There was no way she could escape him.
The feeling of futility that came over her then was drab and familiar, like a shabby old coat grown colorless with age that you don’t have the money to replace. Sometime, long ago, she’d crossed that line where hope ceased. She had never actually admitted to herself that she no longer believed they’d ever make that big strike—just one day woken up knowing that she was simply waiting out her contract, stubbornly trying to endure long enough to serve out her term and return to Earth no poorer than she had set out.
Which was when her deviling had turned nasty, wasn’t it? It was when she had started touching herself and telling MacArthur exactly what she was doing. When she’d started describing in detail all the things she’d never do to him.
It was a way of getting through one more day. It was a way of faking up enough emotion to care. It was a stupid, stupid thing to do.
And this was her punishment.
But she couldn’t give up. She was going to have to… She didn’t finish that thought. If she was going to do this unnamed thing, she had to sort through the ground rules first.
The three rules were: No Violence. Protect Company Equipment. Protect Yourself. They were ranked hierarchically.
Okay, Patang thought. In order to prevent violence, I’m going to have to destroy Company property.
She waited to see if she’d pass out.
Nothing happened.
Good.
She’d come to a long ridge, steep-sided and barren and set her suit to auto-climb. As she climbed, she scanned the slope ahead, empty and rock-strewn under a permanently dazzling cover of sulfuric acid clouds. Halfway up, MacArthur emerged from the zigzagging valley below and waved jauntily.
Patang ignored him. That pile of boulders up ahead was too large. Those to the right were too small. There was a patch of loose regolith that looked promising but… No. In the end, she veered leftward, toward a shallow ledge that sheltered rocks that looked loose enough to be dislodged but not massive enough to do any serious damage to MacArthur’s suit. All she wanted was to sweep him off his feet. He could survive a slide downslope easily enough. But could he hold onto the laser drill while doing so?
Patang didn’t think so.
Okay, then. She took her suit off automatics and climbed clumsily, carefully, toward her destination. She kept her helmet up, pointed toward the top of the ridge, to avoid tipping MacArthur off to her intentions.
Slantwise across the slope, that’s right. Now straight up. She glanced back and saw that she’d pulled MacArthur into her wake. He was directly beneath her. Good. All systems go.
She was up to the ledge now.
Stop. Turn around. Look down on MacArthur, surprisingly close.
If there was one thing Patang knew, after all these months, it was how easy it was to start a landslide. Lean back and brace yourself here, and start kicking. And over the rocks go and over the rocks go and—
LASER HAZARD
“Ohhhh, Patang, you are so obvious. You climb diagonally up a slope that any ordinary person would tackle straight on. You change direction halfway up. What were you planning to do, start an avalanche? What did you think that would accomplish?”
“I thought I could get the laser away from you.”
“And what good would that do? I’d still have the suit. I’d still have rocks. I’d still have you at my mercy. You hadn’t really thought this one through, had you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“You tried to outwit me, but you didn’t have the ingenuity. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“You were just hoping. But there isn’t any hope, is there?”
“No.”
He flipped one hand dismissively. “Well, keep on going. We’re not done yet.”
Weeping, Patang topped the ridge and started downward, into a valley shaped like a deep bowl. Glassy scarps on all sides caught whatever infrared bounced off the floor and threw it back into the valley. The temperature readings on her visor leaped. It was at least fifty degrees hotter out there than anyplace she had ever been. Hot enough that prolonged exposure would incapacitate her suit? Maybe. But there was MacArthur behind her, and the only way forward was a shallow trough leading straight down. She had no alternative.
Midway down the slope, the trough deepened. Rock walls rose up to plunge Patang into shadow. Her suit’s external temperature went down, though not as much as she would’ve liked. Then the way grew less steep and then it flattened out. The trough ended as a bright doorway between jagged rocks.
She stepped out into the open and looked across the valley.
The ground dazzled.
She walked out into it. She felt weightless. Her feet floated up beneath her and her hands rose of their own accord into the air. The muscle suit’s arms rose too, like a ballerina’s.
A network of cracks crazed the floor of the valley, each one blazing bright as the sun. Liquid metal was just oozing up out of the ground. She’d never seen anything like it.
Patang stomped on a puddle of metal, shattering it into droplets of sunlight and setting off warning alarms in her suit. For an instant she swayed with sleepiness. But she shook it off. She snapped a stick-probe from her tool rack and jabbed it into the stuff. It measured the metal’s temperature and its resistance to pressure, ran a few baby calculations, and spat out a result.
Tin.
She looked up again. There were intersecting lines of molten tin everywhere. The pattern reminded her of her childhood on the Eastern Shore, of standing at the edge of a marsh, binoculars in hand, hoping for a harrier, with the silver gleam of sun on water almost painful to the eye. This looked just like a marsh, only with tin instead of water.
A tin marsh.
For an instant, wonder flickered to life within her. How could such a thing be? What complex set of geological conditions was responsible? All she could figure was that the noontide heat was involved. As it slowly sank into the rock, the tin below expanded and pushed its way up through the cracks. Or maybe it was the rocks that expanded, squeezing out the liquid tin. In either case the effect would be very small for any given volume. She couldn’t imagine how much tin there must be down there for it to be forced to the surface like this. More than she’d ever dreamed they’d find.
“We’re rich!” she whooped. She couldn’t help it. All those months, all that misery, and here it was. The payoff they’d set out to discover, the one that she’d long ago given up all hope of finding.
LASER HAZARD
LASER HAZARD
LASER HAZARD
“No! Wait! Stop!” she cried. “You don’t need to do this anymore. We found it! It’s here!”
Turning, she saw McArthur’s big suit lumber out of shadow. It was brute strength personified, all body and no head. “What are you talking about?” he said angrily. But Patang dared think he sounded almost sane. She dared hope she could reason with him.
“It’s the big one, Mac!” She hadn’t called him Mac in ages. “We’ve got the goddamned mother lode here. All you have to do is radio in the claim. It’s all over, Mac! This time tomorrow, you’re going to be holding a press conference about it.”
For a moment MacArthur stood silent and irresolute. Then he said, “Maybe so. But I have to kill you first.”
“You turn up without me, the Company’s gonna have questions. They’re gonna interrogate their suit. They’re gonna run a mind-probe. No, MacArthur, you can’t have both. You’ve got to choose: money or me.”
LASER HAZARD
“Run, you bitch!” MacArthur howled. “Run like you’ve got a chance to live!”
She didn’t move. “Think of it, MacArthur. A nice cold bath. They chill down the water with slabs of ice, and for a little extra they’ll leave the ice in. You can hear it clink.”