The Abyss of Time

Chapter Forty Six

     They used the drone to measure the size and extent of the cave system. That allowed them to direct the other two gophers to the place where they'd found the tantalum by burrowing through the rock and soon their spoil pipes were disgorging pulverised rock that the hand scanners confirmed contained tantalum.

     They assembled the refinery, began shovelling the rock in and soon thumb-sized ingots of lustrous, blue-grey tantalum were emerging from the output chute. Miller picked up one of them, finding it still warm. "How many thinking war machines could you make, just from this one ingot?" he muttered to himself.

     "Ten, fifteen," Dorelis replied, looking over his shoulder. "You given any more thought to how we're going to set up this trap? We've got to let them know we've got this stuff without them suspecting anything."

     "They're going to know it's a trap," said Miller, though. "We've got to make them think that we made a mistake. Left a gap in the trap. A gap they can sneak in through." He got up and paced across the jungle floor. Around him, the trees were alive with the pounding, drumming sound of animals challenging rivals and calling for mates.

     Miller stopped and turned to face the other man. "Okay, how about this," he said. 'We move a good distance away. A hundred klicks or so. Somewhere there's no tantalum in the ground. Then we send the gophers down, drilling holes and leaving piles of pulverised rock on the surface. We leave a pile of slag from the refinery there too. Make the cyborgs believe there's tantalum in the rocks below. They decide to go down and mine their own rather than risk stealing ours and that's when we set a bomb off. A nuke. Big enough to take them all out and everything for a mile in every direction. It's the only way to be sure."

     "How do we lead them to the false mine?"

     "We make our way back to the colony from there but we leave a trail they can follow. They backtrack, find the cave."

     Dorelis nodded. "We set up another trap somewhere else," he suggested. "They'll think that's the real trap. They won't suspect that the false mine is the real trap."

     "And if anything goes wrong, we've still got the tantalum. We can use it to lead them into another trap. I'd rather avoid that if possible, though. Using real tantalum as bait has to be the ultimate last resort. We can't risk handing them the stuff on a silver platter."

     "If we don't do it, they'll find tantalum on their own sooner or later," Dorelis reminded him. "It may take them years, but it's been twenty years since the war already. They won't mind waiting a few more. We take the risk, or face our eventual, inevitable defeat."

     Miller nodded. "You're right," he said. "Okay, so how are we going to leave a trail back from the false mine?"

     The two men fell silent as they began to think.

☆☆☆

     Later, Miller, feeling a little tired, went up to the dormitory to have a little nap.

     The room contained four bunk beds, one of which had been curtained off to give the women a little privacy. Sitting on his bed was Charles Tharp, wearing the 3D goggles and staring in fascination at whatever he was seeing in them. He was holding his tablet computer in his hands. A number of images were showing on its screen and Miller smiled in amusement when he saw what they were.

     "You found some more fossils," he said.

     Charles took off his goggles to look at him. "Yes, the caverns full of them," he said. "The water constantly erodes the walls. Bits of rock fall away to reveal fossils. And not just any fossils. Vertebrate fossils dating from thirty to forty million years after our own time. Close enough that we can identify the animals of our own time they're descended from."