"Fredrik Pohl - Callistan Tomb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

to waste them. Something may happen.тАЭ
"Yes," said Pyle shrilly, тАЬsomething may happen." He flung himself on a wall and clawed at the chinks
of rock, tearing them from their bed. On Foley's nod the two others silently fell in beside the boy and
picked at surface. The foreman watched for a moment and picked up a long drill that trailed a useless
length of wire. Hefting it, he unscrewed its bit and handed it to Pyle. "You can use this crow-bar, he said.
"I'll look for more."
All together they tore into the wall, and slowly a new tunnel, at a forty; five degree angle with the old,
was formed.

тАЬSIX THOUSAND feet or more on the vertical to go," said Vogel pantingly as he bore down on his
improvised wedge. "And we've dug about fifty feet in two hoursтАж My guess is that we've got just about
ten hours more to live."
Rawson, a huge chunk of ore in his arms, paused. "I thought that we weren't going to talk about it,"
he said evenly.
Pyle had been tearing at the rock frantically; without stopping he panted, "Something might happen.
Don't fight now. Something might happen." It was his constant liturgy. Rawson wondered if he were
going mad. At best they were keeping themselves occupied; no one really believed, he was sure, that
help would come in time. He hefted the rock and walked back to the mouth of their ragged tunnel.
"Drop it here," said Foley, who was stacking the excavated ore. The little space they had was nearly
filled with it.
The big American let the rock fall at the mouth of the peristaltic tube, now silent and still. "How long
does the respirator work?" he asked abruptly.
"It depends. Twenty hours, sometimes. In any case, not long enough for us . . . Let's get back to the
diggings."
Foley flashed his head-lamp over the ceiling of their new tunnel. "I don't like that flow-bulge," he said.
"Get a stick of timber if you can find one long enough."
Rawson rummaged through the piles of wreckage and wrenched out a slender beam. "Will this do?"
he asked.
Foley eyed it. "It's long enough, at least," he said. "Jam it inтАФthere." The prop was shoved against
the ceiling, and they swung their bodies against it to batten it into place. Then they waited to see. Slowly
the beam arced under a pressure greater than the soft Callistan timber was cut to resist; as the men stood
aside it snapped with the noise of a gunshot.
"Even at this, light gravity rock flows when there's a mile of more rock in over it. Our ceiling's
descending faster than I thought; it's pretty hard to estimate when you've been used to working with
shoring."
Rawson was staring in fascination at the roof of their tunnel, his headlamp making a glaring spot of
green radiance on the dead-black ore. Foley clapped him on the shoulder. "Get back to the face," he
said.
Again they were scratching at the yielding wall of rock, tearing fragments from it bodily and prying
others loose with cunning leverage.
Rawson felt a shortness of breath, and wondered about the respirators. Twenty hours, maybe, he
thought. Suddenly he had to speak.
"Foley," he cried, "why don't we try a blast?"
The foreman looked at him blankly; then his face seamed into a grim smile. "If the others are willing,"
he said. "Only you have to realize that would be pretty close to suicide for us, without shoring. If it comes
clear we'll have gained fifteen feet or so in a hundredth of the tune it'd take us this way. If it doesn't ... All
in favor?"
"Why not?" said Vogel. And, flatly, "I hope it fails!"
Pyle coughed nervously. "If you think there's a chance. . . ."
"That settles it, I think," said Foley. "Hold your crowbar while I tap." They bit slowly into the wall,