In short, any body in the ring might shift position enough in the space of a minute or two to be lost forever.
Timkin shot back to the coal lump. Yes, the coal lump was there, not having a complicated private motion. But where was the yellow lump that his blind eyes had seen—and ignored? There were a hundred other little bodies around the coal lump and to look them all over one by one....
Timkin's heart sank to its lowest ebb before suddenly he saw the yellow glint again. Then, thankfully, he shot the Jetabout over it and hovered, locking the controls. Minutes later in his vac-suit he was propelling himself down to the yellow lump via reaction pistol.
"It's only fool's gold, of course," he told himself to calm his wildly racing pulse. "Just think of it as fool's gold, so you won't be disappointed again. Or it could be cheap copper. So don't get excited—yet."
Timkin reached the yellow body, fumbled with his pick and finally chipped off a piece. He noticed it sheared off under the hard pick, rather than chipped. He dared to hope it was soft gold. And when he held the bit to his visor....
"Gold!"
He said the one word quietly. Then he sat down on the lump, shaken.
"Gold," he repeated. "I hit it—gold! My bonanza! My dream for ten years!"
It was minutes before he could control his shaking nerves and allow the warm glow of exultation to spread through him like wine, giving him new strength. He arose and, like a bird, made a circle around the lump, using his reaction pistol. He estimated its weight as a thousand pounds, earth measure. Then he stopped to stand on it again, a king on an island.
"Of course, it ain't pure gold," Timkin told himself. "But it looks like about fifty percent pure. They say the first moon before it exploded didn't have many seas to dissolve and thin out ore deposits. So I can figure about five hundred pounds of gold. At the pegged rate of thirty-seven SS-dollars an ounce...."