Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One Read online

  For a space, with the candles glowing and evoking lambent ghosts in the highballs, even Root was gay. The air was wonderfully cool and the sands of the desert spread white and clean as damask out into the dimness. So they feasted on canned fowl and mushrooms and frozen fruit and drank deep of Root’s brandy, and across the pond the natives watched from the dark.

  And presently, while Root grew sleepy and dull, Landry became gay, and Barbara sparkled—the complete hostess, charming, witty and the Dicantropus night tinkled and throbbed with her laughter. She and Landry toasted each other and exchanged laughing comments at Root’s expense—who now sat slumping, stupid, half-asleep. Finally he lurched to his feet and stumbled off to the station.

  On the table by the lake the candles burnt low. Barbara poured more brandy. Their voices became murmurs and at last the candles guttered.

  In spite of any human will to hold time in blessed darkness, morning came and brought a day of silence and averted eyes. Then other days and nights succeeded each other and time proceeded as usual. And there was now little pretense at the station.

  Barbara frankly avoided Root and when she had occasion to speak her voice was one of covert amusement. Landry, secure, confident, aquiline, had a trick of sitting back and looking from one to the other as if inwardly chuckling over the whole episode. Root preserved a studied calm and spoke in a subdued tone which conveyed no meaning other than the sense of his words.

  There were a few minor clashes. Entering the bathroom one morning Root found Landry shaving with his razor. Without heat Root took the shaver out of Landry’s hand.

  For an instant Landry stared blankly, then wrenched his mouth into the beginnings of a snarl.

  Root smiled almost sadly. “Don’t get me wrong, Landry. There’s a difference between a razor and a woman. The razor is mine. A human being can’t be owned. Leave my personal property alone.”

  Landry’s eyebrows rose. “Man, you’re crazy.” He turned away. “Heat’s got you.”

  The days went past and now they were unchanging as before but unchanging with a new leaden tension. Words became even fewer and dislike hung like tattered tinsel. Every motion, every line of the body, became a detestable sight, an evil which the other flaunted deliberately.

  Root burrowed almost desperately into his rocks and bones, peered through his microscope, made a thousand measurements, a thousand notes. Landry and Barbara fell into the habit of taking long walks in the evening, usually out to the pyramid, then slowly back across the quiet cool sand.

  The mystery of the pyramid suddenly fascinated Landry and he even questioned Root.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Root. “Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that the natives don’t want anyone trying to get into it.”

  “Mph,” said Landry, gazing across the desert. “No telling what’s inside. Barbara said one of the natives was wearing a diamond necklace worth thousands.”

  “I suppose anything’s possible,” said Root. He had noticed the acquisitive twitch to Landry’s mouth, the hook of the fingers. “You’d better not get any ideas. I don’t want any trouble with the natives. Remember that, Landry.”

  Landry asked with seeming mildness, “Do you have any authority over that pyramid?”

  “No,” said Root shortly. “None whatever.”

  “It’s not—yours?” Landry sardonically accented the word and Root remembered the incident of the shaver.

  “No.”

  “Then,” said Landry, rising, “mind your own business.”

  He left the room.

  During the day Root noticed Landry and Barbara deep in conversation and he saw Landry rummaging through his ship. At dinner no single word was spoken.

  As usual, when the afterglow had died to a cool blue glimmer, Barbara and Landry strolled off into the desert. But tonight Root watched after them and he noticed a pack on Landry’s shoulders and Barbara seemed to be carrying a handbag.

  He paced back and forth, puffing furiously at his pipe. Landry was right—it was none of his business. If there were profit, he wanted none of it. And if there were danger, it would strike only those who provoked it. Or would it? Would he, Root, be automatically involved because of his association with Landry and Barbara? To the Dicantrops, a man was a man, and if one man needed punishment, all men did likewise.

  Would there be—killing? Root puffed at his pipe, chewed the stem, blew smoke out in gusts between his teeth. In a way he was responsible for Barbara’s safety. He had taken her from a sheltered life on Earth. He shook his head, put down his pipe, went to the drawer where he kept his gun. It was gone.

  Root looked vacantly across the room. Landry had it. No telling how long since he’d taken it. Root went to the kitchen, found a meat-axe, tucked it inside his jumper, set out across the desert.

  He made a wide circle in order to approach the pyramid from behind. The air was quiet and dark and cool as water in an old well. The crisp sand sounded faintly under his feet. Above him spread the sky and the sprinkle of the thousand stars. Somewhere up there was the Sun and old Earth.

  The pyramid loomed suddenly large and now he saw a glow, heard the muffled clinking of tools. He approached quietly, halted several hundred feet out in the darkness, stood watching, alert to all sounds.

  Landry’s atomite torch ate at the granite. As he cut, Barbara hooked the detached chunks out into the sand. From time to time Landry stood back, sweating and gasping from radiated heat.

  A foot he cut into the granite, two feet, three feet, and Root heard the excited murmur of voices. They were through, into empty space. Careless of watching behind them they sidled through the hole they had cut. Root, more wary, listened, strove to pierce the darkness…Nothing.

  He sprang forward, hastened to the hole, peered within. The yellow gleam of Landry’s torch swept past his eyes. He crept into the hole, pushed his head out into emptiness. The air was cold, smelled of dust and damp rock.

  Landry and Barbara stood fifty feet away. In the desultory flash of the lamp Root saw stone walls and a stone floor. The pyramid appeared to be an empty shell. Why then were the natives so particular? He heard Landry’s voice, edged with bitterness.

  “Not a damn thing, not even a mummy for your husband to gloat over.”

  Root could sense Barbara shuddering. “Let’s go. It gives me the shivers. It’s like a dungeon.”

  “Just a minute, we might as well make sure…Hm.” He was playing the light on the walls. “That’s peculiar.”

  “What’s peculiar?”

  “It looks like the stone was sliced with a torch. Notice how it’s fused here on the inside…”

  Root squinted, trying to see. “Strange,” he heard Landry mutter. “Outside it’s chipped, inside it’s cut by a torch. It doesn’t look so very old here inside, either.”

  “The air would preserve it,” suggested Barbara dubiously.

  “I suppose so—still, old places look old. There’s dust and a kind of dullness. This looks raw.”

  “I don’t understand how that could be.”

  “I don’t either. There’s something funny somewhere.”

  Root stiffened. Sound from without? Shuffle of splay feet in the sand—he started to back out. Something pushed him, he sprawled forward, fell. The bright eye of Landry’s torch stared in his direction. “What’s that?” came a hard voice. “Who’s there?”

  Root looked over his shoulder. The light passed over him, struck a dozen gray bony forms. They stood quietly just inside the hole, their eyes like balls of black plush.

  Root gained his feet. “Hah!” cried Landry. “So you’re here too.”

  “Not because I want to be,” returned Root grimly.

  Landry edged slowly forward, keeping his light on the Dicantrops. He asked Root sharply, “Are these lads dangerous?”

  Root appraised the natives. “I don’t know.”

  “Stay still,” said one of these in the front rank. “Stay still.” His voice was a deep croak.

  “
Stay still, hell!” exclaimed Landry. “We’re leaving. There’s nothing here I want. Get out of the way.” He stepped forward.

  “Stay still…We kill…”

  Landry paused.

  “What’s the trouble now?” interposed Root anxiously. “Surely there’s no harm in looking. There’s nothing here.”

  “That is why we kill. Nothing here, now you know. Now you look other place. When you think this place important, then you not look other place. We kill, new man come, he think this place important.”

  Landry muttered, “Do you get what he’s driving at?”

  Root said slowly, “I don’t know for sure.” He addressed the Dicantrop. “We don’t care about your secrets. You’ve no reason to hide things from us.”

  The native jerked his head. “Then why do you come here? You look for secrets.”

  Barbara’s voice came from behind. “What is your secret? Diamonds?”

  The native jerked his head again. Amusement? Anger? His emotions, unearthly, could be matched by no earthly words. “Diamonds are nothing—rocks.”

  “I’d like a carload,” Landry muttered under his breath.

  “Now look here,” said Root persuasively. “You let us out and we won’t pry into any of your secrets. It was wrong of us to break in and I’m sorry it happened. We’ll repair the damage—”

  The Dicantrop made a faint sputtering sound. “You do not understand. You tell other men—pyramid is nothing. Then other men look all around for other thing. They bother, look, look, look. All this no good. You die, everything go like before.”

  “There’s too much talk,” said Landry viciously, “and I don’t like the sound of it. Let’s get out of here.” He pulled out Root’s gun. “Come on,” he snapped at Root, “let’s move.”

  To the natives, “Get out of the way or I’ll do some killing myself!”

  A rustle of movement from the natives, a thin excited whimper.

  “We’ve got to rush ’em,” shouted Landry. “If they get outside they can knock us over as we leave. Let’s go!”

  He sprang forward and Root was close behind. Landry used the gun as a club and Root used his fists and the Dicantrops rattled like cornstalks against the walls. Landry erupted through the hole. Root pushed Barbara through and, kicking back at the natives behind him, struggled out into the air.

  Landry’s momentum had carried him away from the pyramid, out into a seething mob of Dicantrops. Root, following more slowly, pressed his back to the granite. He sensed the convulsive movement in the wide darkness. “The whole colony must be down here,” he shouted into Barbara’s ear. For a minute he was occupied with the swarming natives, keeping Barbara behind him as much as possible. The first ledge of granite was about shoulder height.

  “Step on my hands,” he panted. “I’ll shove you up.”

  “But—Landry!” came Barbara’s choked wail.

  “Look at that crowd!” bit Root furiously. “We can’t do anything.” A sudden rush of small bony forms almost overwhelmed him. “Hurry up!”

  Whimpering she stepped into his clasped hands. He thrust her up on the first ledge. Shaking off the clawing natives who had leapt on him, he jumped, scrambled up beside her. “Now run!” he shouted in her ear and she fled down the ledge.

  From the darkness came a violent cry. “Root! Root! For God’s sake—they’ve got me down—” Another hoarse yell, rising to a scream of agony. Then silence.

  “Hurry!” said Root. They came to the far corner of the pyramid. “Jump down,” panted Root. “Down to the ground.”

  “Landry!” moaned Barbara, teetering at the edge.

  “Get down!” snarled Root. He thrust her down to the white sand and, seizing her hand, ran across the desert, back toward the station. A minute or so later, with pursuit left behind, he slowed to a trot.

  “We should go back,” cried Barbara. “Are you going to leave him to those devils?”

  Root was silent a moment. Then, choosing his words, he said, “I told him to stay away from the place. Anything that happens to him is his own fault. And whatever it is, it’s already happened. There’s nothing we can do now.”

  A dark hulk shouldered against the sky—Landry’s ship.

  “Let’s get in here,” said Root. “We’ll be safer than in the station.”

  He helped her into the ship, clamped tight the port. “Phew!” He shook his head. “Never thought it would come to this.”

  He climbed into the pilot’s seat, looked out across the desert. Barbara huddled somewhere behind him, sobbing softly.

  An hour passed, during which they said no word. Then, without warning, a fiery orange ball rose from the hill across the pond, drifted toward the station. Root blinked, jerked upright in his seat. He scrambled for the ship’s machine gun, yanked at the trigger—without result.

  When at last he found and threw off the safety the orange ball hung over the station and Root held his fire. The ball brushed against the antenna—a tremendous explosion spattered to every corner of vision. It seared Root’s eyes, threw him to the deck, rocked the ship, left him dazed and half-conscious.

  Barbara lay moaning. Root hauled himself to his feet. A seared pit, a tangle of metal, showed where the station had stood. Root dazedly slumped into the seat, started the fuel pump, plunged home the catalyzers. The boat quivered, bumped a few feet along the ground. The tubes sputtered, wheezed.

  Root looked at the fuel gauge, looked again. The needle pointed to zero, a fact which Root had known but forgotten. He cursed his own stupidity. Their presence in the ship might have gone ignored if he had not called attention to it.

  Up from the hill floated another orange ball. Root jumped for the machine gun, sent out a burst of explosive pellets. Again the roar and the blast and the whole top of the hill was blown off, revealing what appeared to be a smooth strata of black rock.

  Root looked over his shoulder to Barbara. “This is it.”

  “Wha—what do you mean?”

  “We can’t get away. Sooner or later—” His voice trailed off. He reached up, twisted a dial labeled EMERGENCY. The ship’s ULR unit hummed. Root said into the mesh, “Dicantropus station—we’re being attacked by natives. Send help at once.”

  Root sank back into the seat. A tape would repeat his message endlessly until cut off.

  Barbara staggered to the seat beside Root. “What were those orange balls?”

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering—some sort of bomb.”

  But there were no more of them. And presently the horizon began to glare, the hill became a silhouette on the electric sky. And over their heads the transmitter pulsed an endless message into space.

  “How long before we get help?” whispered Barbara.

  “Too long,” said Root, staring off toward the hill. “They must be afraid of the machine gun—I can’t understand what else they’re waiting for. Maybe good light.”

  “They can—” Her voice stopped. She stared. Root stared, held by unbelief—amazement. The hill across the pond was breaking open, crumbling…

  Root sat drinking brandy with the captain of the supply ship Method, which had come to their assistance, and the captain was shaking his head.

  “I’ve seen lots of strange things around this cluster but this masquerade beats everything.”

  Root said, “It’s strange in one way, in another it’s as cold and straightforward as ABC. They played it as well as they could and it was pretty darned good. If it hadn’t been for that scoundrel Landry they’d have fooled us forever.”

  The captain banged his glass on the desk, stared at Root. “But why?”

  Root said slowly, “They liked Dicantropus. It’s a hell-hole, a desert to us, but it was heaven to them. They liked the heat, the dryness. But they didn’t want a lot of off-world creatures prying into their business—as we surely would have if we’d seen through the masquerade. It must have been an awful shock when the first Earth ship set down here.”

  “And that pyramid…”

>   “Now that’s a strange thing. They were good psychologists, these Dicantrops, as good as you could expect an off-world race to be. If you’ll read a report of the first landing, you’ll find no mention of the pyramid. Why? Because it wasn’t here. Landry thought it looked new. He was right. It was new. It was a fraud, a decoy—just strange enough to distract our attention.

  “As long as that pyramid sat out there, with me focusing all my mental energy on it, they were safe—and how they must have laughed. As soon as Landry broke in and discovered the fraud, then it was all over…

  “That might have been their miscalculation,” mused Root. “Assume that they knew nothing of crime, of anti-social action. If everybody did what he was told to do their privacy was safe forever.” Root laughed. “Maybe they didn’t know human beings so well after all.”

  The captain refilled the glasses and they drank in silence. “Wonder where they came from,” he said at last.

  Root shrugged. “I suppose we’ll never know. Some other hot dry planet, that’s sure. Maybe they were refugees or some peculiar religious sect or maybe they were a colony.”

  “Hard to say,” agreed the captain sagely. “Different race, different psychology. That’s what we run into all the time.”

  “Thank God they weren’t vindictive,” said Root, half to himself. “No doubt they could have killed us any one of a dozen ways after I’d sent out that emergency call and they had to leave.”

  “It all ties in,” admitted the captain.

  Root sipped the brandy, nodded. “Once that ULR signal went out, their isolation was done for. No matter whether we were dead or not, there’d be Earthmen swarming around the station, pushing into their tunnels—and right there went their secret.”

  And he and the captain silently inspected the hole across the pond where the tremendous space-ship had lain buried under the spine-scrub and rusty black creeper.

  “And once that space-ship was laid bare,” Root continued, “there’d be a hullabaloo from here to Fomalhaut. A tremendous mass like that? We’d have to know everything—their space-drive, their history, everything about them. If what they wanted was privacy that would be a thing of the past. If they were a colony from another star they had to protect their secrets the same way we protect ours.”