Even through the tank and the suit, heat was pouring in, and there was a faint itching in those parts where the armor was thinnest that indicated the start of a burn — though not as yet dangerous. He had no desire to think what was happening to the men who were trying to worm into the heart of it in nothing but armor; nor did he care to watch what was happening to them. Palmer was trying to inch the machine ahead, but the stuff underneath made any progress difficult. Twice something spat against the tank, but did not penetrate.
“Five minutes are up,” he told Palmer. “They’d all better go directly to Dr. Brown, who should be out with the truck now for immediate treatment.”
Palmer nodded and relayed the instructions. “Pick up all you can with the crane and carry them back! Send in a new bunch, Briggs, and credit them with their bonus in advance. Damn it, Doc, this can go on all day; it’ll take an hour to pry around through this mess right here, and then he’s probably somewhere else. The stuff seems to be getting worse in this neighborhood, too, from what accounts I’ve had before. Wonder if that steel plate could be pushed down?”
He threw in the clutch engaging the motor to the treads and managed to twist through toward it. There was a slight slipping of the lugs, then the tractors caught, and the nose of the tank trust forward; almost without effort, the fragment of housing toppled from its leaning position and slid forward. The tank growled, fumbled, and slowly climbed up onto it and ran forward another twenty feet to its end; the support settled slowly, but something underneath checked it, and they were still again. Palmer worked the grapple forward, nosing a big piece of masonry out of the way, and two men reached out with the ends of their poles to begin probing, futilely. Another change of men came out, then another.
Briggs’ voice crackled erratically through the speaker again. “Palmer, I got a fool here who wants to go out on the end of your beam, if you can swing around so the crane can lift him out to it.”
“Start him coming!” Again he began jerking the levers, and the tank buckled and heaved, backed and turned, ran forward and repeated it all, while the plate that was holding them flopped up and down on its precarious balance.
Doc held his breath and began praying to himself; his admiration for the men who’d go out in that stuff was increasing by leaps and bounds, along with his respect for Palmer’s ability.
The crane boom bobbed toward them, and the scoop came running out, but wouldn’t quite reach; their own tank was relatively light and mobile compared to the bigger machine, but Palmer already had that pushed out to the limit, and hanging over the edge of the plate. It still lacked three feet of reaching.
“Damn!” Palmer slapped open the door of the tank, jumped forward on the tread, and looked down briefly before coming back inside. “No chance to get closer! Wheeoo! Those men earn their money.”
But the crane operator had his own tricks, and was bobbing the boom of his machine up and down slowly with a motion that set the scoop swinging like a huge pendulum, bringing it gradually closer to the grapple beam. The man had an arm out, and finally caught the beam, swinging out instantly from the scoop that drew backward behind him. He hung suspended for a second, pitching his body around to a better position, then somehow wiggled up onto the end and braced himself with his legs. Doc let his breath out and Palmer inched the tank around to a forward position again. Now the pole of the atomjack could cover the wide territory before them, and he began using it rapidly.
“Win or lose, that man gets a triple bonus,” Palmer muttered. “Uh!”
The pole had located something, and was feeling around to determine size; the man glanced at them and pointed frantically. Doc jumped forward to the windows as Palmer ran down the grapple and began pushing it down into the semi-molten stuff under the pole; there was resistance there, but finally the prong of the grapple broke under and struck on something that refused to come up. The manager’s hands moved the controls gently, making it tug from side to side; reluctantly, it gave and moved forward toward them, coming upward until they could make out the general shape. It was definitely no Tomlin suit!
“Lead hopper box! Damn! Wait, Jorgenson wasn’t anybody’s fool; when he saw he couldn’t make the safety, he might… maybe—” Palmer slapped the grapple down again, against the closed lid of the chest, but the hook was too large. Then the man clinging there caught the idea and slid down to the hopper chest, his armored hands grabbing at the lid. He managed to lift a corner of it until the grapple could catch and lift it the rest of the way, and his hands started down to jerk upward again.
The manager watched his motions, then flipped the box over with the grapple, and pulled it closer to the tank body; magma was running out, but there was a gleam of something else inside.
“Start praying, Doc!” Palmer worked it to the side of the tank and was out through the door again, letting the merciless heat and radiation stream in.
But Ferrel wasn’t bothering with that now; he followed, reaching down into the chest to help the other two lift out the body of a huge man in a five-shield Tomlin! Somehow, they wangled the six-hundred-odd pounds out and up on the treads, then into the housing, barely big enough for all of them. The atomjack pulled himself inside, shut the door and flopped forward on his face, out cold.
“Never mind him — check Jorgenson!” Palmer’s voice was heavy with the reaction from the hunt, but he turned the tank and sent it outward at top speed, regardless of risk. Contrarily, it bucked through the mass more readily than it had crawled in through the cleared section.
Ferrel unscrewed the front plate of the armor on Jorgenson as rapidly as he could, though he knew already that the man was still miraculously alive — corpses don’t jerk with force enough to move a four-hundred-pound suit appreciably. A side glance, as they drew beyond the wreck of the converter housing, showed the men already beginning to set up equipment to quell the atomic reaction again, but the armor front plate came loose at last, and he dropped his eyes back without noticing details, to cut out a section of clothing and make the needed injections; curare first, then neo-heroin, and curare again, though he did not dare inject the quantity that seemed necessary. There was nothing more he could do until they could get the man out of his armor. He turned to the atomjack, who was already sitting up, propped against the driving seat’s back.
“’Snothing much, Doc,” the fellow managed. “No jerks, just burn and that damned heat! Jorgenson?”
“Alive at least,” Palmer answered, with some relief. The tank stopped, and Ferrel could see Brown running forward from beside a truck. “Get that suit off you, get yourself treated for the burn, then go up to the office where the check will be ready for you!”
“Fifty thousand check?” The doubt in the voice registered over the weakness.
“Fifty thousand plus triple your minute time, and cheap; maybe we’ll toss in a medal or a bottle of Scotch, too. Here, you fellows give a hand.”
Ferrel had the suit ripped off with Brown’s assistance and paused only long enough for one grateful breath of clean, cool air before leading the way toward the truck. As he neared it, Jenkins popped out, directing a group of men to move two loaded stretchers onto the litter, and nodding jerkily at Ferrel. “With the truck all equipped, we decided to move out here and take care of the damage as it came up — Sue and I rushed them through enough to do until we can find more time, so we could give full attention to Jorgenson. He’s still living!”