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the mother lode.
    Even here the immediate perception remained the same, except that the contour lines of the rift spread out till they became lost in those of the hell plain beyond the Shadowline’s end. But there was one eye-catcher on his main display, a yellowness that grew more intense as the eye moved to examine the feedback on the territory ahead.
    Near his equipment’s reliable sensory limits it became a flaming intense orange.
    Yellow. Radioactivity. Shading to orange meant there was so much of it that it was generating heat. He glared at the big screen. He was over the edge of the stain, taking an exposure through the floor of his rig.
    He started pounding on his computer terminal, demanding answers.
    The idiot box had had hours to play with the data. It had a hypothesis ready.
    “What the hell?” Frog did not like it. “Try again.”
    The machine refused. It knew it was right.
    The computer said there was a thin place in the planetary mantle here. A finger of magma reached toward the surface. Convection currents from the deep interior had carried warmer radioactives into the pocket. Over the ages a fabulous lode had formed.
    Frog fought it, but believed. He wanted to believe. He had to believe. This was what he had given his life to find. He was rich . . . 
    The practicalities began to occur to him when the euphoria wore off. Radioactivity would have to be overcome. Six kilometers of mantle would have to be penetrated. A way to beat the sun would have to be found because the lode was centered beyond the Shadowline’s end . . . Mining it would require nuclear explosives, masses of equipment, legions of shadow generators, logistics on a military scale. Whole divisions of men would have to be assembled and trained. New technologies would have to be invented to draw the molten magma from the earth . . . 
    His dreams, like smoke, wafted away along the long, still corridors of eternity. He was Frog. He was one little man. Even Blake did not have the resources to handle this. It would take a decade of outrageous capitalization, with no return, just to develop the needed technologies.
    “Damn!” he snarled. Then he laughed. “Well, you was rich for one minute there, Frog. And it felt goddamned good while it lasted.” He had a thought. “File a claim anyway. Maybe someday somebody’ll want to buy an exploitation franchise.”
    No, he thought. No way. Blake was the only plausible franchisee. He was not going to make those people any richer. He would keep the whole damned thing behind his chin.
    But it was something to think about. It really was.
    Piqued by the futility of it all, he ordered his computer to lock out any memories relating to the lode.
     
----

Eleven: 3031 AD
    Cassius stepped into the study. Mouse remained behind him.
    “You wanted me?”
    Storm cased the clarinet, adjusted his eyepatch, nodded. “Yes. My sons are protecting me again, Cassius.”
    “Uhm?” Cassius was a curiosity in the family. Not only was he second in command, he was both Storm’s father-in-law and son-in-law. Storm had married his daughter Frieda. Cassius’s second wife was Storm’s oldest daughter, by a woman long dead. The Storms and their captains were bound together by convolute, almost incestuous relationships.
    “There’s a yacht coming in,” Storm said. “A cruiser is chasing her. Both ships show Richard’s IFF. The boys have activated the mine fields against them.”
    Cassius’s cold face turned colder still. He met Storm’s gaze, frowned, rose on his toes, said, “Michael Dee. Again.”
    “And my boys are determined to keep him away from me.”
    Cassius kept his counsel as to the wisdom of their effort. He asked, “He’s coming back? After kidnapping Pollyanna? He has more gall than I thought.”
    Storm chuckled. He killed it when Cassius frowned. “Right. It’s no laughing matter.”
    Pollyanna Eight was the wife of his son Lucifer. They had not been married long. The match was a