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There was a murmur of sound in the briefing room. Wayne felt his heart starting to pound; D-N beryllium was big. So big that a whole fleet of IES ships did nothing but search the galaxy for it, full time.

“Naturally,” the general continued, “we don’t want any of this information to leak out, just in case it should prove false. The prospect of enough D-N beryllium to make fusion power really cheap could cause a panic if we didn’t handle it properly. The Economics Board has warned us that we’ll have to proceed carefully if there actually is a big deposit on this planet.”

Captain Wayne stared uneasily at Sherri James, who frowned and chewed her lip. To his left, a short, stubby private named Manetti murmured worriedly, “That means trouble. D-N beryllium always means trouble. There’s a catch somewhere.”

General Scarborough, on the platform, said, “There’s a second reason for secrecy. I think it can better be explained by a man who has the evidence first-hand.”

He paused and looked around the room. “Four weeks ago, the Scout Ship Mavis came back from Fomalhaut V.” There was a dead silence in the briefing room.

“Lieutenant Jervis, will you tell the crew exactly what happened on Fomalhaut V?”

* * * * *

Lieutenant Jervis stepped forward and took his place on the platform. He was small and wiry, with a hawk nose and piercingly intense eyes. He cleared his throat and smiled a little sheepishly.

“I’ve told this story so many times that it doesn’t even sound real to me any more. I’ve told it to the Supreme Senate Space Committee, to half the top brass in the IES, and to a Board of Physicians from the Medical Department.

“As well as I can remember it, it goes something like this.”

Laughter rippled through the room.

“We orbited around Fomalhaut V for a Scouting Survey,” Jervis said. “The planet is hot and rocky, but it has a breathable atmosphere. The detectors showed various kinds of metals in the crust, some of them in commercially feasible concentration. But the crust is so mountainous and rocky that there aren’t very many places to land a ship.

“Then we picked up the double-nucleus beryllium deposit on our detectors. Nearby, there was a small, fairly level valley, so we brought the ship down for a closer check. We wanted to make absolutely positive that it was double-nucleus beryllium before we made our report.”

He paused, as if arranging the story he wanted to tell in his mind, and went on. “The D-N beryllium deposit lies at the top of a fairly low mountain about five miles from the valley. We triangulated it first, and then we decided we ought to send up a party to get samples of the ore if it were at all possible.

“I was chosen to go, along with another member of the crew, a man named Lee Bellows. We left the ship at about five in the morning, and spent most of the day climbing up to the spot where we had detected the beryllium. We couldn’t get a sample; the main deposit is located several feet beneath the surface of the mountaintop, and the mountain is too rough and rocky to climb without special equipment. We got less than halfway before we had to stop.”

Wayne felt Sherri nudge him, and turned to nod. He knew what she was thinking. This was where he came in; it was a job that called for a specialist, a trained mountaineer–such as Captain Peter Wayne. He frowned and turned his attention back to the man on the platform.

* * * * *

“We made all the readings we could,” Jervis continued. “Then we headed back to our temporary base.”