The Gripping Hand

Re

"You want local color, you came to the right place. I'm Ajax Boynton."

"Kevin Re

"Sir Kevin," Boynton said. "Saw you on tri-vee. Hey, fellows, we got a celebrity."

Re

Four more joined him. Two ordered straight orange juice. It cost as much as liquor. They introduced themselves as the Scott brothers, James and Darwin.

"I take it things are slow?" Kevin asked,

"A little," Darwin Scott said. He shrugged massive shoulders. "Snow ghost hunting's a chancy thing. Get a good one and you make money, but you don't always."

"Then what?"

"Then you wait for somebody to stake you," Ajax Boynton said. "You looking to invest some money?"

Re

"Five thousand buys a quarter share," Boynton said. "Ten thousand buys forty percent."

"Why-"

"With ten thousand worth of gear we have a better chance of getting a ghost."

"Oh. Plausible."

"Still interested?"

"Sure, if I get to come along."

Boynton looked a

"You keep saying that. With IR gear, and-"

"And sonar, and the best damn acoustic gear we can come up with," James Scott said, "And we lose people, because it's a long way north, the aurora mucks up electronics. And-"

"And ghosts move fast," his brother said. "They dig in near tree roots, where you can't get a good sonar map. They stay down in the snow so the IR doesn't spot them, And they can swim under snow faster than you can walk. Forget it, Mister."

"Let's see, now. I back you for ten thousand worth of gear, which I leave behind when the ship lifts. A good ghost fur costs...what? Straight from you, no retailer."

Darwin Scott said, "I'd get around twenty thousand."

Re

Three men sighed. Re

Three men were hiding smiles. Ajax Boynton said, "Me neither. If you've got a place in mind, I'll tell you if there are snow ghosts there."

"Let's find a map."

4 Snow Ghost

Have you not seen how your Lord lengthens out the shadow?

He could have kept it motionless if he liked.

Yet We make the sun its pilot to show the way.

al-Qur'an

"Is this wise?" Bury sipped at coffee and examined the map projected on the wall. "It will certainly not be comfortable."

Re

"So will synthetics, and they are much cheaper. Why the area between the glaciers?"

"Oh, hell, Bury. How do you know Reuben Fox is hiding something but he isn't stealing and can't be bribed? Brains and instinct and technique. It took me all afternoon. We talked. The Scott brothers switched from orange juice to tea ... the Maguey Worm has a magic coffeepot variation. Gilbey makes a liter of tea and then lets the caffeine filter out through the wall. Takes five minutes."

"More Motie influence."

"Right off of your ships, Horace! Anyway I pointed at various parts of the map, all of it in the region where the northern lights play, but that's fairly large. Snow ghosts? Yes. No. Maybe. They'd never live here, they've been hunted out there, my brother got one here a year ago."

"I wish you had a fast-forward switch, Kevin."

"By and by, Boynton said he'd heard opal meerschaum came from under the Hand Glacier. The Scott brothers said it didn't, it had been searched by an uncle or something, and besides, the place had been hunted out of snow ghosts twenty years ago. So I went on pointing, and every place I pointed, the Scott brothers thought I might find a snow ghost there."

"There's something in the Hand. The Mormons know about it and Boynton doesn't. For that matter, it might be opal meerschaum. Under the glacier. You wait till the glacier moves; that's why the market's so sporadic."

"Given the geology I would not be surprised, but what is that to you?"

Re

"And you trust your companions, whom you met in a bar-"

"I had Ruth Cohen check on them. Boynton and the Scott brothers are well known, no trouble with the police except that Boynton gets drunk when he has a good hunt. The Maguey Worm is one of half a dozen places where ghost hunters hang out looking for a. stake."

"Still-?"

"You have a better lead?"

"I have leads. And a different ma

"No guts, no glory." Re

The glacier ended in sharp edges bordered in bare rocky ground. The bare spots ranged from a few meters to several kilometers before vanishing into the snow. They flew past a cluster of buildings nestled against the glacier edge. Two buildings stood out, one wide and low, the other taller amid more massive. Mist and steam rose from all the clear-ground areas to the thick cloud cover above them, so that it was hard to see the town,

"Zion," Ajax Boynton said.

"Looks interesting," Re

"For us," Darwin Scott said. "That's one of the True Temples. But there won't be any ghosts near there. No opal meerschaum, either."

"Not there," Boynton agreed. "But that stuff's got to be near here somewhere."

"Why?"

"We know the jade comes from here."

"We know people say so," James Scott said. ‘But I never met anyone who'd found any."

"You have, too," Ajax Boynton said. "Ralph. Ralph... hell, I forget. Came to the Maguey and bought for the house."

"Yeah, and the next day bought a ticket for Tabletop," James Scott said. "I'd forgotten him. Okay, so you can get lucky."

"Never did understand that," Boynton said. "Ralph-Plemmons, that was his name. I didn't know him all that well, but I sure never figured him to leave the Purchase." He looked down at the map display on the flier's navigation screen. "Fifteen more klicks south, then twenty east. I know a good place."

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