Space Prison (originally published as "The Survivors")

Space Prison (originally published as "The Survivors") by Tom Godwin Page B

Book: Space Prison (originally published as "The Survivors") by Tom Godwin Read Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Godwin
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure
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shot and the ground beside them erupted into an explosion of sand and gravel. When the dust had cleared away there was a new crater where none had been before.
      Humbolt wiped the blood from his face where a flying fragment had cut it and said, "The heat of the sun loosens rocks up on the rim. When one falls a mile in a one point five gravity, it's traveling like a meteor."
      They went on, through the danger zone. As with the peril of the chasm's heat, there was no choice. Only by observing the material that littered the base of the cliffs could they know what minerals, if any, might be above them.
      On the fifteenth day they saw the red-stained stratum. Humbolt quickened his pace, hurrying forward in advance of Barber. The stratum was too high up on the wall to be reached but it was not necessary to examine it in place—the base of the cliff was piled thick with fragments from it.
      He felt the first touch of discouragement as he looked at them. They were a sandstone, light in weight. The iron present was only what the Dunbar Expedition had thought it to be; a mere discoloration.
      They made their way slowly along the foot of the cliff, examining piece after piece in the hope of finding something more than iron stains. There was no variation, however, and a mile farther on they came to the end of the red stratum. Beyond that point the rocks were gray, without a vestige of iron.
      "So that," Barber said, looking back the way they had come, "is what we were going to build a ship out of—iron stains!"
      Humbolt did not answer. For him it was more than a disappointment. It was the death of a dream he had held since the year he was nine and had heard that the Dunbar Expedition had seen iron-stained rock in a deep chasm—the only iron-stained rock on the face of Ragnarok. Surely, he had thought, there would be enough iron there to build a small ship. For eleven years he had worked toward the day when he would find it. Now, he had found it—and it was nothing. The ship was as far away as ever…
      But discouragement was as useless as iron-stained sandstone. He shook it off and turned to Barber.
      "Let's go," he said. "Maybe we'll find something by the time we circle the chasm."
      For seven days they risked the danger of death from downward plunging rocks and found nothing. On the eighth day they found the treasure that was not treasure.
      They stopped for the evening just within the mouth of one of the chasm's tributaries. Humbolt went out to get a drink where a trickle of water ran through the sand and as he knelt down he saw the flash of something red under him, almost buried in the sand.
      He lifted it out. It was a stone half the size of his hand; darkly translucent and glowing in the light of the setting sun like blood.
      It was a ruby.
      He looked, and saw another gleam a little farther up the stream. It was another ruby, almost as large as the first one. Near it was a flawless blue sapphire. Scattered here and there were smaller rubies and sapphires, down to the size of grains of sand.
      He went farther upstream and saw specimens of still another stone. They were colorless but burning with internal fires. He rubbed one of them hard across the ruby he still carried and there was a gritting sound as it cut a deep scratch in the ruby.
      "I'll be damned," he said aloud.
      There was only one stone hard enough to cut a ruby—the diamond.
     
      It was almost dark when he returned to where Barber was resting beside their packs.
      "What did you find to keep you out so late?" Barber asked curiously.
      He dropped a double handful of rubies, sapphires and diamonds at Barber's feet.
      "Take a look," he said. "On a civilized world what you see there would buy us a ship without our having to lift a finger. Here they're just pretty rocks.
      "Except the diamonds," he added "At least we now have something to cut those quartz crystals with."
     
      They took only a few of

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