"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 mouthpiece. "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."
"Got your maps?"
"Yes."
"We got to run a sag up to Eleven fast or drown. Can you give me the shortest possible distance?"
"Can do." The Head Surveyor snapped orders. "We'll have it for you in a minute. Thank God there was somebody down there with a brain."
"It doesn't take super–human intelligence to push buttons."
"You'd be surprised. Your point on glory holes was very well taken you won't have much time after the pump quits. When the water reaches the Station…"
"Curtains. And it's all done now running free and easy recirculating. Hurry that dope!"
"Here it is now. Start at the highest point of Stope Fifty Nine. Repeat."
"Stope Fifty–Nine." Jones waved a furious band as he shouted the words; the tight–packed miners turned and ran. The shift–boss followed them, carrying the walkietalkie, aiming an exasperated kick of pure frustration at the merrily humming water pump as be passed it.
"Thirty two degrees from the vertical anywhere between thirty and thirty five."
"Thirty to thirty five off vertical."
"Direction got a compass?"
"Yes."
"Set the blue on zero. Course two hundred seventy five degrees."
"Blue on zero. Course two seven five."
"Dex sixty nine point two zero feet. That'll put you into Eleven's class yard so big you can't miss it."
"Distance sixty nine point two that all? Fine! Maybe we'll make it, after all. They're sinking a shaft, of course. From where?"
"About four miles in on Six. It'll take time."
"If we can get up into Eleven we'll have all the time on the clock it'll take a week or more to flood Twelve's slopes. But this sag is sure as hell going to be touch and go. And say, from the throw of the pump and the volume of the sump, will you give me the best estimate you can of how much time we've got? I want at least an hour, but I'm afraid I won't have it"
"Yes. I'll call you back."
The shift–boss elbowed his way through the throng of men and, dragging the radio behind him, wriggled and floated up the rise.
"Wright!" he bellowed, the echoes resounding deafeningly all up and down the narrow tube. "You up there ahead of me?"
"Yeah!" that worthy bellowed back.
"More men left than I thought how many half of 'em?"
"Just about."
"Good. Sort out the ones you got up there by trades" Then, when he had emerged into the now brilliantly illuminated slope, "Where are the timber– pimps?"
"Over there."
"Rustle timbers. Whatever you can find and wherever you find it, grab it and bring it up here. Get some twelve–inch steel, too, six feet long. Timbermen, grab that stuff off of the face and start your staging right here. You muckers, rig a couple of skoufers to throw muck to bury the base and checkerwork up to the hanging wall. Doze a sluice way down into that waste pocket there, so we won't clog ourselves up. Work fast, fellows, but make it solid you know the load it'll have to carry and what will happen if it gives."
They knew. They knew what they had to do and did it; furiously, but with care and precision.
"How wide a sag you figurin' on, Supe?" the boss timber. man asked. "Eight foot checkerwork to the hangin', anyway, huh?"
"Yes. I'll let you know in a minute."
The surveyor came in. "Forty one minutes is my best guess."
"From when?"
"From the time the pump failed."
"'That was four minutes ago nearer five. And five more before we can start cutting.
Forty one less ten is thirty one. Thirty one into sixty nine point two goes…"
"Two point two three feet per minute, my slip–stick says."
"Thanks. Wright, what would you Say is the. biggest sag we can cut in this kind of rock at two and a quarter feet a minute?"
"Um–m–m". The miner scratched his whiskery chin. 'That's a tough one, boss. You'll hafta figure damn close to a hundred pounds of air to the foot on plain cuttin' that's two hundred and a quarter. But without a burley to pimp for 'er, a rotary can't take that kind of air she'll foul herself to a standstill before she cuts a foot. An' with a burley riggin' she's got to make damn near a double cut seven foot inside figger so any way you look at it you ain't goin' to cut no two foot to the minute."
"I was hoping you wouldn't check my figures, but you do. So we'll cut five feet. Saw your timbers accordingly. We'll hold that burley by hand."
Wright shook his head dubiously. "We don't want to die down here any more than you do, boss, so we'll do our damndest but how in hell do you figure you can hold her to her work?"
"Rig a yoke. Cut a stretcher up for canvas and padding. It'll pound, but a man can stand almost anything, in short enough shifts, if he's got to or die."
And for a time two minutes, to be exact, during which the rotary chewed up and spat out a plug of rock over five feet deep things went very well indeed. Two men, instead of the usual three, could run the rotary; that is, they could tend the complicated pneumatic walking jacks which not only oscillated the cutting demon in a geometrical path, but also rammed it against the face with a steadily held and enormous pressure, even while climbing almost vertically upward under a burden of over twenty thousand pounds.
An armored hand waved a signal voice was utterly useless up! A valve was flipped; a huge, flat, steel foot arose; a timber slid into place, creaking and groaning as that big flat foot smashed down. Up—again! Up—a third time! Eighteen seconds less than one–third of a minute ten inches gained!
And, while it was not easy, two men could hold the burley in one–minute shifts. As has been intimated, this machine "pimped" for the rotary. It waited on it, ministering to its every need with a singleness of purpose impossible to tray except robotic devotion. It picked the rotary's teeth, it freed its linkages, it deloused its ports, it cleared its spillways of compacted debris, it even and this is a feat starkly unbelievable to anyone who does not know the hardness of neocarballoy and the tensile strength of ultra–special steels it even changed, while is full operation, the rotary's diamond tipped cutters.