Miners in the Sky by Murray Leinster Read Free Book Online Page A

told Miss Keyes what I’m doing? Did she write a letter for me to take?”
    The pickup ship skipper snorted.
    “She was told, of course. Come and get in your damned lifeboat. Of course, I hope you make out!”
    Dunne followed him out of the cabin. He went along the patterned steel floorplates that were used everywhere on the ship that wasn’t considered a habitation. Nobody can live long in a completely artificial environment; but these were corridors in which nobody lived.
    And here was the lifeboat. Dunne couldn’t see more than the quasi-vestibule between the ship and the lifeboat’s entrance-lock. He went in, looked over the control panel, and nodded. The seal-off door closed. A voice from a speaker in the ceiling of the tiny control. room made conventional reports. The pickup ship lifted and, as seen from near Outlook, dwindled to insignificance and vanished.
    Dunne strapped himself in before the control board. He said, “Ready!” and on the outside of the big ship a pair of mussel-shell blister-doors opened. They were designed for the launching of lifeboats. From the direct-view ports Dunne could see that golden haze which was, actually, the rings of Thothmes.
    “Ready to clear?” asked a booming voice from overhead.
    “Ready,” said Dunne again. He frowned.
    “Ejection coming,” said the speaker.
    There was a shock. The lifeboat hurled itself violently to one side. It began to turn end-for-end, and he could see the pickup ship as a monstrous shadow, already with all details wiped out by the haze.
    Up to this instant, Dunne had been almost satisfied. Not pleased, but confident. The miners of the Rings had every reason to believe that he was leaving Outlook as a passenger on the pickup ship. There hadn’t seemed anything else for him to do. Believing this, it would seem to most of the men in the Rings, convinced that the Big Rock Candy Mountain had been found again, that Dunne had sacrificed his partner to the secret of the Mountain—left him to die because Dunne couldn’t get to him and still keep the secret.
    But then the speaker in the ceiling of the lifeboat’s control room boomed with the full volume of the ship’s transmitter. The voice of the pickup ship’s skipper came out.
    “Luck to you, Dunne! You made me mad, and it’s crazy not to stay aboard. But luck to you anyhow!”
    And then the pickup ship’s drive boomed, and the ship moved away. It accelerated swiftly. Almost immediately it was out of sight in the Ring mist. It vanished before Dunne could draw a single infuriated breath. He was speechless with fury. Anybody within a thousand miles could have picked up that foolish, that stupid, that damning three-sentence farewell of the pickup ship’s skipper.
    Anybody who heard it would know that Dunne had been able to stay behind when the ship from Horus left. And anyone could reason that Dunne had gotten a lifeboat with which to go after his partner. The men who’d intended to trail Dunne’s donkeyship would now shift their attention to a lifeboat, as soon as they could locate it. And in particular, whoever had destroyed the donkeyship would now set about trying to destroy the lifeboat. Without turning on the drive, Dunne knew it would have a completely distinctive drive-sound, and couldn’t pass as just another donkeyship.
    It needn’t have happened. It was unnecessary. It was more than infuriating. It could easily be fatal.
    He heard a stirring in the central cabin of the lifeboat. He whirled, his hand going to his belt-weapon.
    The door to the tiny control room opened wider. A girl stood there, very pale. She was Keyes’ sister, Nike.
    “They told me,” she said shakily, “that you’d gotten this boat to—go get my brother. And I’ve got to see him. So I came along. I—stowed away.”
    Dunne ground his teeth. The pickup ship was gone. It would be in overdrive by now, heading across the many millions of miles between Outlook and the inhabited planet Horus. There was no way to