Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One by Jack Vance Page B

than an insult.
    “I thought—that maybe you might like to talk,” said Root. “I’m very sorry, Barbara, that you’re unhappy.”
    Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.
    “We’ll go home on the next supply ship,” Root said. “Let’s see, there should be one—”
    “Three months and three days,” said Barbara flatly.
    Root shifted his weight, watched her from the corner of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger—there had been plenty of these before.
    “We’ll try to keep amused till then,” he said desperately. “Let’s think up some games to play. Maybe badminton—or we could do more swimming.”
    Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. “With things like that popping up around you?” She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”
    Root peered. “Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything else.”
    “My Lord!” whispered Barbara.
    Root walked down to the water’s edge. “Hey, boy!” The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. “Come here!”
    Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.
    “Let’s see what you’ve got there,” said Root, leaning close to the necklace.
    “Why, those are beautiful!” breathed his wife.
    Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. “They certainly look like diamonds. The setting might be platinum or iridium. Hey, boy, where did you get these?”
    The Dicantrop paddled backward. “We find.”
    “Where?”
    The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath-holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.
    “You find in big pile of rock?”
    “No,” said the native and sank below the surface.
    Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, “That pyramid must be full of things like that!”
    Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. “Oh—I suppose it’s possible.”
    “Why don’t you go out and see?”
    “I’d like to—but you know it would make trouble.”
    “You could go out at night.”
    “No,” said Root uncomfortably. “It’s really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it’s their business. After all it belongs to them.”
    “How do you know it does?” his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. “They didn’t build it and probably never put those diamonds there.” Scorn crept into her voice. “Are you afraid?”
    “Yes,” said Root. “I’m afraid. There’s an awful lot of them and only two of us. That’s one objection. But the other, most important—”
    Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. “I don’t want to hear it.”
    Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, “It’s no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us. I made a mistake bringing you out here and I’m sorry. I thought you’d enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet—”
    Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.
    “Barbara!”
    “ Shh! ” she snapped. “Be still! Listen!”
    He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far thrum-m-m-m .Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.
    Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator—but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.
    It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.
    The dogs on the port began to turn, the