Baldur III
“What’s taking so long?”
“Gimme a minute. I’m getting some screwy readings.”
Pierre Fremont squinted at the readouts on his secondhand Starfleet-surplus tricorder, which, honestly, had seen better days. His partner, Belinda Sharikh, sat in the driver’s seat of the mobile phaser drill they had leased for the day in order to dig a new well for their homestead. Looming evergreens bordered the clearing as he walked ahead of the drill, methodically scanning the ground for a suitable aquifer to tap into. Moss, rocks, and old stumps, the latter waiting to be dug out, carpeted the outdoors. Sweating beneath the afternoon sun, Pierre cast a longing glance at the shady forest before turning his gaze back to the squirrelly readings on the tricorder’s display panel. The data on the screen kept fluctuating. Visual static obscured the graphics.
“Screwy how?” Belinda asked. Like him, she was wearing a practical coverall suitable for a hard day’s work. Heavy-duty treads supported the open cab of the drill conveyor while the actual phaser mechanism was suspended on a crane in front of her. A transparent aluminum windshield failed to conceal her worried expression.
“I’m not certain,” he confessed. “I’m getting some kind of interference that’s making it hard to get a precise reading, or maybe this old piece of junk is just on the fritz again.” He smacked the device with his palm in hopes of knocking it back into proper working order. “I swear, I’m tempted to trade this thing in for an old-fashioned dowsing rod.”
“A what?”
“An archaic bit of Earth folklore.” He recalled that offworld history, let alone superstitions, were hardly among Belinda’s interests. They were both third-generation colonists, born and raised on Baldur III. Earth, and the Federation, for that matter, were about as remote from their daily lives as Romulus was. They were Baldurians, through and through. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”
“Just tell me where to drill,” she insisted. “We need get this monster back to town before nightfall or we’ll be charged another day.”
“Trust me, I’m well aware of that.”
Ever since their old well had gone dry, they’d been reduced to hiking a quarter mile to the nearest creek just to keep themselves properly hydrated. A new well would make their lives much easier and free up more time to concentrate on building their fledgling lumber business, maybe even work up enough funds to get one of those fancy plasma-powered, automated sawmills. Belinda had big dreams of going into handcrafted custom carpentry as well.
Assuming we don’t have to spend half our time toting water.
Despite the annoying (and inexplicable) interference on the tricorder, he kept probing beneath the surface until he was almost at the edge of the clearing, about twelve meters from their rustic log cabin, which was composed of equal parts timber and thermoconcrete. Solar paneling shared the roof with a chimney and a bare-bones communications array. Erratic though they were, the tricorder readings indicated that the water table was relatively accessible at this location, plus or minus a reasonable margin for error.
This will have to do, he decided. As Belinda had reminded him, they needed to get the drill back by nightfall and the town was a good fifty kilometers away. We don’t have time to search for the ideal spot to drill.
He unclipped a paint canister from his work belt and sprayed an X on the moss, marking the spot. “Here you go.”
“Right on it.”
She positioned the drill directly above his mark and donned a pair of protective goggles to protect her eyes from the glare of the phaser beam. Pierre did the same, backing away from the site as she fired up the drill, slowly at first to avoid digging too deep. The last thing they wanted to do was punch a hole in the bedrock for the water to drain away into.
A ruby-red beam issued from the tip of the drill, burning down through the rocky soil toward the water table, forming a hole approximately fifteen centimeters in diameter; they could widen the hole later once they were certain they were in the right spot. A high-pitched whine accompanied the beam, which steadily increased in intensity, going from red-hot to blue to a brilliant white that, despite the goggles, made his eyes water if he looked directly at it for too long. He could feel the heat from the beam even from several paces away. Smoke and steam rose from the pit as the beam drilled through dense layers of dirt, clay, and stone. Pierre grinned. So far, the drill was worth every credit.
This is saving us hours, maybe even days, of heavy labor.
“How am I doing?” Belinda shouted over the whine of the phaser as well as the hissing steam. Gloved hands worked the control panel.
“Right on track!” He monitored her progress with the tricorder. “Just a few more meters . . . hang on, what the—?”
A sudden energy spike, coming from deep beneath the surface, registered on the device, blanking out the data on the screen. A warning siren sounded. A red light flashed.
An underground explosion rocked the ground beneath his feet. A shock wave burst from the pit, sending rocks, Pierre, and other debris flying. Barely missing one of the nearby trees, he landed flat on his back on the forest floor, the wind knocked out of him. He lay there dazed for a moment, catching his breath, before adrenaline—and concern for Belinda’s safety—gave him the strength to scramble to his feet.
“Belinda?”
“Over here!”
The shock wave had toppled the drill platform and thrown her from the cab, but, to Pierre’s relief, she appeared to be okay as she got up from the ground. If anything, she looked more concerned with the damage to the drill. The windshield was cracked, while the phaser itself had broken loose from the crane and was now an inert mass of mangled steel that, for better or for worse, was no longer capable of firing a beam. Probably just as well, he thought, given that it’s not pointed at the ground anymore.
“Damn it,” Belinda swore. “There goes our deposit!”
“At least we’re still in one piece,” he pointed out.
“There’s that,” she conceded, brushing herself off. “But what just happened?”
Pierre wanted to know that too. He glanced around the clearing, which was now strewn with dirt and debris. He noticed that certain rocks appeared to be glowing faintly, as though permeated with some kind of luminous material. He scanned one such fragment after recovering and resetting his tricorder. His eyes bulged as the device identified the targeted substance.
“Ye gads. These rocks are laced with pergium!”
The rare mineral was valued throughout the quadrant for its ability to power life-support systems. Pierre assumed that the phaser beam had accidentally energized a deposit of raw pergium, setting off a chain reaction, but just how big a deposit were they talking about?
A different kind of excitement kept his heart racing even as the initial jolt from the explosion subsided. He cautiously approached the gaping pit forged by the explosion.
“Careful there!” Belinda said.
“Uh-huh,” he murmured, but his gaze remained glued to the tricorder’s readouts. No longer set to detect the presence of water, the device scanned for pergium instead.
His jaw dropped at the results.
“Yikes, this is trashed.” Belinda circled the capsized drill platform, shaking her head in dismay. “You don’t think they’re going to expect us to replace the whole thing, do you?”
“Forget the drill.” A grin stretched across his face. “Forget the well. Forget the whole darn lumber business. Turns out we’re sitting on top of a huge vein of raw pergium, just waiting to be mined.”
She turned away from the battered drill as the full implications of their discovery sunk in. “You mean . . . ?”
“We’re set for life . . . and then some!”
He realized then and there that their lives were never going to be the same.