The expedition had been poorly outfitted and undermanned from the
beginning. The commander had been short of money at the outset, having
spent almost all he could raise on his own, plus nearly everything he
could beg or borrow, on his first two probing expeditions, neither of
which had shown any real profit.
But they _had_ shown promise; the alien population of the target which
the commander had selected as his personal claim wore gold as ornaments,
but didn't seem to think it was much above copper in value, and hadn't
even progressed to the point of using it as coinage. From the second
probing expedition, he had brought back two of the odd-looking aliens
and enough gold to show that there must be more where that came from.
The old, hopeful statement, "There's gold in them thar hills," should
have brought the commander more backing than he got, considering the
Empire's need of it and the commander's evidence that it was available;
but people are always more ready to bet on a sure thing than to indulge
in speculation. Ten years before, a strike had been made in a sector
quite distant from the commander's own find, and most of the richer
nobles of the Empire preferred to back an established source of the
metal than to sink money into what might turn out to be the pursuit of
a wild goose.
Commander Frank, therefore, could only recruit men who were willing to
take a chance, who were willing to risk anything, even their lives,
against tremendously long odds.
And, even if they succeeded, the Imperial Government would take twenty
per cent of the gross without so much as a by-your-leave. There was no
other market for the metal except back home, so the tax could not be
avoided; gold was no good whatsoever in the uncharted wilds of an alien
world.
Because of his lack of funds, the commander's expedition was not only
dangerously undermanned, but illegally so. It was only by means of
out-and-out trickery that he managed to evade the official inspection
and leave port with too few men and too little equipment.
There wasn't a scientist worthy of the name in the whole outfit, unless
you call the navigator, Captain Bartholomew, an astronomer, which is
certainly begging the question. There was no anthropologist aboard to
study the semibarbaric civilization of the natives; there was no
biologist to study the alien flora and fauna. The closest thing the
commander had to physicists were engineers who could take care of the
ship itself--specialist technicians, nothing more.
There was no need for armament specialists; each and every man was a
soldier, and, as far as his own weapons went, an ordnance expert. As far
as Commander Frank was concerned, that was enough. It had to be.
Mining equipment? He took nothing but the simplest testing apparatus.
How, then, did he intend to get the metal that the Empire was screaming
for?
The commander had an answer for that, too, and it was as simple as it
was economical. The natives would get it for him.
They used gold for ornaments, therefore, they knew where the gold could
be found. And, therefore, they would bloody well dig it out for
Commander Frank.