Battlefield Earth

They nodded.

“Tomorrow,” said Jo

They got to work to mine the gold they didn't want but had to have. Gold was the bait in the trap.

Chapter 3

Jo

Two months had gone by and he felt their chances were worsening. The only blessing was that the winter snows were late: but not the winter cold, and the wind sighing through the night was bitter.

The huge night glasses were icy to the touch. The binocular character of them made them hard to use– the two eyepieces, being Psychlo, were so far apart he could only use one at a time.

The faint light of the dying moon reflected from the snow-capped peak behind him and gave a faint luminescence to the plain.

He was trying to see her fire. From this vantage point he knew by experience that he should be able to. So far he could not find even the tiniest pinpoint of it.

The last time he had seen her, two months ago, he had piled the cage with wood, given her some wheat to boil, and even a few late radishes and lettuces, all from the old women's garden. She had a fair supply of smoked meat, but it would not last forever.

He had tried rather unsuccessfully to cheer her up and give her confidence he himself was not feeling.

He had also given her one of the stainless steel knives the scout had found, and she had pretended to be amazed and delighted with it and the way it could scrape a hide and cut thin strips of meat.

In all these two months, he had not heard from Terl. Forbidden to go to the compound, having no radio contact, he had waited in vain for Terl to come to the base.

Perhaps Terl thought they had moved. True, they had put an emergency camp near the minesite down in a hidden valley. They had moved extra machines, supplies, and the three shifts for the lode and one of the old women to cook and wash for them. There was an abandoned mining village there and it was a short flight to the lode.

The efforts to mine the vein were not going well. They had driven the steel bars into the cliff and tried to build a platform, but the wind, meeting resistance, kept flexing the rods at the point of contact with the cliff and the section there would become red hot. It was daredevil work. Two rods had already broken and only safety lines had saved Scots from plummeting a thousand feet to their deaths. Two months' work in bitter and ferocious winds. And they had only a few pounds of wire gold to show for it– gold grabbed, as it were, on the fly.

This was the fifth night he had lain here and looked in vain for the fire that should be there.

Five nights before, not seeing the fire, they had sent a scout.

There had been a row with the council and the others when they found he was determined to slip down there himself. They had literally barred the door on him. Robert the Fox had become cross with him and shouted into his ears that Chiefs didn't scout. They might raid, but never scout. It was too dangerous for him; he was not expendable. He had argued and found the rest of the council taking Robert's side. And when other Scots heard the raised voices they came and stood around the council– as they had a right to do, they said– and added their arguments against his taking senseless risks with his person.

It had been quite a row. And they were right.

They had sent, as a compromise, young Fearghus. He went off like a shadow through the cold moonlight and they waited out the hours.

Somehow young Fearghus got home. He was badly wounded. The flesh of his shoulder was seared like beef. He had gotten almost to the small plateau in front of the cage. The moon had set by then. There was no fire in the cage. But there was something new at the compound-sentries! The area was patrolled by one armed Psychlo near the cages and one or more guards walking the perimeter of the compound.

The guard at the cage had fired at a shadow. Fearghus had gotten away only by howling like a wolf in pain, for the sentry supposed he had shot a wolf, common enough on the plains.

Fearghus was in the makeshift hospital now, shoulder packed in bear grease and herbs. He would get well, clucked over by one of the old women. He was triumphant rather than cowed, for he had proven the majority opinion right.

The other Scots, singly and in groups, informed MacTyler that the point was proven beyond any doubt. A Chief must not go on scout; raid yes, scout no.

The parson had consoled Jo

Lying in the tall grass using binoculars built for an alien face, Jo

Here they were, a tiny group of a vanishing race, on a planet itself small and out of the way, confronting the most powerful and advanced beings in the universes. From galaxy to galaxy, system to system, world to world, the Psychlos were supreme. They had smashed every sentient race that had ever sought to oppose them, and even those that had tried to cooperate. With advanced technology and a pitiless temperament, the Psychlos had never been successfully opposed in all the rapacious eons of their existence.

Jo

No, not the last hope, thought Jo

Yes, he had a potential weapon. But not only did he have no uranium; he didn't even have a detector. He had nothing at all to tell him where to look or even whether something was uranium. He and the Scots had a very forlorn hope indeed.

He put the binoculars on maximum magnification. One last sweep on that sleeping compound way over there. Nightlights, green pinpoints under the domes. But no yellow-orange fire.

He was about to give it up for the night when his sweeping glasses picked up the fuel dump. There were piled the cartridges that powered the machines. A bit distant, safely away in case of a blowup, was the explosives magazine– plenty of explosives for mining, but even blowing the whole thing up would not really jar the compound. And there were the battle planes, twenty of them lined up on a ready line. Across the transshipment area from the battle planes and distant from all the rest, but closer to the cage area, was the breathe-gas dump. The company didn't care how much breathe-gas it stockpiled; in huge drums and small mask bottles, there must be enough breathe-gas there to last the mining operation fifty years. It was piled higgledy-piggledy. It was never checked out-machine operators simply picked up canisters for their canopies and masks. There was too much of it to require conservation.

The glasses swept on. Jo