FOR A MOMENT, Major Briarton just stared at him. Then he was on his feet, shaking his head as he came around the desk. “Tom, use your head,” he said. “It’s as much of a shock to me as it is to you, but you can’t afford to jump to false conclusions.”
Tom looked up bitterly. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s dead. He must have died the instant of the explosion.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I wasn’t there at the time it happened; no.”
“Then who was?”
Major Briarton again spread his hands helplessly. “Nobody was. Your father was alone. From what we could tell later, he’d left the Scavenger when the rear tank exploded. There wasn’t enough left of it to tell what went wrong, but it was an accident; there was no evidence to suggest anything else.”
Tom looked at him. “You really believe that?”
“I can only tell you what we found.”
“Well, I don’t believe it for a minute,” Tom said angrily. “How long have you and Dad been friends? Twenty years? Twenty-five? Longer than we’ve been alive, that’s sure. Do you really think Dad could have an accident with a mining rig?”
“I know he was an expert engineer,” the major said. “But things can happen that even an expert can’t foresee, mining in the belt.”
“Things like a fuel tank exploding? Not to Dad, they wouldn’t happen. I don’t care what anybody says.”
“Easy, Tom,” Greg said.
“Well, I won’t take it easy! Dad was too careful for something like that to happen. If he had an accident, somebody made it happen.”
Greg turned to the major. “What was Dad doing out there?”
“Mining.”
“By himself? No crew at all?”
“No, he was alone.”
“I thought the regulations said there always had to be at least two men working an asteroid claim.”
“That’s right. Your father had Johnny Coombs with him when he left Sun Lake City. They signed out as a team, and then Johnny came back to Mars on the first shuttle ship.”
“How come?”
“Not even Johnny knows. Your father just sent him back, and there was nothing we could do about it then. The U.N. has no jurisdiction in the belt, unless a major crime has been committed.” Major Briarton shook his head. “If a man is determined to mine a claim all by himself out there, he can find a dozen different ways to wiggle out of the regulations.”
“But Dad would never be that stupid,” Greg said. “If he was alone when it happened, who found him?”
“A routine U.N. patrol ship. When your father failed to check in at the regular eight-hour signal, they went out to see what was wrong. But by the time they reached him, it was too late to help.”
“I just don’t get it,” Greg said. “Dad had more sense than to try to mine out there all by himself.”
“I know,” the major said. “But I don’t know the answer. I had a patrol ship go over the scene of the accident with a fine tooth comb after they reported what had happened, but there was nothing there to find. It was an accident, and that’s that.”
“What about Jupiter Equilateral?” Tom said hotly. “Everybody knows they were out to get Dad. Why don’t you find out what they were doing when it happened, bring them in for questioning?”
“I can’t do that,” the major said wearily.
“Why can’t you?”
“I haven’t a scrap of evidence.”
“But you’re the Mars Co-ordinator, aren’t you?” Tom persisted. “You act like you’re scared of them.”
Major Briarton’s lips tightened angrily. “All right, since you put it that way. I am scared of them. They’re big, and they’re powerful. If they had their way, there wouldn’t be any United Nations control on Mars, there wouldn’t be anybody to fight them and keep them in check. There wouldn’t be any independent miners out in the belt, either, because they’d all be bought out or dead, and Earth would pay through the nose for every ounce of metal that she got from the Asteroid Belt. That company has been trying to drive the U.N. off Mars for thirty years, and they’ve come so close to it that it scares me plenty.” He paused, then went on. “And that is exactly why I refuse to stir up a mess over this thing, unhappy as it is, without something more than suspicions and rumors to back me up, because all Jupiter Equilateral needs is one big issue to make us look like fools out here, and we’re through.”
He crossed the room to a wall cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a scarred aluminum box. “We found this in the cabin of the Scavenger. I thought you boys might want it.”
They both recognized it instantly. It was the battered old spacer’s pack that Roger Hunter had used for as long as they could remember. It seemed to them, suddenly, as if a part of him had appeared here in the room with them. Greg looked at the box and turned away. “You open it,” he said to Tom in a sick voice.
There was nothing much inside — some clothing, a pipe and tobacco pouch, a jackknife, half a dozen other items so familiar that Tom could hardly bear to touch them. At the bottom of the pack was the heavy leather gun case which had always held Roger Hunter’s ancient .44 revolver. Tom dropped it back without even opening the flap. He closed the box and took a deep breath. “Then you really believe that it was an accident and nothing more?” he said to the major.
“All the evidence points to it. There was nothing to indicate anything else.”
“I’m not talking about evidence, now. I’m talking about what you think.”
Major Briarton shook his head. “What I think or don’t think doesn’t make any difference. It just doesn’t matter. In order to do anything, I’ve got to have evidence, and there Just isn’t any evidence. I can’t even take a ship out there for a second look, with the evidence I have, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But you think that maybe it wasn’t an accident, just the same,” Tom pursued.
The major hesitated. Then he shook his head again. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to stand on what I’ve said. And I think you’d better stand on it, too.”
• • •
It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. As Tom Hunter walked with his brother down the broad upper ramp to the business section of Sun Lake City, he could not shake off the feeling of helpless anger, the growing conviction that Dad’s death involved something more than the tragic accident in space that Major Briarton had insisted it was.
“He didn’t tell us everything he knew,” Tom said fiercely. “He didn’t say everything he wanted to say, either. He doesn’t think it was an accident any more than I do.”
“We can’t put words in his mouth,” Greg said. “And anyway, you shouldn’t have badgered him like that. He was only doing what he had to do, and you didn’t help him out any.”
“He didn’t believe a word he was saying,” Tom said.
“How do you know? Are you a mind reader?”
“No.”
“Well, Dad wasn’t a superman, either. He was taking an awful risk, trying to work a mining rig by himself, and he had a bad break. Why do you have to have sombody to blame for it?”
“Keep talking,” Tom said. “You’ll convince yourself yet.”
Greg just jammed his hands in his pockets, and they walked on in silence. On the second level of the Martian underground city, stores and supply depots had crowded out the living quarters, and the corridors were busy with people. The low oxygen concentration and the low pressure of Mars’ atmosphere had proven unsuitable for human life except for very brief periods of exposure; every human habitation on Mars depended on the protective plastic bubble outside to keep in the artificially maintained atmosphere. As a consequence, the cities on Mars had never spread out on the surface like Earth cities, but were excavated into the ground, and resembled huge multi-unit apartment buildings, with ramps and concourses connecting the various levels and segments of the city.
Of all the Martian cities, Sun Lake City was the biggest, the busiest, the noisiest. Already it was crowded with miners and their families, prospectors, rocket men, research men and builders, and for the third time in a decade the power machinery was at work excavating for another level of the city to make room for more.
For Tom and Greg Hunter, Sun Lake City had always been home. Now they walked along the main concourse, Tom with the aluminum box under his arm, Greg with his own spacer’s pack thrown over his shoulder. They didn’t talk; rather than being drawn closer by the news of the tragedy, it seemed that they had drawn farther apart, as though the one common link that had held them together had suddenly been broken.
They turned into the dining commissary, mingling with the crowd as people poured up from the living quarters and offices on the lower levels. They stood across from each other at the table, picking at their food and saying nothing. Finally Tom tossed down his fork. “At least there’s one thing we can do,” he said. “I’m going to call Johnny Coombs.”
He weaved through the crowd of diners to the phone booths in the rear and dialed a number. Johnny had been a friend of the family for years; he and Roger Hunter had been partners in many mining ventures in the Asteroid Belt before Hunter had taken his position with Jupiter Equilateral. If Johnny had any suspicions that Roger Hunter’s accident had been more than an accident, he certainly would not hesitate to voice them.
After a dozen rings, Tom hung up, tried another number. There was no answer there, either. Frowning, Tom rang the city’s central paging system. “Put in a personal call for Johnny Coombs,” he said when the “record” signal flashed on. “Tell him to contact the Hunters when he comes in. We’ll be at home.”
Back at the table, he finished his dinner without tasting it. Greg checked his watch, and together they started for the down ramp that led to the living quarters of the city. A jitney passed them, loaded with people bound for quarters, but neither of them made a move to hop on. When they reached H wing on the fourth level, they turned right down an apartment corridor, and stopped in front of a familiar doorway. Tom pressed his palm against the lock plate, and the door swung open.
It was home to them, the only home they had ever known. Soft lights sprang up on the walls of the apartment as the door opened. Tom saw the old bookcases lining the walls, the drafting board and light at the far end of the room, the simple chairs and dining table, the door which led into the bedroom and kitchen beyond. The room still had the slightly disheveled look it had had ever since Mom died — a slipper on the floor here, a book face down on the couch there. It looked as though Dad had just stepped out for an hour or so…
Tom was three steps into the room before he saw the visitor. The man was sitting comfortably in Roger Hunter’s easy chair, a short, fat man with round pink cheeks that sagged a little and a double chin that rested on his neck scarf. There were two other men in the room, both large and broad-shouldered; one of them nodded to the fat man, and moved to stand between the twins and the door.
The fat man was out of his seat before the boys could speak, smiling at them and holding out his hand. “I wanted to be sure to see you before you left the city,” he was saying, “so we just came on in to wait. I hope you don’t mind our butting in, so to speak.” He chuckled, looking from one twin to the other. “You don’t know me, I suppose. I’m Merrill Tawney. Representing Jupiter Equilateral, you know.”
Tom took the card he was holding out, looked at the name and the tiny gold symbol in the corner, a J in the center of a triangle. He handed the card to Greg. “I’ve seen you before,” he told the fat man. “What do you want with us?”
Tawney smiled again, spreading his hands. “We’ve heard about the tragedy, of course. Shocking… Roger was one of our group so recently. We wanted you to know that if there is anything at all we can do to help, we’d be only too glad.”
“Thanks,” Greg said. “But we’re doing just fine.”
Tawney’s smile tightened a little, but he hung on to it. “I always felt close to your father,” he said. “All of us at Jupiter Equilateral did. We were all sorry to see him leave.”
“I bet you were,” Greg said. “He was the best mining engineer you ever had. But Dad could never stand liars, or crooked ways of doing business.”
One of the men started for Greg, but the fat man stopped him with a wave of his hand. “We had our differences of opinion,” he said. “We saw things one way, your father saw them another way. But he was a fine man, one of the finest.”
“Look, Mr. Tawney, you’d better say what you came to say and get out of here,” Greg said angrily, “before we give your friends here something to do.”
“I merely came to offer you some help,” Tawney said. He was no longer smiling. “Since your father’s death, you two have acquired certain responsibilities. I thought we might relieve you of some of them.”
“What sort of responsibilities?”
“You have an unmanned orbit ship which is now a derelict in the Asteroid Belt. You have a scout ship out there also. You can’t just leave them there as a navigation hazard to every ship traveling in the sector. There are also a few mining claims which aren’t going to be of much value to you now.”
“I see,” Greg said. “Are you offering to buy Dad’s mining rig?”
“Well, I doubt very much that we’d have any use for it, as such. But we could save you the trouble of going out there to haul it in.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Greg said. “How much are you offering?”
Tom looked up in alarm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “That rig’s not for sale.”
“How much?” Greg repeated.
“Forty thousand dollars,” Merrill Tawney said. “Ship, rig and claims. We’ll even pay the transfer tax.”
Tom stared at the man, wondering if he had heard right. He knew what Dad had paid for the rig; he had been with him when the papers were signed. Tawney’s offer was three times as much as the rig was worth.
But Greg was shaking his head. “I don’t think we could sell at that price.”
The fat man’s hands fluttered. “You understand that those ships are hardly suited to a major mining operation like ours,” he said, “and the claims…” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Still, we’d want you to be happy with the price. Say, forty-five thousand?”
Greg hesitated, shook his head again. “I guess we’d better think it over, Mr. Tawney.”
“Fifty thousand is absolutely the top,” Tawney said sharply. “I have the papers right here, drawn up for your signatures, but I’m afraid we can’t hold the offer open.”
“I don’t know, we might want to do some mining ourselves,” Greg said. “For all we know, Dad might have struck some rich ore on one of those claims.”
Tawney laughed. “I hardly think so. Those claims were all Jupiter Equilateral rejects. Our own engineers found nothing but low-grade ore on any of them.”
“Still, it might be fun to look.”
“It could be very expensive fun. Asteroid mining is a dangerous business, even for experts. For amateurs — ” Tawney spread his hands — “accidents occur.”
“Yes, we’ve heard about those accidents,” Greg said coldly. “I don’t think we’re quite ready to sell, Mr. Tawney. We may never be ready to sell to you, so don’t stop breathing until we call you. Now if there’s nothing more, why don’t you take your friends and go somewhere else?”
The fat man scowled; he started to say something, then saw the look on Greg’s face, and shrugged. “I’d advise you to give my offer some careful thought,” he said as he started for the door. “It might be very foolish for you to try to use that rig.”
Smiling, Greg closed the door in his face. Then he turned and winked at Tom. “Great fellow, Mr. Tawney. He almost had me sold.”
“So I noticed,” Tom said. “For a while I thought you were serious.”
“Well, we found out how high they’d go. That’s a very generous outfit Mr. Tawney works for.”
“Or else a very crooked one,” Tom said. “Are you wondering the same thing I’m wondering?”
“Yes,” Greg said slowly. “I think I am.”
“Then that makes three of us,” a heavy voice rumbled from the bedroom door.
Johnny Coombs was a tall man, so thin he was almost gangling, with a long nose, and shaggy eyebrows jutting out over his eyes. With his rudely cropped hair and his huge hands, he looked like a caricature of a frontier Mars farmer, but the blue eyes under the eyebrows were not dull.
He grinned at the boys’ surprise, and walked into the room. “You don’t mind if I have a seat, I hope,” he said in his deep bass voice. “I been standin’ there inside that door for almost an hour, and I’m tired of standin’.”
“Johnny!” Tom cried. “We were trying to find you.”
“I know,” Johnny said. “So were a lot of other people, includin’ your friends there.”
“Well, did you hear what Tawney wanted?”
“I’m not so quick on my feet any more,” Johnny Coombs said, “but I got nothin’ wrong with my ears.” He scratched his jaw and looked up sharply at Greg. “Not many people nowadays get a chance to bargain with Merrill Tawney.”
Greg shrugged. “He named a price and I didn’t like it.”
“Three times what the rig is worth,” Coombs said.
“That’s what I didn’t like,” Greg said. “That outfit wouldn’t give us a break like that just for old times’ sake. Do you think they would?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Johnny said slowly. “Back before they built the city here, they used to have rats getting into the grub. Came right down off the ships. Got rid of most of them, finally, but it seems to me we’ve still got some around, even if they’ve got different shapes now.” He jerked his thumb toward the bedroom door. “In case you’re wondering, that’s why I was standin’ back there all this time, just to make sure you didn’t sell out to Tawney no matter what price he offered.”
Tom jumped up excitedly. “Then you know something about Dad’s accident!”
“No, I can’t say I do. I wasn’t there.”
“Do you really think it was an accident?”
“Can’t prove it wasn’t.”
“But at least you’ve got some ideas,” Tom said.
Johnny Coombs stood up and started the coffee-mix heating on the stove. “Takes more than ideas to make a case,” he said at length. “But there’s one thing I do know. I’ve got no proof, not a shred of it, but I’m sure of one thing just as sure as I’m on Mars.” He looked at the twins thoughtfully. “Your dad wasn’t just prospecting, out in the belt. He’d run onto something out there, something big.”
The twins stared at him. “Run unto something?” Greg said. “You mean…”
“I mean I think your dad hit a big strike out there, rich metal, a real bonanza lode, maybe the biggest strike that’s ever been made,” the miner said slowly. “And then somebody got to him before he could bring it in.”