He said nothing, looking toward the hills, the distant glow of light.

  "You probably feel you should be there with them," she said. "I'm glad you're not."

  "Sven has had experience with mining machinery and Miles is an engineer. Hans and your man Gheel can do the moving and holding. If I was there I'd only be in the way."

  "And you had other things to do." Taking his hand she led the way to a seat. "You're clever, Earl. Not many men would be willing to let others take the lead. Even Rudi used to thrust himself forward more than he should have done. It made him unpopular at the university. People like to be made to feel important."

  "Perhaps they were envious."

  "Of me?" Her soft laughter showed she appreciated the compliment. "Don't underestimate the viciousness of academics, Earl. Your average professor can be more spiteful than a betrayed woman. Haven't you found that those who live the most restricted lives are often the most intolerant? And few lives are as restricted as that of those who teach."

  "What did you do before you married?"

  "Do you really care, Earl? I studied, taught a little, took a position as assessor for a company making geological surveys. I even traveled a little." She moved closer to him, leaning back in order to look at the sky, the stars hanging like jewels in the heavens. "Just a little, Earl, and always to safe, civilized worlds. You would have been bored."

  Her shoulder was against his own, her profile sharp against the starlight, the smooth mounds of her breasts enhanced by the wind-tautened fabric. The long, smooth curves of her thighs were parted, the material of her gown forming a concavity between them; a cradle in which she rested her hands.

  "Bored," she said again. "Sometimes I think it to be the worst condition of all. To wake knowing what every hour will bring, every minute predicted, each second alloted its special task. To see nothing ahead but endless repetition of the familiar."

  "To eat," he said. "To know that you will not be hungry. To know that you will sleep in comfort and safety. To be certain that, for you, there will be a tomorrow. Many would yearn for such a condition."

  "But not you, Earl." She turned to face him, one hand lifting to rest on his arm. "Never you." A creature of the wild, she thought as she studied his face. The most dangerous creature of all. A man who had early learned to live without any protection other than that given by his own prowess. A fighter, one not afraid to kill, one never afraid to plunge into the unknown. Against him Rudi seemed a petulant child. Had he been alive now which would she have chosen?

  Dumarest looked at the hand which she had closed tightly on his arm. "Worried?"

  "A little." It was a relief to change the subject. "Debts, commitments, the usual thing. God, how at times I wish I could forget the whole damned mess. Tell Mtouba to take all I own and just live life as most do on this world."

  He said, bluntly. "If it was in your nature to do that you'd have done it long ago. No, Isobel, you're a fighter. You don't give in."

  "Rudi used to say that in any enterprise there was a point where a wise man accepted his limitations."

  "The justification of failure."

  "No, Earl! Rudi—"

  "Is dead." He was curt in his interruption. "That very fact stamps him as a failure."

  "You are cruel to say that. It was an accident."

  "One he could have avoided and should have done. One born of ignorance. What did he know of mining aside from what books had told him? The tunnel was too large, there should have been shoring, he should have tested the soil to discover the coefficient of adhesion." Things he had failed to do and so had died and was buried—why had he worn the medallion? Recognizing the cause of his anger Dumarest said, more gently, "I'm sorry. I should not have said that."

  "It's true. I tried to warn him but he wouldn't listen." She added, "It means a lot to you, doesn't it? Finding the medallion, I mean."

  "Yes."

  "And when you find it? If you find it?" She knew the answer. "You'll move on. But if you find this world, Earl, what then?"

  A question he'd been asked before and now, as then, had no answer. The search had taken too long, the disappointments had been too many, the driving need to find the planet obliterating all other considerations. To find Earth. To find it—beyond that nothing existed.

  And it was there, somewhere among the stars, waiting for him once he had gained the secret lying so close.

  The wind freshened and Isobel shivered a little, pressing closer to gain warmth and shelter. The stars were fuzzed now, their brightness dulled with scudding wisps of cloud.

  "It'll rain soon. Tomorrow, maybe."

  "Will it be bad?" It would be the first rain he'd seen on this world.

  "No, it's too early in the year for that. Just showers but they'll delay the ephemerae—their pods can't swell when it's wet. Later, when warmed by the sun, the air will be full of color."

  Devils dancing in their changing patterns but this time she wouldn't be watching them. Tomorrow they would all be at the mine and Dumarest too busy to pay her any attention. Tomorrow—but tonight he would be hers.

  Chapter Twelve

  From the headphones Zalman's voice said, "One fifty, Earl."

  "Right."

  A routine report which required only a brief acknowledgment and Dumarest had no breath to spare for unnecessary conversation. Fifty yards on the surface could be covered in as many strides but the same distance below ground was another matter. A span measured in feet as progress was measured in inches.

  Dumarest drew up his knees and used foot and elbows to lever himself farther along the bore. It stretched before him, a circular hole barely a yard in diameter, the sides roughly combed by the teeth which had torn it from the rock. A shaft without ventilation; the air he breathed came from tanks fastened to his back and fed into a mask which covered his face. Condensed sweat made pools at neck and chin, more stinging his eyes. Beneath the padding and his own clothing his body was slimed with moisture.

  "Two seventy, Earl."

  "Right."

  The beam of his helmet lantern bobbed as he inched on, hitting the sides of the bore, deflected from a point farther down. The shaft which should have been straight was curved, irregular, the cutters diverted by altered densities and a malfunctioning guidance system. Even so it ran in the desired direction.

  Dumarest halted as the beam showed what he was looking for. With a small pick he dug out a nugget of juscar and slipped it into a pouch before making his report.

  "Hit."

  "Good! How does it look, Earl?" Zalman was optimistic. He sobered as Dumarest told him. "Bad color, eh? Well, maybe it'll increase as you move on."

  A forlorn hope. The juscar was scattered and it was possible to drive a shaft through it and not find a single nugget. So far he'd been lucky and from his finds and their proximity a vector could be drawn on the map of probable dispersement. Axilia's method and a good one.

  "Four seventy, Earl."

  "Right."

  Zalman had sounded worried and with reason. The rock was soft, the bore deep and if anything happened Dumarest was as good as dead. A risk he had taken but one which no man in his right mind could like. Again he halted to gouge free another nugget. A small one, the blue barely noticeable in the beam of his lantern, its finding a matter of chance.

  As it came free the bore trembled.

  Dumarest felt it, instinctively crouching, eyes wide behind the mask, his muscles tensed to fight an enemy he couldn't see. One he had no hope of defeating. Again he felt the slight tremor and a thin plume of dust fell from the roof of the shaft to rain on his helmet. A shift of some tectonic plate, the crashing impact of storm-driven waves on some distant coast—the cause was unimportant. If the bore collapsed he would be buried to lie, still living, in a nighted tomb.

  "Earl?" The voice riding the wire attached to the lifeline was strained. "You've gone deep enough, man. We only bored down to seven hundred and you're past the six-fifty mark now. Up?"

  "Up," said Dumarest. "Up!"

  He felt the movement of slack at his side then the pull at the yoke attached to his ankles. A pull which straightened the rope and closed his legs. Beneath him the floor of the shaft began to slide under the padding, the circle illuminated by his lantern to diminish with slow deliberation. As he watched more dust fell to thicken the air.

  "Hurry!"

  "Earl?"

  "Hurry, damn you! Hurry!"

  Rock fell as the pull at the rope increased, small fragments which heaped into a pile, others which, with startling abruptness, filled the bore where he had been lying. Beneath him the dirt rasped against the padding, his knees, the toes of his boots. He lifted them, fighting the pull, accepting the strain on calves and thighs in order to avoid any impact with an obstruction or uneven spot in the bore.

  "Earl!" Zalman knelt beside him as Dumarest left the mouth of the shaft. "Are you hurt?"

  "No." Dumarest removed the helmet and mask. "A bruise or two but that's all. You logged the finds?" He smiled as Zalman nodded. "You did well, Hans. Thanks."

  "We're partners, Earl. I haven't forgotten."

  A reminder of a bargain yet to be completed but Dumarest doubted if it was only that. Freed of the tanks and padding he laved his face and head in a bucket, rising to dry himself, seeing Zalman rewind the rope on its drum, the activity all around.

  Ten days had made a change. Where there had been only the gaping mouths of decaying shafts and the camp where men stayed if they wanted and worked if they chose was ordered confusion. The place was littered with fresh mounds of debris gouged from the rock; the detritus forming a bizarre pattern against the hills. An awning shielded a table at which the workers ate, tents provided accommodation, a trough held water for washing. Latrines had been dug well away from the field kitchen with its pots and oil-fed fires. To one side the tunneler dominated the scene, the sound of its engine a thin, spiteful whine. From the bore it had made came a constant stream of gritty particles which were gathered and dumped by a suction tube handled by a pair of men.

  Axilia looked up as Dumarest approached. "Any luck?"

  "Some—but not what we wanted."

  "Trouble?"

  "That too—the bore fell in." Dumarest looked at the tuneller. "Has that been going all the time?"

  "No. The engine broke down and it took time to fix." Axilia narrowed his eyes. "You think it vibrated the strata and brought down the roof?"

  "It could have. From now on there's to be a halt on working while anyone's in a bore." Dumarest looked at Tocsaw. The man was sweating, dust plastering his face and naked torso to give him the appearance of a living statue. "He's standing up well."

  "More than you can say about the others." Axilia glowered to where Ocher and Quail sat at the table beneath the awning. They and others had come to join the workers but already some had left and Dumarest knew that others would follow.

  He said, "I'll check out the findings with you later, Sven. Now I could use something to drink."

  A slack-faced girl served him, spilling half the tisane as she filled his cup. A lump of bread followed and he took both over to the table. The awning provided an acoustic relay and, leaning back, he could hear what Quail was saying.

  "… crazy. That bastard will kill us all if we give him the chance. It's all right for Sven, he likes mining, to him all this is a game, but what are we getting out of it? Work, bad food, more work. Hell, I didn't come to Elysius for this."

  "We offered—"

  "Sure we did. Do a little digging and get a share of the juscar. Get ourselves a stake if we want to move on. Real money for a High passage, maybe—man, we'll be lucky if we get enough to ride Low. You fancy that?"

  Traveling doped, frozen, and ninety per cent dead. Riding in caskets meant for the transportation of beasts and risking the fifteen percent death rate for the sake of cheap transportation.

  Ocher shook his head. "I've done that too often. Once more could be one time too many."

  "That's right." Quail took a sip of his tisane and spat it into the dust. "Swill! We work like dogs and we don't even get wine. To hell with it. There's color in the north and the manna will be lying thick. How about us harvesting it while we have the chance?"

  "What's the point? The Hausi won't buy."

  "Because he's got a cut coming from the mine, but he'll change his mind once we have the monopoly. See what I mean? We harvest and store and use a little muscle if we have to to make sure we get it all. Who can stop us?" His laughter was ugly. "Man, we've got it made. All we need do is collect."

  An entrepreneur recognizing an opportunity but also a man whose labor Dumarest needed. Rising he stood before them both.

  "Earl?" Ocher looked up, squinting. "How did it go?"

  "Fair enough."

  "Hit the nexus yet?" Quail added, "Don't bother to answer. You didn't. I can read it in your face."

  "As I can read what you have in mind in yours." Dumarest looked at the disorder of the mine, the hills, the sky to the north. "There are easier ways of making a living, right?" As Quail nodded he said, "Harvesting the manna, for example. I've thought about it but I've recognized the snags. First, the Hausi won't pay high—why should he when so many are offering it cheap? Then you have to go out and get it—not easy unless you've got a raft. Humping that stuff in bulk means work and, of course, you'd have to have containers and such. You'd need money all along the line."

  "For boxes," said Ocher thoughtfully. "And you'd need supplies."

  "Unless you want to live on the manna, yes. But once you take it you won't want to go to all that trouble. And if you're thinking of forcing others to work for you, forget it. Remember the fight I had with Sven? How no one tried to help the woman? She doesn't eat manna, that's why. If she'd been one of them they would all have jumped in to help her and Sven would be dead by now." He added, casually, "Don't take my word for it, ask Mtouba. Of try it the hard way."

  Quail said, "Those dummies won't hurt us."

  "Maybe not."

  "They haven't the guts."

  "Then you've got nothing to worry about." Dumarest finished his tisane. "But if you try to steal the raft you'll have plenty. The same if you take anything else. Leave if you want but, when you go, you go empty handed." He looked from one to the other. "Do I make myself clear?"

  Dusk brought the time for decisions. Seated at the table Axilia swept a hand over the map before him, a finger tracing a straight line.

  "The bore you checked, Earl. I've correlated the findings and it's a bust. Decent color but not enough and fading instead of thickening. My guess is we cut across the perimeter." His hand moved, the finger tracing another line. "As we did here."

  Tocsaw said, "Trace two lines within a circle, bisect the angle where they join and a line from there will aim toward the center."

  "And away from it."

  "That would lead up into the open air." The engineer wiped a hand over his face, the palm smearing oil to be a wider blotch. "Let's not play games, Sven."

  "We're talking of a sphere not a circle," reminded Dumarest. "Eliminate the upper half and we've still got a wide choice of direction."

  One they had tried to narrow with the bores, the extensions of old workings. Computations backed by the miner's instinct and knowledge but they all knew success rested on luck as much as anything else. And time was running out.

  "The men are restless," said Zalman. "Most of them are ready to quit."

  "Quail and Ocher?"

  "Those too, Earl, but they can be handled. Give them a few nuggets and they'll be greedy for more. No, it's the others who are the real problem. Their patience is running out and a few of them have tried to steal." Part of his duties was to check them from the workings, taking what they had found, reading in their attitudes and answers if they were holding out. He added, bleakly, "They keep staring at the color in the sky."

  "If they want to leave we can't hold them." Dumarest turned to the woman. "Any luck with Mtouba?"

  "He's given all the credit he can," she said. "Or that's what he says. From now on we pay for what we get and, if we take too long delivering some metal, he'll close us down."

  Axilia said, "Maybe he won't find that too easy."

  "All he has to do is wait," said Dumarest. "We need supplies which he needn't deliver. The stuff we have now he doesn't want returned but he could come to collect the tunneler if he wants."

  "He's welcome to it." Tocsaw wiped again at his face. "The damned thing's a heap of junk."

  An exaggeration but the machine kept breaking down due to faulty repairs and previous abuse. Dumarest looked at where it rested on the slope almost hidden by its own mounds of crushed rock. Only the drive was visible, the cutting head was far below the surface, and even as he watched a man working on the engine swore and jumped back from a vivid flare of bluish light.

  "Mitel," said Tocsaw. "He's willing enough but a dope. I told him to check all the insulation and you saw what happened. Well, I'd better get over there and see what I can do."

  "Not yet." Dumarest looked at the map. "How far down is the bore?" He nodded at the answer. "Still a way to go yet. Can you steepen the angle?"

  "It's perpendicular now." Axilia gave the answer. "A chance we have to take. Earl. I have orders for a direct shaft to run from here," he tapped at the map, "to here. Once we check it we'll have another vector to plot the nexus-line. We might even be lucky and hit the main deposit."

  Or they could just be wasting more time. Dumarest looked at the map as he had done a hundred times before trying to read into the lines and details more than they showed. The juscar was there—the nuggets proved it, but in which direction lay the main concentration? Bury a ball under the sand, stick a needle into the dirt while blindfolded and how often must you try before hitting dead center?

  Zalman, reading him, said, "Is it possible, Earl?"

  "What?" Axilia looked from one to the other, frowning. "What's possible? What are you talking about?"

  "We're assuming the nexus must be under the hills toward the west," said Dumarest. "Maybe we're trying too far west. Could it lie toward the east?"