“A what?”
“An axe.”
“Yes — here.”
“Smash the chain with that. Aim for the link you’ve been working on.”
“I might hit you.”
“To hell with that. Belt it.”
He felt the thump as she let drive. The chain snatched sharply at his wrists and nearly jerked his arms from their sockets. Suddenly he smelled the stink of gasoline: the tank had been crushed.
Clank! She brought the axe down, then again. When Dermott twisted to see how she was doing, the clawing thread of the shoe scraped down past his shoulder. The thing was touching him. He shrank away from the monstrous beast, and brought out his last, terrible idea.
“Chop my hands off!” he ordered, quite calmly.
“I can’t!”
“Go on. It’s them or me.”
“NO!” She gave a piercing shriek and swung the axe down with every ounce of her behind it. Next second she was on her knees sobbing, “Oh my God, it’s gone! It’s gone!”
Dermott fought his instinct to leap up. He held himself down as he struggled with the severed link. The tread was bumping and bruising him now. In another few moments it would hook him under, as it had the car.
“For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “Quick!”
Miraculously, his hands came free. He got his arms back to their normal position and twisted sideways. “Look out for the pit!” he yelled. He himself was on the very lip. Hardly had he rolled clear of the dragline when there was a huge whumph and a roar of dark-red flame shot sideways at ground level. A chance spark had ignited the car’s gasoline. By a fluke he had rolled into the wind, so that the fiery blast went the other way and left him unscathed. Corinne was there behind him, also intact.
The blaze made no difference to the monster’s advance. The flames roared for a few seconds, then went out, and the dragline continued without faltering toward the brink.
Dermott felt weak with reaction — but not as weak as the girl. One moment she was standing behind him; the next, as Dermott struggled to find the words to express his gratitude to her, she had collapsed in a heap on the ground. He picked her up as tenderly as he knew how, laid her gingerly over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and began carrying her toward the still-lighted windows of the isolation quarters. His eyes seemed to have gone blurred with the strain. Or was it just ice? He scrubbed them with his free hand and saw better. Out in the patch of white light ahead of him, the helicopter was preparing to take off, lights flashing, rotor spinning. Even as he watched, it lifted off and slanted away into the sky.
At once the car whose lights had provided the marker moved off and accelerated. Once again, Dermott realized, the unspeakable murderers had melted into the night. He knew he ought to feel disappointed. As it was, he could concentrate on nothing except getting back into the warmth of the hut and lying down.
He was very close to the building, going slow, when he saw someone pass across the lighted windows in front of him. Fear seized him. Maybe it was one of them. Was he going to be shot after making such an effort? Before he had time to put down his burden or alter course, a flashlight came on, searched briefly and found his face.
“Good God! Dermott!”
“Carmody! Where in hell have you been?”
“Trying to ditch the chopper. What about you?”
“Had a… had a bit of bother.” Suddenly Dermott found he could hardly talk. He was about to break down. “Take her, will you?” he croaked. “I’ve had it.”
With an exclamation Carmody relieved him of his inert burden. “Quick,” said the policeman. “Inside.”
They laid Corinne on one bed and Dermott collapsed onto another with the manacles still dangling from his wrists. “Ring Shore!” he gasped. “Tell him for Christ’s sake to switch off the power to Dragline One. Tell him and Brady to get up here like they never drove before.”
They had turned on the floodlights to illuminate the 150-foot depths of the pit below. They had also hammered in spikes ten yards back from the lip, and to these they had attached ropes so that the vertiginously inclined or the less-than-sure-footed could cling to them as they peered over the edge.
Dragline One had ended up on its nose, tilted backward toward the near-vertical face at an angle of thirty degrees. The massive casing appeared undamaged, as did the triangular arm over which the control cables passed. Even the boom, its enormous length stretched out horizontally across the uneven valley floor, seemed undamaged, at least from above.
Brady had prudently wrapped his belaying rope three times around his mighty girth. “Surprisingly little damage,” he said. “Or so it looks. I suppose some of the electric motors were wrenched free from their beds.”
“That’ll be the least of our troubles.” Jay Shore looked stricken, ashen-faced in the floodlights. The sight of the crippled monster had far more effect on him than on any of the others. “It’s getting the damn thing out of there.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a replacement?” asked Brady.
“Jesus! Do you know what a replacement would cost at today’s prices? Forty million dollars. Probably more. And you don’t order one up, just like that. If we could have one on our doorstep tomorrow, I’m sure Sanmobil would order it. But it can’t be done that way. You can’t transport a thing that size overland. Electric motors apart, the whole caboodle comes crated in tens of thousands of pieces, and it takes a team of skilled engineers months to assemble it.”
“Cranes?” Brady suggested. He seemed fascinated by the sheer size of the problem. Or he was trying to be diverted; trying not to think of his missing wife and daughter.
Shore made a dismissive gesture with his gloved hands. “The biggest cranes in the world — a whole battery of them — couldn’t lift the dragline an inch off the floor. We’ll either have to dismantle it piece by piece and raise the bits up here for reassembly, or build a road from down there back up to surface level and have it towed up on bogies — or, perhaps, under its own steam. The road would have to be a very gentle gradient, which would mean a length of over a mile, heavily metalled on massive foundations. Whatever we do, it’ll cost millions.” He swore at some considerable length. “And all this in just seven minutes’ work!”
“Why in hell couldn’t you stop it, when we phoned you?” asked Carmody.
“The bastards knew what they were doing,” said Shore savagely. “They’d gone into the generator », room, thrown the breaker that fed power to Dragline 1 One, locked the door from the outside, left the key in the lock and smashed it so thoroughly that it’ll need an oxyacetylene torch to open it again. We just couldn’t get in to shut down the power.”
“They sure knew how to cause the maximum damage and disruption with the minimum of effort,” said Brady. “I suggest, Mr. Shore, there’s no point in our remaining here a moment longer. All you’re doing is twisting the knife deeper into your wound. Let’s all get back inside and ask George what happened.”
“Okay. Let’s go.” Shore, who had supervised the construction of the dragline, working along with the contractors, Bucyrus-Erie, seemed strangely reluctant to leave the fallen giant. It was as if he were abandoning an old friend. Brady could appreciate how he felt. But he could also appreciate how he felt himself — he had become acutely conscious of the cold.
Shore took one last look at the dragline and turned back toward the heated haven of the minibus. “Okay,” he repeated automatically. “Let’s go hear Dermott’s story.”
They drove the short distance back to the isolation block, where they found Dermott lying on a bed, already being questioned by Willoughby. Corinne was sitting on a chair in the corner of the small room, looking in better shape than the man she’d rescued.
“How is he?” Brady whispered to the nurse out in the corridor.
“His wrists look pretty bad — they got chewed up by the manacles, and frostbitten as well. They’re going to be real painful for the next few days. They’ll mend, though.”
“What about his general condition — exposure?”
“What are you talking about? He’s got the constitution of an ox.”
By the time Brady, Mackenzie and Carmody had filed into the room, the place was crammed full. Brady seemed much moved by the sight of his senior operative brought low, with hands and forearms heavily bandaged.
“Well, George,” he began, clearing his throat heavily, “I am informed that you plan to survive.”
“Sure do.” Dermott grinned up at them. “But boy — I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”