Adonia pulled Victoria toward the aluminum stairs leading up to the catwalk. The Undersecretary still coughed, wiping at her eyes. Van Dyckman hurried to join them, with Garibaldi following. Shawn took the hesitant Senator’s arm, urging him to move. “Come on, sir. We can’t stay here — up the stairs! We’ve got to get to those catwalks.”
Pulaski shrugged him off. “I heard you. I’m going.”
Just when Adonia and Victoria reached the base of the stairs, a new whistling siren wailed throughout the cavern, echoing off the walls. The din was deafening, as though all the military’s stockpiled old sirens had gone off at once.
“Now what?” the Senator cried. “I didn’t trigger anything!”
A waist-high metal gate at the base of the catwalk stairs swung shut like a guillotine blade. Adonia yanked the Undersecretary away as the gate slammed, cutting them off from the metal steps.
With a sudden mechanical jerk, the catwalk rotated up away from the access stairs with a creaking, clanking sound that was loud even above the alarms.
“Sensors must have detected the halothane,” Shawn said, looking at the tendrils of gas rolling toward them. “The release of the gas would signal the other countermeasures and isolate anyone down in the grotto.”
“This is insane!” Garibaldi exclaimed.
Simultaneously, the two freight elevators on either side of the ledge whirred into motion and dropped to the lower floor in their safe position, further isolating the team members above the high bay. The opposite catwalk rotated up into the arched ceiling as well and locked in place, just missing the extended metal boom of the massive crane, completely inaccessible.
“We’re trapped!” van Dyckman said.
The metal staircase that had connected with the catwalk still extended up, but stopped at a blind end, disconnected. The last step hung over the precipitous drop down to the grotto floor.
Adonia felt as if someone had just kicked the wind out of her. The alarm siren continued to wail.
As the yellow tracer smoke crawled closer, the Senator showed panic, waiting for someone to save him. Van Dyckman moaned in sick dismay. “The catwalks were our only way to get above the gas!”
Victoria Doyle had managed to get her coughing under control, and glared at him. “Another thing you didn’t count on, Stanley? How do we get out of here?”
“On the metal stairs, everybody,” Adonia said, helping Victoria back to her feet. It was the only option she could see. “Climb while we can.”
“But they don’t go anywhere!” Garibaldi said. “They just dangle out in open air.”
“We might still get high enough to be safe.” She swung one leg over the metal half gate and climbed over. Wasting no time, she stepped onto the now-disengaged aluminum ladder, which wobbled, unstable without the connecting catwalk to hold it in place. Once she balanced on the metal stairs, she grabbed the railing and helped Victoria climb over to join her. The others covered their faces with their hands, hoping to block the halothane as they swung themselves over the gate.
Victoria ascended the steps, holding the metal rails to keep her balance as Adonia helped van Dyckman get to the stairs. But as Victoria climbed higher, the unstable staircase creaked from the weight. If she went much higher, the unsupported metal structure would bend.
The remaining steps telescoped up at an angle, wavering free. Adonia realized that was why the gates had swung shut, to prevent anyone from climbing the stairs without the supporting catwalk in place.
While the Undersecretary held on to the swaying staircase, Adonia shouted over the alarm noise, “Wait! It’s not stable enough to hold us.”
Victoria stopped where she was, and the wobbly stairs stopped swaying, but when she gingerly tried to climb one step higher, the metal frame creaked and swung to the left, then back in a pendulum-like motion. She looked down at the others, her face ashen. “This is as high as I can go. I don’t think more than a few of us will be able to get up here. It won’t hold our weight.”
Adonia knew it would never support all six of them. On the far side of the ledge, the second staircase also extended to nowhere. The disconnected steps might support two people high enough above the encroaching gas, but a third person would certainly overstress the metal.
The air currents in the grotto would stir the gas, waft some of it up, maybe enough to incapacitate them high on the rickety steps. And they would fall to their deaths.…
Adonia was already dizzy, and the relentless sirens disoriented her even more. “Dead end.” Breathing hard, she caught more of the halothane scent, growing stronger. Her world focused into nothing but survival. She searched for another way to climb higher, but the catwalks were now far out of reach.
Shawn called to her from below. “We have to go down instead — get out on the cavern floor, keep far enough ahead of the gas until it’s diluted.”
Looking down from her perch on the detached aluminum steps, Adonia saw the piles of construction material, mounds of cement bags, even the crane itself. Once out in the lower cavern, they could reach the far end and climb above the gas.
“One small problem, Colonel Whalen,” Garibaldi said. “We have no way to get down there.”
Close to the plastic safety chain, Adonia peered over the drop-off to see the stone floor impossibly far below.
The original emergency stairs that led from the ledge to the grotto floor had been disengaged and pushed to the other side of the construction material to make room for the temporary pool. She looked up and saw that the crane boom was out of reach high overhead, extending from the huge Manitowoc cab anchored in the middle of the cavern.
Both freight elevators were now locked and secured down on the floor. “Stanley!” Adonia said. “Where are the controls to the freight elevator?”
Van Dyckman lifted a shaky arm and pointed back toward the tunnel, where the ominous wave of gas continued to boil out. “The override is up in the guard portal.”
“No good,” Shawn said.
Adonia looked down, saw the surface of the cooling pool only thirty feet below, the entire structure encircled by the metal mesh observation platform. And it was clear what they had to do.
“Good news,” she said, turning to face them as the alarms continued to clamor. “We have two choices. Stay here on the ledge and hope we don’t die from the halothane.” She calmed herself, then said the unthinkable alternative. “Or we jump into the pool of radioactive fuel rods and climb down to the floor.”
28
Even with the blaring alarms and the encroaching yellow gas, Adonia knew the others would balk at the jump — and with good reason. But it was the only way out she could see. She hoped she and Shawn wouldn’t have to throw them over the ledge. If the halothane incapacitated them on the ledge, they would surely die, lying in the lethal concentration for hours before a rescue team could make their way inside.
Before she could defend her crazy suggestion, Garibaldi raised his voice over their growing alarm. “She’s right! This much halothane will kill us if we stay here. We’re going to be incapacitated within minutes, so we have to move now.”
Shawn added, “Any rescue team is still hours away. Jumping in the pool is less hazardous than staying here. Once we’re in the water we can swim to the side and climb down to the floor. We’ve got to jump.”
“Are you insane?” Senator Pulaski stumbled backward in his haste to get away from the edge. “The water and the rods — they’re radioactive!”
Adonia raised her voice over the sirens. “Water moderates the radiation, Senator. You’ll be all right for a short period of time. If you jump in and swim across quickly, your exposure will be minimal. Scuba divers clean out fuel rod storage pools at Granite Bay all the time. Just stay clear of the fuel rods when you’re in the water.”