The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond Hamilton
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low roof. Hyrst and Shearing shut their eyes.
“I’m not sure, but I think I see a wire. Damn the fog. Can’t tell where it goes—”
* * * *
Hyrst took cutters from his belt and slithered cautiously over the box. His heart was hammering very hard and his hand shook so that he had great difficulty getting the cutters and the wire together. The wire was attached to the back of the box, very crudely and hastily attached with a blob of plastic solder. It was not until he had pinched the wire with the sharp metal cutter-teeth that he realized the plastic was non-metallic and the wire bare. And then, of course, it was too late.
There must have been a simple energizer somewhere up ahead, still charging itself from the ample radiation source. The cutters flew out of Hyrst’s hand in a shower of sparks, and in the darkness of the tunnel ahead there was a sudden wild flare of light, and an explosion of dust. A shock wave, not too great, hammered past Hyrst’s helmet. Shearing yelled once, a protest broken short in mid-cry. Then they waited.
The dust settled. The brief tremor of the rock was stilled.
In the roof of the tunnel, where the blast had been, a broken dump-trap hung open, but nothing poured out of it but a handful of black dust.
Hyrst began to laugh. He lay on his belly on top of the box of Titanite and laughed. The tears ran out of his eyes and down his nose and dropped onto the inside of his helmet. Shearing hit him from behind. He hit him until he stopped laughing, and then Hyrst shook his head and said.
“Poor MacDonald.”
“Yeah. Go ahead, you can cut the wire now.”
“Such a lovely booby trap. But he wasn’t figuring on time. They went away from here, Shearing, you see? And when they went they drained off the liquid graphite and took it with them. So there isn’t anything left to flood the tunnel. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
Shearing hit him again. “Cut the wire.”
He cut it. They scuffled backward down the tunnel, dragging the box. When they got back into the shaft where there was room to do it they opened up the box.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it, for all the trouble it’s made?”
“No, it doesn’t. But then gold doesn’t look like much, or uranium, or a handful of little dry seeds.” Shearing picked up a chunk of the rough, grayish ore. “You know what that is, Hyrst? That’s the stars.”
It was Hyrst’s turn to prod Shearing into quiet. The starship and the dream that went with it were still only an intellectual interest to him. They shared out the Titanite into two webbing sacks. It made a light load for each, hardly noticeable when clipped to a belt-ring at the back.
Hyrst felt suddenly very nervous. Perhaps it was reaction, perhaps it was the memory of having been trapped in a similar hole on the Valhalla asteroid. Perhaps it was a mental premonition, obscured by the radioactive “fog”. At any rate, he started to climb the ladder with almost suicidal haste, urging Shearing on after him. The shaft seemed to be a mile high. It seemed to lengthen ahead of him as he climbed, so that he was never any nearer the top. He knew it was only imagination, because he passed the level markers, but it was the closest thing to a nightmare he had ever experienced when he was broad awake. Just after they had passed the E Level mark, Shearing spoke.
“A ship has landed.”
Hyrst looked mentally. The fog-effect was not so great now, and he could see quite clearly. It was a small ship, and two men were getting out of it. It had stopped snowing.
“Radar must have picked up the raft after all,” said Shearing. “Or else somebody spotted the jet-flares.” He began to climb faster. “We better get out of this before they come in.”
D Level. Hyrst’s hands were cold and stiff inside his gauntlets, clumsy hooks to catch the slender rungs. The two men were standing outside in the snow, peering around.
C Level. One of the two men saw the raft parked by the hoist tower. He pointed, and they moved toward it.
B Level. Hyrst’s boots slipped and scrambled, banging the shaft wall. “Christ,” said Shearing. “You sound like a temple gong. What are you trying to do, alarm the whole moon?”
* * * *
The men outside bent over the raft. They looked at it. Then they looked at the hoist tower. They left the raft and began to run, pulling guns out of their belts.
A Level. Hyrst’s breath roared in his helmet like a great wind. He thought of the long dark way down that was below them, and how MacDonald had looked at the bottom of the shaft, and how he would take Shearing with him if he fell, and nobody would get to the stars, and Vernon would go free. He set his teeth, and sobbed, and climbed. Outside, the two men cautiously removed the hatch and stepped into the tower.
End of the ladder. A level floor to sprawl on. Hyrst squirmed away from the shaft. He thought for a minute he was going to pass out, and he fumbled with the oxygen valve, making the mixture richer. His head began to clear. Shearing was now beside him. This time they had guns, too. Shearing gave him a quick mental caution, Not unless you have to. One of the two men was placing a tentative foot on the stair that led up to where they were. The other man was close behind him. Shearing took careful aim and fired, at half power.
The harsh blue bolt did not strike either man. But they went reeling back in a cloud of burning flakes, and when Shearing shouted to them to drop their weapons and get out they did so, half stunned from the shock. Hyrst and Shearing leaped down the stairs, stopping only long enough to pick up the guns. Then they scrambled outside. The two men were running as hard as they could for their ship, but they had not gone far and Shearing stopped them with another shot that sent a geyser of methane steam puffing up practically under their feet.
“Not yet,” he said. “Later.”
The two men stood, sullenly obedient. They were both young, and not bad looking. Just doing a job, Hyrst thought. No real harm in them, just doing a job, like so many people who never stop to worry about what the job means. They both wore Bellaver’s insigne on their vac-suits.
One of them said, as though he were reciting a lesson in which he had no real personal interest, “You’re trespassing on private property. You’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Sure,” said Shearing. He motioned to the hoist tower. “Back inside.”
The young men hesitated. “What you going to do?”
“Nothing fatal. It shouldn’t take you more than half an hour to break out again.”
He marched them to the hatch and saw them inside it. Hyrst was watching the sky, the black star-glittering sky with the glorious arch of the Rings across it and one milky-bright curve of Saturn visible and growing above the eastern horizon.
“They’re coming,” he said mentally to Shearing.
“Good.” He started to close the hatch, and one of the young men pointed suddenly to the sack clipped to Shearing’s belt.
“You’ve been stealing something.”
“Tell that to Bellaver.”
“You bet I will. The fullest extent of the law, mister! The fullest extent—”
The hatch closed. Shearing jammed the fastening mechanism so it could not be turned from the inside. Then he went and stood beside Hyrst in the glimmering plain, watching the ship drop down out of the Rings.
Hyrst said, “They’ll tell Bellaver.”
“Naturally.”
“What will Bellaver do?”
“I’m not sure. Something drastic. He wants our starship so hard he’d murder his own children to get it. You can see why. In itself it’s priceless, a hundred years ahead of its time, but that’s not all. It’s what it stands for. To us it means freedom and safety. To Bellaver it