Beltrunner Page 3

  “I’ll bet I can do it in eight minutes,” Collier said, his breath wheezing a little as he continued to hold on to Rocinante’s antenna.

  Sancho surprised him with his answer. “You’re on.”

  The next five minutes were interesting: he cut back on thrust once he had checked with Sancho that Isa’s ship was still too distant to beat him to the rock even if he reduced his velocity, fearing the damaged antenna on Rocinante’s hull would snap off. Once Rocinante had taken him back to the asteroid and he was closing in on it, he let go of the scout and ordered her back to the Dulcinea for refueling and repair. He would use his suit jets to soften his landing there.

  “Just to let you know, Skipper,” Sancho said after he had released his grip on Rocinante and reversed his jets to begin a gentle braking maneuver, “your eight minutes are up. I win.”

  “Congratulations. I owe you a dinner. How’s my relative velocity?”

  “You’re closing at eight point seven seven meters per second. Distance ninety-one meters.”

  “Still a little hot for my liking,” Collier mumbled. He squeezed his jet control grip and felt the pressure on his chest as the suit jets thrust broke his speed. He kept up the burn for five seconds, counting in his head, and called Sancho for an update. He didn’t trust his eyes to give him an accurate assessment of his velocity: the asteroid’s surface appeared to be coming at him very slowly.

  “Five point one four meters per second. Distance fifty-four meters.”

  He nodded. That would do for now. A few more bursts from the jets once he got closer, and he’d be there.

  “I’m receiving a transmission from the Ad Astra mining ship, Skipper,” Sancho said.

  “Really? Put her through to me,” Collier said. “Hello, Isa. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Col? You overshot the rock and are coming back? You’re not going to beat us, not by a long shot. I don’t know—”

  “Sorry, Isa, I already have. In fact—” he applied a final tiny burst of thrust and extended his arms, absorbing the gentle impact of his slow-moving body on to the asteroid. “Touchdown.”

  “What?”

  “I’m on the rock. It’s mine.” He began to unship the tethering gear from his shoulder pack.

  Sancho chimed in. “Confirmed. I have you on telemetry.”

  “Col, I don’t know what kind of game this is, but if you think you can fool me into thinking you’ve made a claim to this asteroid without being on it, you’re crazier than even I thought.”

  “It’s not a trick. I’m on the other side. Sancho, when will the rock’s rotation carry me into view of the Ad Astra ship?”

  “Won’t be for a while, Skipper. Perhaps thirty-five minutes.”

  “Isa, unless you want to just trust me, you’ll have to wait half an hour before you can see me. You think you can do that?”

  “This is insane,” Isa murmured.

  “Yep. That’s the Belt for you,” he smiled and aimed the tethergun at a likely looking spot. “Sancho, I’m tethering myself now.” He fired the piton and immediately drifted away from the impact. He didn’t bother using his suit jets to compensate: the piton buried itself into the rock trailing the tether cable, which coiled oddly for a moment before the shoulder winch tightened it down. He sank gently back down toward the asteroid, tucking his legs under him so he could stand.

  “Tethering successful,” he said to both Isa and Sancho.

  “Col, are you really on the rock? You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  Collier paused even as his feet touched the dusty surface of the asteroid. “No, I wouldn’t. I never did, Isa. That’s why you left me, remember? Because I couldn’t lie to you.”

  “Yeah,” Isa said, and Collier hoped the wistfulness he heard in her voice was real and not his own invention. Then, her coldness returned. “So you’re on the rock.”

  “Yep. And I plan to mine it. So why don’t you and your corp look for another one. It shouldn’t be hard. I’m planting the claim beacon now.” He opened his thigh pouch and planted the disc-shaped beacon firmly on the surface of the asteroid. When he depressed the securing stud, the beacon fired its spikes into the surface and began blinking red.

  “Receiving beacon transponder,” Sancho said.

  “Good. Record and send to Ceres, please, Sancho.” Collier grinned and said to Isa, “It’s over, Isa. Go find another.”

  “You don’t get it, Col. Nothing I’ve said to you — you haven’t heard anything.” She was silent a moment, then continued. “I’m going off comm for a little while. But this isn’t over.”

  “Whatever you say, Isa,” he grunted, then told Sancho to cut transmission, hoping to get the order in before she cut hers.

  “Transmission ceased, Skipper.”

  “Good. Now. Where am I relative to that crevice we saw when we first decided this was our baby?”

  “You’re on the proper side of the asteroid, Skipper. I make it sixty six meters distant.”

  “Good news indeed. All right. Prepare for orientation.” He faced the tether point and held still. “Designating bearings. I am currently facing zero degrees at designated north pole. Align my suit compass and your own compass to that, please, Sancho.”

  “Alignment complete. Fissure beginning point located sixty-five point nine meters distant, bearing one-six-four degrees. You should see that in your helmet display.”

  “Got it,” Collier said as he saw the tiny diamond appear in his display. He turned slowly, crouched down, and launched himself as flat as he could toward the target. There were no outcroppings ahead of him, and in any case, he was not travelling very rapidly. He kept his hands in front of him, gripping the suit jet controls, and skimmed the surface of the rock toward what he hoped were the deposits that would make this whole endeavor worthwhile.

  “If there are no Ps there, I’m going to feel a bit stupid,” he murmured. Then, louder, to Sancho, he said, “You didn’t see anything down there, did you?”

  “I’m afraid not, Skipper. But you wouldn’t expect me to be able to from up here.”

  Collier grunted. That was true. But he would have felt a hell of a lot happier if Ps had been just lying on the surface somehow.

  “You’re almost there,” Sancho said a few moments later. “You should be able to see it pretty soon.”

  Collier used the suit jets to take him higher off the surface. He increased his headlights to maximum intensity and dispersal and suddenly saw the fissure. From his vantage point, it looked like a box canyon made of shadows: his lamps could not penetrate to the bottom.

  “Contact. I’m going to set a second tether here. I’ll also put a beacon down for you, Sancho. What’s your ETA?”

  “I should be hovering over your position in roughly three hours, twelve minutes.”

  Collier nodded inside his helmet. His suit was rated for twelve hours survival time under working conditions, and he knew from experience he could stretch that out to sixteen if he was miserly with air and water. The biggest problem with a twelve-hour suit shift was the nutrient gel. It never tasted quite right.

  “Okay, Sancho. I’m going to begin preliminary excavation as soon as I am re-tethered here.” He set to work, firing another piton from his shoulder and securing himself close to the fissure. Once he was safely tethered to this new point, he released the first tether, securing it to the rock with a blob of stik-tite adhesive, and began his weightless rappel down into the fissure.

  He descended slowly — one meter per second — despite his impatience to reach the bottom. There was no sense in hurrying things now, not when he had beaten Isa to the rock. Besides, the fissure couldn’t be more than seventy meters deep, since the asteroid itself wasn’t that thick. He should find the bottom relatively soon.

  No sooner had he thought that than his feet felt the surface of the bottom of th
e fissure. He bent his knees and absorbed the gentle fall, being careful not to spring back up and launch himself off the bottom.

  “Okay, I’m down, Sancho.”

  There was no reply. He tried again, but still did not get an answer. The canyon walls, combined with the asteroid’s gentle rotation, must be blocking his transmission. He shrugged. It was a minor annoyance, but he should have expected it. He set to work unshipping his core sampler, deploying a firefly to give him some ambient light by which to work.

  Minutes later, he eyed the harpoon-like core sampler and selected a spot on the canyon wall. He set the sampler’s anchor points and secured it to the wall. All that remained now was to press the firing stud and allow the sampler to bore deep into the rock, retrieving and analyzing samples that would tell him if all this had been worthwhile.

  A single test, if negative for Ps, would not mean the rock was worthless. He could test dozens of times and still not hit veins that may be hidden elsewhere on the asteroid. He knew this intellectually, but he nevertheless hesitated on the firing button. How many tests would he perform before admitting his instincts were wrong?

  He shook himself inside his suit. “Haven’t even sampled the damn rock once, and already I’m…” He pressed the firing button with what amounted to defiance.

  The sampler worked invisibly and soundlessly for several minutes, boring a deep shaft into the surface of the asteroid. Only when the sampler had created a shaft deep enough did a cigar-sized cylinder fire itself through the barrel of the sampler’s long, rifle-like assembly toward what Collier hoped were the ores he sought.

  Collier knew well the operation of the probe: it would scrape the sides of the shaft created by the mining laser and determine where, if anywhere, veins of rare metals and ores lay. It could, and probably would, come back with nothing on this first run, he told himself. No sense getting worked up about it.

  The cylinder returned to its home in the sampler base presently and the dedicated assay computer in the sampler housing began its work. Collier watched the readout screen at the rear of the device, his breath coming quickly despite his self-talk. The dark screen brightened to life with a chemical readout. Collier gasped at the numbers. He had long ago programmed the assay computer to highlight the Ps and ignore the more common elements: Dulcinea would never be a workhorse mining vessel carrying iron ore in huge quantities. She would always be a specialist. But such a path meant many, many failures. Only when he struck a vein of Ps would any mission be worthwhile.

  And so he had this time. The readout did not change even as he stared at it:

  Platinum: 6.123%

  Palladium: 3.237%

  Total P’s: 9.36%

  Rhodium: 1.788%

  Iridium: 1.334%

  Osmium: 1.299%

  Nickel: 67.344%

  Iron: 11.322%

  Copper: 7.044%

  Other: Trace

  He had only once before broken ten Ps on a strike: that was years and years ago and had carried him for quite some time through a long dry spell. He hadn’t quite broken ten on this sample, but nine point three plus was damn good. And that was just his first sample — what if he hadn’t even hit a vein?

  The possibilities swam before him. On his first sample, a nine-three. Nine three six, really. He considered his options.

  He could reset the sampler and start looking for an even richer vein, but he was out of contact down here. It would be more prudent, now that he had verified that the rock was a winner, to get back to the Dulcinea, resupply, regroup, and think about his plans. He had time.

  He disassembled the sampler again and returned it to its place in his pack, then placed a second beacon on the wall of the canyon with stik-tite. Grasping the tether cable, he jumped gently off the floor of the canyon and rose back to the surface, using the cable to steady his ascent.

  Once back on the surface, he hailed Sancho again.

  “Sancho, my friend, open the champagne. The sampler came back nine-three-six on the first try. So the—”

  “Skipper! I’ve been trying to raise you for the past twenty minutes!” Sancho’s voice was tense.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “The Ad Astra ship. She’s been sending out blast warnings. She’s preparing to send an impact probe. I’ve tried to tell the captain that you—”

  “Damn her! Put me through to her. Now.” Collier’s grip on the tether cable tightened. An impact probe could easily split the asteroid in half if it struck the rock well enough: the fissure itself was evidence that the asteroid was fragile and could break in two if—

  Isa’s voice sounded tense in his helmet. “Col? Where’ve you been? I’ve been sending out blast warnings for the last—”

  “Damn it, Isa, didn’t you believe me? I’m on the goddamn rock, like I told you. Placed a claim beacon. Can’t you see me now?”

  “We saw two tethers, one of which was stuck to the rock. The other looked like it went down some kind of crevasse. But—”

  “Yeah, that was me. I must have been down in the canyon. It doesn’t matter. So now you know I am here, and you can’t legally mine this rock unless I sell the rights to you. Which I am not going to do. I’m here, I’ve already begun my sampling. So fuck off,” he added, feeling the pain of the past few years seep into his words.

  “I’m afraid not, Col. You’ve begun sampling, you say? What did you get?”

  It made no sense to tell Isa what he had found. There was nothing that could be gained from revealing his findings to her. But the smug power behind his knowledge was too much for his fragile wisdom to contain. He needed her to know he had made a strike, just like he always said he would. The sting of the words in her letter was almost as fresh as it had been when he had first read them. “You’re a dreamer, Col. That might be okay for you, but I can’t live on dreams. The Belt isn’t a place for dreamers. And neither is our relationship. If you really loved me, you’d put away your toys. But you’re not really a man. You’re a boy. I need a man. So long.”

  “Nine-three-six P,” he said, clearly emphasizing each digit. “Did you hear that?” he almost shouted. It wasn’t really a question: she hadn’t time to respond. He knew what he sounded like, but at that moment, he didn’t care. He let himself be petulant. “Nine-three-six! And that was just the first sample! What do you think of that, Isa? And don’t think I’m going to take you back, either. You had your chance.” Even as he spoke the last words, he knew he had gone too far. Not that he had hurt her, but that he had squandered his chance to redeem himself, even a little bit, in her eyes. He was merely being a boy some more.

  Isa drew her breath. “Nine-three-six, you say,” she drawled, her voice as calm as Collier’s had been manic. “Quite a find. I was right to follow you.” She was evidently ignoring his final outburst. A sarcastic comment would have been kinder than silence. “Anyway, Col,” she said after an eloquent pause, “You should head on back to the Dulcinea soon. We’ll be ready to launch our probes pretty soon. I’m going to crack this rock open and mine her dry.”

  “You can’t, Isa,” he repeated, keeping his voice calmer. “Belt law clearly gives me right of first. There’s nothing subtle about it.”

  “And what are you going to do about it, Col?” Isa’s voice was dangerously smooth and soft. “Run to the Authority? Please don’t tell me your childish idealism has gone that far,” she chuckled cruelly.

  “The claim beacon,” Collier said, “is planted. It’s sending data to my ship and I’m sending it to Ceres.”

  Isa sounded almost sorry. “No, it’s not. We’re jamming your transmission.”

  “Sancho!” Collier snapped.

  “I can’t confirm that yet, Skipper. Haven’t received verification of reception from Ceres, but that could be from slowness on their part.”

  Isa continued. “It’s going to come down to our word against yours. And
the corporation has a loud voice.”

  Collier swallowed. Isa was right: if she decided to flout the law, the worst the Authority could really do was slap a fine on the Ad Astra Corporation. And even that was unlikely. He had no money to defend a claim, besides his ship. If he lost the claim (which, despite the circumstances, was quite possible given the skill and resources available to the Ad Astra’s lawyers) he would lose his legal deposit. He couldn’t afford to lose. Therefore, he couldn’t afford to fight.

  “Why, Isa?” His voice carried all the meaning he needed to convey.

  She sighed. “Don’t make this more than it is, Col. I’m a captain in the Ad Astra Corporation. It’s what I do.”

  “And what if I stay here and mine? Would you kill me, Isa?”

  “Jesus, Col, do we have to make this so dramatic? No, of course not. I’ll still fire the impact probe, maybe it’ll crack the rock open, maybe not, but the concussion will disrupt anything you’ve put down. Might even damage or destroy your equipment. Then what? You won’t be able to mine, even if you wanted to.”

  Collier’s fingers flexed in his suit. He knew she was right: she could probably place the impact probe close enough to him to shake him off the rock but far enough away not to hurt him. And she had plenty of probes to waste if the first one didn’t do the trick. Now that she knew the asteroid was a nine-six-three, she could afford to be liberal in her attempts to shake him off.

  “I need water,” he said, lamely.

  Isa voice indicated she saw through the ruse immediately. “I’m sure you do, after your idiotic stunt. I think I can spare a few cubic meters of ice so you don’t need to sleep your way back to Ceres.”

  “This isn’t right, Isa. You know it’s not.”

  “There’s no such thing as right and wrong out here, Col. Just what a girl can grab.”

  “Grab and hold onto, you mean,” he amended.

  “As you say. Grab and hold onto. You were never good at holding onto things, were you, Col?”

  Collier turned his eyes toward the stars. He wasn’t looking for Isa’s ship, since it was far too distant still to be made out by eye, but was imagining her as she was during those promise-filled months. He could see her long face as she held it in her cupped palm, her elbow denting the mattress. In his mind, she was smiling slightly — not a smile of occasion because of something in particular he had said or done, but a smile of circumstance. But then again, perhaps what he saw was not a memory but a creation of his own brain. Had she really ever been happy with him?