He got it free of the blast area and dropped it.
The men raced back to their drills.
“We're all finished here!” came Chief Chong-won's voice on the mine radio.
“Excellent,” said Jonnie. “Now clear every man out of there and tell me when they're gone, including you!”
He could see them streaming out of the powerhouse and up the far roadway, tiny figures in blue work clothes. At last they were safely away from the dam. “All clear, Lord Jonnie," said Chief Chong-won.
It wouldn't stop the drilling. Jonnie signaled Dwight. Dwight gave the crew at the wreck their orders. “Fire in the hole!” yelled Dwight. Jonnie could see them setting fuses. Then they slipped and slithered and plowed through the ooze to their flying platform and boarded it. They had to bodily haul the last one onto it by his collar and fly off with his legs still dangling. The platform went over to a safe area and landed. Jonnie watched the wreck area.
Blowie! Blowie! The sharp cracks of blast cord exploding.
A long line of mud catapulted into the sky. Smoke and spattering goo obscured the wreck for a moment.
A shock wave made the ground tremble. A small roll of water ran down the lake. Twenty-four seconds after the blast the sound of it reached them like a hard buffet with a big hand.
The smoke was clearing away up there. The enormous wreck had not moved but a channel had been cut through the upper and lower crater edges. A trickle of water started through the farther one. Just a trickle?
Jonnie held his breath, eyeing it with a scope, afraid that in their shortness of time they would have to shoot again. “Come on! Come on!” he was saying. “More, more!” He knew water was very erosive and tended to chew and widen its own way. “Come on!”
The farther side was at least two feet higher than the lake at the dam. It should have more push than that!
Right then some object in the way of the flow was worked out by the water. It was a big blast gun. It twisted in the swirl and then at last went tumbling away.
The water burst through the far crater wall. It swirled and surged in the crater, a boiling, frothing churn of discolored mud. Water thrust the upper channel wider. More water burst through.
Now it was working at the nearest ditch the blast cord had dug. It gnawed at obstruction and debris. And then it started through!
A third surge in the upper crater. Pieces were tearing loose. There was a roaring torrent there now. The bowl was filling; it was emptying into the lower lake.
They had gotten the river running again. Jonnie told Dwight to give them a very well done. The drills were raving and smoking. Jonnie looked at his watch. They only had about twenty minutes left. Where had the time gone? “How many drill sections have you gotten into those holes?” asked Jonnie to Thor.
“Five. That's seventy-five feet.”
“It will have to be enough. Get those drills out of there. Stormalong!" he barked into his radio. “Start pulling these crews and equipment out of here!”
He could see Chief Chong-won, a speck way over on the far side. He spoke into his mine radio. “Chief, you are going to see one awful flash over here in a few minutes. Wait to make sure the whole dam doesn't go out, and the instant it's safe, send a picked crew in there to open two generator ports and get the power back on to the cone cable and pagoda area only. Got it?”
“Yes, Lord Jonnie."
“And be sure to be under cover for this blast,” added Jonnie.
They had the port-a-packs out and were clattering them in plane holds.
"Dwight!" said Jonnie. “Take those three drums of liquid explosive and pour them in those holes and then set the empty drums on top of them. Fast!”
Dwight pointed with his good arm and got men running. They began to pour a big drum of explosive into each hole. The holes were still so hot, the explosive was almost boiling. It was hard to get it to flow down against the trapped air. The air came bubbling and steaming back up.
Jonnie raced along, stringing blast cord. He put a big loop of it around each place where they would set a drum. The drums would be like bombs with the explosive vapor still in them. “Fuses!” yelled Dwight.
“We've got no time,” shouted Jonnie. "I’m going to set this off with a plane's guns!”
“What?” gawked Thor.
They had the barrels empty and were putting them in place in the circle of blast cord at each hole. A shot into any one drum would set off the lot.
“Leave me that plane!” Jonnie pointed at a single battle plane they'd brought. “Get the rest of them out of here with all men right now!”
Stormalong started to protest and then started hurrying men into the remaining ships. As their equipment went slamming into the planes, Stormalong yelled over to Jonnie, “Shoot it from way up! This thing is going to skyrocket!”
Jonnie was looking at his watch. They only had nine minutes left.
The planes were taking off, Dwight was being dragged into the last one. Jonnie looked at this setup. All okay.
He rushed to the battle plane and got ready to start it.
There was nobody left in the area.
He took off. He jumped the ship to about two thousand feet. The dam still looked big.
The planes were landing in sandbag abutments on the other side. Stormalong had really gotten across and slammed them down in an awful hurry.
Chief Chong-won and his men were under cover.
“Fire in the hole!” said Jonnie on his mine radio.
He flipped the guns to “Flame,” “Narrow,” and “Maximum.” He checked his security belt.
Now for some nice gunnery. At this moment it all looked pretty peaceful down there. The blackened wreck was spilling flotsam as water went through its broken girders. The river was flowing right up to the dam lake.
But the increased water was spilling under the dam below the lake and it would be tearing that hole wider and wider.
Jonnie closed all windows with a flick of switches, made sure doors were all secure. Should he back up to three thousand? No. This was the best range. A battle plane could take a lot. But he had never heard of anybody setting off a hundred fifty gallons of liquid explosive before. Plus a thousand feet of number five blast cord.
He put his sights carefully on the center barrel. He pushed the gun trip.
There was a flash across the whole sky before him. A curtain of green fire three thousand feet high.
Crash!
The recoil hit him and the plane went spinning skyward like a thrown toy.
The yank of the security belt was like a blow. It knocked the wind out of him.
Three seconds later he found he was upside-down. He punched the console. The plane's balance motors caught up and righted it. He was flying backward.
The whine of engines fought against the wrong direction.
The plane steadied. Somebody would have to replace the windscreen. It had a diagonal crack in it.
And then he saw the cliff. The smoke had cleared. And the whole cliff front was sliding down toward the lake in slow, slow motion.
Half a million cubic yards of rock, moving down.
A lot of it was apparently still in one piece. But that was an illusion. It was a clean slice of cliff, knifed off neatly. But inside it the rock was cracked and shattered and just before it hit the water it lost shape and tumbled in fragments. It had looked at first like it hadn't left the bank. But there had been distance. Some of it struck nearly at the center of the lake.
He watched the dam. Would it, too, crumble in slow motion and this whole lake go roaring down the gorge? He had set it up so the shock wave would go into the air, not down and through the ground. It had gone into the air, all right; witness what happened to his plane.