The Mink he takes his pick and gun,
He ranges through the towns;
His force is miners, trappers, thieves--
And a girl in gentry-gown.
The rebels ride on stolen nags,
They travel on shanks' mare;
The gore's awash, the heads they roll,
All in the torches' glare.
--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
Revel the Mink and his eight troops crouched in the dark entrance of the
mine. The night was black, clouds had obscured the moon, and only the
occasional pinpoints of globes drifting between the buttons above them
broke the gloom.
"What are they doing?" hissed Nirea. "Why haven't we been attacked long
since?"
"The globes move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform," muttered
John Klapham. "I'll wager there's something like that in the Globate
Credo."
"Almost those words." Revel glanced at him respectfully. This man of the
Ancient Kingdom had great mental powers.
"Sure. Every time somebody has the upper hand over somebody else,
there's got to be an aura of mystery; and any half-brained action is put
down to 'mysterious ways.'" He spat. "They're so damn confused, son,
that they're probably holding forty conferences up there, because they
don't dare wipe out this valley--coal keeps the gentry warm and happy
for 'em--and they want to inspect the cave down below. So they're tryin'
to think of the best way to squelch you without losing too many priests
and zanphs and gentry."
"True, they mustn't lose too many servants, or their prestige is hurt,"
said Lady Nirea. Now that she'd found her Revel, she had discarded the
rucker's clothing and was dressed in a thigh-hugging sapphire gown. Even
in the dark she was beautiful, he thought.
The Mink stood. Up and down the valley glowed the lights of god-guards
at the mines, double and treble now, since with the Mink loose not even
a god was safe alone. Plenty of zanphs there too, he thought. Yet he had
a few gentryman's guns, and his old pick slung at his back. Zanphs,
gods, gentry, priests? Let them beware!
His thinking was done; he would retire his brains--despite the clever
John, Revel knew he had more than one brain--and let his brawn take
over. Only the brawn of the Mink could win through the next hours.
Half-consciously he tensed his whole frame, curled his fingers and toes,
thrust out his great chest. The skin on all parts of his body creaked,
split back from the worse wounds, achily stretched; blood sprang from
shoulder and from other hurt places. Yet he was not only whole, but full
of eager vitality. The small pains of his hide were only incentives to
act violently and forget them. He relaxed and turned to his friends.
"You two, find the nags of the gentry we slew. I hear stamping nearby.
Nirea, go to your own beast and wait for me. You two, with Rack, Jerran,
John and me, we'll search the mines for men. We need plenty of
them--it's miners' guts and muscles it'll take to move that
beam-throwing thing from the cavern. Let's begin."
He drew the Lady Nirea up to him, slapped her face lightly, kissed her
open mouth. "Quick, wench, hop when I speak!" A touch of starshine
glistened on his grin-bared teeth. Then he turned and leaped off the
rock shelf.
* * * * *
The nearest mine was guarded by three gods, nervously jiggling up and
down in grotesque little air-dances; below them sat half a dozen
hideous-headed zanphs. Revel crawled up toward the entrance. At the
first touch of an alien mind on his own, he shot forward, pick flailing.
Two gods he caught with one stroke, the third began to rise and his
backswing took it on the underside and tore a gash as if the pick had
struck a rubber bag: yellow gore dropped in a flood. He had no time to
wonder if the third globe had telepathed a distress signal, for the
zanphs were on him.
Their snake-like heads were fitted with only two teeth in each jaw, yet
those were four inches long and thick as a man's thumb at the base,
tapering to needle points. One zanph, propelled by all the vigor of its
six legs, rose like a rocketing pheasant and clamped its jaws across his
left arm. It overshot, and two teeth missed; but the others dug down
into the flesh and grated on the ulna bone.
He gave it a jab of the handle of his pickax between its cold pupilless
eyes, and it swung limp, losing consciousness but anchored to his arm by
the frightful teeth. He cracked the neck of another zanph with his foot,
spitted a third, and then Rack and Jerran were slaying the others. John
appeared and lifted the first one's body so that Revel could disengage
the teeth from his bloody arm.
"What a beastie," marveled the Ancient Kingdom man. "How I'd love to
dissect one!" Revel, puzzling over the word "dissect," went into the
mine.
"Jerran, come along. You others remain, and keep off any intruders."
There were but three levels in this mine, and he covered them rapidly,
Jerran at his heels. He slew seven more spheres, with four zanphs. His
blood was up and his tongue lolled with excitement.
To his banner, which was a dead god on Jerran's pick, there came
forty-three miners. Four others declined, and were allowed to stay at
their posts, true to their false gods and the service of the gentry.
Coming out of this mine, he led a small army, and felt like a conquering
general already. In two hours he had invaded every shaft in the valley,
and six hundred men less a score or so were at his back.
"How's this for a start?" he asked Nirea, meeting her walking her roan
on the grass. She glanced at the mass of men, all those in the van
carrying dead globes. "Not bad ... but have you seen the sky, Mink?"
He looked upward. From horizon to horizon the sky was ablaze with
circles of light, red and green and violet, pure terrible white and
flickering yellow. _The buttons_, murmured his men behind him. _The
buttons are awake!_
[Illustration]
"You couldn't expect to do it in secret, Revel," said John. The old man
was as spry and eager as a boy, thought the Mink. "Now let's not waste
time. I'm banking that the invaders, I mean the globes, won't blast this
valley except as a last resort; if they read my mind, or if their
science has gone far enough for 'em to recognize an anti-force-screen
thrower when they see one, then we're practically atom soup now."
Revel, having understood at least one portion of the speech--"Let's not
waste time"--waved his miners forward.
They filled the shaft and the tunnel, they thronged into the cave; when
the Mink had shown them the machine to be moved, they fought one another
for the honor of being first to touch it.
* * * * *
It stood solidly on the floor, ten feet high, twelve wide, square and
black with twin coils and a thick projection like an enormous gun on the
top. Men jammed around it, bent and gripped a ledge near the bottom,
heaved up. Loath to move, it rocked a bit, then was hoisted off the
ground. They staggered forward with it.
The hole in the wall was far too small.
"Miners! The best of you, and I don't want braggarts and second-raters,
but the best! Tear down that wall!" Revel stood on a case and roared his
commands. Men pushed out of the tunnel's throng, big bearded men, small
tough men. They stood shoulder to shoulder and at a word began to swing
their picks. Up and down, up and down, smite, smite, carve the rock
away....
Soon they picked up the machine again, and manhandled it out into the
tunnel. The crowd pressed back, and the Mink bellowed for the distant
ones to go up the shaft to the top.
"How you going to get it up to the ground?" asked John. His voice had a
kind of confidence in it, a respect for Revel that surprised the big
miner. John evidently believed in him, was even relying on his mind when
John himself was so overwhelmingly intelligent. Revel wondered: if he,
the Mink, were to fall asleep and wake in a future time, knowing all his
friends and relatives were dead long since, knowing his whole world had
vanished ... would he be as calm and alert and interested in things as
John?
There was a man, by--what was the expression he used?--by god!
"We'll get it there," he said. "So long as you can work it, John, there
aren't any worries."
"Understatement of the millenium, or is that the word I want? Optimistic
crack o' the year. Okay, Revel. It's your baby."
Slowly the men carried the machine to the lip of the shaft. Nothingness
yawned above for ninety feet, below for over a hundred. The shaft was
twenty feet across. "Now what?" asked Lady Nirea.
"There's an ore bucket at the bottom; we toss our coal down the shaft,
and once a day the bucket's drawn up to the top, by a hoisting mechanism
worked by ten men, and the coal's emptied out and taken away in small
loads. The bucket fills that shaft. It's two feet deep but so broad it
holds plenty of coal. You can see the cable out there in the center;
it's as tough as anything on earth."
"I see your idea," said John. "I _hope_ that cable's tough. The machine
weighs a couple of tons."
"Tons?"
"I mean it's heavy!"
* * * * *
Revel bawled for the men at the top to start the winch. Shortly they
heard the creak and groan of the ore bucket, coming slowly toward their
level. When its rim was just level with the floor of the tunnel, the
Mink let go a yell that halted the men on the windlass like a pickax
blow in the belly; then Revel said, "All right, move it onto the
bucket!"
"For God's sake, be careful of it," said John. "That's a delicate
thing." He leaped down into the huge bucket. "Take it easy," he
cautioned the miners, straining and sweating at the work.
"Easy ... easy ... easy!"
The great square mysterious box thrust out over the lip, teetered there
as if it would plunge into the bucket. John with a screech of anguish
jumped forward and thrust at it with both hands.
If it fell now it would smash him to a pulp, and Revel's chance
to drop the buttons from the sky would be gone forever. Nobody on
earth could ever learn to manipulate such a complex thing as the
_antiforcescreenthrower_ of John.
The idiot had to be preserved. Revel dropped his pick and launched
himself into space, lit unbalanced and fell against John, rolled over
sideways pulling the amazed man from the past with him.
The machine teetered again, then a score of men were under it and
lowering it gently into the bucket. The broad round metal container gave
a lurch, then another as the machine settled onto its bottom. It tipped
gradually over until it seemed to be wedging itself against the wall of
the shaft. Revel howled, "Into the bucket, you lead-footed louts!
Balance the weight of that thing, or the cable'll be frayed in half!"
Miners piled down, filling the bucket; it was hung simply by the cable
through its center, and when coal was loaded into it the mineral had to
be distributed evenly if the bucket was to rise. Now it slowly righted
itself, came horizontal again.
"Up!" roared the Mink. Nothing happened. "More men on the winch!" Then
in a moment they began to rise.
The other rebels swarmed up the ladder. Lady Nirea and Rack kept pace
with the bucket, anxiously watching Revel and John.
At last the bucket halted. Its edge was even with the top of the shaft.
All that remained was to hoist the machine out and drag it out into the
night, below the shining buttons. Revel, leaping out and giving a hand
to John, ordered each inch of progress; and finally the
_antiforcescreenthrower_ was all but out of the mine. Another ten feet
would bring it clear.
Then the world shook around them with a noise like the grandfather of
all thunderclaps, the earth rocked beneath their feet, and the Mink felt
his eardrums crack and his nose begin to bleed.