The crew's equipment was still lying about. The lamps were still on. Jonnie picked up a drill and began to make six-inch-deep holes all around the extreme edges of the white quartz. Two Scots picked up other drills and began to help him when they saw what he was doing: he was putting in shot holes.
While he worked he had others of the rescue team clear the remaining equipment out of the drift and take it above. No reason to waste that. Only the shift radio had been smashed in the rockfall. This drift would never be used again and it might well blow to bits.
He was surprised the plane came back so fast. He was in radio contact with the surface and he told them what he wanted down there.
Very shortly the explosives arrived. He put powerful, molding explosive into each one of the shot holes. Then on top of that he put a giant concussion-fired blasting cap. On top of all that he packed neutral goo. It was rigged so it would blow outward toward the cliff face.
He went back up to the surface, talking on the radio as he was hoisted aloft. They had a harness and cable rigged and he went out to the cliff edge, shrugging into the harness. He ignored Robert the Fox's request that somebody else do it; they had not used explosives that much and Jonnie knew them well.
Using a winch and safety wires, they lowered him over the edge. He found it very easy to go down the cliff face now that it was slightly inclined. He signaled when he was opposite the lode and they halted the lowering winch.
Bouncing himself about with his moccasins against the cliff, he looked for the pinhole. From inside he had put a very thin drill all the way through to the outside.
There was the tiny hole! It marked the top center of the inside ring of shot holes.
The shot-holer gun bounced down to him. This was the dicey part. The gun might set off the inside blast with concussion, and if it did he'd be blown off the cliff by the explosion. But he had no time to just drill.
He made a plaited cable of blasting cord. With the shot-holer set at minimum power he made holes for pins in the lode. Getting himself adjusted up and down by the winch and with a thousand feet of chasm gaping below him, he wound the blasting cord through the pins. Presently he had a big circle on the vein.
He fixed an electric firing wire to the cord and let it pay out as they reeled him up.
He was pressed for time. It would be at most half an hour before the recon drone came over and the smoke must be cleared.
The firing wire was run to the plane. He made everyone including himself get into the plane in case more cliff went.
“Stand by!” he shouted.
He pressed the firing button.
Smoke and flame flashed on the cliff face. White quartz and country rock blasted toward the other wall of the canyon.
The ground shook.
No more cliff fell.
Jonnie took the plane up and into the height and position the recon drone would be.
They had a black hole in the cliff side.
It looked like the drift had reached the lode.
They landed again to look busy with equipment. The smoke of the blast dissipated in the mountain air.
The rumble of the drone grew louder in the distance.
Chapter 8
A very hungover Terl sat beside the drone receiver in his office, woodenly taking the lode scans out of the roller.
He had slept the sleep of the very drunk both last night and this morning, and he had not felt any earthquake, nor had anyone informed him of it since the compound was proof against such slight tremors, and it had been much more severe in the mountains.
What little pleasure he got in life these days was looking at the scan photos, even though they showed only a bit more waste ore around the shaft and a little activity.
He was no closer to solving the puzzle of Jayed than he had been when the fellow arrived. The endless searching and trying to figure out the reasons I.B.I. might have an interest here had
cost Terl weight, had sunken in and dulled his eyes, and had put a tremor in his talons when he lifted the all-too-frequent kerbango saucepans to his mouthbones. His hatred of this planet with its accursed blue skies and white mountains deepened day by day. This routine moment at the scanner, taken only after locking all doors and checking with a debug probe, was his only hopeful instant in the day.
Terl raised the scan picture to the light. It took him a moment or two to realize it was different today. Then he quivered with abrupt shock.
The face of the cliff had avalanched. There was no lode there.
He didn't have yesterday's pictures. He always tore them up promptly. He tried to estimate how much of the face was gone. The incline of it was different. He couldn't estimate how deep the sheer-off had cut into the cliff.
There was a hole. That would be the drift. They had been drifting along the vein.
He was about to put the photo down to think about it when he noticed the mineral side scan trace. The primary purpose of a recon drone was not surveillance. It scanned ceaselessly for minerals and recorded them on a trace. This trace was different.
Indeed it was different. He knew the lode trace: the jagged spectrum of gold. He quickly ran the trace into the analyzing machine.
Sulphur? There was no sulphur in that lode. That gold was not a sulphide gold compound. Carbon? Fluorine? What in the name of the crap nebula...none of these minerals were in that area!
He wondered whether he was looking at the six-common-mineral formula of what the Psychlos called "trigdite." None of the explosives or fuels were imported from Psychlo. They were dangerous to transship and easy to make on this planet. The little factory stood about ten miles south of the compound, served by the power lines from the distant dam, and every now and then a crew went down to combine the elements into fuel cartridges and explosives. So all these elements were present on this planet.
He ran it through the scanner again to get the exact balance of the mix.
Trigdite!
Terl's unbalanced wits instantly leaped to a wrong conclusion. Trigdite was the commonest trace one got around any Psychlo mine. It would almost be unusual not to find it as it hung in the rocks and air after blasting.
He leaped from his chair and ripped the scan photo to bits in savage paws. He threw down the fragments. He stamped on them. He pounded his fists against the wall.
The vicious rotten animals had blown the face of the cliff off! Just to spite him! just to get even with him! They'd destroyed his lode!
He collapsed in the chair.
He heard a knocking at his door and Chirk's worried voice, “Whatever is the matter, Terl?"
Suddenly he realized he must get control of himself. He must be very cold, very clever.
“The machine broke,” he shouted, a clever explanation.
She went away.
He felt cool, dispassionate, masterful. He knew exactly what he would do, knew it step by step. He would have to remove all possible threats to his life. He would have to cover all traces.
First he would commit the perfect crime. He had worked it all out.
Then he would release the drone and exterminate the animals.
His talons were still shaking a bit. He knew it would make him feel much better if he went out and killed the two females. He had that planned for Day 94. He would make a couple of explosive collars for the horses and then he would lead the horses up to the cage and show the females the red blob on the horses' collars was the same as on theirs, and then he would hit a switch and explode a horse's head off. The females would go into terror. Then he'd do it to the other horse. Then he'd pretend to let them loose but step back and blow the smaller female's head off. The amount of terror he could generate would be delicious. He felt he needed such a boost now. Then he remembered the animal's “psychic powers.” That animal up in the hills would know about it and might do something to avoid getting killed.