Battlefield Earth

“Your animals are all trained?” said Terl.

“As well as can be expected.”

“Well, notice you've had a couple extra weeks.”

“They'll do.”

“All right, now. We have to come to the time to be real miners!” He rolled out the map. It was a patch-up of sectional ru

“Yes,” said Jo

Terl snapped the head of a canyon with his talon. “It’s there.” Jo

There it was, a diagonal slash of white in the red side of a canyon. Terl took a closer shot and showed it. Fingers of pure gold could be seen threading through the quartz.

Jo

He sat there and let Jo

Jo

Terl put all his papers away except the map. “Hold on to that.” He stood up.

“How long do we have to get it out?” said Jo

“Day 91 of the coming year. That's six and a half months away.”

“That's also winter,” said Jo

Terl shrugged. “It’s always winter up there. Ten months of winter and two months of fall.” He laughed. “Fly over and look at it, animal. Take a week or two to study it out. And then come over and we'll have a private meeting. And this is confidential, do you hear? Outside of your animals, say nothing."

Terl had gone off playing catch with the control box. His ground car roared away back to the compound.

A couple of hours later Jo

“That's the first time,” said one of the Scots behind Jo

Jo

Psychlo that well?”

“Of course,” said the Scot and showed the ruler bruises on the back of his hand. He was one of the lads chosen because of his resemblance to Jo

“One of our very few advantages,” said Jo

“Well,” said Robert the Fox, “it's a very optimistic man that thinks he can win all the battles. What are all those villages down there?”

It was true. There were old towns here and there throughout this section of the mountains.

“They're deserted,” said Jo

"'Tis a sad thing” said Robert the Fox. “All this space and all kinds of food and no people. And over in Scotland there's little space that will grow anything and hardly any food at all. It 's a dark chapter in history we've been through.”

“We'll change it,” said a young Scot behind him.

“Aye,” said Robert the Fox. "If we have any luck. All this great broad world full of food and no people! What are the names of those grand peaks down there?”

“I don't know,” said Jo

“Hey!” said a young Scot. “There's sheep down on that mountainside!” He was using a hand telescope.

“They're called bighorns,” said Jo

“And there's a bear!” said the Scot. “What a big one!”

“The bears will go into hibernation soon,” said Jo

“Some wolves are following him,” said the Scot.

“Laddies,” said Robert the Fox, “we are hunting bigger game! Keep your eye out for the canyon.”

Jo

Chapter 7

It was a startling sight. The grandeur of the scene in this thin, cold air made one feel small.

Out of a river, a thin, silver thread in the depths far below, reared a reddish, massive wall of rock rising sheer and raw. Narrowly across from it was its echoing face. Down through the eons the river, finding a softer strata between the two faces, had gnawed its turbulent way to make at last this gigantic knife slice in the all but impregnable stone. A thousand feet deep, a hundred yards wide, the enormous wound gaped.

All around it rose majestic peaks, hiding it from the world.

The sparkling white line of quartz, many feet thick, marked it with a brief, diagonal line. And in that quartz, imbedded and pure, gold shone and beckoned.

It had in its reality a much greater impact than any photograph. It was like a jewel band set upon the wrinkled skin of a hag.

One could see far below where a portion of the cliff face had fallen; the fragments lay like crashed pebbles in the depths. The river had eaten too deep under the cliff and an earthquake had shaken a slice of the face loose.

Snow had not fallen yet, for the year was dry, and there was nothing to impede the view. Jo

And then the wind hit them.

Fu

With fingers racing across the overlarge keys of the console, Jo

It was not a dazzling lode at that moment. It was a brutal, elemental wall that could crush them if they touched it.

Jo

Du

In these teleportation drives, there were a number of corrections that had to be constantly watched. Some were built in to the computers; some were preprogrammed for any flight. Space itself was absolute and motionless, having no time, energy, or mass of its own. But to stay in one place relative to the mass around one, it was necessary to parallel the track of such mass. The world turned daily, and that was a near thousand-mile-an-hour correction. The earth orbited the sun and that required second-to-second correction. The solar system was precessing, and even if the correction was minute, it had to be compensated for. The whole solar system was en route to somewhere else at a blinding speed. The universe itself was twisting in relation to other universes. These factors and others made control of the ship a dicey business in normal times. Down there in that canyon it was a nightmare.

The irregular external buffetings of the wind upset the inertia of the motor housing and made instant shifts of coordination continual.

Du