“Blast a flat place out.”

Jonnie flipped a slide and showed him the crack, the possibility of the whole lode sheering off and plummeting to the bottom of the gorge. “Can't blast.”

“Drills,” said Terl. “Possibly flatten a place with just drills. Tedious but it could be done. Fly back of the cliff edge and drill toward the chasm.” But he was drifting off, abstracted.

Jonnie realized that Terl was scared of something. And he realized something else: if this project were abandoned, Terl's first action would be to kill all of them, either to cover evidence or just out of plain sadism. Jonnie decided it was up to him to keep Terl interested.

“That might work,” said Jonnie. “What?” said Terl.

“Drilling from back of the chasm toward it, keeping a ship out of the wind while it hovers.”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

Jonnie knew he was losing him.

To Terl, it wasn't a screen in front of him– it was the face of Jayed.

“I haven't shown you the core,” said Jonnie. He tilted the portable lamp and brought the core out of his pocket.

It was an inch in diameter and about six inches long, pure white quartz and gleaming gold. Jonnie tipped it about so it sparkled.

Terl came out of his abstraction. What a beautiful specimen!

He took hold of it. With one talon he delicately dented the gold. Pure gold!

He fondled it.

Suddenly he saw himself on Psychlo: powerful and rich, living in a mansion, doors open to him everywhere. Talons pointing on the street with whispers. “That's Terl!"

“Beautiful,” said Terl. “Beautiful.”

After a long time, Jonnie said, “We'll try to get it out.”

Terl stood up in the narrow drift, and dust eddied in the lamp. He still fondly gripped the core.

“You keep it,” said Jonnie.

Suddenly it was as though the core were hot. “No, no, no!” said Terl. “You must hide it! Bury it in a hole.”

“All right. And we'll try to mine the lode.”

Yes, said Terl.

Jonnie breathed a pent-up sigh of relief.

But at the drift entrance before they parted, Terl said, “No radio contacts. None. Do not overfly the compound.

Skim the mountains on the east; fly low leaving and arriving at this base. Make a temporary second base in the hills and do your shifts from that.

“And stay away from the compound! I’ll see the females are fed.”

“I should go over and tell them they won't be seeing me.”

“Why?”

“They worry.” Jonnie saw that Terl couldn't comprehend that and amended it quickly. “They might make a fuss, create a disturbance.”

“Right. You can go once more. In the dark. Here, here's a heat shield. You know where my quarters are. Flash a dim light three times.”

“You could just let me take the girls over to the base.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no, you don't.” Terl patted his remote control. “You're still under my orders.”

Jonnie watched as he rumbled off and vanished in the night. Fear was preying on Terl. And in that state Terl would vacillate and change his mind.

It was a troubled Jonnie who went back to the base.

They were overflying the lode area, Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the three near-duplicates, and the shift leaders. They were high up. The air was crystal and the mountains spread grandly about them. They were looking for a possible landing site back from the chasm.

“Aye, 'tis the devil's own problem,” said Robert the Fox.

“Impossible terrain,” said Jonnie.

“No, I don't mean that,” said Robert the Fox. “It’s this Terl demon. On the one hand we have to keep this mining going and fruitful, and on the other, the last thing we want is for him to succeed. I know very well he'd kill us all if he lost hope. But I’d rather be dead than see him win.”

“Time is on our side,” said Jonnie, turning the plane for another pass over the edge.

“Aye, time,” said Robert the Fox. “Time has a nasty habit of disappearing like the wind from a bagpipe. If we haven't made it by Day 91, we're finished.”

"MacTyler!" called Dunneldeen from the back. “Put your eyes on that space about two hundred feet back from the edge. A bit west. It looks flatter.”

There was a bark of laughter from the others. Nothing was flat down there. From the edge and back the terrain was tumbled like a miniature Alps, all stone outcrops and sharp-toothed boulders. No place was flat enough even to set this plane down.

“Take over, Dunneldeen," said Jonnie. He slid sideways and let the Scot into the pilot's seat. Jonnie made sure he had control and then went into the back.

He picked up a coil of explosive cord and began to put himself into harness. The others helped him. “I want you to hold about ten feet above that spot. I’ll go down and have a try at blasting it flat.”

“No!” said Robert the Fox. He gestured at David MacKeen, a shift leader. “Take that away from him, Davie! You're not to be so bold yourself, MacTyler!"

“Sorry,” said Jonnie. “I know these mountains.”

It was so illogical that it stopped Robert the Fox. He laughed. “You're a bonnie lad, MacTyler. But a bit wild.”

Dunneldeen had them hovering over the spot and Jonnie wrestled with the door to get it open. “Proves I’m a Scot,” he said.

The others didn't laugh. They were too tense with concern. The plane was making small jumps and jerks and the sharp ground bobbed up and down below. Even here, two hundred feet from the edge, there was wind.

Jonnie was lowered to the ground and let the pickup rope go slack. Not too much blast or that cliff would sheer off again. It might even break off downward. Jonnie examined the ground and chose a sharp tooth. He girdled it with explosive cord, getting it as low and level as possible. He set the fuse.

At a wave of his hand, the pickup rope tightened and yanked him into the air. He hung there, spinning in the wind.

The explosive cord flashed and the roar racketed around the mountains, echoing.

They lowered him again into the wind-whipped dust and with a spike gun he drove a spike into the rock he had blasted loose. A line came down to him and he put it through the eye of the spike. If he had judged correctly the tooth should sheer away.

He was hauled up higher. The plane's motors screamed. The rock came away.

They lowered the pickup line and he cut the haul cord with a clipper.

The huge rock bounded into a hollow, leaving a flat place where it had stood.

For an hour, grounded and hauled away alternately, Jonnie worked. Some of the blasted rock fell into nearby hollows. Gradually a flattish platform fifty feet in diameter materialized two hundred feet back from the cliff edge.

The plane landed.

David, the shift leader, crept over the broken ground to the crack thirty feet in from the edge. The wind buffeted his bonnet. He put a measuring instrument down into the crack that would tell them if it widened in the future.

Jonnie went over to the edge of the cliff and with Thor holding his ankles tried to look under it and see the lode. He couldn't. The cliff face was not vertical.

The others clambered around seeing what they could.

Jonnie came back to the plane. His hands were scraped. This place had to be worked with mittens. He'd ask the old women to make some.

“Well,” said Robert the Fox. “We got down.”

The daily recon drone rumbled in the distance. They had their orders. The three near-duplicates of Jonnie dove for the plane and out of sight. Jonnie stood out in the open.

There was plenty of time. The sharp crack of the sonic boom hit them like a club as the recon drone went overhead. The plane and ground shook. The drone dwindled in the distance.

“I hope the vibrations of that thing,” said Dunneldeen, emerging, “don't split the cliff.”

Jonnie gathered the others around him. “We have a supply point now. First thing to do is pound in a security fence so nothing can slide off, and construct a shift shelter. Right?”