He had a picto-recorder on a strap around his neck. With a couple of buckskin thongs he had steadied it to his chest so that with a slight motion of his hand he could start and stop it without raising it to his eye. He had practiced doing that and had gotten pretty accurate at pointing it without looking through the finder. He requisitioned a dozen of the things and plenty of miniature discs. As he talked he took pictures of the girls and the cage from several angles, pictures of the switch box and wires. It was a risk, he knew.
He told Chrissie and Pattie he would be back and rode casually to a high point above the Chinko quarters. Seemingly idle, he took broad panoramas, both wide-angle and telephoto, of the minesite. He took pictures of the twenty battle planes lined up in the field, the distant cartridge fuel dump, and, beyond that, the breathe-gas storage dump. He took pictures of the morgue a hundred yards beyond the transshipment area. And he covered the freighter landing area and ramps and conveyor belt and control tower.
Then luck! He saw a freighter on its way in with a load of ore. He idled down off the knoll. As he passed the cage, he felt a sudden need for cautiousness. He dismounted and slipped the discs he had already taken into the waiting pack, making it appear that he was just putting in some flowers.
Remounted, he wandered on down to the ore-dusting area. He let Windsplitter pause near tasty clumps of grass and at last came to the dust-coated area of transshipment.
The freighter had not unloaded yet. Employees were coming out and getting onto their machines. He rode up to the ore-dusting machine. The operator was not there. A hook was swinging from a crane and he pretended to duck it. But in actual fact he leaned over and pulled out a wire from the back of the machine's controls. He did not know its circuit, but with luck he would very soon.
The operator knew him slightly from his apprentice days but glanced at him with normal Psychlo disdain. “You better get that horse out of here! Ore coming in.”
Jonnie backed Windsplitter off.
The freighter discharged with a dusty roar. The blade machines raced about neatening up the pile. The first load was ready for the buckets on the conveyor belt.
A red light flared. A horn went off.
The ore duster operator cursed and banged at his controls.
All activity stopped.
The air around the operator's dome and mask might well have turned blue from his cursing.
Char came rumbling like a tank out of the dome of the transshipment control office, shouting as he came.
Far off was the faint moan of another freighter coming in from an overseas minesite.
It was not a transshipment firing day, but schedules were about to ball up on freighter discharge.
Char was shouting for electronics repair, and somebody in the dome, on the loudspeaker system, was demanding to know where the duty electronics was.
Jonnie could have told them where duty electronics was. He'd seen the employee walking toward the compound fifteen minutes ago.
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 damned 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 transshipment 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 transshipment 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 transshipment 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 transshipment 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.