For a moment, neither of the boys could say anything at all.
From the time they had learned to talk, they had heard stories and tales
that the miners and prospectors told about the Big Strike, the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow, the wonderful, elusive goal of every man
who had ever taken a ship into the Asteroid Belt.
For almost a hundred and fifty years ... since the earliest days of
space exploration ... there had been miners prospecting in the
Asteroids. Out there, beyond the orbit of Mars and inside the orbit of
Jupiter, were a hundred thousand ... maybe a hundred million, for all
anybody knew ... chunks of rock, metal and debris, spinning in silent
orbit around the sun. Some few of the Asteroids were big enough to be
called planets ... Ceres, five hundred miles in diameter; Juno, Vesta,
Pallas, half a dozen more. A few hundred others, ranging in size from
ten to a hundred miles in diameter, had been charted and followed in
their orbits by the observatories, first from Earth's airless Moon, then
from Mars. There were tens of thousands more that had never been
charted. Together they made up the Asteroid Belt, spread out in space
like a broad road around the sun, echoing the age-old call of the
bonanza.
For there was wealth in the Asteroids ... wealth beyond a man's wildest
dreams ... if only he could find it.
Earth, with its depleted iron ranges, its exhausted tin and copper
mines, and its burgeoning population, was hungry for metal. Earth needed
steel, tin, nickel, and zinc; more than anything, Earth needed
ruthenium, the rare-earth catalyst that made the huge solar energy
converters possible.
Mars was rich in the ores of these metals ... but the ores were buried
deep in the ground. The cost of mining them, and of lifting the heavy
ore from Mars' gravitational field and carrying it to Earth was
prohibitive. Only the finest carbon steel, and the radioactive metals,
smelted and purified on Mars and transported to Earth, could be made
profitable.
But from the Asteroid Belt, it was a different story. There was no
gravity to fight on the tiny asteroids. On these chunks of debris, the
metals lay close to the surface, easy to mine. Ships orbiting in the
Belt could fill their holds with their precious metal cargoes and
transfer them in space to the interplanetary orbit-ships spinning back
toward Earth. It was hard work, and dangerous work; most of the ore was
low-grade, and brought little return. But always there was the lure of
the Big Strike, the lode of almost-pure metal that could bring a fortune
back to the man who found it.
* * * * *
A few such strikes had been made. Forty years before a single claim had
brought its owner seventeen million dollars in two years. A dozen other
men had stumbled onto fortunes in the Belt ... but such metal-rich
fragments were grains of sand in a mighty river. For every man who found
one, a thousand others spent years looking and then perished in the
fruitless search.
And now Johnny Coombs was telling them that their father had been one of
that incredible few.
"You really think Dad hit a bonanza lode out there?"
"That's what I said."
"Did you see it with your own eyes?"
"No."
"You weren't even out there with him!"
"No."
"Then why are you so sure he found something?"
"Because he told me so," Johnny Coombs said quietly.
The boys looked at each other. "He actually _said_ he'd found a rich
lode?" Tom asked eagerly.
"Not exactly," Johnny said. "Matter of fact, he never actually told me
_what_ he'd found. He needed somebody to sign aboard the _Scavenger_
with him in order to get a clearance to blast off, but he never did plan
to take me out there with him. 'I can't take you now, Johnny,' he told
me. 'I've found something out there, but I've got to work it alone for a
while.' I asked him what he'd found, and he just gave me that funny
little grin of his and said, 'Never mind what it is, it's big enough for
both of us. You just keep your mouth shut, and you'll find out soon
enough.' And then he wouldn't say another word until we were homing in
on the shuttle ship to drop me off."
Johnny finished his coffee and pushed the cup aside. "I knew he wasn't
joking. He was excited, and I think he was scared, too. Just before I
left him, he said, 'There's one other thing, Johnny. Things might not
work out quite the way I figure them, and if they don't ... make sure
the twins know what I've told you.' I told him I would, and headed back.
That was the last I heard from him until the Patrol ship found him
floating in space with a torn-open suit and a ruined scooter floating a
few miles away."
"Do you think that Jupiter Equilateral knew Dad had found something?"
Tom asked.
"Who knows? I'm sure that _he_ never told them, but it's awful hard to
keep a secret like that, and they sound awful eager to buy that rig,"
Johnny Coombs said.
"Yes, and it doesn't make sense. I mean, if they were responsible for
Dad's accident, why didn't they just check in for him on schedule and
then quietly bring in their rig to jump the claim?"
"Maybe they couldn't find it," Johnny said. "If they'd killed your dad,
they wouldn't have dared hang around very long right then. Even if
they'd kept the signal going, a Patrol ship might have come into the
region any time. And if a U.N. Patrol ship ever caught them working a
dead man's claim without reporting the dead man, the suit would really
start to leak." Johnny shook his head. "Remember, your Dad had a dozen
claims out there. They might have had to scout the whole works to find
the right one. Much easier to do it out in the open, with your
signatures on a claim transfer. But one thing is sure ... if they _knew_
what Roger found out there, and where it was, Tawney would never be
offering you triple price for the rig."
"Then whatever Dad found is still out there," Tom said.
"I'd bet my last dime on it."
"There might even be something to show that the accident wasn't an
accident," Tom went on. "Something even the Major would have to admit
was evidence."
Johnny Coombs pursed his lips, looking up at Tom. "Might be," he
conceded.
"Well, what are we waiting for? We turned Tawney's offer down ... he
might be sending a crew out to jump the claim right now."
"If he hasn't already," Johnny said.
"Then we've got to get out there."
Johnny turned to Greg. "You could pilot us out and handle the
navigation, and as for Tom...."
"As for Tom, he could get sick all over the place and keep us busy just
taking care of him," Greg said sourly. "You and me, yes. Not Tom. You
don't know that boy in a spaceship."
Tom started to his feet, glaring at his brother. "That's got nothing to
do with it...."
"It's true, isn't it? You'd be a big help out there."