The Abyss of Time

Chapter Forty Five

      The rest of their journey was thankfully uneventful.

     They travelled for another twenty hours, taking a deliberately circuitous route in case a cyborg drone stumbled across their tracks. Miller, Dorelis and the scientists went up to the dormitory to get a few hours sleep leaving Jack and Vezenes driving in the cockpit, and when they awoke Jack told them that they were just a few kilometres from their destination.

     "There was some considerable uncertainty locating the deposit, of course," Mary Thorp told Miller as they were having some breakfast in the crew lounge. "We may already be above the densest part."

     "You're the expert," Miller replied. "Just tell us to stop wherever you think is best."

     They continued on to the spot they'd originally been heading for, though, and arrived at an area of jungle that looked just the same as everywhere else to Miller. The two geologists and their assistants immediately unpacked and assembled the core sampler while the soldiers repaired and refitted the Landmaster's broken leg.

     They finished a couple of hours later to find the core sampler chugging away as it pushed a rotating sample tube down into the heavy, organic soil. "And I'm afraid that's it for a while," said Mary apologetically. "It'll take the sampler a couple of hours to get down to depth. Then we move it a couple of hundred metres and try again. It might take days to find tantalum. It might take weeks. It can't be hurried, I'm afraid."

     "The hand scanner says there's definitely traces of tantalum in the soil," Pierre added, showing them the 'ray gun' device he was holding. "Trouble is, it might have been washed here from dozens of klicks away by the rains."

     "I understand," Miller replied, wiping the condensation from the visor of his surface suit. "Just go as fast as you can." The geologists nodded and went back to work.

     "Okay," said Miller to Jack. "Anything from the drones?"

     "They've just completed their first sweep of the area," his son replied. "No EM signatures. If the cyborgs've been here, they didn't hang around."

     "The first EM trace we get, shut everything down," his father told him. "The Landmaster, the core sampler. Every phone and computer. We go dark until they pass by."

     "And hope we saw them before they saw us," Jack replied. Miller nodded glumly and went back inside the Landmaster.

     Time crawled. One day, then another. Then a third. The geologist took dozens of core samples from up to a thousand metres down, burying the long cylinders of rock under the loose soil and undergrowth to hide them as soon as they'd scanned them and found no more than trace amounts of the precious element they were looking for. Then, on the fourth day, Pierre gave a cry of delight that brought the others running.

     "Tantalum," he said, still aiming the hand scanner at the newly revealed core of rock. "Point oh oh five percent tantalum pentoxide." He turned the scanner to show them the glowing symbols on the display screen. "We must be just metres away from a tantalum seam. Close enough for some of it to have leached into the surrounding rocks. I say we stop dicking around with the core sampler and send the gophers down."

     He was referring to the mining machines which were able to burrow sideways. The core sampler could only go straight down. "Let's do it," said Mary, grinning with excitement. "How far down?"

     "Eight hundred metres," Pierre replied. "It'll take the gophers a few hours to get down there." He went back inside the Landmaster and emerged a moment later with a sealed package on a wheeled trolley. He and Jean tore it open to reveal a tunnel boring machine with a flat, circular face dotted with hyperdiamond teeth. They turned it on and ran it through its diagnostic and calibration routines. "It's ready," said Pierre eagerly.