Part 1 (2/2)
”You going on to Ullr on the _City of Canberra_?” Lourenco Gomes asked. ”I wish I were; I have to stay over and make another shot, in a month or so, and I've had about all of Niflheim I can take, now.”
”When are you going to Terra?” the girl asked him.
”Terra? I don't know; a year, two years. But I'm going to Ullr on the next s.h.i.+p--the _City of Pretoria_--if we get the next blast off in time. They want me to design some improvements on a couple of power-reactors at Keegark so I'll probably see you when I get there.”
”Here she comes!” the chief engineer called. ”Watch the base of the column!”
The pillar of fiery smoke and dust, still boiling up from where the bombs had gone off far underground, was being violently agitated at the bottom. A series of new flashes broke out, lifting and spreading the incandescent radioactive ga.s.ses, and then a great gush of flame rose. A column of pure hydrogen must have rushed up into the vacuum created by the explosion; the next blast of flame, in a lateral sheet, came at nearly ten thousand feet above the ground. Then geysers of hot ash and molten rock spouted upward; some of the white-hot debris landed almost at the acid river, half-way to the armor-tender.
”We've started a first-cla.s.s earthquake, too,” Murillo said, looking at the instruments.
”About six big cracks opening in the rock-structure. You know, when this quiets down and cools off, we'll have more ore on the surface than we can handle in ten years, and more than we could have mined by ordinary means in fifty.”
”Well, that finishes our work,” the large young man said, going to a kit-bag in the corner of the cabin and getting out a bottle. ”Get some of those plastic cups, over there, somebody; this one calls for a drink.”
The Ullran, in the background, rose quickly and squeaked apologetically. Murillo nodded. ”Yes, of course, Gorkrink. No need for you to stay here.” The Ullran went out, closing the door behind him.
”That taboo against Ullrans and Terrans watching each other eat and drink,” Paula Quinton commented. ”But you were speaking to him in Lingua Terra; I didn't know any of them understood it.”
”Gorkrink does,” Murillo said, uncorking the bottle and pouring into the plastic cups. ”None of them can speak it, of course, because of the structure of their vocal organs, any more than we can speak their languages without artificial aids. But I can talk to him in Lingua Terra without having to put one of those d.a.m.n gags in my mouth, and he can pa.s.s my instructions on to the others. He's been a big help; I'll be sorry to lose him.”
”Lose him?”
”Yes, his year's up; he's going back to Ullr on the _Canberra_. He's from Keegark; claims to be a prince, or something. But he's a d.a.m.n good worker. Very smart; picks things up the first time you tell him.
I'll recommend him unqualifiedly for any kind of work with contragravity or mechanized equipment.”
They all had drinks, now, except the chief engineer, who wanted a rain-check on his.
”Well, here's to us,” Murillo said. ”The first A-bomb miners in history....”
II
Carlos von Schlichten, General of the troops on Ullr, threw his cigarette away and set his monocle more firmly in his eye, stepping forward to let Brigadier-General Themistocles M'zangwe and little Colonel Hideyos.h.i.+ O'Leary follow him out of the fort. On the little hundred-foot-square parade ground in front of the keep, his aircar was parked, and the soldiers were a.s.sembled.
Ten or twelve of them were Terrans--a couple of lieutenants, sergeants, gunners, technicians, the sergeant-driver and corporal-gunner of his own car. The other fifty-odd were Ullrans. They stood erect on stumpy legs and broad, six-toed feet. They had four arms apiece, one pair from true shoulders and the other connected to a pseudo-pelvis midway down the torso. Their skins were slate-gray and rubbery, speckled with pinhead-sized bits of quartz that had been formed from perspiration, since their body-tissues were silicone instead of carbon-hydrogen. Their narrow heads were unpleasantly saurian; they had small, double-lidded red eyes, and slit-like nostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Being cold-blooded, they needed no clothing, beyond their belts and equipment, and the emblem of the Chartered Ullr Company painted on their chests and backs. They had no need for modesty, since all were of the same gender--true, functional hermaphrodites; any individual among them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other individual.
Fifteen years before, when he had come to Ullr as a newly commissioned colonel in the army of the Ullr Company, it had taken him some time to adjust. But now his mind disregarded them and went on worrying about the mysterious disappearance of pet animals from Terran homes; there must be some connection with the subtle change he had noticed in the att.i.tudes of the natives, but he couldn't guess what. He didn't like it, though, any more than the beginning of cannibalism among the wild Jeel tribesmen. Or the visit of Paula Quinton on Ullr as field-agent for the Extraterrestrials' Rights a.s.sociation; now was no time to stir up trouble among the natives, unless his hunch was wrong.
He shrugged it aside and climbed into the command-car, followed by M'zangwe and O'Leary. Sergeant Harry Quong and Corporal Ha.s.san Bogdanoff took their places in the front seat; the car lifted, turned to nose into the wind, and rose in a slow spiral.
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