Miners in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

supplied. That was to keep anybody from guessing where they mined a fragment floating in the Rings. Now, Dunne knew angrily, it wasn’t unlikely that they’d wait nearby to follow him when he departed. He began irritably to plan evasive tactics.
    A second pair of donkeyship partners was tapped. They also seemed to leave. It was unlikely that they’d go off about their private affairs. They’d try to involve themselves in Dunne’s, It was pure silliness. Dunne had made a single unqualified statement, and instantly he was suspected of the success every other man had dreamed of! It was partly his fault. But Nike’s situation wasn’t! He wouldn’t take her into the Rings! He was desperately uneasy about Keyes, but he wouldn’t take Keyes’s sister into the Rings!
    A loudspeaker barked: “Attention! Somebody’s moving about outside! If you want to check your ships, the lock’s ready!”
    Instantly there was pandemonium, with men getting into space-suits faster than should have been possible. Dunne heard the grizzled Smithers cursing furiously: “It’s gooks! Them gooks! They come to stop us workin’ in the Rings!”
    Dunne paid no attention to him. He was getting into his own suit. He was one of the first ten men to crowd into the big cargo-lock that would let all of them out at once.
    The inner lock-door closed. The outer opened, with a vast rushing-away of air. The men in the lock dived out, and the urgency they felt was made clear. Every man used his emergency jet. They are normally reserved for ultimate emergencies when a man’s lifeline parts or something else occurs to make it necessary for him to propel himself in space.
    They flew like birds across the spaceport, every man bound for his own ship.
    Dunne heard the click of an electric detonator.
    He saw his ship fly to bits with a momentary flash of monstrous intensity and violence.

CHAPTER TWO
    The rotund little donkeyship split up into fragments, some of which disappeared with the velocity of rifle bullets. Pure emptiness was left where it had been. No debris. No fragments. Nothing. The gravitational pull of Outlook could only draw objects to it with an acceleration of inches per standard year. Any moving object touching Outlook bounced. Every scrap of the shattered ship that hit anything rebounded away, and all the fragments together amounted to no more than new fragments in new orbits in the Rings of Thothmes.
    Dunne came to ground where his ship had been. His magnetic boot-soles clung to the metal. He could see where the explosion had taken’ place, because the mirror-bright metal had been slightly oxidized by the flame of the ship’s detonated fuel store.
    He ground his teeth. He began to hunt doggedly for some evidence, some clue to who had bombed his ship and why. There was nothing to be found. Naturally!
    The delivery of ordered supplies to donkeyship operators continued. At another place, where there was law, there would probably have been an investigation, and the taking of evidence, and maybe a conclusion about the guilt or innocence of someone or other. But here nobody had authority to investigate. Nobody had authority to question witnesses. Certainly nobody had authority to punish.
    So everyday business resumed. The cargo-lock of the pickup ship opened, and two men came’ out towing their bundled supplies by a rope. Two men could move tons, here where nothing had any weight. With magnetic boot-soles clanking on the metal substance of Outlook, a donkeyship man hauled his purchases to a waiting ship. His partner would have opened the loading lock-door. The mass of floating stuff went inside. The door closed. The donkeyship went away.
    Other business went on, only it wasn’t quite ordinary business. There was the firm, irrational conviction of the miners of the Rings that Dunne and Keyes had found great treasure. The reason for the guess was that Dunne had come to Outlook alone, and had let it be implied that Keyes stayed behind to guard