The answer was to concentrate what strength remained on what was essential, and close out his attention on anything unnecessary. It was something like controlled tunnel vision, making the most of what was available over the smallest possible area. Having breathed himself back into self-control, he closed up his suit, addressed the rock face again and let his mind spiral inward, his vision close in… until all he saw was the rock before his torch and John's directing hands, until all he heard was John's voice.
The heat became distant and unimportant. The fatigue ceased to exist except as an abstract phenomenon. The stope, the mine itself, the very fact that he was underground, became things unimportant and apart. Even the relief periods were brief, unimportant moments before he was back at the face of rock again. The real universe was restricted to that rock face, the torch, and the directions of John.
His grip on the torch steadied. His cuts regained their precision and certainty. In this smaller universe, his present strength and attention was enough and to spare to get the job done. He worked…
Suddenly, they had all stopped and put back their helmets; and they were not starting again. John and the other torchers were turning away from the rock face. Baffled, Hal opened up his perceptions; and staggered physically as the larger world came back into existence about him, a bone-weariness exploding all through him.
He was conscious of John catching his arm and holding him up, guiding him back from the ledge and down the ramp cut the day before to the level below. His legs were wobbly and the torch he had unthinkingly carried back from the rock face - when he should have left it there for the next day's first crew - seemed to weigh several tons. He laid it against the face of the rise in which the ramp was cut; then, overwhelmed, slid down into a sitting position himself with his back to the rise.
Everybody was gathering around him. In the crowd, strangely, were Tonina and Will Nanne, who had left them hours ago.
"Well," said Will's harsh voice. "He did it. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself."
"All right," said John, looking down at Hal. "I suppose you'll do. I hope you understand the whole team's going to have to carry you and lose production until you learn enough to do a fair shift of work?"
"Oh, leave him alone!" said Tonina. "Can't you let him be now that he's won the job?"
"I have?" Hal said, foggily.
"Well, you still got to throw a port party for the team," said Davies.
Escorted back to the skip by them all with Tonina on one side of him and John on the other, acting as bumpers to bounce him back on course when he staggered out of the direct line of march, Hal felt a sense of triumph beginning to rise within him and a deep feeling of affection for those around him. He was one of them at last. They were like family, and he felt for each of them as if each was a brother or a sister.
"Port party tonight," said an unfamiliar voice in the crowded skip. Evidently the whole mining camp had been in on the plans for his trial as a torcher.
"Wait until you make leader, if you ever do," said Tonina in his ear. "Then you have to get the whole crowd of underground workers at the mine drunk."
As they had left the rock face, Hal had felt that he had hardly the strength left to do anything but fall on his bed and sleep the clock around. But once back in the bunkhouse, showered and dressed for Port, he found himself coming back to life. In the end, as they boarded the subway in a group - the team, Tonina, and Will Nanne, who was evidently entitled to share in the party because of having been one of the actors in the traditional drama in which Hal had been offered his chance to try out as a torcher - Hal found himself feeling as well as ever, except for a slight sensation as if he had lost so much weight he might float off the ground, with any encouragement at all.
Chapter Eleven
Hal, himself, had not been back to the main Coby spaceport since he had come in to this world; but he had come to know that nearly all the miners headed there in their off-time, particularly on the day and a half off they had between their six and a half day work weeks. The six and a half days came about because every three working days there were twelve extra hours off between work periods in which the slag-loaders did general cleanup and maintenance or other administrative work was carried on down in the mine. Every third week the extra half day of weekend holiday was cancelled out as each shift made a move forward of that many hours into a new work-time slot.
He had been puzzled that the shifts should need to change at all on this world where there was no sun and no natural day or nighttime hours. But he came to learn that a number of the miners had living partners or other personal arrangements in Port, where for administrative purposes day and night were strictly set and held. Certainly, everyone else but he seemed to know their way around Port when their group got there, heading off in one specific direction by unanimous agreement.
"Where are we going?" he asked John.
"The Grotto," said John. They were walking together in the back of the crowd; and now John took Hal by the elbow and slowed him down until they had fallen several meters behind everyone else. Even Tonina, seeing John holding Hal's arm, had gone on ahead. "… You've got the credit for this, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Hal.
"All right," said John. "If you find yourself getting in too deep, remember I can advance you what you need to make up the difference. You'll have to pay me back as soon as possible, though, or I'll take it out of your profit share, some every week until it's paid back."
"No, I've really got all the funds I'd need," Hal said.
"All right."
John let go of him and moved back up into the crowd ahead. Hal, stretching his own legs to catch up also, felt a twinge of guilt. John, in spite of handling Hal's papers, obviously did not know that Hal had brought in with him probably more in the way of a credit balance than a team leader in the mines could earn in twenty years in the mines - and a good chunk of that amount was in interstellar credits.
Remembering his credit balance started Hal on a new train of thought. The Others were unlikely to trace him here; but that did not mean that they could not, or would not. He might one day have to run for it again; and if he did, it would not help if they had located his funds under his own name and tied them up so that he could not use them to get away. What he needed was interstellar credit hidden away, untraceable to any official eye, but quickly available to him in an emergency. He filed the thought to be acted on as soon as possible.
Meanwhile they had reached their destination; they all poured through an arched entrance in the frontage wall of one of the Port blocks of construction. Above the arch the name GROTTO floated in blue flames.
Within, it was so dark that at first he could see nothing and stumbled as he went forward, before he realized he was walking on some soft surface. As his vision adjusted, he saw that this was a thick carpet of something looking very much like grass and that the illusion overhead was of a night sky with the moon hidden behind clouds.
He followed the others forward, and passed with them through a light curtain into a scene of bright moonlight, seeming so brilliant after the short period of near-darkness that he was startled. The illusion of a moon shone down on the appearance of a tiny bay on the shore of a tropical sea, with actual tables and chair floats intermingled with rocks or ground features that also gave sitting or table space. A surf spoke gently on the sandy beach before them all. Soft, spice-perfumed air blew around them; and a full moon surrounded by innumerable stars was overhead in a now-cloudless sky.