Part 33 (1/2)

Char was raving at the operator on the ore duster. The operator was hammering paws on the control panel.

Jonnie slid off his horse and went to them. ”I can fix it.”

With a roar that had concussion in it, Char told him to get the out of there!

”No, I can fix it,” said Jonnie.

A voice coming closer said, ”Let him fix it. I trained him.” It was Ker.

Char was distracted by the new interruption. He whirled to storm abuse at the midget Psychlo.

Picto-recorder running, Jonnie slid up to the front of the ore duster control panel. He snapped it open. He stood at right angles to the layout of components and pretended to study it. Then he reached in and touched a couple of points, doing nothing to them. Given pictures of this, he could build it!

He closed the box.

He rapidly connected the wire he had earlier loosened.

Char turned back to him after chomping on Ker.

”It's fixed,” said Jonnie. ”It was just a loose wire.”

Ker yelled to the operator, ”Try it now!”

The operator did and the ore duster purred.

”See?” said Ker. ”I trained him myself.”

Jonnie got back on Windsplitter, using the motion to turn off his picto-recorder.

”It's working now,” said the operator. Char looked venom at Jonnie. ”You keep that horse out of this area. If this was a firing time he'd land in Psychlo!” He went off muttering something about d.a.m.ned animals.

The conveyor belt and buckets and machines were roaring away again, making haste to clear the load before the new freighter came in. The old one took off.

Windsplitter wandered down toward the morgue. This building, remarkable for its refrigerator coils, stood well back. Jonnie turned and looked from it back at the compound. It was a straight course from here, across the transs.h.i.+pment platform and up the hill to the cage.

”And what,” said a voice, ”are you doing down here with a picto-recorder?”

It was Terl. He had stepped out of the morgue and had a list in his hand. In the dark reaches of the building, coffins were stacked. Terl had been checking Psychlo corpses scheduled for return home at the semiannual firing.

”Practicing,” answered Jonnie. ”For what?” growled Terl.

”Sooner or later you'll want me to take pictures for you up in the-'

”Don't talk about that around here!”

Terl tossed his list back of him toward the morgue and stepped close to Jonnie. He yanked the picto-recorder off Jonnie's chest, snapping the holding straps. The thongs bit into Jonnie's back as they resisted just before they gave.

Turning the machine over, Terl snapped the disc out of it, threw it in the dust, and stamped on it with his boot heel.

He poked sharp talons into Jonnie's belt and flipped out four more discs.

”They're just blanks,” said Jonnie.

Terl threw those into the dust and ground them under a heavy toe.

He shoved the picto-recorder back at Jonnie. ”It's a company rule not to record a transs.h.i.+pment area.”

”When you want me to take pictures,” said Jonnie, ”I hope you'll be able to make them out.”

”I better be able to,” snarled Terl illogically and stamped back into the morgue.

Later, when Jonnie was let in to take Chrissie supplies, he had no trouble slipping the earlier discs from his incoming pack to Chrissie's outgoing pack.

But they weren't the circuit diagrams that would detect uranium.

Out of plain revenge that night he showed his whole crew the earlier pictures he had taken. He showed them all the locations of the whole transs.h.i.+pment area. He would have to do it again later when proper plans were formed. But for now he wanted to show them pictures of Chrissie and Pattie.

The shots showed the girls, showed the collars, showed the switch box to the bars. But mainly it showed their faces, the faces of a little girl and a beautiful woman.

The Scots watched the pictures, attentive to the geography of the transs.h.i.+pment area, the battle planes, the breathe-gas dump, the fuel dump, the morgue, and the platform. But when they saw the pictures of Chrissie and Pattie they began with pity and ended with rage.

Robert the Fox had to speak again to prevent them from tearing over right then and ripping the place to pieces. The pipers played a mournful lament.

If the Scots had been enthusiastic before, they were deadly determined and angry now.

But Jonnie lay unable to sleep that night. He had had it right in the camera- the circuit of a uranium detector. He had not memorized it. He had counted upon getting the pictures. He blamed himself for depending on machines. Machines were all right but they did not replace man.

There would come a day of reckoning with Terl. He vowed it bitterly.

Chapter 6.

In the clear, cold noon they were on their way for a first look at the lode. Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the three who looked similar to Jonnie, and the two Scot mining s.h.i.+ft leaders who had been appointed sped along in the small personnel carrier, high above the grandeur of the Rockies.

Terl had come early that morning, threatening and secretive. His ground car had been spotted some time since by a posted sentry and Jonnie had been warned.

Wrapped in a puma skin against the dawn chill, Jonnie met the ground car as it stopped. Breakfast was just over in the mess hall and a warning had been sent to stay inside. The grounds were nearly deserted and there was nothing to distract Terl's attention.

He got out, tightening his breathe-mask, and stood there tossing the remote control box idly into the air and catching it in his paw.

”Why,” said Terl, ”are you interested in a uranium detector?”

Jonnie frowned and looked mystified- or tried to.

”I heard after you left the other day that you 'repaired' the ore duster. With a picto-recorder around your neck? Ha!”

Jonnie decided on a sudden verbal attack. ”You expect me to go up into those mountains without knowing what to avoid? You expect me to go tearing around getting myself wrecked-”