He did his own work with a fury and an impeccable thoroughness quite foreign to him. He got through investigations at once. He answered all dispatches at once. Anything questionable in his files was buried or destroyed at once. Terl had even personally overhauled and fueled and charged the twenty battle planes in the field so that he would appear alert and efficient.
He had filed a banal report about the animals. There were dangerous posts in mining, slopes one could not get into, and as an experiment “ordered by Numph" he had rounded up a few animals to see whether they could run simpler machine types. The animals were not dangerous; they were actually stupid and slow to learn. It did not cost the company anything and it might increase their profits in case the experiment worked out. It was not very successful yet anyway. Nothing was taught the animals about metallurgy or warfare, both because of company policy and because they were too stupid. They ate rats, a vermin plentiful on this planet. He sent the report through with no priority. He was covered. He hoped.
But fifteen times a day Terl decided that he should wipe out the animals and return the machines to storage. And fifteen times a day he decided to go on with it just a little longer.
The sentry affair had disturbed him, not because Psychlos had been killed (he needed the dead bodies for his plans), but because one of the sentries, when Terl put the body in a coffin for transshipment next year, had had a criminal brand burned into the fur of his chest. This three-bar brand was put on criminals by the Imperial government. It represented someone “barred from justice procedures, barred from government assistance, and barred from employment.” It meant the personnel department on the home planet was careless. He had made an innocuous report of it.
For a flaming moment of hope he thought perhaps Jayed might be investigating that or looking for some such. But when he had a fellow employee mention it casually to Jayed, no interest had been shown.
Terl simply could not find out what Jayed was looking for, nor why Jayed was there. The tension and uncertainty of it had brought him near to perpetual hysteria.
And this morning, out of the blue, the animal had done something that literally stood Terl's fur on end with terror.
As was his usual practice, Terl was stripping the day's photos from the recon drone receiver, when he found himself looking at a photo of the minesite with a sign in it.
There, sharp and clear, at the lode, was the animal steadying a huge twelve-by-twelve-foot sign. It was resting on a flat place the animals had made back of the lode. In clearest Psychlo script it said:
URGENT
Meeting Vital. Same place. Same time.
That was bad enough! But a machine tarpaulin seemed to have fallen over the last part of the sign. There was another line. It said:
The W....
Terl couldn't read the rest of it.
The stupid animal apparently had not noticed part of its sign was obscured.
With shaking claws, Terl had tried to find another frame in the sequence that looked back of the tarpaulin. He could not.
Panic gripped him.
Gradually his scattered wits collected down to seething anger. The panic died out as he realized that his was the only recon drone receiver on the planet; the telltale on the side of it that showed whether anything else was receiving was mute. He daily watched these photos and had exactly tracked the progress at the lode. The animal he had captured always seemed to be there with a crew. While all these animals looked alike, he thought he could recognize the blond beard and size of the one he had trained. This usually reassured him, for it seemed to mean the animal was busy and not wandering around elsewhere.
The progress at the lode was minimal but he knew the problems of mining it, and he also knew they might solve them without his advice. He had months to go– four months more, actually– before day 92.
He got over his panic and shredded the photos. Jayed had no possible access to them.
But to directly link Terl with the project was not to be allowed. He began to imagine that the sign had started with his name and regretted having shredded it so fast. He should have made sure. Maybe it did start:
"Terl!"
Terl was not introspective enough to realize that he was bordering upon insanity.
The darkness spread like a black sack over the tank. He had been driving on instruments without lights. It was treacherous terrain: an old city had been here once, but it was now just a honeycomb of abandoned mine holes where the company had followed an old deposit centuries before.
Something showed on his detector screen right ahead. Something live!
His paw rested alertly on the firing knob, ready to blast. He cautiously made sure he was headed away from the compound and masked by a hill and ancient walls. Then he turned on a dim inspection light.
The animal was sitting on a horse at the rendezvous point. It was a different horse, a wild horse nervous because of the tank. The dim, green tank light bathed the rider. There was another, someone else! No, it was just another horse...it had a large pack on its back.
Terl swept his scanners around. No, there was nobody else here. He looked back at the animal. Terl's paw quivered an inch above the firing lever. The animal did not seem to be alarmed.
The interior of the tank was compressed with breathe-gas but Terl also had on a breathe-mask. He adjusted it.
Terl picked up an intercom unit and pushed it through the atmosphere-tight firing port. The unit fell to the ground outside the tank. Terl picked up the interior unit.
“Get down off that horse and pick up this intercom,” ordered Terl.
Jonnie slid off the half-broken horse and approached the tank. He picked the unit off the ground and looked through the tank ports for Terl. He could see nothing. The interior was dark and the glass was set to block a view in.
Through the intercom, Terl said, “Did you kill those sentries?”
Jonnie held the outside unit to his face. He thought fast. This Terl was in a very strange state. “We haven't lost any sentries,” he said truthfully.
“You know the sentries I mean. At the compound.”
“Have you had trouble?” said Jonnie.
The word “trouble” almost made Terl's head spin. He didn't know what trouble he had, or what kind of trouble, or from where. He got a grip on himself.
“You obscured the last part of that sign,” he said accusingly.
“Oh?” said Jonnie innocently. He had obscured it on purpose so that Terl would come. “It meant to say, 'The winter is advancing and we need your advice.' "
Terl simmered down. Advice. “About what?” He knew about what. It was next to impossible to get out that gold. But there had to be a way. And he was a miner. Top student of the school, actually. And he studied the recon drone pictures daily. He knew the flexing rods would not let them build a platform. “You need a portable shaft stairway. You've got one in your equipment. You nail it to the outside face and work from it.”
“All right,” said Jonnie. “We'll try it.” He had Terl calmer now that he was on a routine subject of interest.
“We also need some protection in case of uranium,” said Jonnie.
“Why?”
“There's uranium in those mountains,” said Jonnie.
"In the gold?”
“I don't think so. In the valleys and around.” Jonnie thought he had better emphasize that Terl was barred from those places, and also he was desperate for the data. He could not experiment with uranium without protection from it. "I’ve seen men turn blotchy from it,” he added, which was true but not of his present crew.