“My thinking, too. Now this is the part that really baffles …”
The viewer now came to the scene in which fliers were aware of predator and it of them, the defensive line of the golden creatures and their orderly evacuation.
“Kai! Kai! Where are you, man?” They heard the voice of Dimenon, Kai’s senior geologist. “Kai!”
“Ho, Dimenon, we’re up front,” Kai replied, pressing the hold on the viewer.
“We’re here for the transuranics, aren’t we?” asked Dimenon at his most dramatic as he burst into the small cabin, an equally excited Aulia beside him.
“You bet …”
“We found the mother’s own end of a great whopping saddle of pitchblende … rich or I’ll give you every credit in my account!”
“Where?”
“You know we were to follow the south-eastern track of the old cores, pick it up where it faltered? Well, where it faltered was at the edge of a geosyncline, the orogenesis is much later than this area. It was Aulia who noticed the vein, the brown lustre in the one sunny interval we had. We planted seismimics on a rough triangulation and this is the reading we got.” Dimenon brandished the print-out as one proferred a treasure. “Rich–high up on the scale. Why, this one find alone justifies the entire expedition. And with all those new fold mountains, I’ll bet this is the first of many. We struck it, Kai. We struck it!”
Kai was pummelling Dimenon and Varian was hugging Aulia with complete lack of inhibition while the rest of the geological team began to crowd into the compartment to add their congratulations.
“I was beginning to wonder about this planet. There were traces, yes, but there ought to have been more ore deposits …” Triv was saying.
“You forget, Triv,” Gaber said, inking smears on his face which was for once wreathed with genuine good humour, “we’re on old continental shield, not likely to have been much anyway.”
“All we had to do was get beyond the shield, and look what we’ve got already …” Dimenon again did his triumphant dance, waving the print-out tape like a streamer until it caught on Portegin’s shoulder and began to tear. He ended his physical gyrations and carefully began to roll up the all-important tape which he stowed in his chest pocket. “Over my heart forever!”
“I thought I was there,” Aulia teased him.
“This would seem to call for a celebration,” Lunzie said, putting her head round the door.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got some joy juice hidden away somewhere?” cried Dimenon, waggling an accusatory finger at her.
“There’s no end of ways to serve that fruit, you know,” she replied, her manner so blandly innocent that Varian whooped.
“Wouldn’t you know Lunzie would come through?”
“Three cheers for Lunzie! The distilling dietician!”
“And how would you know it was distilled?” asked Lunzie suspiciously.
“Why else was Trizein rigging up a fractional distillation column?”
That warranted more laughter and congratulations which was why Varian noticed the solemn heavy-worlders were absent. She said nothing about it, though she wondered. Surely Dimenon had made no secret of the find on his way up from the sled park. Where were the heavy-worlders that they wouldn’t join in the expedition’s first real triumph?
Lunzie was saying that she wasn’t certain how good the brew would be. The product had had no time to settle or age but surely, Dimenon said in a wheedling tone, there’d be something to take the edge off the taste of it. The group began to file out of the shuttle, moving towards the general purpose dome. Varian saw no sign of the heavy-worlders but there was a light in the quarters they shared. Passing the central standard, she rang the alarm bell in alert sequence. The iris opening of the heavy-worlders’ quarters widened slightly and massive shoulders and a head appeared, outlined by the light.
“Yes?” It was Paskutti.
“Didn’t you hear, Paskutti? A massive find of pitchblende. Lunzie’s distilled a beverage from the fruit. We’re going to sample it by way of celebration.”
A huge hand waved and the iris closed.
“They being aloof again?” asked Kai, pausing in his progress to the large dome.