Riptide

'I think you'd better leave,' said Hatch quietly.

'Absolutely not.'

'Kerry?' Hatch peered anxiously into the crack once again. 'Kerry, can you answer me?'

Wopner stared out at him, a low, hoarse moan escaping his lips. His breath was now wheezing and gurgling.

Outside the tunnel, Hatch could hear the thud and clatter of machinery as Neidelman pulled in the cable that had been dropped from the surface. He sucked air desperately as a strange buzzing began sounding faintly in his head.

'Can't breathe,' Wopner managed to say, his eyes pale and glassy.

'Kerry? You're doing great. Just hold on.' Kerry gasped and coughed again. A trickle of blood ran down from his lips to dangle from his chin.

The sound of running footsteps, then Neidelman reappeared. He slung two hydraulic jacks to the ground, followed by a portable oxygen cylinder. Hatch grabbed the mask and began screwing the nozzle onto the regulator. Then he spun the dial on the top of the cylinder and heard the reassuring hiss of oxygen.

Neidelman and Bonterre worked feverishly behind him, tearing off the plastic coverings, unfastening the jacks from the rods, screwing the pieces together. There was another shudder, and Hatch could feel the tall shaft of rock shift under his hand, inching inexorably toward the wall.

'Hurry!' he cried, head swimming. Dialing the flow to maximum, he snaked the oxygen mask into the narrow gap between the rocks. 'Kerry,' he said, 'I'm going to place this mask over your face.' He gasped, trying to find the air to keep talking. 'I want you to take slow, shallow breaths. Okay? In just a few seconds we're going to jack this rock off you.'

He placed the oxygen mask over Kerry's face, trying to slip it beneath the programmer's misshapen helmet. He had to mold the mask with his fingers to make it narrow enough to fit around the programmer's mashed nose and mouth; only now did he realize just how tightly the young man was wedged. The moist, panicked eyes looked at him imploringly.

Neidelman and Bonterre said nothing, working with intense concentration, fitting the pieces of jack together.

Craning to get a glimpse into the thinning space, Hatch could see Wopner's face, narrowed alarmingly, his jaw locked open by the pressure. Blood flowed from his cheeks where the edge of the helmet cut into his flesh. He could no longer speak, or even scream. His left hand twitched spasmodically, caressing the rock face with purple fingertips. A slight sound of escaping air came from his mouth and nostrils. Hatch knew that the pressure of the rock made breathing almost impossible.

'Here it is,' Neidelman hissed, handing the jack to Hatch. Hatch tried to jam it in the narrowing crack.

'It's too wide!' he gasped, tossing it back. 'Crank it down!'

He turned back to Wopner. 'Now Kerry, I want you to breathe along with me. I'll count them with you, okay? One . . . two ...'

With a violent trembling underfoot and a harsh grating sound, the slab lunged closer; Hatch felt his own hand and wrist suddenly squeezed between the tightening rocks. Wopner gave a violent shudder, then a wet gasp. As Hatch watched in horror, the beam of his light angling into the narrow space with pitiless clarity, he saw the programmer's eyes, bulging from his head, turn first pink, then red, then black. There was a splitting sound, and the helmet burst along its seams. Sweat on the crushed cheeks and nose grew tinged with pink as the slab inched still closer. A jet of blood came rushing from one ear, and more blood burst from the tips of Wopner's fingertips. His jaw buckled, sagging sideways, the tongue protruding into the oxygen mask.

'The rock's still slipping!' Hatch screamed. 'Get me something, anything, to—'

But even as he spoke, he felt the programmer's head come apart under his hand. The oxygen mask began to burble as its airway grew clogged by a rush of fluids. There was a strange vibration between his fingers and to his horror he realized it was Wopner's tongue, twitching spastically as the nerves that fired the muscles burned out.

'No!' Hatch cried in despair. 'Please God, no!'

Black spots appeared before his eyes as he staggered against the rock, unable to catch his breath in the thick air, fighting to pull his own hand free from the increasing pressure.

'Dr. Hatch, step away!' Neidelman warned.

'Malin!' screamed Bonterre.

'Hey, Mal!' Hatch heard his brother, Johnny, whisper out of the rushing darkness. Hey, Mal! Over here!

Then the darkness closed upon him and he knew no more.

Chapter 30

By midnight the ocean had taken on the kind of oily, slow-motion swell that often came after a summer blow. Hatch stood up from his desk and went to the Quonset hut window, moving carefully through the darkened office. He stared past the unlit huts of Base Camp, looking for lights that would indicate the coroner was finally on his way. Lines of spindrift lay in ghostly threads across the dark water. The rough weather seemed to have temporarily blown the fog from the island, and the mainland was visible on the horizon, an uncertain strand of phosphorescence under the star-strewn sky.

He sighed and turned from the window, unconsciously massaging a bandaged hand. He'd sat alone in his office as the evening turned to night, unwilling to move, unwilling even to turn on the lights. Somehow, the darkness made it easier to avoid the irregular shape that lay on the gurney, under a white sheet. It made it easier for him to push back all the thoughts and quiet whispers that kept intruding onto the edges of his consciousness.

There came a soft knock and the turn of a door handle. Moonlight framed the spare outline of Captain Neidelman, standing in the doorway, He slipped into the hut and disappeared into the dark shape of a chair. There was a scratching noise, and the room briefly flared yellow as a pipe was lit; the faint sounds of drawing smoke