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 shift 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-”
“Wrecked?”
“Physically wrecked from uranium contamination-”
“See here, animal, you can't talk this way to me!”
“-when you know very well that I could be made sick if I didn't avoid uranium dust! You've told me there's uranium up there! And you expect me-!”
“Wait a minute,” said Terl. “What are you talking about?”
“Mining toxicology!” snapped Jonnie.
The kilted sentry who had called him was standing by the mess hall door, looking daggers and dirks at Terl.
“Sentry!” shouted Jonnie. “Grab a book, any book in English, and bring it here! Fast!”
Jonnie turned back to Terl. The running footsteps of the sentry could be heard inside the building. Terl put the control box back in his pocket so his gun paw could be free just in case.
The sentry rushed out with an ancient volume labeled The Poems of Robert Burns. He had snatched it from the parson who was reading at breakfast. It would have to do.
Jonnie snapped it open. He put his finger on a line that said, “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie..."
“See there!” he demanded of Terl. "In the presence of uranium, a man's hair falls out, his teeth fall out, his skin develops red blotches, and his bones crumble! And it happens in just a few weeks of exposure.”
“You don't explode?” said Terl.
“It doesn't say anything here about explosion, but it says that continuous exposure to uranium dust can be fatal! Read it yourself!"
Terl looked at a line that said something about, "O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" and said, “So it does. I didn't know that.”
“You know it now,” said Jonnie. He closed and thumped the book. “I found this by accident. You didn't tell me. Now are you going to let me have a detector or aren't you?”
Terl looked thoughtful. “So your bones turn to dust, do they? And it takes a few months?”
“Weeks,” said Jonnie.
Terl began to laugh. His paw dropped from his belt gun and he swatted himself in the chest, catching his breath. “Well,” he said at length, “I guess you'll just have to take your chances, won't you?”
It hadn't worked. But Terl was totally off the scent now. Actually feeling more secure.
“That wasn't what I came over here for, anyway,” said Terl. “Can we go some place less public?”
Jonnie handed the book back to the sentry with a wink to reassure him. The Scot had enough sense not to grin. But Terl was rummaging around the ground car.
He beckoned Jonnie to follow and took him back of the chapel where there were no windows. He had a big roll of maps and photos and he sat down on the ground. He motioned for Jennie to hunker down.
“Your animals are all trained?” said Terl.
“As well as can be expected.”
“Well, notice you've had a couple extra weeks.”
“They'll do.”
“All right, now. We have to come to the time to be real miners!” He rolled out the map. It was a patch-up of sectional running shots from a recon drone, and it condensed about two thousand square miles of the Rocky Mountains from Denver to the west. “You can read one of these?”
“Yes,” said Jonnie.
Terl snapped the head of a canyon with his talon. “It’s there.” Jonnie could almost feel the surge of greed in Terl. His voice was a conspiratorial mutter. “It’s a lode of white quartz with streamers of pure gold in it. It 's a freak. Exposed by a landslide in recent years.” And he took a large photograph out of the pack.
There it was, a diagonal slash of white in the red side of a canyon. Terl took a closer shot and showed it. Fingers of pure gold could be seen threading through the quartz.
Jonnie would have spoken but Terl held up his paw to stop him. “You fly over and take a close look at it. When you've seen it and gotten it oriented as a mining problem, you come back and see me and I will clarify any questions as to procedure.” He tapped the location on the larger map. “Memorize that spot.” Jonnie noted that the map bore no markings. Clever Terl. No clues if the map went adrift.
He sat there and let Jonnie study the map.
Jonnie knew these mountains, but he had never had a detailed picture of them from this angle: above.
Terl put all his papers away except the map. “Hold on to that.” He stood up.
“How long do we have to get it out?” said Jonnie.
“Day 91 of the coming year. That's six and a half months away.”
“That's also winter,” said Jonnie.
Terl shrugged. “It’s always winter up there. Ten months of winter and two months of fall.” He laughed. “Fly over and look at it, animal. Take a week or two to study it out. And then come over and we'll have a private meeting. And this is confidential, do you hear? Outside of your animals, say nothing."
Terl had gone off playing catch with the control box. His ground car roared away back to the compound.
A couple of hours later Jonnie's party was flying high above the Rockies.
“That's the first time,” said one of the Scots behind Jonnie, “that I knew Robbie Burns was toxic.”
Jonnie turned. He thought the sentry must have gotten aboard. “You speak
Psychlo that well?”
“Of course,” said the Scot and showed the ruler bruises on the back of his hand. He was one of the lads chosen because of his resemblance to Jonnie. “I was putting an ear to a window on the second floor above you. He can't understand English, can he?”
“One of our very few advantages,” said Jonnie. “I didn't get the uranium detector.”
“Well,” said Robert the Fox, “it's a very optimistic man that thinks he can win all the battles. What are all those villages down there?”
It was true. There were old towns here and there throughout this section of the mountains.
“They're deserted,” said Jonnie. "I’ve been to some of them. No population but rats. Mining ghost towns.”
"'Tis a sad thing” said Robert the Fox. “All this space and all kinds of food and no people. And over in Scotland there's little space that will grow anything and hardly any food at all. It 's a dark chapter in history we've been through.”
“We'll change it,” said a young Scot behind him.
“Aye,” said Robert the Fox. "If we have any luck. All this great broad world full of food and no people! What are the names of those grand peaks down there?”
“I don't know,” said Jonnie. "If you look on the mine map you'll see they just give them numbers. I think they had names once but people forgot. That one over there we just call 'Highpeak.' "