John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

over. He directed them up a small canyon at low speed, occasionally consulting his chart. Soon, Torwald spotted what they were looking for and pointed toward it.
    A jagged slab of glittering crystal protruded from the wall at the end of the canyon like a cantilevered balcony. Below it lay silver .fragments that had somehow broken from the main mass. There were few of these, since there isn't much in nature that can break diamond crystal. Torwald brought the AC down as near to the formation as he could maneuver.
    They clambered from the AC and trudged up the hillside to the crystal, where they found themselves gazing at the biggest fortune any of them had laid eyes on.
    "Utterly unique." Popov seemed somewhat awed.
    "How's it unique?" Kelly asked. "I've heard of diamond slab being mined on other worlds."
    "Because it shouldn't be here—not on a world this small. Ordinarily, the pressures required to produce such a prodigy are generated only on worlds much more massive. As a geologist, I would have said that such a thing was impossible, but, as our friends have already told you, such words should not be used by spacers. Still, this phenomenon makes as much sense as bananas growing from a saguaro cactus."
    "What do you think broke off those pieces?" Ham asked.
    "Maybe quakes, maybe a meteorite." Popov shrugged. "It's probably lain exposed like this for a billion years, so it would come as no surprise if it had been hit once or twice. Erosion has been very slow here in recent eras."
    "Well," said Ham, "we can speculate to our hearts' content on the way back to Earth. Right now, I'm calling the skipper and telling her to bring the ship in. There's space to land her here, and the canyon floor's sufficiently solid according to the AC seismometer."
    After the Space Angel arrived, Torwald and Kelly off-loaded the cutters and their mounts, and soon all the equipment had been carted up the hillside by powerbarrow. Bert had supplied templates to guide the cuts, thin plastic patterns that the quarriers would use to shape their slabs precisely. The Angel's hold was nearly cylindrical, and Bert did not want to waste a single cubic centimeter of space. When the gear was set up, the skipper ventured out to examine everything. After she was satisfied about the condition of the shortbeam cutters, she turned to Torwald. "How you going to organize your teams?"
    "First off, we cut away the impure stuff on the outside of the outcropping. Ham, Finn, and I have the muscle for that. We'll manhandle the cutters and the others can dispose of it. When the pure stuff is exposed, ill put the cutters on mounts for the fine work. Serge will have to indicate where the cuts are to be made, and Achmed, Kelly, and Lafayette will cart the slabs back to the ship. Bert will direct storage in the hold, and Nancy can spell us on cutters after they're mounted, if she likes." He did not suggest that Michelle be assigned a ground job. The med officer was never risked if it was avoidable.
    "Go to it, then."
    Torwald picked up one of the cutters and, for a moment, held it while indulging in a private reverie. Only Michelle, standing by the AC, had an inkling of what was going through his mind. She had seen his psych profile, knew something of his history. She guessed that the feel of the tool was taking him back to Signet and the smell of blood and sweat and dead men in the quarries, the starvation and exhaustion and the never-ending fear.
    After a minute, Torwald shook off the mood and made a test cut. A sheet of impure crystal streaked with rocky matrix fell away cleanly. One by one, he tested the other cutters. All worked perfectly. Under Popov's supervision, they were soon cutting away at the outcropping while Achmed, Kelly and Lafayette were disposing of the dross. The debris was worth a fortune as gem and industrial diamond, but it would have to be recovered by the next team when Minsk Mineral established a permanent installation.
    Once the worst was cleared away,