitor. Mop was in familiar territory. He scampered around the hardpad and greeted beloved bushes with a gaily hoisted leg before leading the way at a frantic run toward Denton Gale's workshop. He arrived at the door ahead of Erin, announced his presence with frantic barking, and leaped into Denton's arms, wiggling, whining, licking Denton's hands and face in delight when the door was opened. Mop was still demanding attention when Erin reached the office. «Hi,» she said. «Now if you were as glad to see me as this little rascal—» Denton said, grinning. «Well, I can't wriggle my rear as fast as he does,» she said, moving her hips. «Fine fellow that you are, Moppy,» Denton said, «on her it looks better.» He ruffled the dog's hair, pulled on his scrubby tail, put him down on the floor, said to Erin, «Come on in.» It was early autumn on New Earth. Erin, Mop, and the Mother Lode had been gone almost a year. She had scanned the areas surrounding the port on the way down, had seen little change except that the new owner of the Kenner home had built white fences around the entire property. Denton Gale had not changed. He still looked exuberantly youthful. The sun lines at the corner of his eyes gave them a permanent smile. His shop and office were as cluttered as ever. «You left in a hurry,» he said, as he walked to a table to pour coffee for two. «Yes,» she said. He handed her a steaming mug. Mop had jumped from a chair to the top of the service counter that separated the workshop from the office area. Erin sat down. Denton leaned against the counter, a tall man, his brown hair slightly mussed. «I hope that your trip was successful.» She nodded. «Dent, what are your plans for the future? What do you hope to accomplish in life?» He grinned. «You come back here to talk to me about my innermost dreams?» «Yes,» she said, «if you want to put it that way.» He looked at her intently, realizing that she was serious. «Would making inordinately large amounts of money interest you?» His grin broadened. She wondered if his genes were that good or if he'd spent a lot of time in a dentist's chair. «How large?» he asked. «Obscenely so.» «I'm told that the U.P. Penal Service is quite humane,» he said, «but I have no desire to spend any portion of my life in a work camp on some frontier planet.» «That's me,» she said, «the master criminal.» She stood up. Mop's right ear came to attention and he bailed out from the top of the counter to land with a thump at Erin's feet, ready to go. «Bring your coffee,» she said. «Yes, ma'am,» he said with mock humbleness. In the control room on the Mother Lode she handed him her bankbook. He looked at her inquiringly, eyebrows raised, opened it. At the bottom of the page was a figure of a few thousand credits. «Well, you had this much when you left here, didn't you?» «Turn the page,» she said. He turned the page, did a classic double take, brought the little book closer to his face, whistled. His eyes showed his interest when he looked up. «By being more selective in gathering ores we can gross more than that on the next load,» she said. «We?» He handed her the bankbook, sat down in the captain's chair. «You have my attention.» She darkened the room, punched instructions into the computer. On the main viewer the harsh light of the asteroid belt made Denton blink. Mother sat alone in solitude. She had taken the holos on her last extravehicular excursion from a distance of about a hundred yards. Large and small chunks of space debris were visible, patches of glaring light and inky blackness. The scene changed, shot from a holo on the extraction arm. In artificial light the yellow gleam of gold made streaks on the rock sides of an excavated trench. Close up shots showed the dramatic lightning bolt of pure gold that Erin had extracted from the matrix rock, a pile of pure nuggets next to it. «So it was mining that your dad had in mind,» Denton said. «It took me four months to fill Mother's cargo space.» «Sounds simple. Why do you need me?» He laughed. «Or is it that you're overwhelmed by my masculine charm?» She said stiffly, «I'm offering a straight business deal. One third of the gross. Working partners. Twenty-four hour operations. You work, I sleep. I work, you sleep. And that's it, period.» «What's the rush?» He pushed buttons, returned the holo to its beginning, watched the tumble of the asteroids again. «Are you interested?» she asked. «I have a few things to clear up here.» «Time is important,» she said. «How important are those things when compared to one third of three payloads bringing in more than one million credits each?» «Not very, come to think of it,» he said. «A million for me, huh? But why just three trips?» «I'll tell you if you decide to come with me.» «Okay, but I want half. You've made a million. Three more trips at, say, a total of four or five million and you won't be hurting.» «A third or nothing.» «Okay.» He stood up. Mop made his begging sound, wanting to be noticed. Denton patted his head. «Too bad, Moppy, I thought maybe we'd be shipmates.» He was halfway out the open hatch before Erin said, «All right, damn it. Half.» He turned. «It's not that I'm greedy. It's just that I hate working twelve-on and twelve-off.» «Sure.» «How soon do you want to leave?» «Now.» «A couple of weeks. That's the best I can do.» «Two days, three at the most.» «I'll do my best, but even with the prospect of being quite rich I'm not going to just close down a business I've busted my—back to build.» «I won't be unreasonable, but I won't wait weeks.» «You were going to tell me why the rush.» «Sit,» she said, punching in the holo-tape that showed the first view of Old Smiley. The import of what he was seeing hit him with the holos of her cleaning the skull. He waited until a close-up filled the viewing area. «Old?» «I'm no expert. A million years, maybe.» «And you haven't reported it.» She shook her head. «So that's the rush.» «I figured another few months, a year, wouldn't matter. It isn't as if Smiley is a threat to the security of mankind.» «Ummm.» «My dad sunk everything he had into this mother of a ship. I had visions of coming home, caring for him in his declining years, living in genteel poverty on the old home place. I came home to find him dead and the house and lands mortgaged up to the hilt. I think I owe it to his memory not to throw away the opportunity he wanted for himself.» «With what you have already, you could buy a place like the Kenner house.» «Yes, I could.» «But you want more?» «Don't you?» There was a long silence. «Yes, I do.» He turned off the holo, brought up the lights. His eyes squinted. «What would X&A do if they found out you've delayed reporting an important find?» «The laws are very strict. Ten to fifteen years in a penal colony.» «What if you—we—simply do away with it? The skull.» «No. I couldn't do that.» «No, I guess not.» He sighed. «Well, then.» «We go to the belt. We work our asses off. We haul at least three, maybe four loads of the finest ore we can dig to Haven. We keep our eyes open for more fossilized bones. And then we call in X&A and show them where we found the objects—on our last trip to the belt. « Denton winked, picked up the dog, who grunted and threw himself onto his back in the crook of Denton's arm, indicating that he wanted his belly rubbed. «What about this hairy little scoundrel? Can we trust him to keep his mouth shut?» «Uhhhhh,» Mop groaned in pleasure. Erin found herself smiling. Dent was so good with the dog. Any man who liked dogs couldn't be all bad. She shook her head. «Nothing personal, Dent, but I want to reemphasize that this is strictly a working arrangement.» «I get the message. One question. Do we hot bed it, since the other cabin has been converted to mining control?» She smiled coldly, led him by the arm to the door of the mining cabin, pointed to the folded bunk bed on the bulkhead. He shrugged. «That makes it seventy-five twenty-five, my way.» «You and the horse you rode in on,» she said. «All right, Captain,» he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. «Although it will be a terrible struggle for me to resist your charms, I will control my animalistic impulses. I will sleep like a bat, hanging to the bulkhead. I will work twelve-on and twelve-off. Any other orders, ma'am?» Her face had gone stiff. «If that's your attitude, there's no need beginning it,» she said. He held up one hand, shook his head. «No, it's all right. I promise I'll be a good boy.» She clapped her palm to her forehead, looked up, rolled her eyes. «I shouldn't do this,» she said. «I know I shouldn't do this.» Mop came to put his forepaws up on Denton's leg, asking to be picked up. «You're outvoted, lady,» he said. «The hairy member of the crew likes me.» Denton sold his business to a large corporation that had been gobbling up small operations all over New Earth. His sporty aircar went into storage, along with a few personal items from his rented apartment. Erin, impatient to be off and away, told him that he'd have the money to buy a new and far more luxurious aircar, that it was silly to store things like music reproduction equipment. «Want me to throw away my baby pictures and stamp collection, too?» he asked. Actually, he was not quite ready to leave his entire life behind, and, in spite of her eagerness to be underway, Erin understood. He needed to know that he would have something to come back to. She had felt the same kind of wrench while gathering the personal things she had brought aboard Mother from her home. It took three days. Mother lifted off the hardpad into the nightside, orbited briefly as Erin punched in multiple blinks. By the time the generator was drained and ready for recharging, they were light-years from New Earth. During the charge period they settled into a routine that would become familiar. Twelve hours on duty, twelve off. Only one of them at a time in the small exercise gym. No meals taken together. With a fully charged generator Mother blinked again, and again, and just behind her, one blink back, the sleek, armed, deep space miner followed. CHAPTER SIX Dent watched nervously as Erin maneuvered Mother into the stream of asteroids, working her way toward the center where she had found the fragments containing the richest ore on her previous trip. The detectors spotted a promising site. Mop said «yipe» when the ship settled against the tumbling chunk of rock. Dent loosed a long sigh. Erin pretended total nonchalance, although each time she attached Mother to an asteroid it was pucker time. She balanced out forces with the flux drive and with steering jets until ship and rock flowed through space without tumbling. There were less than six hours left of her shift and Denton had been awake for eighteen hours. «You're going to need some sleep,» she said. «Now that the excitement's over?» «What excitement?» He laughed. «I'm familiar in theory with the extraction equipment, but it might be a good idea to have you go through the procedures with me.» She was thinking that at the end of his next twelve he would have gone thirty-six hours without sleep. A tired man was a careless man. X & A axiom. She, herself, would use the rest of her watch making minute measurements to be sure that their neighbors in the crowded asteroid belt were not being pushy and moving in on Mother as she sat on her rocky perch. «All right,» she said. She led the way into the mining control room. He had moved a locker from the gym to store his clothing and personal possessions. The bed was neatly made, although the movable partition that separated it from the rest of the room was pushed back. At least, she thought, he wasn't a slob. She ran him through the checklists, operating procedures, and buttonology for the biter and extractor. Within an hour he was handling the equipment well. It was a rich deposit and the weight of ore built quickly in Mother's hold. «Won't take long at this rate,» he said. «All the deposits are not this rich,» she said. She glanced at the clock and saw that they were two hours into Dent's watch. The tension of taking the ship into the belt, the stimulation of finding a good ore field, all drained away, leaving her exhausted. «I'm declaring a holiday,» she said. «In honor of what?» «You name it,» she said, rising, stretching. «In observation of the day they lopped off Mop's tail.» «A truly significant day.» «You've been up over twenty-four hours. I'm beat, too. I think we both need a good eight or ten hours' sleep, and then we can settle down to serious work.» «You talked me into it, Cap'n.» She was asleep moments after she pulled the light coverlet over her. At some time during the «night» she heard or felt the vibrations caused by the mining machines, thought about getting up to see why Dent had gone back to work, turned over and was fast asleep again. When she woke again, she'd been asleep for over nine hours. She had a solid breakfast before going to the cabin that was a combination of Dent's quarters and the mining control room. Mop greeted her at the door, leaping up joyfully, acting as if it had been months since he'd last seen her. Denton was seated in the control chair. The weight gauge showed that he'd loaded several tons of ore. «Looks as though this vein is about to play out,» he said. «Couldn't sleep?» she asked. «Slept for a couple of hours. I'll have twelve hours to catch up now.» «I'll take it, then.» «I think if we moved ship about a hundred feet toward that sharp extension—» «Readings are good in that direction?» «Yep.» «Well, if you've pretty well exhausted the vein—» «You're going to trust me with moving her?» «You'll have to do it sooner or later,» she said. «Okay. Just check behind me before I do anything,» he said. She watched closely. He used the remote control panel in the mining room to lift Mother with her flux drive and lower her without so much as a jar to a spot just over a hundred feet away. «Well done,» she said. He nodded, positioned the biter, and sampled the rock. A gleam of gold appeared in the viewer. Gold and something else. «Damn,» Erin said. «What? What?» he asked, startled by the tone of her voice. «On the surface,» she said, «just to the right of the trench.» It took him a while to see it. The telltale was a difference in texture more than shape. She pointed it out to him on the viewer. «Two separate pieces,» she said. «That jagged end there—» «Ah, yes,» he said. Mop protested loudly when both of them left him alone and disappeared into the air lock. Once again Erin had that feeling of disorientation as she stepped out of the lock onto the asteroid, but since Dent was directly behind her she did not have the sense of almost panicky loneliness that she'd experienced while going extravehicular on her first trip to the belt. She demonstrated the use of the laser cutter to Dent, adjusting it to flow away rock and leave the fossilized bones intact. One bone had a large knob extending just above the surface. As the matrix stone melted away it was