Commodore, said Pat, while you're doing this, I'll start organizing the passengers. We can't have twenty people trying to get out at once.
That was a nightmare prospect that had to be avoided at all costs. Yet it would be hard to avoid panic even in this welldisciplined community if a single narrow tunnel was the only means of escape from a rapidly approaching death.
Pat walked to the front of the cabin; on Earth that would have been a steep uphill climb, but here a thirty-degree slope was barely noticeable. He looked at the anxious faces ranged in front of him and said: We're going to be out of here very soon. When the ceiling opens, a rope ladder will be dropped down. The ladies will go first, then the men all in alphabetical order. Don't bother to use your feet. Remember how little you weigh here, and go up hand over hand, as quickly as you can. But don't crowd the person in front; you should have plenty of time, and it will take you only a few seconds to reach the top.
Sue, please sort everyone out in the right order. Harding, Bryan, Johanson, Barrett I'd like you to stand by as you did before. We may need your help
He did not finish the sentence. There was a kind of soft, muffled explosion from the rear of the cabin nothing spectacular; the popping of a paper bag would have made more noise. But it meant that the wall was down while the ceiling, unfortunately, was still intact.
On the other side of the roof, Lawrence laid his hoop flat against the Fiberglas and started to fix it in position with quick-drying cement. The ring was almost as wide as the little well in which he was crouching; it came to within a few centimeters of the corrugated walls. Though it was perfectly safe to handle, he treated it with exaggerated care. He had never acquired that easy familiarity with explosives that characterizes those who have to live with them.
The ring charge he was tamping in place was a perfectly conventional specimen of the art, involving no technical problems. It would make a neat clean out of exactly the desired width and thickness, doing in a thousandth of a second a job that would have taken a quarter of an hour with a power saw. That was what Lawrence had first intended to use; now he was very glad that he had changed his mind. It seemed most unlikely that he would have a quarter of an hour.
How true that was, he learned while he was still waiting for the foam to set. The fire's through into the cabin! yelled a voice from overhead.
Lawrence looked at his watch. For a moment it seemed as if the second hand was motionless, but that was an illusion he had experienced all his life. The watch had not stopped; it was merely that time, as usual, was not going at the speed he wished. Until this moment it had been passing too swiftly; now, of course, it was crawling on leaden feet.
The foam should be rock-hard in another thirty seconds. Far better to leave it a little longer than to risk shooting too soon, while it was still plastic.
He started to climb the rope ladder, without haste, trailing the thin detonating wires behind him. His timing was perfect. When he had emerged from the shaft, uncrimped the short circuit he had put for the sake of safety at the end of the wires, and connected them to the exploder, there were just ten seconds to go.
Tell them we're starting to count down from ten, he said.
As Pat raced downhill to help the Commodore though just what he could do now, he had very little idea he heard Sue calling in an unhurried voice: Miss Morley, Mrs. Schuster, Mrs. Williams How ironic it was that Miss Morley would once again be the first, this time by virtue of alphabetical accident. She could hardly grumble about the treatment she was getting now.
And then a second and much grimmer thought flashed through Pat's mind. Suppose Mrs. Schuster got stuck in the tunnel and blocked the exit. Well, they could hardly leave her until last. No, she'd go up all right; she had been a deciding factor in the tube's design, and since then she had lost several kilos.
At first glance, the outer door of the toilet still seemed to be holding. Indeed, the only sign that anything had happened was a slight wisp of smoke curling past the hinges. For a moment Pat felt a surge of relief; why, it might take the fire half an hour to burn through the double thickness of Fiberglas, and long before that
Something was tickling his bare feet. He had moved automatically aside before his conscious mind said, What's that?
He looked down. Though his eyes were now accustomed to the dim emergency lighting, it was some time before he realized that a ghostly gray tide was pouring beneath that barricaded door and that the panels were already bulging inward under the pressure of tons of dust. It could be only a matter of minutes before they collapsed; even if they held, it might make little difference. That silent, sinister tide had risen above his ankles even while he was standing here.
Pat did not attempt to move, or to speak to the Commodore, who was standing equally motionless a few centimeters away. For the first time in his life and now, it might well be, for the last he felt an emotion of sheer, overwhelming hate. In that moment, as its million dry and delicate feelers brushed against his bare legs, it seemed to Pat that the Sea of Thirst was a conscious, malignant entity that had been playing with them like a cat with a mouse. Every time, he told himself, we thought we were getting the situation under control, it was preparing a new surprise. We were always one move behind, and now it is tired of its little game; we no longer amuse it. Perhaps Radley was right, after all.
The loud-speaker dangling from the air pipe roused him from his fatalistic reverie.
We're ready! it shouted. Crowd at the end of the bus and cover your faces. I'll count down from ten.
TEN.
We're already at the end of the bus, thought Pat. We don't need all that time. We may not even have it.
NINE.
I'll bet it doesn't work, anyway. The Sea won't let it, if It thinks we have a chance of getting out.
EIGHT.
A pity, though, after all this effort. A lot of people have half killed themselves trying to help us. They deserved better luck.
SEVEN.
That's supposed to be a lucky number, isn't it? Perhaps we may make it, after all. Some of us.
SIX.
Let's pretend. It won't do much harm now. Suppose it takes oh, fifteen seconds to get through
FIVE.
And, of course, to let down the ladder again; they probably rolled that up for safety
FOUR.
And assuming that someone goes out every three seconds-no, let's make it five to be on the safe side
THREE.
That will be twenty-two times five, which is one thousand and no, that's ridiculous; I've forgotten how to do simple arithmetic
TWO.
Say one hundred and something seconds, which must be the best part of two minutes, and that's still plenty of time for those lox tanks to blow us all to kingdom come
ONE.
ONE! And I haven't even covered my face; maybe I should lie down even if I have to swallow this filthy stinking dust
There was a sudden, sharp crack and a brief puff of air; that was all. It was disappointingly anticlimactic, but the explosives experts had known their job, as is highly desirable that explosives experts should. The energy of the charge had been precisely calculated and focused; there was barely enough left over to ripple the dust that now covered almost half the floor space of the cabin.
Time seemed to be frozen; for an age, nothing happened. Then there was a slow and beautiful miracle, breath-taking because it was so unexpected, yet so obvious if one had stopped to think about it.
A ring of brilliant white light appeared among the crimson shadows of the ceiling. It grew steadily thicker and brighter then, quite suddenly, expanded into a complete and perfect circle as the section of the roof fell away. The light pouring down was only that of a single glow tube twenty meters above, but to eyes that had seen nothing but dim redness for hours, it was more glorious than any sunrise.