Read Online Miners in the Sky by Murray Leinster - Free Book Online

room and abruptly swung the ship end for end. He pointed it back toward the shining, misty, unbelievably enormous surface of the Rings.
    “We’re still going away,” he observed, “and we’ve got a good velocity toward nowhere. But it’ll be some time before the other ships realize that we’re heading back into the Rings. Seeing the stars will confuse them. We should gain a good bit on them.”
    Then he pointed out the viewport. There was an infinitesimal thread of white vapor coming toward the lifeboat. The donkeyship that had fired it was too far away to be seen with the naked eye. A second and third and fourth thread of vapor sped toward them. Dunne was unmoved.
    “They didn’t like it that I shot at them,” he said matter-of-factly, “but the men in the other ships won’t like it that Haney returned my fire. That tells me which ship is his. The other ships want to trail me, not kill me.”
    She tried to match his calm. “Haney?”
    “He’s the man who offered to take the two of us to your brother, and then bring all three of us back next pickup-ship time,” said Dunne evenly. “He’s my best guess. Here come the bazooka-shells.”
    He watched without apparent concern. Infinitely tiny rocket trails leaped toward the lifeboat. They went past, astern. One missed by hundreds of yards only. The others were more widely out of line.
    “It’s not easy to shoot at an accelerating or decelerating target,” said Dunne detachedly. “You can’t figure out how much to lead.”
    He went back to his subject. “When I didn’t take up those very kindly offers,” he said with the same detachment, “he offered to take you alone. I should have killed him then. But I was thinking about your brother and my smashed-up ship. I didn’t realize how completely he’d given himself away.”
    “I didn’t know he gave—”
    “He was the only one, the only man,” said Dunne, “who didn’t believe I’d found the Big Rock Candy Mountain. He took my word that I hadn’t found it. He offered a bargain he’d never have thought of if he believed I’d found it. So he must have known what Keyes and I had. I should have killed him,” repeated Dunne reflectively. “I simply didn’t think of it in time. Too bad!”
    He stripped off the space-suit and put it away.
    “I’m going to give you a lesson in ship-handling,” he said. “If you can drive while I act as artillery from the airlock door, we’ve a better chance of living.”
    He sat her at the control board and began to instruct her in such maneuvers as might be needed in a fire-fight or in the Rings. He could use only one airlock at a time from which to aim a bazooka. That necessarily left one side of the ship unarmed. He showed her how to rotate the lifeboat to swing the airlock to the other side. He showed her how to swing the ship to allow for bazooka fire directly ahead and directly astern. He showed her evasive tactics that sometimes worked when bazooka shells were flashing about through space.
    She accepted the lessons with what he felt was a fine yet unhappy resolution. But he was giving her lessons to keep her from thinking of Keyes, just then. Something had become evident to him, and he was trying to keep her from thinking of it. The thing was that his donkeyship had been destroyed to keep him from getting back to Keyes. To desire such a thing, somebody had to know where Keyes was. In fact, it looked as if someone had killed Keyes and wanted Dunne out of the way—whether killed or marooned—while the rock Keyes was guarding r, was worked out, cleaned up, finished.
    So Dunne taught Nike how to handle the ship so that she’d be too busy to reason out how likely it was that her brother might already be dead.
    She spoke suddenly, and not of the lesson in progress.
    “You said,” she observed, for no apparent reason, “that a man lives only three years on an average in the Rings. How long have you been here?”
    “Two,” said Dunne. “Your brother and I