Miners in the Sky by Murray Leinster

further exploration, still not attempting to enter by the fragile-seeming metal frame and plastic doors which provided an airlock into the bubble. On the farther side of the bubble he halted. He did something Nike could not see. He crawled back to the airlock and entered it.
    Here his actions were extraordinary. He crawled around the inside edge of the bubble, where the dome came down to the rock and where nobody would ordinarily try to move. Still nothing moved, anywhere in the dome. He went around to the back of the sleeping bag, ignoring its motionless occupant.
    He backed away with an object in his hands. There were wires attached to it. He’d detached them from outside the bubble. Now he removed the wired object from within. But he did not touch the sleeping bag nor lift its hood until all of these preliminaries were completed.
    Now he lifted the hood and looked steadily down at what it had hidden. He replaced the hood. He went out of the airlock door, carrying the object from behind the sleeping bag.
    In emptiness, then, he threw it away from the rock and the lifeboat together. He drew his belt-weapon. When it was two hundred feet away he fired at it.
    The thing he’d brought away from the sleeping bag shattered itself to bits, with a monstrous blue-white flame of explosive. But there was no sound. There was no air to carry sound.
    Dunne went sombrely into the lifeboat. Nike faced him as the inner lock-door opened. His expression was that of angry, bitter grief when he took his space-helmet off.
    “We’re too late,” he said savagely. “Much too late.”
    “He’s—dead, then,” said Nike. She swallowed. She became even paler. “When you didn’t come back right away, I thought it was bad news. When you—exploded that thing… I knew.”
    “It was a boobytrap,” said Dunne coldly. “Designed to explode when I looked in the sleeping bag. There are some holes in the bubble. They could have been made by bullets like mine, but they’re larger.” He paused. “If somebody punctured the bubble, he’d have just thirteen seconds to get into a space-suit before he died, and he wouldn’t make it. But he’d hardly know what happened.”
    Nike sobbed once.
    “Then,” said Dunne, “whoever killed him planted a booby trap for me.”
    His expression was bitterness itself. Nike swallowed and said, “What do we do now? Can he—can we bury him?” Then she said, choking; “I—I can’t think straight right now!”
    “Don’t try,” said Dunne more gently. “I’ll take care of things. Everything! You get into a space-suit. I’ll come get you.”
    She turned and went quickly, stumbling a little, into the rearmost part of the lifeboat.
    Dunne swore exhaustively when she’d left. He went into the control room and extended the range of the radar to its greatest possible distance. He slowed down its period of sweep to get the utmost of reach. In the area it could report on, there were six indications of solid objects. None of them detectably changed position. They were actually in motion, of course, swinging in their orbits around the planet Thothmes. Two of them were obviously too small to be concerned about. One was as obviously even larger—much larger—than the rock to which the spaceboat was now tethered. The nearest appeared to be not much larger or smaller. But there was nothing in significant motion within the area the radar could examine.
    He went out of the spaceboat again. There were tools in the bubble. It was a very convincing trap—or it had been. But Dunne did not bother to rage at the man or men who’d done this murder. The Rings were not centers of refinement or culture. Or of reluctance to violate the essential rules of fair play or good faith. But an attempt to commit murder by booby trap would not be admired even in the Rings.
    He took tools from the bubble. Here was a crack in the rock not far away. It needed very little enlargement for his purpose. He labored carefully.
    He brought Nike