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crowds were flocking. Alper thrust them aside, answering no questions. They
passed the lighted commissary, the cook-house, the powerhouse, hearing the
huge diesels that generated the lifeblood of Fortuna, lighted the houses,
drove the mine machinery, pumped the waters of .Little Slave Lake continually
and forever out of the shafts where continually and forever they seeped.
They passed the last of the ugly, utilitarian buildings which two hundred
people needed for their encysted life above the pitchblende veins. And they
came at last to the mouth of the great mine.
Alper shouldered through the excited knot around the entrance. The voice had
ceased to echo its alarm-signal from amplifiers spaced under eaves all along
the streets, but other voices had taken it up now, a babble of them, excitedly
predicting disaster.
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"The ghosts are loose!" Sawyer heard one miner say to another. "Down in Eight
they're busting through the walls!"
"Miss Ford's down there," someone else volunteered as Alper passed. "The
ghosts have got Miss
Ford!"
Alper shrugged them off. He had one purpose now and one only, and his strength
was visibly lagging. Sawyer, following him into the lift, thought with grim
amusement that at any rate, for the moment, they had one goal in common
neither wanted Klai Ford to die.
There was always pandemonium underground at Fortuna. The noise of drills,
carts, automatic muckers never ceased. Men's voices echoed and re-echoed
endlessly. It was a disorderly pandemonium now.
All work seemed to have come to a full stop, and shouts from below made hollow
reverberations that rebounded among the shafts. The lift passed opening after
opening that swarmed with grimy faces with lights burning above every
forehead. Abandoned drills and shovels leaned against the walls where shining
ribbons of pitchblende showed the marks of labor, steel-hard stuff, heavy as
lead and rich with uranium as a pudding with plums. Rich, that is, Sawyer
thought, unless the ghosts have been at it. ...
"They're swarming like bees in Level Eight!" someone called warningly as the
descending men passed. Alper only grunted. He had taken Sawyer's arm as they
stepped into the elevator, and now his weight was heavy against the younger
man. As the mechanism ground toward a halt, he muttered thickly, his breath
coming in uneven gusts:
"Don't try anything. I warn you, Sawyer. Got to help me. Used up too much back
there. My last energy "
"What you were saving to put this gimmick on Miss Ford?" Sawyer asked. "You
made a mistake, Alper.
If any harm comes to her, the government's going to ask some pretty close
questions. Killing me won't help. It won't save you."
"Let me handle this," Alper wheezed. "Do as you're told. Come on."
They stepped out into the mouth of Level Eight, into a cluster of pale,
excited men. Voices echoed dully here and the air felt thick and heavy,
pressing upon the ears. Sawyer noticed an unexpected smell of ozone?
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"She went in there," one of the men at the shaft-mouth said, turning his
helmet-light toward them as the two stepped out of the lift, Alper's heavy
weight sagging on Sawyer's arm. "Here's Joe, Mr.
Alper. He was with her."
"What happened?" Sawyer asked crisply. The miners' troubled, frightened faces
swung round toward him, their Kghts moving in nickers across the wet walls.
One of them stepped forward.
"Miss Ford had Eddie and me come down with her," he said. "She waited right
here. Nobody else was around. We don't work Level Eight any more,
because well, we don't work it. Miss Ford sent Eddie in to get a camera she
wanted."
A murmur from behind him made everyone look up. The tunnel twisted out of
sight into the rock ten feet away. From beyond the bend, a faint flicker of
light showed, faded, showed again. The air seemed to ring soundlessly, as if
bells were swinging far away, sending out sound-waves that compressed the
inner ear. The smell of ozone grew stronger.
"Go on," Alper grunted, shuffling forward. "Go on, I'm listening." The miners
made way for him.
Sawyer let the grip on his arm pull him on. He was very alert, every sense
straining for impressions.
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"Eddie got just around that bend, out of sight," the miner told them. "Excuse
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