He ran back right under the thing, between the shoes. Somewhere there must be a ladder. At last he found it. But as he looked up toward the cab, far above him, he saw someone moving there in a faint glow of light. He hesitated, one foot on the steel ladder, wishing he had a gun and wondering whether he should go back for’ Carmody. That was the last thought that entered his head for a couple of minutes, for the blow caught him squarely on the back of the neck, and brilliant points of light seemed to shoot outward through his head as he slumped to the ground.
He came around shaking from the cold and stuck in an awkward position. His hands were jammed, somehow — jammed behind him. He needed to straighten his arms and get them back into action. He strained to sort himself out and realized with a shock that his wrists were manacled together, and manacled to something.
He gave a grunt and heaved, whereupon a man spoke out of the dark behind him.
“Ah, Mr. Dermott,” said a voice he half-recognized but could not place. “Struggling will not help. You are anchored to a steel ring let into concrete. The ring is directly in the patch of Dragline One, which, as you can see and hear, is now only a few feet from you. The controls have been preset and locked in position so that the middle of the right shoe will pass over you. Good-bye, Mr. Dermott. You have less than two minutes to live.”
Fear cleared Dermott’s head. “Bastards!” he roared. “Sadistic bastards! Come back!” But even as he shouted, he knew it was useless. In the whistle of the wind and the monstrous grinding of the dragline, his voice was nothing and carried nowhere. He twisted around and discovered that he was tethered almost on the lip of the pit: the edge of the black abyss was no more than a yard away. In the opposite direction, the front of the dragline’s shoe had ground remorselessly to within fifteen feet of him. The front of it was coming on like a tank. Above him, the steel tracery of the boom seemed to fill the sky with an angry black pattern.
Dermott stopped shouting and began to fight the manacles. At least there was some movement. He could feel that a length of chain had been passed through the shackle on the ground. He jerked it furiously back and forth in the faint hope that the chain would break, but all he achieved was to chafe his wrists viciously and expose them to the cold. He could feel the icy steel biting into his bare skin. Frostbite, he thought dully. But what did frostbite matter if he was going to be crushed like a beetle?
“Carmody!” he yelled desperately. “Help!” Where the hell had Carmody gone? Why didn’t he come looking?
Dermott fought the chain again and flopped flat, gasping. The shoe was only twelve feet off, scrunching on inch by inch. The whine of the electric motors seemed to fill the night, as if hell had claimed him.
He threw his body feverishly to left and right, experimenting to see if he could get clear of the shoe’s line of advance. Nothing he tried was the slightest good. The shoe was ten feet wide, and he was tethered right in the middle of its track. The monster had been set marching with hideous precision.
He lay still again, panting, beaten. Suddenly images began flashing through his mind, conjured up uninvoked by the extremity of his desperation. Once again he witnessed the final terrifying seconds of the car crash that had killed his wife, the time when an explosion had blown him clear off a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, into the shark-owned sea…
All at once he became aware of a light flashing over him. Then someone was crouching, pulling at his arms. Then he heard a high, feminine cry.
“Corinne!”
“My God!” she cried. “What’s happened? Oh, Jesus!” She leaped to her feet and began to run. “Wait!” she screamed over her shoulder.
Dermott saw her fall, get up again, and go like a greyhound, around the corner of the shoe, the flashlight swinging wildly in the blackness. He shouted something after her, but she was gone. Wait, she’d said. Wait! What a hell of a thing to say! How could he wait? The shoe was scarcely ten feet from him: one minute, give or take a few seconds.
He found his eyes were full of tears, though whether they were of fear or relief or gratitude or what, he couldn’t tell. He was crying like a baby.
Seconds were passing. He began to count. He got to ten and couldn’t go on. He had been overtaken by a horrific vision of the exact physical process of destruction that was about to annihilate him. He would feed his feet and legs to the monster first. Or could he? Could he listen and watch while his ankles, shins and knees were crunched and flattened on the tundra? No — he would have to get the end over quickly and give it his head. But what would that be like, for God’s sake? To hear his skull crack and feel that unthinkable weight! Impossible! Never!
He roared again, “CARMODY!” As if by a miracle, his shout was answered. Headlights came boring up out of the night and swept him as the vehicle turned. Dermott stared incredulously as the lights came on at speed, heading right for him and the front of the shoe. At the last moment the vehicle slowed, but not enough to stop. The driver deliberately slid it into the front of the shoe, using it as a last-ditch barrier to stop the monster’s progress. There was a sharp crash and the tinkle of falling glass. Then the door of the Jeep opened and Corinne leaped out.
There was so little space left that Dermott had all but been run over. The Jeep’s left-hand wheels were almost on him. The next thing he saw was the tires being forced bodily sideways toward him by the irresistible pressure of the dragline’s advance.
Corinne had the tail gate of the Jeep open. She dragged out a steel box — the emergency equipment — and dumped it behind Dermott with a crash.
“Keep still!” she shouted above the noise. “No — come back a bit. There. Keep there!”
Dermott leaned backward in the attitude she ordered, speechless with tension. He saw the wheels of the Jeep come sideways at him again. The back wheel was touching his feet already. The Jeep was being pushed like a toy. At that rate it was going to do more harm than good. It was merely acting as an extension of the shoe, and would crush him before the dragline itself reached him.
He felt Corinne struggling behind him. Suddenly she gave a desperate cry. “Oh my God! I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
Dermott’s voice returned. “What’s happening?” he shouted.
“The cutters!” she sobbed. “The bolt shears are biting into the chain, but I can’t get enough pressure on them. It’s too bloody hard!”
“Put one end on the ground,” he ordered calmly. “One handle on the ground. Then get your weight on the other.”
He felt her try, but she slipped and went down with a crash. “Try again!” he yelled.
By then the noise of the dragline was overwhelming: its roaring and grinding filled the night. But suddenly a new sound: a sharp crack told him that the great steel treads of the shoe had hooked into some part of the Jeep’s bodywork. Instead of being pushed back, the vehicle had been gripped and held down. Dermott stared incredulously as the Cherokee began collapsing like an eggshell. The remaining headlight was snuffed out. Cracking, snapping noises accompanied the collapse of the hood and front wheels.
Behind him Corinne gave a despairing scream.
“I just can’t do it. I’ve got halfway through, but that’s all.”
“Look for a hacksaw!” Dermott shouted. “In the emergency pack.”
“Got one!” She began working again frantically.
For Dermott time seemed to have stopped. He saw that the Cherokee’s engine block had at last offered the dragline a spot of serious resistance: only a spot, it was true, but a definite token. Ponderous as a dinosaur, the machine lifted one foot slowly into the air as it ground the little vehicle beneath its steel sole. As if in a trance, Dermott saw the windshield shatter, the front of the roof crumple down, the passenger compartment flatten. Right in front of him a back wheel snapped off and was squashed flat onto the ground. If his arms had been free, he could have reached out and touched the front of the shoe — it was that close.
But his arms were not free.
“I can’t!” Corinne screamed in desperation. – Dennett’s head cleared, and he shouted, “Is there an axe?”