Wopner's mouth worked silently as Hatch stared. Please . . .
"Kerry, try to stay calm," Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom. My God, it's amazing he's still alive. "Streeter!" he called into the intercom. "We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline."
He turned back to Wopner. "Kerry, we're going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need to know where you hurt."
Again the mouth worked. "I don't know." The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. "I feel ... all broken up inside." The voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner's shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.
"How is he?" Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.
"Get back, for Chrissakes!" Hatch said. "He needs air." Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.
"Be careful!" Bonterre said from behind him. "There may be more than one trap."
A trap? It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly . . . He tried to reach Wopner's hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.
"Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way," came Streeter's voice over the intercom.
"Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—"
"Water . . ." Wopner breathed.
Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen down the side of Wopner's helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black, droplets of blood glistening along its length. Jesus, where the hell are those jacks . . .
"Help me, please!" Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.
Punctured lung, thought Hatch. "Hold on, Kerry, just a couple of minutes," he said as soothingly as he could, and then turned away and stabbed savagely at his intercom. "Streeter," he hissed, "the jacks, goddamnit, where are the jacks?" He felt a wave of dizziness, and gulped more air.
"Air quality is moving into the red zone," Neidelman said quietly.
"Lowering now," said Streeter amid a burst of static.
Hatch turned to Neidelman and saw he had already gone to retrieve them. "Can you feel your arms and legs?" he asked Wopner.
"I don't know." There was a pause while the programmer gasped for breath. "I can feel one leg. It feels like the bone has come out."
Hatch angled his light down, but was unable to see anything but a twist of trouser in the narrow space, the denim sodden to a dark crimson color. "Kerry, I'm looking at your left hand. Try to move your fingers."
The hand, strangely bluish and plump-looking, remained motionless for a long moment. Then the index and middle fingers twitched slightly. Relief coursed through Hatch. CNS function is still there. If we can get this rock off him in the next few minutes, we've got a chance. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
There was another tremor underfoot and a rain of dirt, and Wopner squealed: a high-pitched, inhuman sound.
"Mon dieu, what was that?" Bonterre said, quickly glancing up at the ceiling.
"I think you'd better leave," said Hatch quietly.
"Absolutely not."
"Kerry?" Hatch peered anxiously into the crack once again. "Kerry, can you answer me?"
Wopner stared out at him, a low, hoarse moan escaping his lips. His breath was now wheezing and gurgling.
Outside the tunnel, Hatch could hear the thud and clatter of machinery as Neidelman pulled in the cable that had been dropped from the surface. He sucked air desperately as a strange buzzing began sounding faintly in his head.
"Can't breathe," Wopner managed to say, his eyes pale and glassy.
"Kerry? You're doing great. Just hold on." Kerry gasped and coughed again. A trickle of blood ran down from his lips to dangle from his chin.
The sound of running footsteps, then Neidelman reappeared. He slung two hydraulic jacks to the ground, followed by a portable oxygen cylinder. Hatch grabbed the mask and began screwing the nozzle onto the regulator. Then he spun the dial on the top of the cylinder and heard the reassuring hiss of oxygen.
Neidelman and Bonterre worked feverishly behind him, tearing off the plastic coverings, unfastening the jacks from the rods, screwing the pieces together. There was another shudder, and Hatch could feel the tall shaft of rock shift under his hand, inching inexorably toward the wall.
"Hurry!" he cried, head swimming. Dialing the flow to maximum, he snaked the oxygen mask into the narrow gap between the rocks. "Kerry," he said, "I'm going to place this mask over your face." He gasped, trying to find the air to keep talking. "I want you to take slow, shallow breaths. Okay? In just a few seconds we're going to jack this rock off you."
He placed the oxygen mask over Kerry's face, trying to slip it beneath the programmer's misshapen helmet. He had to mold the mask with his fingers to make it narrow enough to fit around the programmer's mashed nose and mouth; only now did he realize just how tightly the young man was wedged. The moist, panicked eyes looked at him imploringly.
Neidelman and Bonterre said nothing, working with intense concentration, fitting the pieces of jack together.
Craning to get a glimpse into the thinning space, Hatch could see Wopner's face, narrowed alarmingly, his jaw locked open by the pressure. Blood flowed from his cheeks where the edge of the helmet cut into his flesh. He could no longer speak, or even scream. His left hand twitched spasmodically, caressing the rock face with purple fingertips. A slight sound of escaping air came from his mouth and nostrils. Hatch knew that the pressure of the rock made breathing almost impossible.
"Here it is," Neidelman hissed, handing the jack to Hatch. Hatch tried to jam it in the narrowing crack.
"It's too wide!" he gasped, tossing it back. "Crank it down!"
He turned back to Wopner. "Now Kerry, I want you to breathe along with me. I'll count them with you, okay? One . . . two ..."
With a violent trembling underfoot and a harsh grating sound, the slab lunged closer; Hatch felt his own hand and wrist suddenly squeezed between the tightening rocks. Wopner gave a violent shudder, then a wet gasp. As Hatch watched in horror, the beam of his light angling into the narrow space with pitiless clarity, he saw the programmer's eyes, bulging from his head, turn first pink, then red, then black. There was a splitting sound, and the helmet burst along its seams. Sweat on the crushed cheeks and nose grew tinged with pink as the slab inched still closer. A jet of blood came rushing from one ear, and more blood burst from the tips of Wopner's fingertips. His jaw buckled, sagging sideways, the tongue protruding into the oxygen mask.
"The rock's still slipping!" Hatch screamed. "Get me something, anything, to—"
But even as he spoke, he felt the programmer's head come apart under his hand. The oxygen mask began to burble as its airway grew clogged by a rush of fluids. There was a strange vibration between his fingers and to his horror he realized it was Wopner's tongue, twitching spastically as the nerves that fired the muscles burned out.
"No!" Hatch cried in despair. "Please God, no!"
Black spots appeared before his eyes as he staggered against the rock, unable to catch his breath in the thick air, fighting to pull his own hand free from the increasing pressure.