Clifford D. Simak - Jackpot.pdf - Clifford D.Simak - chomaroma

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Jackpot

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.

We walked for quite a while, leaving paint markers along the

walls to lead us back to the entrance. Get lost inside a place like

that and one could wander maybe a lifetime finding his way out.

We were looking for something--almost anything--but we

didn't find a thing except those filing cases.

So we went into one of the rooms to have a look inside the files.

Pancake was disgusted. "There won't be nothing but records

in those files. Probably in a lingo we can't even read."

"There couM be anything inside those files," said Frost.

"They don't have to be records."

Pancake had a sledge and he lifted it to smash one of the

files, but I stopped him. There wasn't any use doing it messy if

there was a better way.

We fooled around a while and we found the place where you

had to wave your hand to make a drawer roll out.

The drawer was packed with what looked like sticks of

dynamite. They were about two inches in diameter and a foot,

or maybe a little more, in length, and they were heavy.

"Gold," said Hutch.

"I never saw black gold," Pancake said.

"It isn't gold," I told them.

I was just as glad it wasn't. If it had been, we'd have broken

our backs hauling it away. Gold's all right, but you can't get

rich on it. It doesn't much more than pay wages.

We dumped out a pile of the sticks and squatted on the floor,

looking them over.

"Maybe it's valuable," said Frost, "but I wouldn't know.

What do you think it is ?"

None of us had the least idea.

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Jackpot

We found some sort of symbols on each end of the sticks and

;he symbols on each stick seemed to be different, but it didn't

aelp us any because the symbols made no sense.

We kicked the sticks out of the way and opened some more

drawers. Every single drawer was filled with the sticks.

When we came out of the silo, the day had turned into a

scorcher. Pancake climbed the ladder to stack us up some grub

and the rest of us sat down in the shade of the ship and laid

several of the sticks out in front of us and sat there looking at

them, wondering what we had.

"That's where we're at a big disadvantage," said Hutch. "If a

regular survey crew stumbled onto this, they'd have all sorts of

experts to figure out the stuff. They'd test it a dozen different

ways and they'd skin it alive almost and they'd have all sorts of

ideas and they'd come up with some educated guesses. And

pretty soon, one way or another, they'd know just what it was

and if it was any use."

"Someday," I told them, "if we ever strike it rich, we'll have

to hire us some experts. The kind of loot we're always turning

up, we could make good use of them."

"You won't find any", said Doc, "that would team up with a

bunch like us."

"Where do you get 'bunch like us' stuff?" I asked him, a little

sore. "Sure, we ain't got much education and the ship is just sort

of glued together and we don't use any fancy words to cover up

the fact that we're in this for all we can get out of it. But we're

doing an honest job."

"I wouldn't call it exactly honest. Sometimes we're inside the

law and sometimes outside it."

That was nonsense and Doc knew it. Mostly where we went,

there wasn't any law.

"Back on Earth, in the early days," I snapped back, "it was

folks like us who went into new lands and ~lazed the trails and

found rivers and climbed the mountains and brought back

word to those who stayed at home. And they went because they

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Jackpot

were looking for beaver or for gold or slaves or for anything

else that wasn't nailed down tight. They didn't worry much

about the law or the ethics of it and no one blamed them for it.

They found it and they took it and that was the end of it. If they

killed a native or two or burned a village or some other minor

thing like that, why, it was just too bad."

Hutch said to Doc: "There ain't no sense in you going holy

on us. Anything we done, you're in as deep as we are."

"Gentlemen," said Doe, in that hammy way of his, "I wasn't

trying to stir up any ruckus. I was just pointing out that you

needn't set your heart on getting any experts."

"We could get them," I said, "if we offered them enough.

They got to live, just like anybody else."

"They have professional pride, too. That's something you've

forgotten."

"We got you."

"We//, now," said Hutch, "I'm not too sure Doc is pro-

fessional. That time he pulled the tooth for me .... "

"Cut it out," I said. "The both of you."

This wasn't any time to bring up the matter of the tooth. Just

a couple of months ago, I'd got it quieted down and I didn't

want it breaking out again.

Frost picked up one of the sticks and turned it over and over,

looking at it.

"Maybe we could rig up some tests," he suggested.

"And take the chance of getting blown up ?" asked Hutch.

"It might not go off. You have a better than fifty-fifty chance

that it's not explosive."

"Not me," said Doe. "I'd rather just sit here and guess. It's

less tiring and a good deal safer."

"You don't get anywhere by guessing," protested Frost.

"We might have a fortune right inside our mitts if we could only

find out what these sticks are for. There must be tons of them

stored in the building. And there's nothing in the world to stop

us from taking them."

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"The first thing", I said, "is to find out if it's explosive. I

don't think it is. It looks like dynamite, but it could be almost

anything. For instance, it might be food."

"We'll have Pancake cook us up a mess," said Doe.

I paid no attention to him. He was just needling me.

"Or it might be fuel," I said. "Pop a stick into a ship engine

that was built to use it and it would keep it going for a year or

two."

Pancake blew the chow horn and we all went in.

After we had eaten, we got to work.

We found a flat rock that looked like granite and above it we

set up a tripod made out of poles that we had to walk a mile to

cut and then had to carry back. We rigged up a pulley on the

tripod and found another rock and tied it to the rope that went

up to the pulley. Then we paid out the rope as far as it would go

and there we dug a foxhole.

By this time, the sun was setting and we were tuckered out,

but we decided to go ahead and make the test and set our minds

at rest.

So I took one of the sticks that looked like dynamite and

while the others back in the foxhole hauled up the rock tied to

the rope, I put the stick on the first rock underneath the second

and then I ran like hell. I tumbled into the foxhole and the

others let go of the rope and the rock dropped down on the

stick.

Nothing happened.

Just to make sure, we pulled up and dropped the rock two or

three times more and there was no explosion.

We climbed out of the foxhole and went over to the tripod

and rolled the rock off the stick, which wasn't even dented.

By this time, we were fairly well convinced that the stick

couldn't be set off by concussion, although the test didn't rule

out a dozen other ways it might blow us all up.

That night, we gave the sticks the works. We poured acid on

them and the acid just ran off. We tried a cold chisel on them

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Jackpot

and we ruined two good chisels. We tried a saw and t~

stripped the teeth clean off.

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We wanted Pancake to try to cook one of them, but Panc~

refused.

"You aren't bringing that stuff into my galley," he said.

you do, you can cook for yourselves from now on. I keel

good clean galley and I try to keep you guys well fed and I aij

having you mess up the place."

"All right, Pancake," I said. "Even with you cooking it,

probably wouldn't be fit to eat."

We wound up sitting at a table, looking at the sticks piled

the centre of it. Doc brought out a bottle and we all had a dri

or two. Doc must have been considerably upset to share k

liquor with us.

"It stands to reason", said Frost, "that the sticks are go~

for something. If the cost of that building is any indication

their value, they're worth a fortune."

"Maybe the sticks aren't the only things in there," Hut,

pointed out. "We just covered part of the first floor. The

might be a lot of other stuff in there. And there are all tho~

other floors. How many would you say there were ?"

"Lord knows,~' said Frost. "When you're on the ground, yr

can't be sure you see to the top of it. It just sort of fades aw~

when you look up at it."

"You notice what it was built of?" asked Doc.

"Stone," said Hutch.

"I thought so, too," said Doc. "But it isn't. You rememb{

those big apartment mounds we ran into in that insect cultm

out on Suud ?"

We all remembered them, of course. We'd spent days tryi~

to break into them because we had found a handful of beaut

fully carved jade scattered around the entrance of one of the~

and we figured there might be a lot of it inside. Stuff like th~

brings money. Folks back in civilization are nuts about an

kind of alien art and that jade sure enough was alien.

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Jackpot

We'd tried every trick that we could think of and we got

nowhere. Breaking into those mounds was like punching a

feather pillow. You could dent the surface plenty, but you

couldn't break it because the strength of the material built up as

pressure compressed the atoms. The harder you hit, the

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