Mother Lode

don was to accomplish the job had been left up to him. In spite of the fact that the Miner had been functioning well under her captain of some five years, one of the male cousins, Gordon was now captain of the ship and, since it was his first real command, he was determined to make the most of it. The Miner had been in space for months. The cousins, Sam and Kim Maleska, were getting more and more fed up with Gordon Plough's constant orders and his indecision. Not the least of their frustrations was the fact that their customary shipboard social life had been put on hold by having a representative of the company aboard. It wasn't that Murdoch Plough was a prude, it was just that the cousins feared management might think that a crew that was having fun wouldn't get the work done. They hadn't been able to play musical beds since leaving Haven and they were discovering that you never miss a good thing until you have it within your reach but can't grab it for some reason or another. «Gordon,» said Sam Maleska one morning after weeks of sneaking around the belt spying on the Mother Lode, «I sure would like to get cracking on a few of them gold bearing rocks.» «Patience,» Gordon Plough said. «Why should we do the work when we can let them do it for us?» It took Sam a while to figure that one out. He told Kim and the sisters, «I think he's planning to let the Mother Lode fill her holds and then hijack her.» «Hell,» Kim said, «we could work twice as fast as they can. This ship was built for mining.» «I think he's scared,» said Caryl. On this trip Caryl was the blonde. It was sister Cherry's turn to be the brunette. «I think he's a pussy,» Cherry said. She tugged uncomfortably at her tunic. She was accustomed to wearing nothing more than a loose, transparent, hip length tee and briefs while aboard ship. «Why don't one us just let our finger slip and blast hell out of that Mule?» «Get it over with,» Caryl agreed. «Blasting her would leave teeny little scraps floating around,» Sam said. «The scraps might be found—» He lifted his eyebrows and spread his arms to indicate the vastness of space and the impossibility of the captain's fears. «Our captain doesn't want to risk having a piece of the Mother Lode identified at some—» At that moment Gordon Plough came into the lounge. «And here he is now,» Kim Maleska said. «I know that you've been wondering why we have delayed the completion of our mission,» Gordon said pompously. «I think you will be pleased to know that we are going to take action.» «When?» Caryl asked, with a flip of her blonde hair. «Soon,» Gordon said. «First we have to find some way to catch both of them out of the ship.» «Why?» Sam asked. «Let's just hole her with a laser and then toss her into the sun.» «There's always the chance that she might get off a distress signal if we do that,» Gordon said. «No. She's got to go into the sun on her own power and without any possibility of a message being sent.» «Can't see how some sombitch can send a stat while his lungs are blowing up in decompression,» Kim grumbled. «That's why my brother put me in charge of this operation,» Gordon said. «He wants things done right. « «If you don't want to put a hole in her with a laser.» Sam said, «how about if she gets busted open by accident?» Gordon made a face. He had to admit that an accident would be almost as good as what he had in mind. «An accident would be neat,» he said. «But it would have to be catastrophic and instantaneous.» It was Cherry who arranged the «accident» that would have smashed the Mother Lode in the collision of two asteroids. «You see,» Gordon said, his voice rising in anger, «I told you so. I said, 'Look, men, let's not be hasty.' « «You hear him say that?» Sam asked Kim. «I didn't. You hear him say that, Cherry?» «I didn't,» she said. «You hear him say that, Caryl?» «Well, maybe I didn't say it in words,» Gordon said, «but you know what I was thinking.» «Oh,» Kim said. «Well, sure.» He looked at Sam with his eyebrows raised. «We always know what you're thinking, Cap'n.» «Now what if she sent off a stat?» Gordon asked. «She was too busy saving her ass to think about sending off a stat,» Kim said. «What would she send? Help, help, a big rock tried to smush me?» Sam Maleska came to his feet. He was a big man, well over six feet, and he affected a huge, bushy, black beard that made him look quite uncivilized. «Cap'n,» he said, «with all respect, if you don't come to a decision pretty quick I'm gonna forget that you're the brother of the boss and take it on myself to kick a little ass.» «Are you threatening me?» Gordon blustered. «You hear me threaten the cap'n?» Sam asked, arms spread. «I didn't hear him threaten the cap'n,» Cherry said. «Did y'awl?» «Not me,» Kim said. «Me neither,» Caryl said, tossing her blonde locks. As it happened Caryl was on watch when the air lock of the Mother Lode opened and two flexsuited figures descended to the surface of the asteroid. She lost no time in waking the others. The captain assessed the situation and came up with a plan. It wasn't a good plan. Sam said to Kim, «This sucks.» But it was a plan. At last they were going to do something. Since there were five of them and only two members of the crew of the Mother Lode, it didn't really matter if the captain had come up with what was, really, a lousy plan. Five of them would handle two quickly and easily. «Listen and listen good,» Gordon said. Sam and Kim looked at each other and rolled their eyes. «We'll take them by surprise,» Gordon said. «Use a narrow beam on the saffers. We don't want to leave pieces of them scattered around. Just hole the suits and then we'll put them on board their ship and set the ship's generator to blink her into the sun. Everyone got that?» As it turned out it wasn't a bad plan after all, it was just that it didn't work for Gordon Plough and the crew of the Murdoch Miner. CHAPTER EIGHT There was nothing wrong with the Mother Lode's warning systems. For two days Erin and Dent checked and rechecked, working the old Century Series computer hard. When Erin was satisfied that Murphy's Law had been at work, that the tumbling slab of debris had, quite naturally, taken the very worst approach so that the bulk of the asteroid on which the ship sat blocked detection, she sighed, said, «Well, that's it,» and was ready to go back to work. But it seemed that the incident with the straying asteroid had changed their luck. Time and time again Erin eased the ship close to a grim, barren, spinning mountain of rock only to find that there were no heavy metals or if there were they were buried deeply. Mother was equipped only for shallow, surface mining. She didn't have the tools to drill a thousand feet into stone to test the source of some very strong readings on the detectors. When, at last, the instruments buzzed happily, having located gold deposits near the exterior of an asteroid with convenient level areas, she attached Mother to the rock with the strength of her field and was pleased when rich flakes and nuggets were extracted immediately. Soon the comfortable work routine had been reestablished. She had forgotten that Dent had well developed arms and a muscular chest with just enough hair to make him look masculine. The sensors on the digging arm sounded the presence of fossilized bone late in a watch. «Oh, damn,» Erin said, stopping the biter from deepening a trench. «There,» Denton said, pointing to the viewer screen. The bones were lighter in color than the matrix rock. Three arching bands were visible. «Nothin' to it but to do it,» Dent said. Erin followed him to the air lock, suited up. Mop was voicing his protest. «Guard the ship,» Dent told him. «Hush,» Erin said, as the dog continued barking. Mop did not hush. He barked energetically long after the inner hatch closed. «You'd think,» Erin said, as she stepped down onto the bare surface, «that you'd get used to this after a few times.» Denton lifted his helmeted head, turned a full circle. Near them, sunward sides reflecting dazzling light, were a few asteroids. Over them, under them, and to all sides there was the harsh glare of the core stars. «I won't miss this part of it when it's over,» Dent said. He was carrying the laser cutter. He positioned himself over the curving bones and began to melt away the matrix. Slowly a rib cage emerged. «Small,» Erin said. » 'Bout like a six-year-old child,» Dent agreed. «There haven't been any fossils where the gold is in veins,» she said. «Only in this softer rock.» «This type of formation must have been near the surface of the planet's crust,» he said. «Notice how it's layered, as if it were formed by sedimentary action. And I'd guess that the gold is a placer deposit, washed down from some mother lode.» The fossilized skeleton was disjointed, but below the rib cage lay a large pelvic bone and long thighbones. Arms, neck, and skull were not to be found. It took over an hour to free the bones and bag them. Erin headed back toward the air lock, Dent directly behind her. She reached out her hand to punch the entry code into the lock, but her finger did not make contact. She felt a sudden sense of disorientation. With nightmare slowness the Mother Lode lifted and drifted away from her outstretched hand. «Hey,» she cried out. Dent jetted away from the surface of the asteroid as Mother accelerated, moving toward the black emptiness of space. For a few moments it seemed that he would catch the ship, but she was moving too fast for the jets of the suit. He and the ship became glowing little stars almost lost among the vastness. Erin watched in shocked silence. The small brightness that was Denton Gale grew until she could make out his suited arms and legs. And then he was landing beside her. «Erin? Hey?» His voice was soft inside her helmet. An image was burned into her mind, the lop-eared, hairy face of Mop at the viewport on the bridge, his head jerking with silent urgency as he barked his alarm at being alone on a ship moving off into space. «Erin?» «I don't know.» «She was not under her own power.» «No. We'd have felt the force of the flux drive.» «What?» She took a deep breath. She had just over three hours to live, plus ten minutes on the suit's reserve air, and she was thinking more about a frightened, lonely little dog than about her own predicament. She shook her head. «Let's take a walk,» she said. For Mother did not leave under her own power. «As it happens,» Dent said, «I have nothing else to do.» The chemically activated jets which gave some degree of maneuverability to a suited spacemen had limited capacity. Dent's vain attempt to catch Mother had almost exhausted his fuel. They crawled from point to point, aided somewhat by the small amount of artificial gravity generated by the tiny flux units that powered the suits. The asteroid was a large one, perhaps a quarter of a mile in diameter. A half hour's air was used up before they reached a point that allowed a view of the side of the asteroid away from Mother's former position. Erin leapt up onto a large protrusion, missed her footing, fell slowly, arms windmilling. The fall saved her life, for as she fell a slash of light passed over her head. «Take cover,» she ordered, her voice calm in spite of the fact that she'd just been narrowly missed by a lethal beam from a saffer. As she landed lightly on her feet and bounced, her own weapon was in her gloved hand. To her right, at a distance she estimated at about two hundred feet, although distances were deceiving on the sharply curved and uneven surface, she saw movement. Her reaction was the result of training. She brought the saffer beam down from above the head of the space-suited man who had fired on her and saw the sizzle of death as the figure was knocked backward by the force. «Behind you,» Denton yelped. She whirled. Rock disintegrated beside her as she slipped to her left, swinging the saffer in a horizontal arc to cut the legs out from under a second assailant. As the integrity of the attacker's suit was breached, she saw a fine mist of blood and fluids spew out to dissipate into the vacuum of space. «My God,» Dent said in disbelief, «they were trying to kill us.» «Bet your sweet ass,» Erin said, swiveling in the stiff suit, examining the shadowy, rocky landscape carefully. There was no further movement. She edged forward and there was a ship, anchored to the asteroid by her field at a point directly opposite Mother's former perch. Denton crawled to lie beside her. «Mining vessel,» he said. «Probably has laser cannon.» «But why?» «Gold,» she said. «But there's enough for everyone,» Dent said. «They didn't think so.» «They wanted to kill us so that they could have all of the gold?» Dent asked. «What else?» «I can't believe that,» he said. «No one ship can possibly mine the whole belt.» «Believe it.» «In real life men don't kill for gold. That happens only in holo-dramas.» «Bullshit,» she said. «How many in her crew?» he asked, nodding his head inside the helmet to indicate the sleek ship. «Four, usually. She's a fleet type scout. I don't know what was done to her during her conversion to a mining vessel. I doubt if they made more crew space. Four men could work the equipment around the clock.» «They used their generator to negate Mother's field?» «What else?» she asked. «A Mule's generator is powerful, but that was a military ship before her conversion. With Mother's generator on low, just enough to keep us on the rock, one quick surge of power with the mining ship's field in reverse would send Mother off into space.» «They had to know, then, that we were not aboard.» «They knew.» «Then they know we're here.» «Yes, but now we know they're here,» she said grimly. Denton swallowed. Two men were dead. «Next thing to do is get you a weapon,» she said, starting to crawl toward the crumpled form of the man whose legs had been cut away. Denton reached the body first, bent to take the saffer from a gloved hand, gasped. «It's a woman,» he said. «So it is,» Erin said, looking at the ruined face and wisps of blonde hair behind the clear mask. «A woman.» «Not a very well trained woman,» Erin said. «And you are,» he said bitterly. «Better thank God that I am.» He was silent. «All right, people,» Erin said, looking at the ship. «Where are you?» As if in answer, rock shattered in eerie silence so close to Demon's head that he rolled away in panic. Erin's eyes followed the lance of the saffer beam to a shadowed alcove between two rocky protrusions. She saw movement. «There are two of them,» she said. «Where?» She pointed. «What are we going to do?» Denton asked. «I think it might be a good idea if we kill them before they kill us.» «Maybe we can talk to them.» «Go ahead. Step forth in peace,» she said. He was silent. «In less than two hours we've got to be aboard that ship,» she said. «I think those two over there might have something to say about that.» «Probably.» She looked around, nodded to herself. The attackers had already shown themselves to be unskilled, even a bit stupid, but, as Denton had pointed out, not too many people went around murdering others these days. A certain lack of experience had been evidenced by the attackers, which was fortunate for Erin Elizabeth Kenner and Denton Gale. «What I'm going to do,» she said, «is jet off behind that rise over there. I want you to keep up a fire on their position. Keep their attention on you.» «I've never fired at a person.» «I think now is the time to start.» «Let's try to contact them by radio.» «Listen, damn it,» she said, «I want you to lay down a covering fire on them now.» Denton's saffer sent a beam of concentrated energy that shattered rock and caused a stir of movement in the shadows. Erin pushed the jet controls and shot upward and outward at a shallow angle. Every muscle was tensed as she waited for fire to lance into her body, but then she was in the protection of the rocks and could relax her sphincters. Denton was firing at roughly five second intervals. She took a survey of the terrain and lifted off once more. From the rear, she soared over the concealed position of the unknown enemy. An overhanging ledge protected them. She fired as she moved forward, seeking a point where her beam could lance under the overhang. The two suited figures looked up, saw her. One of them leapt into the open and took a two-handed stance, his saffer aimed directly at her. She pushed a button to activate a jet to turn her so that she could fire at the man in the open, hit the wrong one, sent herself spinning. She was an easy target, spinning around suspended just above the two would-be killers. «Denton,» she cried out. Fire lanced out from Denton's position. The man who had been drawing a bead on her burned. She corrected her sp