Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

The transport had carried a consignment of explosives, he remembered, and had arrived only a few hours before the general mutiny. Evidently it had not been unloaded and had exploded when the disabled ship struck the bubbling sea.

At three miles he leveled off and stared down at the surface of the twilight belt. Like a great river the molten metal was pouring through the break in the wall and was rapidly spreading over the unprotected region. Not a single plane was in the air.

As he watched, the advancing flood struck Station Number Three and seemed to rear up to surge over it. Even from his great height he saw pitifully small figures running for their lives before the great wave. He knew that, hampered by space suits, they could not run far before being overtaken.

Part of the wave seemed to be congealing, but even as it did so, more of the molten stream poured over it and rushed on. One tongue gradually pushed its way across the belt and stopped only a few miles short of the cold side of the planet, frozen into a solid mass by the frigid conditions on that side of Mercury.

Tom noticed that the congealing of the metal stream was slowly backing up the outpouring of the liquid through the break in the wall. In a few hours a vast new barrier would be thrown up between the twilight belt and the bubbling ocean, but buried beneath that new barrier would be the failure of a rebellion on Mercury. The Terrestrial had proven himself master again.

A blue light flashed on the instrument board. He reached over and plugged in a connection. He spoke into a small microphone.

“Tom Clark, geologist of the Universal Ore Mining Company, stationed on Mercury, ready to receive,” he said.

“Commander James Smith, of the Earth vessel, Star Ogre , speaking,” replied a faint voice, “now running near orbit of Venus. Have five ships to put down uprising on Mercury. Hold on!”

“Send back four of your ships,” said Tom. “Only one is needed to take off survivors. The mutiny is suppressed.”

“How many survivors?” the voice asked laconically.

“Only one,” said Tom, “and that’s me.”

“Jackpot” is another of those stories in which Clifford D. Simak portrayed Earthlings out among the stars as rapacious explorers, roaming the galaxy in search of things that could be taken, grabbed, or exploited. Among others in the same vein are “Beachhead,” “Junkyard,” “Installment Plan,” and “Retrograde Evolution.” This story originally appeared in the October 1956 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction .

At least in this case, some of the Earthlings are better students.

I found Doc in the dispensary. He had on quite a load. I worked him over some to bring him half awake.

“Get sobered up,” I ordered curtly. “We made planetfall. We’ve got work to do.”

I took the bottle and corked it and set it high up on the shelf, where it wasn’t right at hand.

Doc managed to achieve some dignity. “You needn’t worry, Captain. As medic of this tub—”

“I want all hands up and moving. We may have something out there.”

“I know,” Doc said mournfully. “When you talk like that, it’s bound to be a tough one. An off-beat climate and atmosphere pure poison.”

“It’s Earth-type, oxygen, and the climate’s fine so far. Nothing to be afraid of. The analyzers gave it almost perfect rating.”

Doc groaned and held his head between his hands. “Those analyzers of ours do very well if they tell us whether it is hot or cold or if the air is fit to breathe. We’re a haywire outfit, Captain.”

“We do all right,” I said.

“We’re scavengers and sometimes birds of prey. We scour the Galaxy for anything that’s loose.”

I paid no attention to him. That was the way he always talked when he had a skin full.

“You get up to the galley,” I told him, “and let Pancake pour some coffee into you. I want you on your feet and able to do your fumbling best.”

But Doc wasn’t ready to go just yet. “What is it this time?”

“A silo. The biggest thing you ever saw. It’s ten or fifteen miles across and goes up clear out of sight.”

“A silo is a building to store winter forage. Is this a farming planet?”

“No,” I said, “it’s desert. And it isn’t a silo. It just looks like one.”

“Warehouse?” asked Doc. “City? Fortress? Temple—but that doesn’t make any difference to us, does it, Captain? We loot temples, too.”

“Get up!” I yelled at him. “Get going.”

He made it to his feet. “I imagine the populace has come out to greet us. Appropriately, I hope.”

“There’s no populace,” I said. “The silo’s just standing there alone.”

“Well, well,” said Doc. “A second-story job.”

He started staggering up the catwalk and I knew he’d be all right. Pancake knew exactly how to get him sobered up.

I went back to the port and found that Frost had everything all set. He had the guns ready and the axes and the sledges, the coils of rope and the canteens of water and all the stuff we’d need. As second in command, Frost was invaluable. He knew what to do and did it. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.

I stood in the port and looked out at the silo. We were a mile or so away from it, but it was so big that it seemed to be much closer. This near to it, it seemed to be a wall. It was just God-awful big.

“A place like that,” said Frost, “could hold a lot of loot.”

“If it isn’t empty,” I answered. “If there isn’t someone or something there to stop us taking it. If we can get into it.”

“There are openings along the base. They look like entrances.”

“With doors ten feet thick.”

I wasn’t being pessimistic. I was being logical—I’d seen so many things that looked like billions turn into complicated headaches that I never allowed myself much hope until I had my hands on something I knew would bring us cash.

Hutch Murdock, the engineer, came climbing up the catwalk. As usual, he had troubles. He didn’t even stop to catch his breath.

“I tell you,” he said to me, “one of these days those engines will just simply fall apart and leave us hanging out in space light-years from nowhere. We work all the blessed time to keep them turning over.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe this is it. Maybe after this we can buy a brand-new ship.”

But it didn’t cheer him up. He knew as well as I did that I was talking to keep up my spirit as well as his.

“Someday,” he said, “we’ll have bad trouble on our hands. Those boys of mine will drive a soap bubble across three hundred light-years if it’s got an engine in it. But it’s got to have an engine. And this wreck we got …”

He would have kept right on, but Pancake blew the horn for breakfast.

Doc was already at the table and he seemed to be functioning. He had a moderate case of shudders and he seemed a little pale. He was a little bitter, too, and somewhat poetic.

“So we gather glory,” he told us. “We go out and lap it up. We haunt the ruins and we track the dream and we come up dripping cash.”

“Doc,” I said, “shut up.”

He shut up. There was no one on the ship I had to speak to twice.

We didn’t dally with the food. We crammed it down and left. Pancake left the dishes standing on the table and came along with us.

We got into the silo without any trouble. There were entrances all around the base and there weren’t any doors. There was not a thing or anyone to stop us walking in.

It was quiet and solemn inside—and unspectacular. It reminded me of a monstrous office building.

It was all cut up with corridors, with openings off the corridors leading into rooms. The rooms were lined with what looked like filing cases.