again. It seemed that she was to be confined, at least for the moment, to the ship. Since her body was only flesh and blood, it would not survive in the vacuum of space. Something had gone wrong in the indeterminable period of time since she had been locked away in the cooling core material of a destroyed world. She examined herself minutely and found that she had lost many abilities. She would simply have to make the best of what was left. Perhaps these men had developed materials and techniques that would help her regain the magnitude that had once been hers. She spent more time with the materials in the ship's library and resigned herself to the fact that she would have to travel about in a man-made spaceship and imitate the mechanical and electronic structures of man in order to accomplish her desires. She soon discovered that there was not quite enough written or recorded material aboard ship to tell her everything she wanted to know about the blink drive. Moreover, the men had been secure in their knowledge of ship's operations and had not included a basic manual in the library. The knowledge which she needed to operate the ship safely was not included in the material in the library. With her powers so diminished, she didn't want to chance being stranded in space, perhaps to drift for more eternities. She divided the organic matter in her large body into the two original units and lifted the female entity from her repository in the dog's skull and inserted her into her own frame. CHAPTER TWELVE Murdoch Plough, owner of the Haven Refining Company, leapt to his feet in shock when his secretary announced that Miss Erin Kenner was asking to see him. His face first drained itself of blood, so that he was quite pale, but by the time he had recovered himself enough to tell the secretary to send Miss Kenner in he was feeling flushed and feverish. Erin Kenner's presence on Haven presented possibilities that Plough was not quite ready to face. He tried to tell himself that there could be alternate explanations for his not having heard from his brother and the crew of four whom he had sent to replace Erin Kenner and the man she'd picked up on New Earth as possessors of the source of the richest gold ore he'd ever seen. Plough was still musing about the unpleasant possibilities when the Kenner woman and a man about her own age entered the room. He had received no messages from his brother since Kenner's Mother Lode left the main United Planets blink beacon range and headed toward the core. Seeing the woman brought an uneasy smile to his large, square face. She was a looker, all right. As he glanced toward her helper or lover or whatever the hell Denton Gale was, he felt a little easier about his brother, because there was no way that these two pussies could have survived had Brother Gordon and his crew isolated them on a mining planet somewhere off the established blink routes. «Well, Miss Kenner,» he said. «Have your brought a representative of X&A with you this trip?» It still rankled Plough that the woman had pulled influence on him, forcing him to pay premium prices for her ore. «Mr. Gale is my associate,» the Kenner woman said flatly. «What can I do for you?» Plough asked, walking around his desk to shake Denton Gale's hand. «We have a load of ore,» Kenner said. «Ah, excellent, excellent,» Plough said, wiping his hand on his trouser leg. Denton Gale's hand was cold and damp. «However, Miss Kenner, I'm afraid that the market has fallen slightly since you were last here.» «We have a load of ore,» Kenner said. Plough looked at her a bit more closely. She was looking straight at him, but there was an oddness in her eyes, as if they were focused beyond his face. He named a price lower than the price he'd offered her originally for her first load. «We will take the proceeds in U.P. credits,» Gale said. «Sure, sure,» Plough said. «I'll deposit the amount in your account, Miss Kenner.» «We will take the proceeds in U.P. credits,» Gale repeated. «You mean in cash?» There was a moment of hesitation until Kenner said, in that flat, wooden voice, «We will take the proceeds in cash.» «That's a lot of paper,» Plough said. «Is your load as heavy as the last one?» Neither Gale nor Kenner spoke. «Well,» Plough said, «I'll have my men move your ship over to the loading ramp.» «I will move the ship,» Kenner said, turning to lead Gale out of the office. Plough followed them into the reception area, watched them walk stiffly out of the office. «That broad act a little odd to you?» he asked the secretary. «I didn't notice, honey.» the secretary said. Since her prime duty to her employer was of a private nature, she tended to be a bit casual when she and Plough were alone. Plough watched the Mother Lode lift and move laterally to the ramp. Soon some very rich ore was rattling down the conveyor belts toward the smelters. Kenner and Gale stayed aboard the ship. Plough went to the communication room and placed a call to Haven X&A, expressed concern about an overdue Haven Refining Company mining ship, was told that there'd been no communication from the Murdoch Miner. «If you will give us the projected route of the ship, sir,» the X&A operator said, «we will begin a trace.» «No, no, thank you,» Plough said. «I'm probably being needlessly concerned. I'll get back to you.» The Mother Lode sat beside the loading ramp through the smelting operation. Neither Kenner nor Gale left her until Plough called to tell them that he had the money in United Planets credits. Gale came to the office and accepted the large bag of credits without a word. Plough kept waiting for an irate call from X&A complaining that he was cheating an ex-X&A officer, but nothing happened. When Gale left the office, Plough was just behind him. As the Mother Lode lifted ship, she was followed by Murdoch Plough's own private yacht, a converted fleet light destroyer armed with some weapons that were legal for a deep space miner that often entered unexplored areas and with some armament that would have landed Plough in deep trouble if his yacht were ever inspected by X&A. To Plough's surprise the Mother Lode did not leave Haven immediately. She orbited halfway around the world and landed at the spaceport on the other continent. Plough didn't like the idea of taking his heavily and illegally armed ship into a landing other than at his own home port where there were no interplanetary customs offices and no X&A station. But he wanted to know what Kenner was up to, so he went down from orbit in a launch. The Mother Lode was taking on cargo. It was fairly simple for Plough to find out that Kenner was buying a rather odd assortment of materials, calling in her orders from the ship, paying on delivery in cash. All he had to do was intercept the delivery vehicles and hand out a couple of credits and he knew that a wide array of chemicals and electronic equipment were being loaded into the Mother Lode's cargo bins. The most puzzling thing was that while the equipment and materials were being loaded, the mining equipment was being gutted from the Mother Lode. It looked as if Kenner and Gale intended leaving the almost new and very expensive equipment sitting out in the weather on the pad beside the ship, but when Kenner called Control for permission to lift ship she was asked—Plough was tuned into the control frequency—her intentions in regard to the discarded equipment. When she hesitated, Control told her that the machines would have to be removed from the pad before the Mother Lode could be given clearance. Plough shook his head as the Kenner woman babbled on to Control, asking really stupid questions until she was finally told that Control didn't care what she did with the equipment just as long as it was removed from port property. Plough felt faint when a couple of hundred thousand credits worth of perfectly good mining machinery was given to the port's waste removal service, but he didn't have time to make an effort to salvage it, because Control was giving the Mother Lode lift clearance. He took the launch back to his yacht and was ready to follow when Kenner's ship reached orbit and blinked away. He had come to the conclusion that something had happened to his little brother. He wasn't worried. Knowing Gordon, the Murdoch Miner was probably cruising around a couple of hundred light-years away from where she was supposed to have followed Kenner's ship, with Gordon wondering how the hell to find his way home. As the Mother Lode used her big generator to make multiple blinks before recharging, Plough was happy that he had a converted military ship with a generator to match the capacity of the Mule. He had a good crew, six of them, four women and two men. They had been with him for a long time, and he had taken care of them as he built his business from one antiquated mining ship to a fleet and then to bigger and better things. More than once the crew had obeyed his orders without question when there was gain to be had in seizing a rich mining location that had been discovered by others, but Plough had not jumped a claim or disappeared isolated miners in the far outback of space for a long time. It had taken the unbelievably rich deposits being mined by Erin Kenner to arouse his instinct for avarice enough to lure him away from the comfort he had built on Haven. He knew he had goofed in sending his younger brother to do whatever it took to gain access to Kenner's mines; but now he had left the comfort of his office and the charms of no less than three mistresses to make up for his mistake. He wasn't too unhappy about it because in that last load of ore there'd been an almost incredible richness of pure nuggets mixed in with the veined rock. With a source like Kenner's mine, he'd be able to buy Haven, if he wanted to, but most likely he'd accumulate so much money that he could have power on any planet in the system. With the proper amounts of money it wouldn't be difficult to find a more pleasant spot than Haven. For a while it looked as if Kenner's mine was in the Dead World sac, but the Mother Lode had merely paused for charging and when her generator was ready she blinked onward. Plough brought his yacht back into normal space at a safe distance and saw the Mother Lode lying near an asteroid belt that formed a ring around a good G-class sun at approximately one astronomical unit of distance, the usual position for a life zone planet. To be sure he was at the right place, he put his sensors to work. He had the latest equipment, state of the art, and from outside the ring he was able to locate a dozen asteroids showing pleasingly large gold and platinum deposits. This was the place. He told his crew to get ready for some work. The converted light destroyer had huge cargo spaces. The load of ore he'd take back to Haven would make him a very rich man. First, however, there was a little chore to be done. Plough himself took the controls and maneuvered the yacht among the tumbling asteroids until he was within laser range of the Mother Lode. He considered using a computer guided torpedo, but that would have been overkill. It would simply blow the Mule into bits, and would leave enough scrap metal floating around in space so that if someone—like an X&A explorer—stumbled onto it the particles could be identified as having come from a Mule. Simple logic led him to arrive at the same solution for getting rid of a spaceship completely as both his brother and Erin Kenner had. He would hole the hull of the Mother Lode with a laser. Explosive decompression would take care of Kenner and Gale, leaving the ship intact. Then he'd use his generator to boost the Mother Lode into the sun and no one would ever be able to say what had become of her. He positioned the yacht to bring a laser cannon to bear, sighted in on the viewport on the control bridge, ordered the laser's power to be turned on. There was a sinister sizzling sound as the weapon built toward destruction force. Plough was calm. Getting rid of Kenner and Gale and their ship was going to be almost too easy. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Haven was a lightly populated planet composed mostly of scrublands and deserts. Her two principal land masses were of similar size and were on opposing sides of the globe in the northern hemisphere. So alike were the continents that their weather patterns were similar. Alpine ranges on the western edges lifted the moisture-laden ocean air to cooling heights so that a narrow band of rain forest faced the sea. On the eastern side of the mountains, on both continents, arid conditions prevailed, scrub giving way to the sand wastes and barren rock of the deserts that extended two thousand miles to the semi-arid west coast. Throughout the cruel deserts, where, in summer, the daytime temperatures reached one hundred and twenty degrees, were the camps and digs of miners and prospectors. Haven, having little agricultural land to offer, compensated for that lack by being rich in utile ores such as iron, manganese, copper, bauxite, and a good representation of trace minerals, in short, most of the metallic raw materials that were necessary to build and expand a civilization that had spread from one very old and rather small planet, New Earth, to encompass a degree of arc that, on charts, seemed impressive. A new feature appeared in Haven's skies, for Rimfire was that large, her surfaces that reflective. When she went into orbit she became, to those on the surface, a fast moving star, and the scattered seekers of metallic riches turned their faces upward. In Haven's two large cities word spread rapidly that the biggest and most complex spacecraft ever constructed was orbiting over Haven. The territorial governors of both continents were on hand when Rimfire requested landing instructions at East Havenport for the Captain's Gig. The launch was directed to the governor's own pad where Lieutenant Ursy Wade landed her after a spectacularly swift forty-five degree approach that flattened dramatically at the last possible second to allow the gig to contact the pad without so much as a jar. Ursy ran out the gig's boarding stairs before the dignitaries could approach the ship. A grimy worker standing on the edge of the pad behind the baffles said, «Welcome to Haven, babe.» «Thank you,» Ursy said. «After you get through messin' 'round with the H.M.F.I.C, I'll be glad to show you the sights.» «I appreciate that,» Ursy said, holding back a smile. «What did he say?» Julie Roberts asked from behind Ursy. «He tried to hit on me,» Ursy said. «I am aware of that,» Julie said icily. «What were those initials? H.M.F.—» «Don't ask, ma'am,» Ursy said. «I just did.» «Ask him,» Ursy said, pointing to the governor as the dignitaries reached the pad. «I'll give you a hint. H.M.F.I.C. Head mother in charge. Supply the middle initial from your knowledge of old English ma'am.» «I see,» Julie said, even more icily. «Thank you, Lieutenant.» Julie stepped forward, stood in the hatch at stiff attention, saluted, said, «Captain Julie Roberts, X&A Expo ship Rimfire, sir. I thank you for the hospitality of your world.» Ursy took advantage of the movement to slip away, descending to the pad via a cargo chute and walking away with the bulk of the ship hiding her from the crowd. Captain Roberts descended and stood in the chill wind while the H.M.F.I.C. of East Haven took turns with his West Haven counterpart in praising X&A, Captain Julie Roberts, the Rimfire, and the United Planets in general. Each of them managed to get in lengthy commercials for Haven which, Julie heard with some skepticism, was a garden planet waiting to be cultivated, lacking only a few billion credits from X&A's terraforming fund. Julie politely turned down an offer of a guided tour of the scenic deserts from both H.M.F.I.C.s, stating that Rimfire was at Haven on Service business, and that her stay would be quite brief. «I'm sure,» said his Honor, the governor of East Haven, «that you'll want to give your crew liberty. You'll find the accommodations in East Haven City to be quite—» «Gentlemen,» Julie interrupted, «I wish I could. My crew deserves it.» She mentally crossed her fingers for she had a good crew who deserved more than East Haven City. «However, there is a possibility that Rimfire will be passing Haven on her return trip and if time allows I will most certainly consider your kind invitation.» His Honor tried to smile, but the thought of losing the opportunity to have several hundred members of Rimfire's crew turned loose with good U.P. credits in his town turned the attempt into a rather sickly smirk. Ursy Wade entered East Haven Control, saluted the guard on duty, requested to see the officer in charge, s