lot of good. Excitement was still high; none of them had relapsed into the apathy that
had affected them all such a short time before. In fact, one close-clustered group of
men was eyeing Seaton and the overseer in a fashion that made it perfectly clear that,
had it not been for Seaton’s mien and the gun and the whip, there would have been a
lynching then and there.
“Take it easy, people,” Seaton told them. “I know you all want to tear this ape apart, but
what good would it do? None. Not a bit. So I won’t let you do it, if I have to use the whip
and even .the gun to keep you from it. But I don’t intend to use either whip or gun and I
don’t think I’ll have to, because this is the first bite of a fresh kettle of fish for every
civilized human being of this world. I won’t go into much detail, but I represent a group
of human beings, as human as yourselves, called HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT. I’m a
fore-runner. I’m here to bring you a message; to tell you that humanity has never been
conquered permanently and never will be so conquered. Humanity has triumphed and
will continue to triumph over all the vermin infesting all the planets of all the solar
systems of all the galaxies of all surveyed space.
“HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT’s plans have been made in full and are being put out into
effect. Humanity will win here, and in not too long a time. Every Chloran in every solar
system in this region of space will die. That’s a promise.
“Nor do we need your help. All we ask you is that you produce the full quota of ore
every week, so that no Chloran warship will come here too soon. And that production
will be no problem very shortly, since I can repair your machinery and will have it all
back in working order by one week from today. So in a very few weeks you women can
go back to keeping house for your families; you youngsters can go back to school; and
half of you men will be able to make quota in half a shift and spend the other half of it
playing penny-ante. And you, Brother Rat–” he turned back to the deposed overseer-
“you can peel that pretty uniform. You’re going to work, right now. You and I are going
to be partners-and if you so much as begin to drag your feet I’ll slap your face clear
around onto the back of your neck. Let’s go!”
They went. They picked up a drill-which weighed all of three hundred pounds-and
lugged it across the rough rock floor to the foot of the face; which, translated from the
vernacular, means the lower edge of the expanse of high-grade ore that was being
worked.
It was a beautiful thing, that. face; a startlingly high and wide expanse of the glossly,
lustrous, submetallic pitch black of uraninite; slashed and spattered and shot through at
random with the characteristic violent yellows of autunite and carnotite and the variant
greens of torbernite.
But Seaton was not particularly interested in beauty at the moment. What he hoped
was that he could keep from giving away the fact that this was the first time he * had
ever handled a mining machine of any kind or type. He thought he could, however, and
he did.
For, after all, there are only so many ways in which holes can be made in solid rock.
Second, since the hardrock men who operate the machinery to make those holes are
never the greatest intellects of any world, such machinery must be essentially simple.
And third, the Brain’s visualizations had been very complete and Richard Seaton was,
as he had admitted to Prenk, an exceptionally smart man.
Wherefore, although Seaton unobtrusively let the exoverseer take the lead, the two
men worked very well together and the native did not once drag his feet. They set up
the heavy drill and locked it in place against the face. They slipped the shortest “twelve-
inch” steel into the chuck and rammed it home. They turned on the air and put their
shoulders to the stabilizing pads-and that monstrous machine, bellowing and thundering
under the. terrific urge of two hundred pounds to the square inch f compressed air,
drove that heavy bit resistlessly into the ore.
And the rest of the miners, fired by Seaton’s example as well as by his “shot in the
arm,” worked as they had not worked in months; to such good purpose that when the
shift ended at midnight the crew had sent out almost twice as much high-grade ore as
they had delivered the night before.
It need hardly be mentioned, perhaps, that Seaton was enjoying himself very much.
Although he was not, in truth, the “big, muscle-bound ape-especially between the ears”
he was wont to describe himself as, there was certainly a pleasure in being up against
the sort of problem that muscle and skill could settle. For a time he was concerned
about the fact that events elsewhere might be proceeding at a pace he could not
control; but there was not a minute spent on the surface of this planet that was not a
net gain in terms of the automatic repair of the Valeron. That great ship had been hurt.
Since there was at the moment very little that Seaton could do effectively about
DuQuesne, or directly about the Chlorans, or the Fenachrone-and was a great deal he
could do here on the surface of Ray-See-Nee -he put the other matters out of his mind
and did what had to be done.
And enjoyed it enormously!
Seaton went “home” to the empty and solitary house that was his temporary residence
and raised the oversize ring to his lips. “Dottie,” he said.
“Oh, Dick!” a tiny scream came from the ring. “I wish you wouldn’t take such horrible
chances! I thought I’d die! Won’t you, tomorrow morning, just shoot the louse out of
hand? Please?”
“I wasn’t taking any chances, Dot; a man with half my training could have done it. I had
to do something spectacular to snap these people out of it; they’re dead from the belt-
buckle up, down, and back. But I’ve done enough, I think, so I won’t have any more
trouble at all. It’ll get around-and how!-and strictly on the Q and T. All those other apes
will need is a mere touch of fist.”
“You hope. Me, too, for that matter. Just a sec, here’s Martin. He wants to talk to you
about that machinery business,” and Crane’s voice replaced Dorothy’s.
“I certainly do, Dick. You say you want two-hundred-fifty-pound Sullivan Sluggers,
complete with variable-height mounts and inch-and-a-quarter-that’s English, remember
-bits. You want Ingersoll-Rand compressors and Westinghouse generators and Wilfley
tables and so on, each item by name and no item resembling any of their own
machinery in any particular. Since you are supposed to be repairing their own
machinery, wouldn’t it be better to have the Brain do just that, while you look on, make
wise motions, and learn?”
`It might be better, at that,” Seaton admitted, after a moment’s thought. “My thought
was that since nobody now working in the mine knows anything much about either
mining or machinery it .wouldn’t make any difference, as long as the stuff was good and
rusty on the outside, and I know how our stuff works. But I can learn theirs and it will
save a lot of handling and we’ll have the time. They’re working only two shifts in only
one stope, you know. Lack of people. But nine-tenths of their equipment is as dead as
King Tut and the rest of it starts falling apart every time anybody gives any of it a stern
look-1 was scared spitless all shift that we’d be running out of air or power, or both, any
minute. So we’ll have to do one generator and at least one compressor tonight; so you
might as well start getting the stuff ready for me.”
“It’s ready. I’ll send it down as soon as it gets good and dark. In the meantime, how
about Brother Rat? Have you anyone watching him?”
“No, I didn’t think it was necessary. But it might be, at that. From up there, would you
say?”
“Definitely. And Shiro and Lotus haven’t much to do at the moment. I’ll make
arrangements.”
“Do that, guy, and so long ’till dark.”
“Just a sec, Dick,” Dorothy said then. “I’m not done with you yet. You remembered the
no-neighbors bit, I think?”
“I sure did, Honey-Chile. No neighbors within half a mile, So, any dark of the moon, slip
down here in one of the fifteen-footers and all will be well.”
“You big, nice man,” Dorothy purred. “Comes dark, comes me! an’ you can lay to that.”
Countless parsecs away, DuQuesne made proper entry into the Solar System, put his