The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

short and rugged Anglo-Saxon word means simply "helper" in underground parlance) a miner, a top-miner, and then—a long step up the ladder!—a shift-boss.

      And then disaster struck; suddenly, paralyzingly, as mine disasters do. Loud-speakers blared briefly—"Explosion! Cave-in! Flood! Fire! Gas! Radiation! Damp!"—and expired. Short-circuits; there was no way of telling which, if any, of those dire warnings were true.

      The power failed, and the lights. The hiss of air from valves, a noise which by its constant and unvarying and universal presence soon becomes unheard, became noticeable because of its diminution in volume and tone. And then, seconds later, a jarring, shuddering rumble was felt and heard, accompanied by the snapping of shattered timbers and the sharper, utterly unforgettable shriek of rending and riven steel. And the men, as men do under such conditions, went wild; yelling, swearing, leaping toward where, in the rayless dark, each thought the rise to be.

      It took a couple of seconds for the shift-boss to break out and hook up his emergency battery-lamp; and three or four more seconds, and by dint of fists, feet, and a two-foot length of air-hose, to restore any degree of order. Four men were dead; but that wasn't too bad—considering.

      "Up there! Under the hanging wall!" he ordered, sharply. "That won't fall—unless the whole mountain slips. Now, how many of you jaspers have got your emergency kits on you? Twelve—out of twenty-six—what brains! Put on your masks. You without 'em can stay up here—you'll be safe for a while—I hope."

      Then, presently: "There, that's all for now. I guess." He flashed his light downward. The massive steel members no longer writhed; the crushed and tortured timbers were still.

      "That rise may be open, it goes through solid rock, not waste. I'll see. Wright, you're all in one piece, aren't you?"

      "I guess so—yes."

      "Take charge up here. I'll go down to the drift. If the rise is open I'll give you a flash. Send the ones with masks down, one at a time. Take a jolly-bar and bash the brains out of anybody who gets panicky again."

      Jones was not as brave as he sounded: mine disasters carry a terror which is uniquely and peculiarly poignant. Nevertheless he went down the rise, found it open, and signalled. Then, after issuing brief orders, he led the way along the dark and silent drift toward the Station; wondering profanely why the people on duty there had not done something with the wealth of emergency equipment always ready there. The party found some cave-ins, but nothing they could not dig through.

      The Station was also silent and dark. Jones, flashing his head-lamp upon the emergency panel, smashed the glass, wrenched the door open, and pushed buttons. Lights flashed on. Warning signals flared, bellowed and rang. The rotary air-pump began again its normal subdued, whickering whirr. But the water-pump! Shuddering, clanking, groaning, it was threatening to go out any second—but there wasn't a thing in the world Jones could do about it—yet.

      The Station itself, so buttressed and pillared with alloy steel as to be little more compressible than an equal volume of solid rock, was unharmed; but in it nothing lived. Four men and a woman—the nurse—were stiffly motionless at their posts; apparently the leads to the Station had been blasted in such fashion that no warning whatever had been given. And smoke, billowing inward from the main tunnel, was growing thicker by the minute. Jones punched another button; a foot-thick barrier of asbestos, tungsten, and vitrified refractory slid smoothly across the tunnel's opening. He considered briefly, pityingly, those who might be outside, but felt no urge to explore. If any lived, there were buttons on the other side of the fire-door.

      The eddying smoke disappeared, the flaring lights winked out, air-horns and bells relapsed into silence. The shift-boss, now apparently the Superintendent of the whole Twelfth Level, removed his mask, found the Station walkie-talkie, and snapped a switch. He spoke, listened, spoke again then called a list of names—none of which brought any response.

      "Wright, and you five others," picking out miners who could be depended upon to keep their heads, "take these guns. Shoot if you have to, but not unless you have to. Have the muckers clear the drift, just enough to get through. You'll find a shift-boss, with a crew of nineteen, up in Stope Sixty. Their rise is blocked. They've got light and power again now, and good air, and they're working on it, but opening the rise from the top is a damned slow job. Wright, you throw a chippie into it from the bottom. You others, work back along the drift, clear to the last glory hole. Be sure that all the rises are open—check all the stopes and glory holes—tell everybody you find alive to report to me here...."

      "Aw, what good!" a man shrieked. "We're all goners anyway—I want water an'...."

      "Shut up, fool!" There was a sound as of fist meeting flesh, the shriek was stilled. "Plenty of water—tanks full of the stuff." A grizzled miner turned to the self-appointed boss and twitched his head—toward the laboring pump. "Too damn much water too soon, huh?"

      "I wouldn't wonder—but get busy!"

      As his now orderly and purposeful men disappeared, Jones picked up his microphone and changed the setting of a dial.

      "On top, somebody," he said crisply. "On top...."

      "Oh, there's somebody alive down in Twelve, after all!" a girl's voice screamed in his ear. "Mr. Clancy! Mr. Edwards!"

      "To hell with Clancy, and Edwards, too," Jones barked. "Gimme the Chief Engineer and the Head Surveyor, and gimme 'em fast."

      "Clancy speaking, Station Twelve." If Works Manager Clancy had heard that pointed remark, and he must have, he ignored it. "Stanley and Emerson will be here in a moment. In the meantime, who's calling? I don't recognize your voice, and it's been so long...."

      "Jones. Shift-boss, Stope Fifty Nine. I had a little trouble getting here to the Station."

      "What? Where's Pennoyer? And Riley? And...?"

      "Dead. Everybody. Gas or damp. No warning."

      "Not enough to turn on anything—not even the purifiers?"

      "Nothing."

      "Where were you?"

      "Up in the stope."

      "Good God!" That news, to Clancy, was informative enough.

      "But to hell with all that. What happened, and where?"

      "A skip-load, and then a magazine, of high explosive, right at Station Seven—it's right at the main shaft, you know." Jones did not know, since he had never been in that part of the mine, but he could see the picture. "Main shaft filled up to above Seven, and both emergency shafts blocked. Number One at Six, Number Two at Seven—must have been a fault—But here's Chief Engineer Stanley." The works manager, not too unwillingly, relinquished the microphone.

      A miner came running up and Jones covered his mouth-piece. "How about the glory holes?"

      "Plugged solid, all four of 'em—by the vibro, clear up to Eleven."

      "Thanks." Then, as soon as Stanley's voice came on:

      "What I want to know is, why is this damned water-pump overloading? What's the circuit?"

      "You must be ... yes, you are pumping against too much head. Five levels above you are dead, you know, so...."

      "Dead? Can't you raise anybody?"

      "Not yet. So you're pumping through dead boosters on Eleven and Ten and so on up, and when your overload-relief valve opens...."

      "Relief valve!" Jones almost screamed, "Can I dog the damn thing down?"

      "No, it's internal."

      "Christ, what a design—I could eat a handful of iron filings and puke a better emergency pump than that!"

      "When it opens," Stanley went stolidly on, "the water will go through the by-pass back into the sump. So you'd better rod out one of the glory holes and...."

      "Get conscious, fat-head!" Jones blazed. "What would we use for time? Get off the air—gimme Emerson!"

      "Emerson speaking."