Tuck gripped the bar tighter. “Do they roll very often?”
David laughed. “Don’t get excited. It doesn’t happen often. But if you get caught after dark, the emergency lights make the crevices look just like more rock, and then anything can happen. I spent a week in the bottom of a crevice once, until they came and found me. Why, there was one time—” he jerked the wheel hard—“when I ran one of these things right up on top of a great big clordelkus before he decided that now was the time to go somewhere else—”
Tuck grinned, remembering his first scare at seeing one of those. The ’track was following a faint path in the snow left by the ’track before them, and far ahead and to the right Tuck could see the gorge, or what remained of it, where the explosion had occurred. The sight drew his mind back to the things that had happened since the Earth ship had landed—back to the impending crisis at the colony. He watched the leader’s son, thoughtfully, as the lad fought the steering bar of the half-track. Odd that he should be sitting here, perfectly confident in the friendship he felt growing between them—a friendship that was ridiculous by all the standards Tuck had ever known. He wondered if David had even thought of the strangeness of their friendship under these circumstances. Probably not. And yet David was ready to take him into his confidence, with little more than his word for security. Quite suddenly, Tuck felt a pang of shame for his suspiciousness, for his father’s stubbornness—above all, for his own reluctance to admit to himself that Earth Security’s position might, conceivably, be wrong. This was so futile, so needless—
And yet there was John Cortell. The thought sent a chill down Tuck’s spine. “It would be nice if they had caught Cortell by the time we get back,” he said wistfully. “That would solve a lot of problems.”
David snorted. “Well, they won’t, so don’t figure on it. They aren’t going to get near to catching Cortell—and dad knows it.”
“How can you be so sure? It seems to me there’s just so much of the colony to search.”
David nodded. “That’s right. But it’s deceptive. We’re right over a part of the colony now, even though we’re three miles away from the dome.”
Tuck glanced down at the black rock path involuntarily. “Tunnel?”
David nodded. “They go out in all directions—a regular maze. Down about forty feet deep, and even then we have trouble with cave-ins and quakes and landslides.” He hung onto the bar precariously with one hand, pointing to a long outcropping of rock to the right. “See that? That’s a rich vein—goes out almost twenty miles. They mine it and run the ore back to the refinery on railroad tracks laid in there. Got a whole little supply unit in the mining area—whoops!” The car lurched and dropped about six feet, jarring their very bones. David spun the steering bar and went right on talking as Tuck picked himself up from the dashboard. “The tunnels are all interconnecting, everywhere. Get somebody in there who doesn’t know their plan, and he could starve to death trying to get out. But Cortell—”
“I suppose he knows every tunnel,” Tuck remarked glumly.
“Like the back of his hand. He could hide there till doomsday, and nobody’d ever find him. And he’s got plenty of friends to help him, too. If a search party comes close to him, Cortell gets the word, and moves somewhere else. Oh, he’s a clever one—”
Tuck blinked. “Then it seems to me that all this hunting is silly.”
David grinned. “Good boy. Comes the dawn.” He jerked the wheel sharply, avoiding a huge black outcropping, and plunged the half-track down into a shallow gully with high, overhanging crags on both sides.
“But why is your father pretending—”
“Not pretending. He’s hunting. But he needs time—he needs time worse than anything. And he needs to keep the men that are on his side good and busy until he can get your father to see things the colony’s way.” He looked soberly at Tuck. “Want to know the facts of life?”
“Tell me the facts of life.”
“Okay, Bub. Fact number one: your father is going to have to give in and go along with dad. If he doesn’t, the fat’s in the fire. Cortell will have enough time to put his plans into action—”
“But what’s holding him up now?”
“Aha! He can’t do what he wants to do now, and dad knows it. That’s fact number two—but I’m coming to that. Don’t interrupt. Fact number three: if dad can keep his own boys with him long enough to make a settlement with your father, he can cut the floor right out from under Cortell. And that’s where my little scheme comes in—”
Tuck scowled, gripping the bar tightly as the ’track climbed back out of a gully, slowly, painfully, like a roller coaster climbing up for its first big plunge. “But I still don’t see what Cortell is planning to do—”
David slowed the ’track down suddenly, and braked it, snapping the motor off. He stretched his arms for a moment, then turned to Tuck. “Think about it a minute,” he said. “The whole picture. They teach you logic and data evaluation in your Earth schools. Look at the facts. An angry crowd of people out here, being walked all over for years and years. I don’t care whether you believe that or not—I know it’s true. They’ve been kicked for years. No hope of changes—things getting worse and worse for them as the ruthenium gets more and more important for Earth. No end in sight—are you with me?”
Tuck nodded. “So far.”
“Good. Then the smuggled supplies coming out here—oh, they’ve been coming out here, all right. And they’ve been smuggled, too. Then your father gets appointed to come out here. Why? To trace down smuggled supplies. And what happens? They try to clip him—”
“Who tries to clip him?”
David held up his hand. “Just hold on a minute. Somebody—it doesn’t matter who. But the attempt backfires, you and your father come out here anyway—tracing down the supplies. And then Cortell moves and threatens something—and my father won’t tell your father what.” David looked at Tuck narrowly. “You’re the one that’s been to school. Now I ask you—what does all that add up to?”
Tuck chewed his lip. “Cortell is desperate that the smuggled supplies not be found,” he said suddenly. He looked at David. “And so is your father.”
“Huzzah,” said David.
“Why—this begins to make sense!” Tuck’s excitement rose. “You even made a slip about it, that first morning in the colony—”
David nodded. “The Big Secret,” he said.
“Something both Cortell and your father know about, and your father doesn’t dare tell dad about!”
David nodded glumly. “It’s a plan,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “There’s been a plan for a long, long time, here in the colony. My father would break my neck if he ever knew I’d told you this. It’s been so well guarded that there aren’t more than six or seven in the colony now who know exactly what the plan is, or how it’s supposed to work—”
“But what is it?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know specifically—” He saw Tuck’s face, and shook his head again. “No, no—I’m not holding out on you. I honestly don’t know. Hardly anybody knows, although everybody has his pet theory. It got started over a hundred years ago, and everyone in the colony has helped with it, one way or another—but only a few chosen ones have known exactly what it is.”
“But when did it start?”
David spread his hands. “Years ago. Back in the very earliest days, when our leaders began to see what Earth Security was trying to do. Oh, they were bitter in those days—there were strikes, and fighting and protest—it was really gay. But whenever there was an outbreak, Security just cut off supplies and let the colony starve for a while. It worked fine—but even a hundred years ago the colony could see what was coming. Titan was going to end up a slave colony, with no rights of any kind, and no place to go in the whole Solar System. It was like the old horror story I read once about the guy being walled up in a cellar brick by brick. So the leaders held a council. Sometime things would come to a breaking point. They had to make plans for that time, while they could, or the Colony would never be free again. So they came up with the Big Secret.”