"All right," he said, handing Andrews the checklist. "George, when everyone is clear, when you've personally cleared every name on this list with a live body, give me the signal."
"Yes, sir."
Andrews was off at a run, for they were behind schedule in the day—and took his post at the suspension bridge, shouting and cursing the men crossing it to greater speed, to clear the vast cliff that was going to lose a goodly portion of its face. It was the biggest blast they had yet touched off, waiting in that opposing face, and it would yield them rock enough to make a real foundation in the riverbed. It was the beginning.
"Hey, there," said Amos Selby's voice, when Amos was not supposed to be there. Merritt turned and saw the river-man and his son, held out his hand with a grin.
"Did you come to watch the big blast?"
"If you're going to mess up my river," said Amos, "I'm going to have a look at what you're doing. —Are we just about in time?"
"You're supposed to be late, as it happens; but they cross that bridge as if they had all day."
"Huh. Us Hestians ain't made to love heights, flying or otherwise. You wouldn't get me out on that bridge, no, sir."
"Hasn't broken yet," said Merritt.
Amos eyed the fragile rope structure with an expression of distaste. "What surprises me is the People haven't got past you yet to cut it"
"That's what those little sheds are at either end: guard posts. We've heard things skulking about here these last two weeks, but they haven't had the nerve to try anything. —How do things stand downriver? Did you bring us some more men?"
"About thirty-nine this last trip—more going to walk up. Makes a proper city you got growing back there at the station now."
"And a road between here and there. Don't forget that; besides us changing the course of your river for you."
"Couldn't fail to notice. The place is looking more civilized than New Hope already. Can't imagine what it's going to look like with a small ocean where Upriver used to be."
"We'll be doing more building on the dam than on the fortifications from here on out. You watch that cliff in a few moments. —Hey, Ed, get the Selbys some headgear. —And you two wear it, hear? No telling when something's coming down on you around this place. We're about ready to blast."
"I want to see this," said Jim. "Is it safe to stand out here?"
"Ought to be, ought to be. First time I've ever managed something like this, I'm obliged to tell you. Motherworld ways are different"
He saw Andrews' signal, and the bridge was clear. He waved back and then left the Selbys to attend to business.
It had needed a great deal of planning and argument with the haste-minded Porters to determine where to set that charge, and at last it all came down to the touch of a switch on this side of the river. Part of the cliff face bellied out and fragmented while the belated sound reached them, and the ruin settled slowly down again, waiting to be moved by wagons. Great trees—an entire earth bank from higher up—turned loose and became part of the slide, vanishing into the dust before the echoes died up and down the canyon.
When everything was at rest again, Jim Selby gave a long quiet whistle, and Merritt, who had not realized he had been holding his breath overlong, let it go and relaxed. The men knew it was right, and cheered; the experience of smaller blasts let them know what this should have done—and it had: their long work had paid off.
Merritt stepped to the safe planking and let go of the suspension cables, Jim and Amos behind him. The Miller cousins came with them, to take up stations in the farside guardpost, abandoned during the blast—three of the best shots in the high river, the Millers, and armed with the best guns: the farside guard station was the most dangerous, the most exposed, where a severed bridge cable could isolate them for a night or longer. No matter that the post had never been seriously threatened: standing three days at the farside station equalled guard service for a whole week otherside, and entitled the guards to the other four days in the main house back at the station, in real beds, in warmth. Even that bribery did not produce many volunteers.
They stopped at the doorway to the guardpost, on the shallow porch. "Sure changed the landscape, didn't it?" Dan Miller observed, leaning on his rifle and gazing out hillward. Merritt nodded. There was nothing left but yellow powder and great boulders and splintered trees, where a tall cliff had stood.
"I'm going to have a closer look," Merritt said. "I won't be long and I won't go out of sight. You can watch from here—no need us all taking chances."
"Yes, sir," said Dan Miller; but Jim made a gesture to his father, who shrugged and leaned against the shed, and Jim evidently meant to come.
"Stay to my tracks," Merritt advised him, but he was not sorry to have the company. There was a loneliness about farside that prickled the back of the neck, even by noonday, even with the noise of the blast still echoing in the senses. There was a silence here, that all men's efforts had not yet shattered.
Pebbles rattled and rolled down underfoot. The sound of the river reached them distantly. Merritt gave his attention to the path that rimmed the slide area downslope, Jim's shadow close behind his on the sun-baked earth: it was a day like the season, with an icy wind and yet with sun-heat enough to warm a man overmuch on the climb.
A steep climb up hardened-mud steps put them on the security of the upper bank, where no earth had been loosened; and from that vantage it was possible to see all the scope of the canyon and the man-scarred otherside.
"Man," Jim breathed. "I've seen folk try to dam the river before, but they never went at it on this scale. You sure got things going when you decide to move."
"Question is," said Merritt, "whether even that's fast enough. Porter's been yelling about the time we've spent building roads and guard posts; but at least we haven't lost a man yet. Well, Harkness, but—"
"That wasn't on the job."
"No. But I don't intend any more accidents."
Jim looked about him, and grimaced into the sun that was in their faces from the height, back to the east and the Upriver. "You know," he said, "I never thought of it, but I guess the station is the first holding on Hestia that's covered two sides of the river at once. This has never been ours: but it is now."
"So far undisputed—but I'm afraid that won't last."
They walked the ridge westerly, where a gap in rocks and trees afforded a single glimpse of the promontory of Burns' Station, a lonely outpost against all the wilderness about them; and then they walked back again, to look over the damage to the east slope, as close to that slide as they dared come.
"Looks stable enough," Merritt said, thinking of the workmen and wagons that must pull at the edge of it, and reckoning in this too, he would have Porter at his back.
Something rattled away downslope, a rock out of place; and it would have sounded like some belated settling, but that it was followed by a frantic scrabbling. He centered on the source of it, walked higher with Jim trailing after him.
Suddenly a brown form moved among the rocks, scrambled to climb and slid back with a shifting of powder, scuttled sideways and hit worse, plummeted down in an awesome slide, dislodging dust and abrading rock.
"We got one," Jim said at his shoulder. "The blast— must have caught it."
Merritt started running along the ridge in that direction, picked out a way with his eye as he stopped. Jim caught his arm, objecting silently; he shook off the warning and started down, concentrating on his steps. A rattle of stone behind him advised him Jim was with him.
"Stay put," Merritt said. "If I slip I'll need help."
Jim stopped then; Merritt kept walking, slowly, settling rocks into place with his feet, not looking at his goal, but at the ground he had to walk, until he was almost on it.