“Aye, 'tis the devil's own problem,” said Robert the Fox.
“Impossible terrain,” said Jonnie.
“No, I don't mean that,” said Robert the Fox. “It’s this Terl demon. On the one hand we have to keep this mining going and fruitful, and on the other, the last thing we want is for him to succeed. I know very well he'd kill us all if he lost hope. But I’d rather be dead than see him win.”
“Time is on our side,” said Jonnie, turning the plane for another pass over the edge.
“Aye, time,” said Robert the Fox. “Time has a nasty habit of disappearing like the wind from a bagpipe. If we haven't made it by Day 91, we're finished.”
"MacTyler!" called Dunneldeen from the back. “Put your eyes on that space about two hundred feet back from the edge. A bit west. It looks flatter.”
There was a bark of laughter from the others. Nothing was flat down there. From the edge and back the terrain was tumbled like a miniature Alps, all stone outcrops and sharp-toothed boulders. No place was flat enough even to set this plane down.
“Take over, Dunneldeen," said Jonnie. He slid sideways and let the Scot into the pilot's seat. Jonnie made sure he had control and then went into the back.
He picked up a coil of explosive cord and began to put himself into harness. The others helped him. “I want you to hold about ten feet above that spot. I’ll go down and have a try at blasting it flat.”
“No!” said Robert the Fox. He gestured at David MacKeen, a shift leader. “Take that away from him, Davie! You're not to be so bold yourself, MacTyler!"
“Sorry,” said Jonnie. “I know these mountains.”
It was so illogical that it stopped Robert the Fox. He laughed. “You're a bonnie lad, MacTyler. But a bit wild.”
Dunneldeen had them hovering over the spot and Jonnie wrestled with the door to get it open. “Proves I’m a Scot,” he said.
The others didn't laugh. They were too tense with concern. The plane was making small jumps and jerks and the sharp ground bobbed up and down below. Even here, two hundred feet from the edge, there was wind.
Jonnie was lowered to the ground and let the pickup rope go slack. Not too much blast or that cliff would sheer off again. It might even break off downward. Jonnie examined the ground and chose a sharp tooth. He girdled it with explosive cord, getting it as low and level as possible. He set the fuse.
At a wave of his hand, the pickup rope tightened and yanked him into the air. He hung there, spinning in the wind.
The explosive cord flashed and the roar racketed around the mountains, echoing.
They lowered him again into the wind-whipped dust and with a spike gun he drove a spike into the rock he had blasted loose. A line came down to him and he put it through the eye of the spike. If he had judged correctly the tooth should sheer away.
He was hauled up higher. The plane's motors screamed. The rock came away.
They lowered the pickup line and he cut the haul cord with a clipper.
The huge rock bounded into a hollow, leaving a flat place where it had stood.
For an hour, grounded and hauled away alternately, Jonnie worked. Some of the blasted rock fell into nearby hollows. Gradually a flattish platform fifty feet in diameter materialized two hundred feet back from the cliff edge.
The plane landed.
David, the shift leader, crept over the broken ground to the crack thirty feet in from the edge. The wind buffeted his bonnet. He put a measuring instrument down into the crack that would tell them if it widened in the future.
Jonnie went over to the edge of the cliff and with Thor holding his ankles tried to look under it and see the lode. He couldn't. The cliff face was not vertical.
The others clambered around seeing what they could.
Jonnie came back to the plane. His hands were scraped. This place had to be worked with mittens. He'd ask the old women to make some.
“Well,” said Robert the Fox. “We got down.”
The daily recon drone rumbled in the distance. They had their orders. The three near-duplicates of Jonnie dove for the plane and out of sight. Jonnie stood out in the open.
There was plenty of time. The sharp crack of the sonic boom hit them like a club as the recon drone went overhead. The plane and ground shook. The drone dwindled in the distance.
“I hope the vibrations of that thing,” said Dunneldeen, emerging, “don't split the cliff.”
Jonnie gathered the others around him. “We have a supply point now. First thing to do is pound in a security fence so nothing can slide off, and construct a shift shelter. Right?”
They nodded.
“Tomorrow,” said Jonnie, “we'll bring two planes. One loaded with equipment and the other equipped to drive rods. We'll try to construct a working platform to mine the lode, balanced on rods driven into the cliff just below the vein. Survey up here right now what equipment we need for safety reels, ore buckets, and so on.”
They got to work to mine the gold they didn't want but had to have. Gold was the bait in the trap.
Chapter 3
Jonnie lay in the dead grass on a knoll and studied the far-off compound through a pair of Psychlo infrared night glasses. He was worried about Chrissie.
Two months had gone by and he felt their chances were worsening. The only blessing was that the winter snows were late: but not the winter cold, and the wind sighing through the night was bitter.
The huge night glasses were icy to the touch. The binocular character of them made them hard to use– the two eyepieces, being Psychlo, were so far apart he could only use one at a time.
The faint light of the dying moon reflected from the snow-capped peak behind him and gave a faint luminescence to the plain.
He was trying to see her fire. From this vantage point he knew by experience that he should be able to. So far he could not find even the tiniest pinpoint of it.
The last time he had seen her, two months ago, he had piled the cage with wood, given her some wheat to boil, and even a few late radishes and lettuces, all from the old women's garden. She had a fair supply of smoked meat, but it would not last forever.
He had tried rather unsuccessfully to cheer her up and give her confidence he himself was not feeling.
He had also given her one of the stainless steel knives the scout had found, and she had pretended to be amazed and delighted with it and the way it could scrape a hide and cut thin strips of meat.
In all these two months, he had not heard from Terl. Forbidden to go to the compound, having no radio contact, he had waited in vain for Terl to come to the base.
Perhaps Terl thought they had moved. True, they had put an emergency camp near the minesite down in a hidden valley. They had moved extra machines, supplies, and the three shifts for the lode and one of the old women to cook and wash for them. There was an abandoned mining village there and it was a short flight to the lode.
The efforts to mine the vein were not going well. They had driven the steel bars into the cliff and tried to build a platform, but the wind, meeting resistance, kept flexing the rods at the point of contact with the cliff and the section there would become red hot. It was daredevil work. Two rods had already broken and only safety lines had saved Scots from plummeting a thousand feet to their deaths. Two months' work in bitter and ferocious winds. And they had only a few pounds of wire gold to show for it– gold grabbed, as it were, on the fly.
This was the fifth night he had lain here and looked in vain for the fire that should be there.