Battlefield Earth

Chapter 17

They labored in the mine twenty-four hours a day with three shifts. Inward further and further they drove along the barren white quartz vein.

And then on Day 60 the vein faulted. Some ancient cataclysm had shifted it up or down, to the right or left. Suddenly there was just country rock before them. No more vein.

The possibility that they would lose it had not been missing from their calculations. For weeks now they had been sending out scouts to locate any stored gold within their range of recovery.

They had been given hope by Jonnie’s earliest discovery of a gold coin in a bank vault in Denver. But most of the coins left were just curiosities, worthless souvenirs: they were silver-plated copper. Only five more gold coins were in that vault, and these few ounces were a long way from making up a ton of gold.

tonA few bits from what must have been jewelry shops added another pitiful two ounces.

Mining company officials at old mines through the mountains had no gold in their vaults, though they found plenty of receipts: the receipts all said Shipped (so many) ounces to the US Mint, Denver or Shipped (such and such) poundage of concentrate to the smelter.

Shippedounces to the US Mint, DenverShippedpoundage of concentrate to the smelterIn a perilous journey in a plane, carrying heavy supplies of fuel in reserve, Dunneldeen, a copilot and a gunner, flying by night to escape drone detection, went all the way to the eastern coast to a place once called New York. They found the buildings mostly knocked down but some gold vaults, tunneled into and empty.

They also visited a place the historian had found called Fort Knox, but it was just a gutted ruin.

Dunneldeen had accumulated a remarkable fund of information and picto-recorder shots: bridges gone, tumbled rubble, wild game, wild cattle and varmints abundant, no trace of people, and they had had some hair-raising experiences.

But they got no gold.

They had to come to the conclusion that the Psychlos, as much as a thousand years ago, both the company itself and individual employees, had thoroughly gutted this planet of gold. They must have even taken it from corpses in the streets, rings from fingers and fillings from teeth. Possibly this, along with the Psychlo sport of hunting humans on days off, accounted for the thoroughness of population wipeout. There was evidence that in the early days of conquest they had even massacred people just for their rings and fillings. They began to understand Terl a little better in his dangerous enterprise to possess the yellow metal for himself. To the humans, the metal meant very little: they had no experience of using it in trade; it was pretty and didn’t tarnish and was easily pounded into shape, but stainless steel had a lot more utility. Their own ideas of trade and thrift had to do with useful items that were real wealth.

None of this got them any closer to getting a ton of gold. They frantically test-drilled for the lost vein.

On Day 70, they found the vein again. It had been shifted by some past upheaval 231 feet to the north and only thirty feet from the surface.

They wiped off their sweating faces, the droplets tending to freeze in the bitter winter winds of these altitudes, made a new level area for equipment and a new shaft, and began to drift again along the white quartz. The vein had thinned down to about three feet in width. They drove on, filling the dark air of the drift with white chips and blast fumes.

Jonnie went back to studying the battle reports. They must know Psychlo tactics very precisely. He was once again struck with the oddity of this attack on a “tank” in Denver where no tank existed. He narrowed down the location on the faded satellite photos—they had kept coming off the machine even after the president was dead. Yes, there was smoke at that place.

They had scouted out Denver thoroughly. Typically, Terl had not intended to work in the US Mint to refine his gold; he had set up a place in the basement of the remains of a smelter a few minutes’ drive away. He was just using the US Mint as a receipt point.

But all the gold invoices they found in the mines said US Mint, and it seemed to Jonnie that where so much gold was funneled in, there might be further traces there, in case they missed at the lode. Also this tank that didn’t exist to the US military might have been guarding the Mint.

US Mint,In a swift foray, he and Dunneldeen swooped down to the US Mint. They had made very sure there were no ground cars or planes as the afternoon faded. They landed in a park in the cover of giant trees and sped on silent feet to the Mint.

The place was still. It had been scouted before, but once more they went over it just in case the Psychlos had missed a vault. Inside they found nothing.

They lingered outside in the darkness. Dunneldeen amused himself by prying into the mounds that had once been cars, wondering what they looked like in the days when they could run. Jonnie was thinking about the views Terl had shown him. He went around to the back and played a mine lamp on the ground so it would reflect a dim light up.

Shortly, he was looking at the largest mound. It came to him that this must be the tank the battleplane had destroyed. The nonexistent tank.

He lifted some turf—blown sand and grass had overlaid it. He cut the turf very carefully so it could be laid back and leave no sign of disturbance. The thing wasn’t an ordinary car. It was so thickly built that it had endured the rust of time. The metal was twisted where it had burned out. He had never seen anything like this. It had a slot one might fire out of, but that would be its closest resemblance to a tank. The window frames had bars over them, a bit like a cage. What was this thing? He pried a section of metal aside with a mine crowbar and got inside. The interior had been blackened by fire and floor plates had warped. He pried up a floor plate.

Half a minute later, a smiling Jonnie was making a birdcall and beckoning for Dunneldeen. He took the Scot inside.

As one might piece together, when the Psychlo attack came, the US Mint had sought to evacuate its vaults.

GOLD! How much?

In extremely heavy ingots, there it had lain neatly for a thousand years. Overlooked, for everyone thought it was a tank.

They estimated its weight with excited heftings. And then their excitement dimmed.

“It’s less than a tenth of a ton,” said Dunneldeen. “Would Terl be satisfied with that?”

Jonnie didn’t think so. In fact he knew Terl wouldn’t. It was also far less than suited their own project.

“A tenth of a loaf is better than none,” said Dunneldeen.

They packed the two hundred pounds of gold in the plane and put the “tank” back together and scattered snow on it and around it to cover tracks.

They now had about three hundred pounds in gold.

They needed a TON.

TONIt was enough to make one take up alchemy, the mythical conversion of lead to gold, said the historian when they returned. And in fact he spent hours that night fruitlessly studying just that.

The parson made a visit to Jonnie’s village to prepare the people for the possibility of withdrawal into the old base. He told Jonnie his Aunt Ellen sent her love and for him to be very careful in the wild places he went. Jonnie detected the parson was sweet on Aunt Ellen and privately wished him luck.

They felt bad they couldn’t warn other peoples on this planet.

If they failed, Man might indeed become extinct.