The Eagles Gather Page #2

								


"Mulligan," he swore. "Damn, I've sat at tables with war lords. Twenty courses on silver dishes and wine and liquor enough for all. And everybody dressed like hell."

Duane grinned. "Sorry I ain't a war lord. Maybe you'd like a punch in the nose."

Captain took the proffered plate sullenly. "I'm sorry. I keep forgettin'. Geez, I hope they dig up some more uranium soon. It's hard to take this when you've been used to a monthly salary that runs into four figures."

Duane looked up at the dark sky that was vacant save where a trailing mist tangled with the smoke from the fire.

"They won't find any more uranium. Not soon, anyway. I've thought a lot about it. We weren't ready to conquer space. We made a mess of it. Oh, we had the ships and the guns. Mechanically we were perfect. It was us who was wrong. We conquered space but we hadn't conquered ourselves. That will come some day."

"You sound like a parson," Captain jeered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Little Shafer mouthed his food wolfishly, now and then drawing the back of his hand across his mouth and the tip of his long pointed nose. "What makes you think we won't find any more uranium?" he asked slyly.

Duane looked at him. The little man's fingers were trembling.

"Oh, we might find it," Duane said, "but there's no organization any more. It's been blown to hell. If we do find uranium, we'll lose it again. We're all washed up--for the time being, anyway. We'll have to dig in here on old Terra and start from scratch. Personally, I'm glad."

Captain snorted. "Nurts."

"There's uranium aplenty left," little Shafer said stubbornly.

Captain's eyes narrowed. "Know where it is, punk?"

Shafer avoided that steely glance. "Maybe I do and maybe I don't," he evaded.

Belton scraped the last bit of grease from his plate and belched contentedly. "I was rich once," he told the fire.

Captain sneered. "You ain't ever had the price of an extra drink in your pocket."

"I was rich once, just the same." Bill Belton looked from face to face pleadingly. A coal sputtered into the flame and lit the high color on his bulby nose and swollen cheeks. "I was rich once, richer than dirt."

"O. K.," Duane told him. "Maybe you were. Go ahead and tell your tale and get it off your mind. I'm not sleeping tonight, anyway."

"It'll be a rum-soaked, mangy lie that he dreamed up between panhandling and fightin' pink lizards." Captain yawned.

Belton looked hurt and lowered his eyes to the fire.

"I was rich once. I was runnin' a one-man mining boat out of Achilles. It wasn't much of a boat, but it was mine. An' all of a sudden I came across a freighter, a drifter. A meteor had torn about a fourth of her away, and she was driftin' and spinnin' alone out there in space with all the stars a-twinklin' down at her like diamonds sparklin' on black velvet.

"So I boarded her, and every bit of oxygen had been ripped from her, and there was all the poor boys there, dead and frozen in Old Father Time's icebox. Well, that ship was loaded with furs. She had been outward bound from Pallas, I reckon. An' those furs were all mine by rights of salvage. A king's ransom. I packed my boat with 'em until I hardly had room to move about it.
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