"Look! He's come to," I heard one of the men shout. The other one laughed. I looked up quickly. The laughing one was the tallest; he had a hard face and was dressed in rancher's clothes, as was the other one.
I lay there, my ribs still paining me sharply, as I felt myself moving along the conveyer belt with the helpless feeling of a man facing inexorable death. The tall man was laughing again, obviously enjoying the sight of his victim being alive and conscious as he went into the furnace. I drew my legs up and tried to move forward along the conveyer belt, but with my ankles bound together it was a pitiful, wasted effort. In seconds, my knees were torn and bleeding from the sharp edges of the ore which was mostly cuprite and chrysocolla, edged with quartz. I glanced down the conveyer and saw the orange glow of the furnace drawing nearer, the roar of its bowels a terrible cry of welcome. I drew my knees up again and crawled forward, recapturing perhaps sixty seconds of life before my bound ankles made me fall to the side.
Desperately, I looked back at the furnace again. Steeling myself against the pain, moving on the sudden burst of hope I'd found, I crawled forward on the conveyer to gain a little more precious time. Now I began to work the handkerchiefs around my wrists against the sharp edges of the ore. I muttered a prayer of gratitude that all they'd been able to find were handkerchiefs and not strong rope. The material began to shred and I renewed my efforts. There wasn't time to crawl forward again and I ran my bound wrists hard along the sharp edges of the ore. Glancing down the belt, I saw that I was perhaps seventy seconds from the furnace.
The tall man was laughing harder now, as the inexorable conveyer continued to bring me to the edge of the furnace. The heat was scaring my body. Once I reached the edge of the conveyer, every bit of me would be consumed in the heat of the molten copper. There'd be some imperfections in the copper ore which would be filtered out in the system, but nothing else. The conveyer was beginning to edge downward, and the heat was unbearable as my wrist bonds shredded and tore apart I pulled myself up on the sharp ore, putting back fifteen seconds of my borrowed time. I swung around with a sharp lump of ore in my hand, hacked the handkerchiefs on my ankles off with frantic desperation. I rolled sideways, off the edge of the conveyer, just as I felt myself going over with the ore. My hands caught the moving edge, just for a second, just enough to give me a split-second to straighten out and drop to the floor below.
I landed on my feet and sank to my haunches, drawing my breath in deep draughts in the shadows of the huge furnace. I could see the three men, the third one having come up to join his cohorts. They were scrambling down from the catwalk and would be after me at once. But I gathered myself. I'd come within a second of being burned to death, and I figured I owed myself the added moment's rest.
The three men had reached the floor, and I saw them separate, two starting to go around the big furnace on one side, the tall one who had laughed so hard taking the other side. I started to move in the direction he'd taken. I intended doing something about his sense of humor. I raced around the furnace and saw that on the other side the plant widened into the molding area. There, rivers of molten copper flowed in steplike arrangement from one short length of iron funnel to another, forming waterfalls of brilliant orange as it flowed from funnel to funnel. At the base, a huge casting wheel slowly revolved, bordered all around its edges by the glowing, orange squares of molten copper that flowed into the molds from the iron tracks. Some of the large copper molds, when cooled, would be refined and remelted still further for use in various ways.
I was starting to race around the outer perimeter of the right side of the huge casting wheel when the tall, hard-faced man came into view, running at an angle to block me off. He whirled to face me as I came toward him. He swung at me, but I'd figured that to be his first move and I dived low, catching him at the knees. I lifted him up and threw him up and out, the way a Scotsman tosses the caber. He arched through the air and landed in one of the molds of molten copper. His scream seemed to shake the very walls, a horrible paean to death. He didn't laugh once, and I continued to run around the outer edge of the huge iron wheel.
The other two would have heard, of course, and know what had happened, so as I saw a doorway leading into another part of the refinery, I ran for it. I saw them appear just as I disappeared through the door and heard their footsteps chasing after me. I found myself in a narrow passageway of large pipes and conduits and raced for an exit at the far end. A shot echoed in the narrow passage, reverberating from the tubes and pipes. I hit the floor and rolled out of the exit door, regaining my feet in what seemed to be a large storage area for fabricated material. I saw thin sheets of copper, heavy bars and thick slabs as I ran past them. The area was almost dark, one or two lone lightbulbs high in the ceiling casting a dim glow. I saw another doorway and ran through it to find myself in a room with one end filled with huge wooden spools of heavy copper wire, each spool standing eight feet high. The spools were held in place by wooden chocks under the forward edges of the first row of them. I ran forward and squeezed myself into the darkness of the spaces between the huge spools. Dropping to my knees, I braced my hands on the floor and, as the two men came into the room, I kicked hard against the chock holding the spool to my right, then the one to my left. The wooden chocks, knocked sideways, released the giant spools, and they started to roll, gathering momentum instantly. Another kick released the first of three more giant spools of copper wire on the left.
I turned to see the two men frantically trying to dodge the huge spools as they rolled at them with amazing speed. They were too busy dodging, trying not to be crushed to death, to pay attention to me. I pulled Wilhelmina from my pocket, rested myself on one knee and drew a bead on the dodging figures. I only needed to take care of one. I caught him with a clean shot as he halted between two of the spools. His friend, startled by the shot, turned to see what had happened. One of the spools hit him, knocking him down and running over him with a thousand pounds of crushing, killing weight. He didn't scream. Only a low, choking gasp escaped him.
I saw a sign that said EXIT. It was over a steel firedoor. I took it and went out into the cool night air. The few night workmen had called the cops by now, and as I started away I could hear the sound of sirens approaching.
I'd had a lucky break and I knew it. I also began to appreciate the code name of The Executioner. Well. I wasn't going to be a victim.
I found myself a little pub that was just closing and asked directions. It turned out I was a good distance from the new suburban development, and transportation was damned hard to find at that hour. I fell back on man's oldest known transportation system — his own two feet — and started out, setting a steady, ground-consuming pace. But it still gave me plenty of time to go over what had happened. I was heading back to John Dawsey's place, but I had a strong feeling he wouldn't be talking to me. The three men hadn't been waiting for my appearance when I walked in on them. They had no way of knowing I would turn up.
By the time I'd reached the suburban development I'd broken into a trot. At Dawsey's house, still pitch black, I went around to the back door. It was open and I entered, flicking on the kitchen light. The house was empty, or it seemed empty. I knew better.