On the ladder just below, Garibaldi hung exhausted and dejected. Until now, he had focused on the climb, one rung at a time, almost in a trance. Now he just stared without hope at the revolving blades.
Just beneath him, Shawn clung to the wall, shaking his head in grim frustration. “Can you see any controls, Adonia? Is there some way to shut it down?”
“You know that would be too easy.” She doggedly climbed closer to the impregnable barrier. Directly above, the giant fan looked ancient. “Must be part of the 1950s vintage ventilation system.”
Garibaldi seemed to be pondering an engineering problem. “How… many blades?”
She didn’t know what that had to do with anything. “Four, like propeller vanes. They’re moving pretty fast, and completely blocking our way.”
Sagging on the rung, Garibaldi nodded. “Good. At least… it’s not a new industrial fan, a centrifugal type. Otherwise we’d never be able to get through.”
Shawn called up, his voice sounding urgent. “Do you smell that?”
Adonia drew in a deep breath as she looked down at Shawn’s worried face. The faint sweet odor was unmistakable, and she knew what it meant. “If the lockdown finally ended, they’re purging the cavern, venting the gas to the outside — and it will flow right past us. All of it.”
“Which means we can’t go back down,” Shawn said. “The halothane would overwhelm us as we descend.”
Garibaldi looked up. “The quickest way to slow the gas — and for us to escape, of course — is to stop that fan.”
“An excellent suggestion, but how do we do that?” Adonia asked. “I don’t even see any power lines to cut.”
With a raw, radiation-burned hand, Garibaldi patted one of the LED lights that illuminated the shaft. A small dull-colored conduit ran up the granite wall. “This must cover a power line. It looks plastic instead of metal.”
Adonia struck it with her knuckles. “We still don’t have any way to cut it.”
“You don’t need to — there’s another way to stop the power. Quickly now, climb closer to the rotating blades. I’ll follow you so I can inspect the apparatus.” As they hung twenty feet below the spinning blades, the old scientist now seemed stronger, energized. “Good. There’s no grill or grating on either side.”
“It’s not a tourist attraction,” Adonia said. “There shouldn’t be anyone up here except for maintenance crews, and they would have to get through any safety barriers.”
“If the blades weren’t moving, there’d be plenty of room for us to squeeze between them,” Shawn said.
Garibaldi tightened his grip on the rungs. “Colonel, if you would please untie the rope around my waist? I’d do it myself, but I would rather save my strength—”
Shawn shook his head. “You’re too unsteady, sir. And the halothane fumes aren’t helping.”
Garibaldi continued lecturing, undeterred. “We’ll just have to risk it. Untie yours as well, Colonel. Then Ms. Rojas can climb right up and feed the loose line into the rotating blades. That should make a thorough mess of things.”
Adonia grinned as she understood. “The rope will jam it up in no time, burn out the rotor.”
After Shawn untied the rope from himself and from the older man’s waist, Garibaldi handed the end up to Adonia. “This will require some skill, and maybe luck. If you toss it in too quickly, the blades will kick the rope straight up and eject it, without ruining the motor. If you feed in the line too slowly, the blades will whip the rope around and it will flail us like a bullwhip.”
“Sure, no pressure.” Adonia was quiet for a moment, studying the fan as she pulled up the rope. The cloying smell of rising halothane grew stronger, and she started to feel light-headed. But they were so close to the outside she could taste it, and if they jammed the fan, it would stop drawing the fumes up the shaft. “So I get one chance. I feed the rope into the blades, and release it right away?”
“Release it right after the rope catches. The rotation will pull it in, snag the line, and clog the fan.”
Adonia glanced back up at the old machinery, then worked her way up until she hung only a few feet below the spinning blades. She removed one end of the rope from her shoulder, tied a small loop, then let a few feet of rope drop. She twirled the line. “I feel like a rodeo cowboy.”
“With the grime smeared over you, you look more like a coal miner,” Shawn said.
“I’ll take a shower when we’re out of here. Right now, you’ll have to put up with me.” She twirled the rope faster, then jerked it up toward the blades. The small lasso caught in the fan with a loud clang, spun around as the blades rotated, whipping it, tangling it. The rope swiftly snaked up, and Adonia played it out for a few seconds, then let go of the line.
She ducked. The other end of the rope snapped around, just missing her head as it shot into the fan blades like a spaghetti noodle being slurped up by a child. The fan’s drive motor made an increasingly loud whine, accompanied by a sharp rhythmic banging that echoed throughout the shaft. Adonia pressed herself flat against the rungs and the granite wall, afraid the entire old fan system might break from its moorings and collapse on top of them.
The wide metal blades slowed, strained, and then ground to a halt. The fan thrummed with leftover vibrations, and the roaring air current quieted to a barely perceptible breeze. The halothane’s distinct odor was replaced by the smell of smoke and burning wire.
The LED lights in the walls blinked out, plunging the shaft into darkness, but now Adonia could make out a faint halo of light between the motionless fan blades.
It was light from outside.
“I can see daylight up there!”
They waited, making sure that the motor had really burned out, and then they cheered simultaneously. Garibaldi sounded breathless and weary as he urged Adonia upward. “We can celebrate later, but I’d just as soon get into the open with all due haste. I… I am anxious to see the sky again.”
Adonia worked her way up into the enclosure that held the fan in place, where she could smell the hot oil and burning grease from the wrecked motor. Around the shaft and blades, the mangled rope looked like a noose. “Climb on up. It’s safe — this fan is never turning again. We can squeeze between the blades.”
Adonia clambered into the motionless turbine, squirming her way between the flat metal vanes. She cautiously raised her head above the frozen blade. “I feel like I’m sticking my head into a guillotine.” Briefly stuck, she grunted and pushed the fan through part of its rotation to widen the gap for the two men to climb through.
A faint curl of greasy white smoke still drifted from the direct-drive motor, but the mechanism made no more straining sounds. She silently told herself she would be fine and squirmed through, finally climbing up to reach the rungs above the ominous blockage. “It’s a little tight, but we’ll make it to the top.”
Bending down, she extended her arm through the motionless blades to help Garibaldi, who wheezed as he wormed his way up to join her. His shoulders barely fit through the gap.
Adonia worked her way around the framework and found a secure position so she could help Garibaldi climb past her. “Go on, lead the way to the top. I’m right behind you.”
The scientist started up the rungs without a word. His face wore a perpetual wince from the pain in his hands.
Shawn squeezed through the fan blades until he emerged next to Adonia. Without a word, he reached out to touch her face. Soot, dust, and grime smeared his cheeks, and his uniform was in a frightful state. Adonia knew she must look worse. “You can’t report to the President looking like that. I better hose you off when we get outside.”
“And I would be honored to do the same for you,” he said. “That’s what friends are for.”