RAWSON stirred his huge bulk and snapped on the audio set at his elbow. "—bringing to you," it said abruptly, "flashes from the news fronts of the solar system.
"We have received from Earth a steady flow of bulletins on the plague. Our last report announces the death of Commissioner Wheelock, statesman and scholar of New Britain. The Commissioner, said the report, was eased of his pain by an injection of carbon monoxide in solution. His life had been surrendered by his attendant physicians a week ago when drawings were made for distribution of the radium ship's cargo and his group's number did not come up.
"Flashed from Calcutta: Dr. Mohan Shar, member of the Eurasian Presidium, is under treatment made possible by the arrival of Thursday's ore consignment from Callisto. Despite the advanced stage of the disease into which he had passed, it is confidently predicted that Dr. Shar will shortly reach complete recovery. That is all."
The audio fell silent, and Rawson cut off the current. "Hear that, Foley?" he asked.
His bunk-mate, a thin, bald Irishman, sat up. "Sure," he said. "Shar's a fine man. I'm glad he's pulling through the Sickness all right. Have you ever seen a case?"
"Two of them. Haven't you?"
"No—not yet. I'm part of the regular staff on here—I was working on the old five-hour day when the Sickness came to Earth and you extras shoved us out of bed with your three eight-hour shifts. Tell me about the Sickness. What does it do to them?”
Rawson scanned the ceiling evasively. "One of the cases I saw broke out on the Earth-Jupiter ship. The man knew he had it; his number was passed a few times; so he set off to come to the radium as long it wouldn't come to him. I don't know how he came through the cordon—I guess it was bribery."
Rawson hesitated. "They say it’s a kind of cancer, but this man … Well, he didn't look like any cancer patient. It came through his skin, over in tight lumps like apples. He got red and shiny in the face, too. Skipper had to get the surgeon to give him the monoxide and chuck him out . . .”
"Go on, man," urged Foley, noting the big American's pause. "What was the other one?"
"The other one? He was my brother."
"Oh. . . . Sorry," said Foley "Then there's no one who knows better than you what we're doing. I thought it was the pay that brought you—but Lord knows you earn it every second. It's a job for real men down in the mines where we go ...” He trailed off into silence as Rawson stared at him with something indescribable in his eyes.
"Don't talk about it then, Foley,' said the American. "Do you think I don't know what the risk is down bottom? Do you think I don't know why the replacements and extras keep coining in and never going out? Don't talk about it at all, and maybe you and I will get along better while we last."
A bell rang clearly through the cramped quarters. "First notice," said the Irishman. "Get your kit."
The two snapped on respirators—Callista, of course, has an atmosphere, unbreathable but inert; you don't need a space suit, but you do need oxygen—took up their lamps and tools and stepped through their narrow bulkhead.
They walked in the open around the huge bulk of the ore-ship that was waiting to take a full load of crude pitchblende from the little mining settlement to Broadstream, six hundred miles away on the curve of the tiny moon's horizon. There it would be refined into pure radium that was packed into needle-like interplanetary cruisers, flashed to the stricken Earth.
AT the mouth of the mine by the elevator opening twenty men assembled. Shift B was ready to hop into the cage on the split second that shift A was out of it. Some laughed at this at first—but one second meant a cubic yard of ore that would not be wasted on Earth.
Men staggered from the elevator, grimy and fagged with their killing pace of the past eight hours. "Get in!" yelled Foley to his crew—he was the foreman—and they snapped onto the unsteady platform. There was a sickening drop that wrenched their stomachs; they snapped on their radium-exciter lamps and clipped them onto their hats. The greenish glare showed the slick, wet, wooden-shored walls of the vein, dripping with water condensed by the pressure that obtains a mile beneath the surface of a planet. The men did not risk "bends," the terrible disease of most high-pressure workers, for their atmosphere was insoluble in their blood. Krypton and neon replaced the nitrogen of Earth that dissolved under pressure and reappeared in great bubbles when the pressure was released.
They picked up the tools abandoned by the last shift and trotted in formation down the long dim corridor, past the mouths of the peristaltic tubes and the heaps of slag, coming to a halt at the jagged tunnel wall of pitch-blende.
"Back up," said Foley, removing a slim metal tube from his kit. "We're going to try a shot."
With a gleaming drill he bit into the wall some dozen feet and rammed home the blasting charge. The men braced themselves against the walls and tensed their muscles as he swung a hammer against the ramrod.
There was the dull, coughing roar characteristic of trinite as the bomb exploded, and a spider's web of cracks and seams spread slowly over the raw face of the rock. As the foreman sprang back the surface collapsed into a pile of rubble. Smoothly the crew shoved wooden shoring into the loose heap and swung heavy beam braces against the roof. A second crew plunged oversized shovels into the ore and dashed their loads into the mouth of the peristaltic tube that led a mile up to the surface. The tube buzzed a warning signal as it went into operation. Its massive bands of metal contracted and expanded rhythmically and the ore flung into its cavity slowly started for the surface; a lift of over a mile.
"Eighteen cubic yards," announced Foley sonorously as he checked the estimate off on his tally-board. He turned on a man savagely. "Batten than timber down," he yelled. "We can't take chances with anything down here." The worker touched his cap ironically, swung a sledge against a plank.
The last of the rubble had vanished into the tube and the tunnel was safe —or as safe as it ever was—for another blast, shored walls already slick with water.
"We're blasting," cried Foley. He picked up the electric drill and cut it into the surface, bearing down as the bit sank into the rock. Another gleaming capsule vanished into the drill-hole, was thrust home by the ramrod. The little Irishman raised a maul and slammed it against the mushroomed end of the rod.
With appalling suddenness the charge exploded and a geyser of rock sprayed out from the mine-face. Rawson spun about as a chunk of ore shot by him. He saw it smash into a great beam that should have held, but didn't.
"Cave-in!" he screamed, and in the greenish glare of his headlamp he saw the beam slowly topple over and a great collapse of the rock ceiling down the whole length of the corridor. Chunks of ore fell about his head and he felt a sickening shock at the base of his skull as he dropped. Screams rang in the air, but he was falling asleep; unconscious.
SOMEONE was shaking his shoulder, and little shocks of pain ran down his arm. "If you're dead," a voice shouted in his ear, "stay dead, but if you're not get up and make yourself useful!"
"Hello, Foley," he said dizzily as he sat up. "Who's left?"
The little foreman helped him to his feet. "You, me, Pyle, and Vogel," he said. "All the others are gone for good." Rawson didn't know Pyle, but Vogel and he had exchanged greetings now and then. The four men cast their lamps about them and surveyed their position.
"More than a mile underground," said Vogel flatly. "And our power's off, so we can't use the drills and scoops. We're in a little pocket at the very end of what used to be the tunnel. So I guess we're going to . . . I guess we're going to die. . . ."
Foley stared at him for a moment, then suddenly smashed his palm across the man's face. Evenly, then, he said: "Remember that my commission as foreman doesn't expire at the option of the crew. So long as you're alive you take my orders. And you obey them."