The Iron Midden

The Iron Midden

By Lyle R. Amlin

If you are going to gamble, have something up your sleeve

Well, grandkids, I've told you a few of the stories about my adventures on Luna in the early days, but now I'm going to tell you a story that doesn't have much adventure...but it's one that you should know about.

I've told you about how Uncle Don and I built our first still and produced what we called "Lunar Jungle Juice". That was way back in the beginning of the Lunar colonizing...as I remember, when we first fired up the still there were only about 200 or so people on Luna.

Still, Luna was bustling in the early days.

Lunar Corp had its base and was renting out space to various scientists, explorers and other Earthie companies who wanted to exploit Luna, and they had contracted with the Japanese Space Agency to handle the first farms. Remember I told you how Uncle Don and I took a damaged shuttle can, repaired it and began fermenting and distilling the Jungle Juice.

Jungle Juice had a great markup even is we kept the price low, but the market was really small, not like it is today. We figured if we kept the price low while making a decent profit our customers would keep coming back. Had we operated like Lunar Corp did back in the early days and tried to maximize the profits, we would have just cut our sales and someone would have started up their own still and both of us would have lost out. That's the secret of business, you see...provide goods or services that are needed, keep the price down to keep out competitors, and produce a good product. The last thing was something that many American companies had forgotten about a long time ago.

Well, the still isn't the story I want to tell you.

Back when the colony was young, Kaiser Steel, and some other independent one and two-men outfits, were searching all over Luna for iron. You know how expensive it is to lift anything from Earth, and iron and steel were needed badly for all sorts of things like domes, Lunar Cats and the planned Lunar Express Railroad.

Well, if Kaiser, or someone, could find iron ore on Luna it could be turned into iron and steel at a really low cost (with electricity from the A Plant and the growing number of solar cell arrays, electricity was the cheapest thing on Luna after moon rock). Kaiser had two teams exploring and there were at least three other little outfits doing the same thing, but nobody had any luck. One outfit did find some gold ore and while we were able to use it on Lunar for electrical connections there wasn’t enough to bother shipping it back to Earth. Kaiser did locate vein of lead, silver and some copper, but the iron ore eluded everyone.

One afternoon I had been working out at the water-ore crusher (that's where they crushed up rock and freed the water in it for our only water supply) repairing an electric motor on one of the conveyers. It had been a long shift and I decided to spend the night with the crew at the crusher.

We were playing cards and one of the crusher guys hadn't been doing too well and was out of chips. He wanted to stay in the hand but needed ten bucks to match the raise (I had already dropped out with only a pair of fours) and he said, "What about this antique pocket watch?

The raiser, his name was Gary, took the watch and looked at it, shook it, and listened to it. "Damn thing doesn't run, Elgin, I don't think so."

"It used too," Elgin answered, "but it hasn't run very good for the last couple of weeks. But I know it used to run. It's an antique railroad watch my great grandpa used when he worked on the Union Pacific Railroad. It's probably worth at least a hundred bucks."

"Nah," said Gary and he started to hand it back to Elgin.

"Could I see it?" I asked Elgin.

He nodded, "Sure."

I took it and looked at it. It was a real railroad watch all right, worth more than a hundred back on Earth. It was a Gruen, made in Switzerland probably about 1910. A fine watch all right, but it certainly wasn't running right now. It looked good for being more than 100 years old...and besides that it was pretty, "I'll give you 50 for it, outright," I told Elgin.

"Naw, stake me the ten and I'll pay you back when I win this hand."

"No stake...$75, cash," I answered.

"It's worth a hunered."

"Only 75 to me."

"Well..." he paused, "OK, gimme the 75."

I gave him a fifty, a ten and three fives from my cache.

"There you go, Gary," he said, "here's the ten...and here's my three fives."

"Good," said Gary, and here's my three sevens."

"Damn!"

Elgin lost that hand, but when we broke up about 2 a.m. he was ahead by about two hundred. He tried to buy the watch back...eventually offered me his whole winnings, but I had taken a shine to that pocket watch and refused.

About a week later I had some free time and took that watch apart. It was really clean inside and, even with a 10-power magnifying glass I couldn't find anything wrong with it. I laid it down on the table right next to a pin, which I had been using the poke around inside the watch, and the pin suddenly rolled up to the watch. I moved the pin about a half-inch away and it rolled back again. Finally I found that if the pin was more than about an inch away it stayed, but closer than that it immediately rolled right back to the watch.

"I'll be damned...it's magnetized...not the pin, because I tried to lift another pin with it but nothing happened...the whole watch was magnetized.

A couple of days later I was back at the crusher with a small magnet and did a test on the huge tailing pile. It turned out positive. I was elated. I was so excited I rounded up Elgin and gave him another $25. “That’s because I didn’t wanna cheat you,” I said; “You were right, the watch is worth $100.”

That evening I radioed my attorney on Earth, Fuller Arbeck. It was 4 a.m. his local time, but he's used to me calling at odd times and doesn't mind...his retainer is enough so he shouldn't mind...and outlined what I wanted him to do. He said it'd take about three weeks and he'd get back. I transfered $5,000 to his account and went to bed.

Fuller was wrong, it took almost five weeks, but he finally called back, "It's a done deal, Don. We formed Gruen Jewels Inc. which has contracted to buy all of Luna Corp's water crusher tailings for five cents a kilo. Now I need another $50,000 to pay for their current stockpile. What the hell is so important about those rocks? Oh, I'm faxing you my bill."

"Don't worry about the rocks, I'll transfer $100,000 to Gruen's account and you bill Gruen for your services. Now you need to call John Hickey, he's Kaiser's Lunar chief and tell him to send over a team to the tailings and run a test on that rock," I said.

It took Hickey about two weeks to send a team to the tailings...he was not happy about the home office telling him to munch around a pile of crushed rock only two kilometers from his office. I called a guy at the crusher who I knew and asked him to let me know when Kaiser showed up there. He agreed and three days later called me and said they had been there that day. Two days later I had another call from Fuller. "Don, whatever is in that rock has Kaiser in a tizzy, they fell all over themselves in making an offer. I got them up to $200 a metric tonne...that's a profit of $150 a tonne."

"Nix," I said, "make a counter offer of $100 a tonne and 35% of all sales of what they produce from the tailings."

"No," he answered, "we'll be giving up one-third of the profit. What's so important about what they'll produce?"

"Iron...steel," I said, "that rock is rotten with iron ore. Kaiser will have a lock on all of the iron and steel used on the moon and we'll have a piece of the action. Just make certain that you really lock up all of the sales from the tailings. Don't make it just iron, cover everything and anything they use that rock for...even if it's sold as fill."

"Ok, I see your point. I'll get back," and he hung up...that was Fuller's strong point...unlike most attorneys I know, Fuller didn't try to run his hourly rate up by stating an answer six different ways.

* * * *

We didn't get the 35%, we got 28% of all products containing iron and 40% of everything else...plus $125 a tonne for the rock. It took Kaiser more than a year to build a blast furnace and a iron and steel mill (which brought another 50 men to Luna) but I think that last year the income was somewhere around $150,000 from the sale of rock and about $750,000 from our cut of the iron...plus another $150,000 from our 40% of everything else...turned out that rock also had recoverable copper, gold and lead in it.

Oh, Kaiser fired Hrickey of course, for not finding the iron on his own, but Gruen Jewels hired him immediately as our Lunar rep. Hrickey really was a good geologist...he just hadn't had enough time. During the next couple of years he found Gruen two good gold veins and a copper vein. He also managed to buy two claims a couple of independent prospectors found, so we kept our grasp on almost all of Luna's ore.

So that's the story about how we got started on Luna as miners and gold merchants. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the Union Jack Space Suit Company.



"A Lunar Tan" 

"Jungle Juice High" 

"The Iron Midden" 

"Made On The Moon" 

"Cow Who Jumped On The Moon" 

"Gunfight at the Paris Corral" 

"The Long John Space Suit"