Retief at Large by Keith Laumer Read Free Book Online Page B

your suit warming up?"
     
                "Huh?
Yeah, now that you mention it."
     
                Retief
rapped with a gauntleted hand on the satiny black curve of the nearest Bodean
artifact. It clunked dully through the suit. "That's not metal," he said.
"It's plastic."
     
                "There's
something fishy here," Sam said. "This erosion; it looks more like a
heat beam."
     
                "Sam,"
Retief said, turning, "it appears to me somebody has gone to a great deal
of trouble to give a false impression here."
     
                Sam
snorted. "I told you they were a crafty bunch." He started out of the
cave, then paused, went to one knee to study the floor. "But maybe they
outsmarted themselves. Look here!"
     
                Retief
looked. Sam's beam reflected from a fused surface of milky white, shot through with
dirty yellow. He snapped a pointed instrument in place on his gauntlet, dug at
one of the yellow streaks. It furrowed under the gouge, a particle adhering to
the instrument. With his left hand, Mancziewicz opened a pouch clipped to his
belt, carefully deposited the sample in a small orifice on the device in the
pouch. He flipped a key, squinted at a dial.
     
                "Atomic
weight 197.2," he said. Retief turned down the audio volume on his headset
as Sam's laughter rang in his helmet.
     
                "Those
clowns were out to stick you, Retief," he gasped, still chuckling.
"They salted the rock with a cave full of Bodean artifacts—"
     
                "Fake
Bodean artifacts," Retief put in.
     
                "They
planed off the rock so it would look like an old beach, and then cut this cave
with beamers. And they were boring through practically solid gold!"
     
                "As
good as that?"
     
                Mancziewicz
flashed the light around. "This stuff will assay out at a thousand credits
a ton, easy. If the vein doesn't run to five thousand tons, the beers are on
me." He snapped off the light. "Let's get moving, Retief. You want to
sew this deal up before they get around to taking another look at it."
     
                Back
in the boat, Retief and Mancziewicz opened their helmets. "This calls for
a drink," Sam said, extracting a pressure flask from the map case.
"This rock's worth as much as mine, maybe more. You hit it lucky, Retief.
Congratulations." He thrust out a hand.
     
                "I'm
afraid you've jumped to a couple of conclusions, Sam," Retief said.
"I'm not out here to buy mining properties."
     
                "You're
not—then why—but man! Even if you didn't figure on buying ..."He trailed
off as Retief shook his head, unzipped his suit to reach to an inside pocket,
take out a packet of folded papers.
     
                "In
my capacity as Terrestrial Vice-Consul, I'm serving you with an injunction
restraining you from further exploitation of the body known as 95739-A."
He handed a paper across to Sam. "I also have here an Order impounding the
vessel Gravel Gertie II."
     
                Sam took the papers silently, sat
looking at them. He looked up at Retief. "Funny. When you beat me at Drift
and then threw the game so you wouldn't show me up in front of the boys, I
figured you for a right guy. I've been spilling my heart out to you like you
were my old grandma. An old-timer in the game like me." He dropped a hand,
brought it up with a Browning 2mm pointed at Retief's chest.
     
                "I
could shoot you and dump you here with a slab over you, toss these papers in
the John and hightail it with the load ..."
     
                "That
wouldn't do you much good in the long run, Sam. Besides you're not a criminal
or an idiot."
     
                Sam
chewed his lip. "My claim is on file in the Consulate, legal and proper.
Maybe by now the grant's gone