Masters of Space | Page 4

Then, activating another instrument, His Loftiness

thought at it, in an entirely different vein, "Lord Ynos, Madam? I have
to make a very grave report...."
* * * * *
In the Perseus, four scientists and three Navy officers were arguing
heatedly; employing deep-space verbiage not to be found in any
dictionary. "Jarve!" Karns called out, and Hilton joined the group.
"Does anything about this planet make any sense to you?"
"No. But you're the planetographer. 'Smatter with it?"
"It's a good three hundred degrees Kelvin too hot."
"Well, you know it's loaded with uranexite."
"That much? The whole crust practically jewelry ore?"
"If that's what the figures say, I'll buy it."
"Buy this, then. Continuous daylight everywhere. Noon June
Sol-quality light except that it's all in the visible. Frank says it's from
bombardment of a layer of something, and Frank admits that the whole
thing's impossible."
"When Frank makes up his mind what 'something' is, I'll take it as a
datum."
"Third thing: there's only one city on this continent, and it's protected
by a screen that nobody ever heard of."
Hilton pondered, then turned to the captain. "Will you please run a
search-pattern, sir? Fine-toothing only the hot spots?"
The planet was approximately the same size as Terra; its atmosphere,
except for its intense radiation, was similar to Terra's. There were two
continents; one immense girdling ocean. The temperature of the land
surface was everywhere about 100°F, that of the water about 90°F.
Each continent had one city, and both were small. One was inhabited

by what looked like human beings; the other by usuform robots. The
human city was the only cool spot on the entire planet; under its
protective dome the temperature was 71°F.
Hilton decided to study the robots first; and asked the captain to take
the ship down to observation range. Sawtelle objected; and continued
to object until Hilton started to order his arrest. Then he said, "I'll do it,
under protest, but I want it on record that I am doing it against my best
judgment."
"It's on record," Hilton said, coldly. "Everything said and done is being,
and will continue to be, recorded."
The Perseus floated downward. "There's what I want most to see,"
Hilton said, finally. "That big strip-mining operation ... that's it ... hold
it!" Then, via throat-mike, "Attention, all scientists! You all know what
to do. Start doing it."
Sandra's blonde head was very close to Hilton's brown one as they both
stared into Hilton's plate. "Why, they look like giant armadillos!" she
exclaimed.
"More like tanks," he disagreed, "except that they've got legs, wheels
and treads--and arms, cutters, diggers, probes and conveyors--and look
at the way those buckets dip solid rock!"
The fantastic machine was moving very slowly along a bench or shelf
that it was making for itself as it went along. Below it, to its left,
dropped other benches being made by other mining machines. The
machines were not using explosives. Hard though the ore was, the tools
were so much harder and were driven with such tremendous power that
the stuff might just have well have been slightly-clayed sand.
Every bit of loosened ore, down to the finest dust, was forced into a
conveyor and thence into the armored body of the machine. There it
went into a mechanism whose basic principles Hilton could not
understand. From this monstrosity emerged two streams of product.

One of these, comprising ninety-nine point nine plus percent of the
input, went out through another conveyor into the vast hold of a vehicle
which, when full and replaced by a duplicate of itself, went careening
madly cross-country to a dump.
The other product, a slow, very small stream of tiny, glistening black
pellets, fell into a one-gallon container being held watchfully by a small
machine, more or less like a three-wheeled motor scooter, which was
moving carefully along beside the giant miner. When this can was
almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a single pellet,
took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its bucket,
clamped it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and dashed
away toward the city.
[Illustration]
Hilton stared slack-jawed at Sandra. She stared back.
"Do you make anything of that, Jarve?"
"Nothing. They're taking pure uranexite and concentrating--or
converting--it a thousand to one. I hope we'll be able to do something
about it."
"I hope so, too, Chief; and I'm sure we will."
"Well, that's enough for now. You may take us up now, Captain
Sawtelle. And Sandy, will you please call all department heads and
their assistants into the conference room?"
* * * * *
At the head of the long conference table, Hilton studied his fourteen
department heads, all husky young men, and their assistants, all
surprisingly attractive and