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before the miner makes any money.
    The mining process is pretty straightforward. First we have to figure out where we want to mine. Knowing where is what separates miners who make money from those who don't. It doesn't do us any good to mine gravel - we want high mineral content and around here the most common mineral is iron.
    Test holes are drilled with high-powered mining lasers that can punch a hole twenty meters through solid iron, vaporizing everything in its path. It takes about fifteen minutes to drill a twenty meter hole. Once the test hole is drilled, a robot called a groundhog is sent down the shaft. On the way down, the groundhog analyzes the minerals it passes in the hole.
    Regardless of the mineral content , the process of removal is the same. Large augers grind and break the surface material and gather it into a container. Most of the work I do on the claim is ferrying these containers around. Estimation algorithms let us know if a load is valuable enough to haul back to P-1 or if it should be dumped. In some cases, we run it through a pre-sift machine to separate minerals from gravel. It's a lengthy process and we tend to reserve that for when we just can't get anything useful from the claim.
    Last week we had gathered two good containers with a decent iron yield, but this week we had high hopes for a small pocket promising copper and maybe even some platinum. It only takes four or five containers of copper to pay the bills for an operation like ours for a year and a single container of high yield platinum would set a miner for life.
    Our finances were tight enough that Big Pete had released all of our help. It was just the two of us out here, but the fact was, we were good at it. We had worked together for so long that we rarely had to speak, even though we were maneuvering hundred tonne machines within several meters of each other. We had a comfortable rhythm.
    One of our superstitions was that we didn't check the yields on our keeper containers until the end of the week. If the AI indicated a junk container, I ran it out to the giant junk pile at the end of the day. If it was a keeper, we stacked it up for transport back to the P-1 refinery.
    By midweek we started to share a level of excitement. The stack of containers to ship was already at five and the AI recommended a pre-sift on a sixth. At the end of the week, we finished with nine complete containers and a tenth we had pre-sifted from three others.
    " I had a good feeling about this spot." Big Pete broke the silence, causing me to jump. He walked up next to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I looked over at him and saw a large grin on his face.
    " Did you run the numbers yet?" I didn't think he had since it was customary for us to run them with the entire crew. There were few exciting moments on a claim and tallying the week's work was one of them.
    " No, but we haven't pulled ten containers in the last six months. If it is all iron, it will still be worth it."
    Dad was right. With ten containers of iron we could hire a couple more crew and run the rest of the claim more quickly. Moreover, the timing was excellent , with the M-Cor transport showing up in less than two weeks. Payout would come relatively quickly.
    Report yield Hoffen Channel One , Dad instructed his AI.
    I was a little surprised he had chosen Channel One. We used that when we wanted to include Mom in the conversation. I heard a small chirp indicating she had accepted the linkup and was listening in real time. The report was by no means a final tally , but gave a percentage breakdown on what the AI had detected. It could be off significantly, but at this point in the week it would be our best indication of the result of our efforts.
    Iron forty-one point two percent, the AI started out. I heard a gasp from Mom and could see the eyebrows rise on Big Pete's face. The numbers had to add up to 100%, so a low iron number was significant. I had never heard an iron report this low