Time Travel Omnibus, page 388
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital letter.
But you’re thinking of the puzzle. You can’t find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine that’s waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you’ll be knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your view—and telling your younger self all these things I’m telling you.
But now . . .
Well, the drinks are finished. You’re woozy enough to go along with me without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let’s go.
ROCK DIVER
Harry Harrison
If an undersea diver’s equipment failed, he still had a slim chance to live. But between Pete and the surface was the crushing weight of a half-mile of stone. . . .
THE WIND hurtled over the crest of the ridge and rushed down the slope in an icy torrent. It tore at Pete’s canvas suit, pelting him with steel-hard particles of ice. Head down, he fought against it as he worked his way uphill towards the granite outcropping.
He was freezing to death. A man can’t wear enough clothes to stay alive in fifty degrees below zero.
Pete could feel the numbness creeping up his arms. When he wiped his frozen breath from his whiskers there was no sensation. His skin was white and shiny wherever it was exposed to the Alaskan air.
“All in a day’s work.” His cracked lips painfully shaped themselves into the ghost of a smile. “If any of those claim-jumping scissorbills followed me this far they’re gonna be awful cold before they get back.”
The outcropping sheltered him as he fumbled for the switch at his side. A shrill whine built up in the steel box slung at his belt. The sudden hiss of released oxygen was cut off as he snapped shut the faceplate of his helmet. Pete clambered onto the granite ridge that pushed up through the frozen ground.
He stood straight against the wind now, not feeling its pressure, the phantom snowflakes swirling through his body. Following the outcropping, he slowly walked into the ground. The top of his helmet bobbed for a second like a bottle in water, then sank below the surface of the snow.
Underground it was warmer, the wind and cold left far behind. Pete stopped and shook the snow from his suit. He carefully unhooked the ultra-light from his pack and switched it on. The light beam, polarized to his own mass-penetrating frequency, reached out through the layers of surrounding earth as if they were cloudy gelatin.
Pete had been a rock diver for eleven years, yet the sight of this incredible environment never ceased to amaze him. He took the miracle of his vibratory penetrator, the rock diver’s “walk-through,” for granted. It was just a gadget, a good gadget, but something he could take apart and fix if he had to. The important thing was what it did to the world around him.
The hogback of granite started at his feet and sank down into a murky sea of red fog. It was a fog composed of the lighter limestone and other rock, sweeping away in frozen layers. Seemingly suspended in midair were granite boulders and rocks of all sizes, caught in the strata of lighter materials. He ducked his head carefully to avoid these.
If his preliminary survey was right, this rocky ridge should lead him to the site of the missing lode. He had been following leads and drifts for over a year now, closing in on what he hoped was the source of the smaller veins.
He trudged downward, leaning forward as he pushed his way through the soupy limestone. It rushed through and around him like a strong current of water. It was getting harder every day to push through the stuff. The piezo crystal of his walk-through was steadily getting further away from the optimum frequency. It took a hard push to get the atoms of his body between those of the surrounding matter. He twisted his head around and blinked to focus his eyes on the two-inch oscilloscope screen set inside his helmet. The little green face smiled at him—the jagged wave-pattern gleaming like a row of broken teeth.
His jaw clenched at the variations between the reading and the true pattern etched onto the surface of the tube. If the crystal failed, the entire circuit would be inoperative, and frozen death waited quietly in the air far above him for the day he couldn’t go under. Or he might be underground when the crystal collapsed.
Death was here, too, a quicker and much more spectacular death that would leave him stuck forever like a fly in amber. A fly that is part of the amber. He thought about the way Soft-Head had got his and shuddered slightly.
Soft-Head Samuels had been one of the old gang, the hard-bitten rock divers who had been the first to uncover the mineral wealth under the eternal Alaskan snows. Soft-Head had slipped off a hogback two hundred meters down and literally fallen face-first into the fabulous White Owl mother lode. That was the strike that started the rush of ‘63. As the money-hungry hordes rushed north to Dawson he had strolled south with a fortune. He came back in three years with no more than his plane fare and a measureless distrust of humanity.
He rejoined the little group around the potbellied stove, content just to sit among his old cronies. He didn’t talk about his trip to the outside and no one asked any questions. The only sign that he had been away was the way he clamped down on his cigar whenever a stranger came into the room. North American Mining grubstaked him to a new outfit and he went back to tramping the underground wastes.
One day he walked into the ground and never came up again. “Got stuck,” they muttered, but they didn’t know just where until Pete walked through him in VI.
Pete remembered it, too well. He had been dog-tired and sleepy when he had walked through that hunk of rock that hadn’t been all rock. Soft-Head was standing there—trapped for eternity in the stone.
His face was horror-stricken as he stood half bent over, grabbing at his switch box. For one horrible instant Soft-Head must have known that something was wrong with his walk-through—then the rock had closed in. He had been standing there for seven years in the same position he would occupy for all eternity, the atoms of his body mixed inextricably with the atoms of the surrounding rock.
Pete cursed under his breath. If he didn’t get enough of a strike pretty soon to buy a new crystal, he would become part of that timeless gallery of lost prospectors. His power pack was shot and his oxygen tank leaked. His beat-up Miller sub-suit belonged in a museum, not on active duty. It was patched like an inner tube and still wouldn’t hold air the way it should. All he needed was one strike, one little strike.
His helmet light picked a blue glint from some crystals in the gully wall. It might be Ytt. He leaped off the granite spine he had been following and sank slowly through the lighter rock. Plugging his hand neutralizer into the socket in his belt, he lifted out a foot-thick section of rock. The shining rod of the neutralizer adjusted the vibration plane of the sample to the same frequency as his own. Pete pressed the mouth-shaped opening of the spectroanalyzer to the boulder and pressed the trigger. The brief, intensely hot atomic flame blazed against the hard surface, vaporizing it instantly.
The film transparency popped out of the analyzer and Pete studied the spectrographic lines intently.
Wrong again, no trace of the familiar Yttrotantalite lines. With an angry motion he stowed the test equipment in his pick and plowed on through the gummy rock.
Yttrotantalite was the ore and tantalum was the metal extracted from it. This rare metal was the main ingredient of the delicate piezoelectric crystals that made the vibratory mass penetrator possible. Ytt made tantalum, tantalum made crystals, crystals operated the walk-through that he used to find more Ytt to make . . . It was just like a squirrel cage, and Pete was the squirrel, a very unhappy animal at the present moment.
Pete carefully turned the rheostat knob on the walk-through, feeding a trifle more power into the circuit. It would be hard on the crystal, but he needed it to enable him to push through the jellylike earth.
His thoughts kept returning to that little crystal that meant his life. It was a thin wafer of what looked like dirty glass, ground and polished to the most exacting tolerances. When subjected to an almost microscopic current, it vibrated at exactly the correct frequency that allowed one mass to slide between the molecules of another. This weak signal in turn controlled the much more powerful circuit that enabled himself and all his equipment to move through the earth. If the crystal failed, the atoms of his body would return to the vibratory plane of the normal world and alloy themselves with the earth atoms through which he was moving . . . Pete shook his head as if to clear away the offending thoughts and quickened his pace down the slope.
He had been pushing against the resisting rock for three hours now and his leg muscles felt like hot pokers. In a few minutes he would have to turn back, if he wanted to leave himself a margin of safety.
But he had been getting Ytt traces for an hour now, and they seemed to be getting stronger as he followed the probable course of the drift. The mother lode had to be a rich one—if he could only find it!
It was time to start the long uphill return. Pete jerked a rock for a last test. He’d mark the spot and take up the search tomorrow. The test bulb flashed and he held the transparency against it.
His body tensed and his heart began to thud heavily. He blinked and looked again—it was there! The tantalum lines burned through the weaker traces with a harsh brilliance. His hand was shaking as he jerked open his knee pocket. He had a comparison film from the White Owl claim, the richest in the territory. There wasn’t the slightest doubt—his was the richer ore!
He took the half-crystals out of their cushioned pouch and gently placed the B crystal in the hole he had made when he removed the sample rock. No one else could ever find this spot without the other half of the same crystal, ground accurately to a single ultrashortwave frequency. If half A were used to key the frequency of a signal generator, side B would bounce back an echo of the same wavelength that would be picked up by a delicate receiver. In this way the crystal both marked the claim and enabled Pete to find his way back to it.
He carefully stowed the A crystal in its cushioned compartment and started the long trek back to the surface. Walking was almost impossible; the old crystal in his walk-through was deviating so far that he could scarcely push through the gluey earth. He could feel the imponderable mass of the half-mile of rock over his head, waiting to imprison him in its eternal grip. The only way to the surface was to follow the long hogback of granite until it finally cleared the surface.
The crystal had been in continuous use now for over five hours. If he could only turn it off for a while, the whole unit would have a chance to cool down. His hand shook as he fumbled with his pack straps—he forced himself to slow down and do the job properly.
He turned the hand neutralizer to full power and held the glowing rod at arm’s length before him. Out of the haze there suddenly materialized an eighteen-foot boulder of limestone, adjusted now to his own penetrating frequency. Gravity gripped the gigantic rock and it slowly sank. When it had cleared the level of the granite ledge, he turned off the neutralizer. There was a heavy crunch as the molecules of the boulder welded themselves firmly to those of the surrounding rock. Pete stepped into the artificial bubble he had formed in the rock and turned off his walk-through.
With a suddenness that never ceased to amaze him, his hazy surroundings became solid walls of rock. His helmet light splashed off the sides of the little chamber, a bubble with no exit, one half-mile below the freezing Alaskan wastes.
With a grunt of relief, Pete slipped out of his heavy pack and stretched his aching muscles. He had to conserve oxygen; that was the reason he had picked this particular spot. His artificial cave cut through a vein of RbO, rubidium oxide. It was a cheap and plentiful mineral, not worth mining this far north, but still the rock diver’s best friend.
Pete rummaged in the pack for the airmaker and fastened its power pack to his belt. He thumbed the unit on and plunged the contact points into the RbO vein. The silent flash illuminating the chamber glinted on the white snow that was beginning to fall. The flakes of oxygen released by the airmaker melted before they touched the floor. The underground room was getting a life-giving atmosphere of its own.
With air around him, he could open his faceplate and get some chow out of his pack.
He cautiously cracked the helmet valve and sniffed. The air was good, although pressure was low—around twelve pounds. The oxygen concentration was a little too high; he giggled happily with a mild oxygen jag. Pete hummed tunelessly as he tore the cardboard wrapper from a ration pack.
Cool water from the canteen washed down the tasteless hardtack but he smiled, thinking of thick, juicy steaks. The claim would be assayed and mine owners’ eyes would bulge when they read the report.
Then they would come to him. Dignified, sincere men clutching contracts in their well-manicured hands.
He would sell to the highest bidder, the entire claim, let someone else do all the work for a change. They would level and surface this granite ridge and big pressure trucks would plow through the earth, bringing miners to and from the underground diggings. He relaxed against the curved wall of the bubble, smiling.
He could see himself, bathed, shaven and manicured, walking into the Miners’ Rest . . .
The daydream vanished as two men in bulging sub-suits stepped through the rock wall. Their figures were transparent; their feet sank into the ground with each step. Both men suddenly jumped into the air; at mid-arc they switched off their walk-throughs. The figures gained solidity and handed heavily on the floor. They opened their faceplates and sniffed the air.
The shorter man smiled. “It sure smells nice in here, right, Mo?”
Mo was having trouble getting his helmet off; his voice rumbled out through the folds of cloth. “Right, Algie.” The helmet came free with a snap.
Pete’s eyes widened at the sight, and Algie smiled a humorless grin. “Mo ain’t much to look at, but you could learn to like him.”
Mo was a giant, seven feet from his boots to the crown of his bullet-shaped head, shaved smooth and glistening with sweat. He must have been born ugly, and time had not improved him. His nose was flattened, one ear was little more than a rag, and a thick mass of white scar tissue drew up his upper lip.
Two yellow teeth gleamed through the opening.
Pete slowly closed his canteen and stowed it in the pack. They might be honest rock divers, but they didn’t look it. “Anything I can do for you guys?” he asked.
“No thanks, pal,” said the short one. “We was just going by and saw the flash of your airmaker. We thought maybe it was one of our pals, so we come over to see. Rock diving sure is a lousy racket these days, ain’t it?” As he talked, the little man’s eyes flicked casually around the room, taking in everything.
With a wheeze, Mo sat down against the wall.
“You’re right,” said Pete carefully. “I haven’t had a strike in months. You guys newcomers? I don’t think I’ve seen you around the camp.”
Algie did not reply. He was staring intently at Pete’s bulging sample case.
He snapped open a huge clasp knife. “What you got in the sample case, Mac?”
“Just some low-grade ore I picked up. Going to have it assayed, but I doubt if it’s even worth carrying. I’ll show you.”
Pete stood up and walked toward the case. As he passed in front of Algie, he bent swiftly, grabbed the knife hand and jabbed his knee viciously into the short man’s stomach. Algie jackknifed and Pete chopped his neck sharply with the edge of his palm. He didn’t wait to see him fall but dived toward the pack.
He pulled his army .45 with one hand and scooped out the signal crystal with the other, raising his steel-shod boot to stamp the crystal to powder.
His heel never came down. A gigantic fist gripped his ankle, stop-Ping Pete’s whole bulk in midair.
He tried to bring the gun around but a hand as large as a ham clutched his wrist. He screamed as the bones grated together. The automatic dropped from his nerveless fingers.
He hung head-down for five minutes while Mo pleaded with the unconscious Algie to tell him what to do. Algie regained consciousness and sat up cursing and rubbing his neck. He told Mo what to do and sat there smiling until Pete lost consciousness.
Slap-slap-slap, slap-slap; his head rocked back and forth in time to the blows. He couldn’t stop them, they jarred his head, shook his entire body. From very far away he heard Algie’s voice.
“That’s enough Mo, that’s enough. He’s coming around now.”
Pete braced himself painfully against the wall and wiped the blood out of his eyes. The short man’s face swam into his vision.
“Mac, you’re giving us too much trouble. We’re going to take your crystal and find your strike, and if it’s as good as the samples you got there, I’m going to be very happy and celebrate by killing you real slow. If we don’t find it, you get killed slower. You get yours either way. Nobody ever hits Algie, don’t you know that?”
They turned on Pete’s walk-through and half carried, half dragged him through the wall. About twenty feet away they emerged in another artificial bubble, much larger than his own. It was almost filled by the metallic bulk of an atomic tractor.
Mo pushed him to the floor and kicked his walk-through into a useless ruin. The giant stepped over Pete’s body and lumbered across the room. As he swung himself aboard the tractor, Algie switched on the large walk-through unit. Pete saw Algie’s mouth open with silent laughter as the ghostly machine lurched forward and drove into the wall.
