A Gun for Dinosaur and Other Imaginative Tales

But Ali Moyang was conditioned by experience not to open up to strangers more than was necessary. Moyang only hoped that, when the professor learned of his objective, he would not make things difficult.

The long Kteremian day was well advanced when Moyang had come upon the fallen Bertin. When, after another two slow kilometers, Ma pointed out a good camping place, Moyang did not object to stopping.

Moyang took a package from one of the Kteremians, opened it, and extracted a Cohen tent. This was no bigger than a book when folded, but was soon erected into a structure big enough to hold all four Earthmen. He set the transparency control to full, so that the tent was a mere filmy shimmer veiling its spidery guy-wires. From another pouch he brought out a pocket-sized atomic air-conditioner which he attached to a loop that hung down from the peak. When the little machine began to hum, a delicious coolness made itself felt in the tent.

As the Kteremian helpers prepared the meal and handed it round, Bertin said: "I cannot contribute because I had eaten all my emergency rations — but now that I think, there is something ..."

The big man fumbled in his knapsack and brought out an ornate half-liter bottle.

"Brandy, by God!" cried Peterson. "It was a lucky day we found you, Mr. Bertin."

Bertin passed the bottle around. When his turn came, Moyang looked suspiciously at the cognac bottle. Drinking had never been among his vices. But then, he was tired, too, and might as well defer to the spirit of the occasion. They all had something to celebrate: Bertin for having had his life saved; the treasure hunters for having found a man who could give them entree to the village of the little-known Fshi. He drank.

With tongues loosened, a discussion arose: that old camp-fire standby about the best means of transportation for exploring the surface of Kterem. Bertin was a flying enthusiast. Peterson objected that the tsestni made it too hazardous; that mules were the logical answer. Moyang complained that mules could not live on the native vegetation, but sickened and died if they tried, and that therefore so much of their load had to be devoted to fodder that they had no capacity left for payload. Therefore one's own two feet, while slow and laborious, were the one sure means of locomotion. Ma suggested taming and breeding some suitable native species ...

When the brandy was gone, Moyang leaned back with a benign expression on his usually impassive face. He felt so benign, in fact, that when Bertin again asked him what he was after, he lazily replied:

"Oh, I suppose you'll learn sooner or later. We're after the treasure of Zhovacim."

"But —"said Bertin sharply, then fell silent, chewing the ends of his mustache.

"Yes?" said Moyang.

"What does this treasure consist of?"

"As I got the story from old Mendelius before he died, there are about a million sheets of gold inscribed with the records of the old kingdom of Zhovac, just waiting for somebody to take them. What do you know about it?"

Bertin nodded. "I talked to Mendelius too, and I have seen one of the sheets, in the chief's hut in Hadal."

"Do the Fshi go up there?"

"No, they are afraid to."

"Some tribal superstition?"

"Yes. But Mendelius brought this one sheet down and left it because he was too old to carry the extra weight."

"Are they heavy?" asked Moyang.

"Surprisingly so. What are you planning to do with these sheets?"

"Turn them into bullion."

Bertin paled under his redness and said in a strained voice: "There is a law about antiquities."

"Oh, that. When a mass of gold is melted up you can't tell what it was originally, and a cut will take care of nosey officials."

"Those sheets are of enormous scientific value, and you would melt them up for some lousy gold?"

"What do you mean, lousy gold? It's still money on this planet."

"You cannot take it back to Terra; the freight would eat up most of the value, and all gold is controlled there —"

"Who said anything about going back to Terra? I've got two wives and six children to support in Sveho, right here on Kterem."

Moyang scowled at the professor, his benignity evaporating. The man was going to be difficult after all. Ali Moyang had come across this type before: people who were solemnly fanatical about some abstract idea like law or history or science, subjects about which he knew little and cared less.

Bertin persisted: "But the scientific importance —"

"What's that worth on the open market? Can you get me a better offer for these sheets than I could get for them as raw gold?"

"N-no; there is no appropriation I can think of ..."

"Well then?"

"But," said Bertin, "you will never be able to carry this through."

"Why not?"

"You cannot work through the summer, which will soon be upon us; and by next autumn Zhovacim will have been declared a protected site."

"Why can't I work through the dry season?" Moyang felt a rising urge to tell this oversized fathead off. Europeans always thought they knew it all.

"Because in the Jiltak region the temperature goes up almost to the boiling point of water during the day. And you cannot estivate like the Kteremians. I was going to pull out in a few days myself."