from No. 3's pool had failed; too much steel and concrete.
An hour later he was back at the station.
A forward control point had been established in an underground bunker, once the dormitory for the plant's fire brigade, now the command post for the disaster-control operation. It was thick with stale cigarette smoke and not much ventilation; the same air was recirculated over and over because, however it might stink, it was better than what was outside.
It was hardly forty-eight hours that Sheranchuk had been gone, but so much had changed! The helicopter drops were nearing their objective. Almost
The immediate problem was the plenum under the ruined reactor. It contained water, and it was therefore in Leonid Sheranchuk's department.
Of course, the purpose of the plenum was to act as a safety feature, to quench the steam if one or two pipes burst.
But that safety feature was now the greatest danger the core of Reactor No. 4 still faced.
Hanging over it was a mass of one hundred and eighty tons of uranium dioxide, whatever was left of eighteen hundred tons of graphite, the fragments of the 200-ton refueling machine and associated materials, the rubble of the collapsed walls — and the five thousand tons that had been dumped over it all to stop the deadly emissions. The structure had never been designed to support such a load. Worse, the structure itself had been shocked and damaged by the violence of the explosion. It was weakened in unpredictable ways. The whole thing might come down at any moment.. and if it collapsed those two thousand tons of uranium and graphite would plunge into the plenum. And… and then that water would flash into steam, and the explosion that followed would be perhaps even worse than the first.
With the whole thing to do over again — not to mention killing a good many of the people frantically working to contain the accident.
It was a major general of engineers who was now in command of the operation, and he had a plan of the underground reservoir spread before him. Sheranchuk hunched over the drawing as the general explained: 'Our miners from Donetsk pushed this tunnel through, here. Then we had a team of eight volunteers — nine originally, but one of them just fell apart— and they've worked steadily for a day and a half to break through—'
'You've broken through to the plenum?' Sheranchuk demanded. 'Then what is the problem? Simply drain it and pour in your concrete.'
'It won't drain,' the general said.
'Won't drain? Why not? Ah, of course,' Sheranchuk said, placing his finger on the plans. 'Those valves need to be opened first.'
'But those valves,' the general said gloomily, 'are now under water. All those passages are filled with runoff. Someone must go down in a diving suit and open the valves. We have two volunteers… but neither of them knows where the valves are.'
'I do,' Sheranchuk cried.
The general studied him for a moment. 'Yes,' he said, 'that is what I thought.'
What Sheranchuk expected from the words 'diving suit' was the kind of thing you saw in films, the big man- from-Mars helmets and trailing air hoses. It wasn't like that. What the volunteers got to breathe with were simply scuba masks, with tanks on their backs for air. What they wore on their bodies were wet suits, rubbery things that were stiff and cold and nasty to put on and chokingly tight where they were not chafingly loose to wear — of course, they had not had time to be very scrupulous about sizes. They did not have portable underwater lights. What they had was a floodlamp on a long cable— the electrician swore he had done his very best to make it watertight — and one of the two volunteers to carry it. They didn't have phones, either. Once they were in the water, there was no one to talk to, and nothing to hear.
Nothing, that was, except the ominous creaks and thuds and settling sounds from the six or seven thousand tons of material that was waiting to fall on them from overhead.
They couldn't help hearing those sounds. If their ears had been plugged, they still would have felt them as shudders and shakes in the water all around.
At least they weren't cold. At first Sheranchuk thought that was a blessing, because the wet suit had been horribly clammy to put on. Then it was not so much of a blessing, because the water was distinctly warm — hotter than blood temperature, with the furious heat of the core raging just over it. Sheranchuk found himself sweating in a suit that gave the sweat no place to go.
That was not the worst of it, either. Sheranchuk was angrily aware that the water was hot in other and even more unpleasant ways, for most of it had run down through mazes of radioactive rubble to fill the concrete passages they were swimming and pushing their way along. None of them had taken a dosimeter along. There was no point. The water was only mildly contaminated with radioactivity — as far as anyone could tell from outside — and anyway the job had to be done. It was essential.
The only question was whether or not it was also impossible.
The concrete-walled passages Sheranchuk had once walked along without a thought were now mazes. The floodlight showed the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the useless light fixtures, the inoperative instruments — but how different they, all looked when they were underwater! It took twenty minutes of struggle, more swimming than walking, to reach the passage where the plenum valves were located.
When Sheranchuk was sure of what he was looking at, he splashed around to face his companions. Squinting into the watery glow of the thousand-watt lamp, he beckoned them to come to him.
Just then, without flash or warning, the light went
out.
'God and your mother!' Sheranchuk shouted into the darkness. All he got for response was a mouthful of water as he dislodged the scuba mask, and a strangling coughing fit once he got it back in place. No one heard. No one spoke, either, or if they did, he could not tell.
Hanging, almost floating, in that total underwater blackness, Sheranchuk could not tell up from down, could not guess where the walls were, much less where his comrades had gotten to. He thrashed about in panic until he caught one wall a bruising blow with his knuckles. Then he reached out for it and felt along it until he encountered a railing, pulling himself back along the rail until something caught him a violent kick in the side. He reached out and caught the foot of one of the other men.
Which one? There was no way to tell until he felt the third man brush against him and, feeling his arms, found the useless floodlight with its cable.
Sheranchuk thought for a moment. They could go back for another light. But would it work any better? And how much longer could he spend in this place without beginning to glow in the dark?
He found the lamp bearer's shoulder and slapped it twice to get his attention, then thrust him gently back down the corridor: there was no further need for him. The other man he pulled toward the wall, found his hand, put it on the railing. Then he tugged the man forward as he himself turned and pulled himself farther down the flooded corridor.
With thanks to the God he had never believed in,
Sheranchuk felt the plenum pipe under his feet at the end of the corridor.
From there it was, if not easy, at least simple. The two of them felt their way along the pipe until they came to the first valve. Sheranchuk put the other man's hand on it and there in the dark, with the contracting sounds of the core shaking them, they put their weight on it.
It turned.
A moment later they had found the second valve. It, too, turned; and through the water that surrounded them they felt the gurgling suck of the plenum emptying itself.
In the open air Sheranchuk blinked at the light, fending off the workers who were trying to hug him as he was doing his best to strip off the wet suit. He was triumphant, but most of all he was very tired. He tripped on the duckboards at the floor of the miners' tunnel, but a half-dozen hands were quick to grab him.
By the time he was back in the bunker he was ready for a cigarette, but when he saw a doctor coming toward him with a clipboard, he knew what she was going to say. He stood up to greet her.
Funnily, he could see her mouth moving as though she were speaking to him, but he couldn't hear the
