Read Online PLATINUM POHL by Frederik Pohl - Free Book Online Page B

I broke the news that we were down to our last igloo.
    Cochenour cleared his throat. He sounded like a fighter-plane jockey blowing the covers off his guns in preparation for combat, and Dorrie attempted to head him off with a diversion. “Audee,” she said brightly, “you know what I think we could do? We could go back to that site that looked good near the military reservation.”
    It was the wrong diversion. I shook my head. “No.”
    “What the hell do you mean, ‘No’?”rumbled Cochenour, revving up for battle.
    “What I said. No. That’s a desperation trick, and I’m not that desperate.”
    “Walthers,” he snarled, “you’ll be desperate when I tell you to be desperate. I can still stop payment on that check.”
    “No, you can’t. The union won’t let you. The regulations are very clear about that. You pay up unless I disobey a lawful directive; you can’t make me do anything against the law, and going inside the military reservation is extremely against the law.”
    He shifted over to cold war. “No,” he said softly, “you’re wrong about that. It’s only against the law if a court says it is, after we do it. You’re only right if your lawyers are smarter than my lawyers. Honestly, Walthers, I pay my lawyers to be the smartest there are.”
    The difficult part was that he was even more right than he knew he was, because my liver was on his side. I couldn’t spare time for arbitration because without his money and my transplant I wouldn’t live that long.
    Dorrie, listening with her birdlike look of friendly interest, got between us again. “Well, then, how about this? We just put down here. Why don’t we wait and see what the probes show? Maybe we’ll hit something even better than that Trace C—”
    “There isn’t going to be anything good here,” he said without looking at her.
    “Why, Boyce, how do you know that? We haven’t even finished the soundings.”
    He said, “Look, Dorotha, listen close one time and then shut up. Walthers is playing games. You see where we are now?”
    He brushed past me and tapped out the program for a full map display, which somewhat surprised me because I didn’t know he knew how. The charts sprang up with virtual images of our position, the shafts we’d already cut, the great irregular edge of the military reservation overlaid on the plot of mascons and navigation aids.
    “You see? We’re not even in the high-density mass areas now. Is that true, Walthers? We’ve tried all the good locations and come up dry?”
    I said, “You’re partly right, Mr. Cochenour, but I’m not playing games. This site is a good possibility. You can see it on the map. We’re not over any mascon, that’s true, but we’re right between two of them that are located pretty close together. Sometimes you find a dig that connects two complexes, and it has happened that the connecting passage was closer to the surface than any other part of the system. I can’t guarantee we’ll hit anything here, but it’s not impossible.”
    “Just damn unlikely?”
    “Well, no more unlikely than anywhere else. I told you a week ago, you got your money’s worth the first day just finding any Heechee tunnel at all, even a spoiled one. There are maze rats in the Spindle who went five years without seeing that much.” I thought for a minute. “I’ll make a deal with you,” I said.
    “I’m listening.”
    “We’re down here, and there’s at least a chance we can hit something. Let’s try. We’ll
deploy the probes and see what they turn up. If we get a good trace we’ll dig it. If we don’t—then I’ll think about going back to Trace C.”
    “ Think about it!” he roared.
    “Don’t push me, Cochenour. You don’t know what you’re getting into. The military reservation is not to be fooled with. Those boys shoot first and ask questions later, and there aren’t any policemen or courts on Venus to even ask them questions.”
    “I don’t know,” he said after a