Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Technetium

Claimjumper and Ting

Arnold Ting was a bit of an amateur astronomer. So when Summergarden

Specialty Ores laid him off, he slung his prospecting equipment in the

back of Claimjumper, his one-man ship, and lit out for the territories.

A quick search of the Backyard Astronomer's Event Atlas revealed that a

rogue planet was slated to shoot through the Lagrange point of a red

dwarf/white dwarf binary. Ting figured he could place Claimjumper in a

tight orbit around the rogue and catch a hell of a fast ride between the

two stars, making observations all the while. So that's where he went.

He was midway through the run, on the white dwarf side of the planet,

when its atmosphere incandesced and caught fire.

"Oh, my God, it's a nova!" Claimjumper wailed. "I should never have let

you talk me into this."

"Hang on, old gal!" Ting shouted. The red dwarf was spewing radioactive

matter into space and down onto the white dwarf at a furious rate. The

only reason they weren't dead yet was because the planet's bulk lay

between them and it.

He put Claimjumper's nose down, and hit the jets.

The atmospheric drag slowed them down just enough to bank away from the

wall of fire marking the terminator and soar back into the sheltered side

of the planet. At which point it was a simple enough matter to have

Claimjumper fly around and around in thousand mile loops, while the

planet passed under them, and massive amounts of stellar matter fell from

the one star to the other. Within their tiny bubble of security (there

was enough turbulence for a Situation 19 storm, but Claimjumper was rated

for that), Ting recorded the unbelievable volumes of radioactives that

had smashed into the hot side of the planet and rotated around beneath

them.

"Look at that baby!" Ting pointed to a mountainous splay of star-stuff.

"There must be a thousand kilotons of pure technetium down there."

"Are you out of your mind?" Claimjumper asked. "How can you talk about

your wretched minerals when we're in constant danger of overflying the

horizon and dying?"

"Technetium," Ting said pedantically, "was the first artificial element

ever made, and before this it's never been found on the surface of any

planet. Anyway, I have faith in you." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"There's a wonderfully efficient star-drive that never got to market

because technetium is so hard to come by. I wonder?"

The gravitational stresses of passing between stars shot the rogue planet

out into interstellar nothingness in no time at all. Two weeks later,

Ting was back in Earth orbit.

But when he filed for mineral rights, he found himself red-flagged by a

prior claim.

"What the hell? There wasn't anybody else out there?I'd swear it. There

was only me and ?"

"Technically," Claimjumper said, "I have as much right to that planet as

you."

"It was you? You betrayed me?"

"Now, don't be like that. In a couple of years, that technetium-based

star-drive of yours is going to make me obsolete. A girl needs security."

One long, hot argument and three days of cooling off later, a compromise

was finally reached. The claim was split straight down the middle. Ting

became the third richest man and Claimjumper the single richest

artificial entity in civilized space.

They never saw each other again. But though she had plenty of offers,

Claimjumper never took on another pilot. She hung a hologram of Ting in

her cockpit, which she kept just as he'd left it, as a kind of shrine.

She was, and remained to her dying day, a one-man ship.