Ancestor's World (33 page)

Krillen seemed bored by her question. Mahree would have been too, except for the man's tense reaction. "It's pumped back by those pumps over there?"

She pointed to a series of six pumps that were each as large as a jumpjet.

Now Wozniak looked really worried. "Uh, uh, yes ma'am," he said, stuttering somewhat. He licked his lips. "Uh, inside this shack is where we control the mud mix and monitor the drill head temperatures. Come on inside and I'll show you around."

Krillen followed the crew boss out of the crawler. Mahree started to do so, realized her knees were half frozen, then forced them to flex. Stumbling after the other two, she entered the mud shack. The thumping racket outside moderated to a dull thud indoors. Four technicians--a human male, a Heeyoon female, and two Drnians--sat before a panel of electronic controls that lined one wall of the shack. At least it was warmer inside. Mahree stepped closer to the crew boss. "Uh, Mr. Wozniak, aren't those pumps rather large to just be pumping fluid up and down the drill hole?" At the control panel, one of the Drnian technicians overheard and looked back their way. Her large red eyes caught sight of Mahree's collar speaker, part of her CLS-issue voder. "Oh, they're not, ma'am. They're used primarily for injection fracturing of the ore vein."

Wozniak cursed, then eyed Mahree nervously when she turned to him.

"Sorry, Ambassador. You get used to hard language working at places like this."

Krillen had noticed the man's reaction, and now her own response. Mahree fixed the bearded man with an unblinking stare. "Crew Boss, just what is Nordlund dril ing for here? What are you mining?"

Wozniak's mood grew distinctly uneasy. "Uh, we're drilling for core samples.

There's a vein of beryllium and cesium a thousand meters down and we're testing its purity."

On the far side of the room, the Drnian female technician looked surprised, then turned her attention back to her panel

241

when Wozniak glared at her. Mahree had had enough. "Mr. Wozniak, if you do not tell me, fully and completely, exactly what this drilling rig is doing here, in the middle of a thrust fault fissure, I will demand that the Project Engineer tell me. And I shall tell him that you were the one who spilled the beans."

The man shifted from one foot to the other, openly distressed. "Well, yes, ma'am, we are using injection fracturing to open up the ore vein. And we're already doing some side-slant drill-mining of the ore body. Later, we'll send down robot miner cars."

Krillen's ears flared widely. "You will send unliving devices down into the chambers of Father Earth?" His tone sounded scandalized.

Wozniak nodded. Mahree pointed at one of the shack's dusty windows, beyond which loomed the rank of giant pumps. "Mr. Wozniak, I studied geology. I've heard of injection fracturing. It was once used on Earth, in old oil and gas fields, to fracture the rock and allow for an easier flow of gas or oil. It extended the life of those fields by decades." She lowered her hand.

"But they pumped steam into the rock strata. You're pumping this 'mud' stuff.

Why? What are you mining?" She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him.

She counted to ten, silently, then said, "All right, fine," and headed for the door.

"Ambassador Burroughs! Wait! Sheesh, I'm sorry!" Wozniak was openly distressed. "Please. We're not doing anything wrong. The Na-Dina sold us the mining rights, and we're just--"

"One more time, Mr. Wozniak," Mahree interrupted. "And then I go and see Mr. Mohapatra and I call for a team of CLS mining experts to come and investigate your entire operation. Tell me."

Wozniak gulped audibly. "Uhhhhh," he said.

Mahree stared at him, waiting. Wozniak looked so upset that she almost felt sorry for the big man. "We're using mud in the fract job to hold down the radiation flux of an adjacent uranium ore body."

242

Mahree frowned. "Why is radiation flux damping important?" Again she waited.

The man swal owed. "Because of the radonium."

"What!" Mahree stared at the window above the control panel, where the steel framework of the drilling rig rose up. "You're drilling for radonium?

Here? On a fault line? And next to a uranium ore body!"

"Yes, Ambassador. But there's no danger of it turning into radonium-two and going hypercritical!" Wozniak wrung his hands, his manner agitated. "The mud chemical mix includes a neutron inhibitor. And the radonium ore vein is separate from the nearby uranium body. Uh, the fault line action has mixed beryllium and cesium in with the radonium. So we are mining all three minerals." Mahree felt faint. No wonder the Nordlund Combine had committed to the massive expense of building the giant earthfill dam on the River of Life! They would more than make back their expenses if the radonium vein in the heart of the Mountains of Faith turned out to be commercially viable. They could kiss off the beryllium and just ship casket after casket of stable radonium-one off-planet, each casket neutron-shielded to avoid a runaway hypercritical reaction.

Stable radonium-one was the fuel that made the transit to metaspace possible. Without it, there would be no Stellar Velocity starships. The ore was very rare, very valuable, and very tricky to mine. If exposed to neutrons, radonium- one mutated into radonium-two--and exploded, more powerfully than any bomb.

Mahree had studied a lot about radonium, especially when they'd had that crisis at StarBridge Academy three years ago. Rob had been sick with worry that the entire asteroid would be blown to smithereens, along with all of his students. Before the crisis had ended, they'd wound up evacuating the whole school.

Mahree had a feeling that she'd just discovered what Bill Waterston and Project Engineer Mohapatra had argued about. And it was a big secret, an important secret. One

243

that the PE might have been willing to keep at all costs ... including ordering Bill's death.

Krillen was looking at her, his expression puzzled. "Radonium? What substance is this?"

"The power that fuels our Sky ships, and takes us from star to star." Mahree turned to Wozniak. "The inhibitor chemical is regularly recharged? The radiation monitors are checked frequently? They're within noncritical parameters?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Wozniak glared at the Drnian female technician who'd frowned at his statement. He turned to Mahree, hands held up defensively.

"Honest! We're not fools here. The mud holds down the neutron flux of the drilled aggregate, then drops it into the holding ponds, and from here we ship it to a processing plant near the dam site. We have intensive quality controls at every step." Mahree nodded slowly, accepting the man's reassurance. She would shortly be talking to Project Engineer Mohapatra and would have her own chance to verify his statement. "Fine. Your radonium controls are state of the art. But what about this injection fracture drilling of yours? Liquid injection has been known to free up shear faces in a fault, thus setting off minor earthquakes. Couldn't the same happen here?"

Wozniak's dismay lightened. "No, oh no. Not here. Anyway, feel that?" He pointed to the stone floor, where the ground rumbled in the fifth minor tremor that Mahree had felt since landing in the jumpjet. "This planet is constantly quaking. Part of that's due to subduction diving by the southern tectonic plate under the northern one." He grinned, his black beard spreading wide. "That's how the scalies got the Mountains of Faith in the first place! So what does one more quake matter?"

Mahree doubted the man's glib reassurance. Drilling on fault lines could be done safely, but only with great care. What she hadn't known were the true stakes at play in Nordlund's presence on Ancestor's World. Radonium made a big, big difference. She prayed Sorrow Sector didn't know about this trade secret, then waved to Krillen. "Investigator,

244

if you are done with your questions for Crew Boss Wozniak, I need to consult with the Project Engineer. On the radonium and on this entire drilling operation. This is now a CLS matter, not just a Na-Dina issue."

Krillen eyed the upset crew boss. "Driller Wozniak, I do hope you will hire a knowledgeable female to guide you in your explorations of Father Earth.

Otherwise, the Lake of Stars might cover you sooner than you think."

The man nodded nervously, then led the way out of the control shack and into the cold wind.

Damn. Her knees had just defrosted. Hunching her shoulders, Mahree trudged after her Na-Dina colleague, wondering if she would be able to walk up the jumpjet stairs.

Project Engineer Mohapatra welcomed Mahree into his office with a big smile, then bowed low to Krillen when the Investigator walked up to stand at her side. Unable to help themselves, they both stared at the wide window behind the man. It showed a bird's-eye view of the Great Dam.

The dam site lay between buttresslike sandstone walls that soared a hundred eighty meters from river bottom to canyon rim, each wall flanking either end of a wide trench cut deep into the yellow stone that had once underlain the River of Life. For now, a red clay and gravel diversion dam rose just upstream of the kilometers-wide trench, holding back a small lake that had formed when the river was diverted. This smaller dam, itself three kilometers long and thirty meters high, would eventually be part of the footing of the much larger main dam.

Until that bigger structure was built, this one served to divert the River of Life sideways into a tunnel bored into the western canyon face, from which it spurted a half- kilometer later, running back into the original riverbed. In the great space lying between the canyon wall buttresses, people were black specks and earthmovers were brown dots. There were hundreds of specks and dots. The size of the undertaking staggered her.

Project Engineer Narasimhao S. M. Mohapatra was still

245

smiling when Mahree looked his way. He was a middle- aged Hindu with coal-black hair, intense brown eyes, and the manner of a maharajah.

"Impressive, is it not?" he said smoothly. "I suspect that even Emperor Ashoka Vardhana would have been proud of our efforts."

Krillen did not understand the engineer's reference. Mahree did so only because one of her in-service students on Shassiszss had been a reclamation engineer from India's Maharashtra state, who loved to talk about her land's ancient history.

"Perhaps so." Mahree was glad that she'd made McAllister take her by the Base Camp so she could don her Interrelator's uniform. Proper attire did help in maintaining one's dignity. Not to mention that her knees had been red and chapped after her visit to the Lake of Stars.

Mahree folded her hands in front of her, then dipped her head. "The emperor's efforts at restoring the great dam and reservoir of Girnar were indeed a wonder. But this is a different world, a different people, and I'm wondering why, again, I see drilling rigs at work." Mahree pointed through the tinted window to where a caterpillar-tracked rig crawled across the immense expanse of beige and yellow rock lying between the canyon wall buttresses. The rig resembled a beetle lost on a house floor.

Their host's expression froze a moment; then he gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk. "Please sit and relax, Ambassador. All your questions will be answered in due time." The man faced Krillen, touched his forehead, then his chest, and bowed respectfully. "Investigator Krillen of the clan Moon Bright, you honor me with your presence. May I offer cool water and share with you the salt of my home?"

Krillen's ears fluttered with the sign of cautious respect. "And you, Project Engineer Mohapatra of the clan Human, are most generous in your offer.

Water only, please."

The engineer looked her way. "Your choice of refreshment, my dear?"

"Iced tea with lemon, please," she replied.

"Of course." Still standing, Mohapatra touched a record 246

slate lying on his desk, and ordered refreshments.

Mahree sank into a thick-cushioned chair placed just a few meters back from the PE's carved teak desk. Their host also sat, his light brown face carefully schooled to an expression of pleasant professionalism. She reminded herself that Nordlund was a legitimate if overly slick corporation, with projects on a dozen CLS worlds. Then she accepted British tea from a male aide who entered, and watched as Krillen took the proffered bowl of water.

The bronze vessel bore Hindi script along the rim, and scenes on the side from the story of Rama and his friend Hanuman, the god of good fortune.

She lifted her eyebrows, drawing the engineer's quick notice. "I trust you do not rely on the luck of Hanuman to ensure the safety of the dam you are building."

Mohapatra's thin lips curved slightly. "Of course not. We are a very modem, very sophisticated construction company, Ambassador. We have earned a reputation for reliable work."

"Is that so?" Behind her the aide exited, closing the outer door of this very luxurious office, a place sitting atop a bluff on the east side of the dam.

Mahree decided to be direct with the Project Engineer. "I just returned from your drill-mining site near the Lake of Stars. You're mining radonium there.

And perhaps elsewhere." Mohapatra's professional look did not waver. "Why didn't you report this to the CLS Council on Shassiszss? It's a requirement of your commercial license to conduct interworld commerce."

Mohapatra steepled his hands on the teak desk top, his manner calm. "We have. Nordlund has, I mean. Five months ago, when our drill cores confirmed our remote sensing readings, they made a report to the CLS."

That could not be. Mahree had been on Shassiszss at that time and such news would have made its way to her, if only because a human corporation was involved. But the engineer was not a man to be caught in an outright lie.

"Perhaps it was sent. But I was on Shassiszss at the time, and heard nothing. Can you explain?"

247

Mohapatra's dark brown eyes glimmered, as if he knew exactly what she thought. "The presence of radonium on this planet is a commercial trade secret of great value to Nordlund. That is why we did not place a holo-tank call to the CLS Ministry concerned with off-world commerce. One of our supply ships left for Shassiszss Station, with a hand- carried copy of the report."