Battlefield Earth

Chapter 10

It was the consensus of opinion at the mountain site that they all should be very visible and look busy for the flyover of the drone today.

Jonnie was very concerned. It was absolutely vital that Terl continue with his gold scheme. All their own plans depended on it utterly.

They had weighed various alternates to their own strategy but none of them was good. They could fly into the old defense base now—Angus had gotten the heliport door to work—but they only used it for supplies. It was a long way from ready. The parson’s idea that they should bury the dead there was shelved due to the magnitude of the task and their own few numbers. The parson had decided the place was really a tomb anyway. Later, perhaps, when they had freed the planet—if they succeeded in that—they could bury the dead. Now their energies must be devoted to the living and a possible future. So they really couldn’t withdraw into the old primary defense base. It wasn’t ready and they were not defeated. Not yet anyway.

Keeping Terl going on with his plan was their single hope. But Jonnie was very concerned. In that last interview he realized Terl was no longer sane, if he ever had been.

Gold was the bait in the trap for Terl. So Jonnie added to their plans.

They worked in a rush from the last passing of the drone yesterday to prepare for its passing today.

The lode core he had blasted out had hit the opposite side of the canyon and rebounded back in shattered pieces to lie upon the top of the new rockfall at the canyon bottom.

Jonnie fashioned a remote-control box for a blade scraper machine they could afford to lose.

Robert the Fox fashioned a lifelike dummy to strap into the seat. The dummy’s hands in mittens were rigged to move back and forth when the machine ran. Knowing the macabre was Terl’s favorite dish, he also wadded up scraps of discarded clothing and patterned it with steer blood.

They rigged an ore net to the end of a crane cable and filled it with white quartz from the upper tunnel. Taking what wire gold they had, they encrusted the top of the lode with the specimens.

In the black, brief period of no wind at dawn, they cabled the blade scraper down to the top of the rockfall.

An operator hidden in a cleft at the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the canyon, from which perch the blade scraper could be seen, made the scraper make a flat place (at risk of its toppling into the river) and dig into the pile.

The ore net, with its carefully prepared load, was craned down to the side of the blade scraper.

It was ready long before the drone came, so Jonnie gathered them at the top of the shaft.

“Wire gold goes in pockets,” he told them. “It says so in the old man-manuals on mining. There is a possibility that there is another pocket in this vein. It could be two hundred, five hundred feet up the vein from the cliff. It could have little gold, it could have much.

“What we’ve got to do now is reverse direction on the vein and drift along it into the mountain. It will be much faster since we can blast now.

“So rig this cage again so it doesn’t slip and get to work mining up that vein. We have about sixty days left until Day 92. Probably we will have to deliver the gold by Day 86. So get going and hope!”

“And pray,” added the parson.