contact? And, why aren’t they here?’
‘Maybe they are,’ Bergman said quietly.
They turned to look at him.
‘Look, I know it sounds insane, but look at the facts. The mine is full of air. Someone managed to seal the mine. They may not have been able to get comms going again. This is a big place; they may not know we’re here.’
Bergman’s words echoed in the silence that followed. They all thought of the huge, empty mine, with all its passages, rooms and shafts running deep under the mountain.
‘Okay.’ Clare was the first to speak. ‘This is an interesting theory, but until we find further evidence to support it, it’s a theory. It doesn’t change our immediate priorities. We continue the search.’
Matt turned away from the group. He felt frustrated and confused. None of this made any sense. He tried to clear his mind and concentrate on looking for food or water.
He headed towards the left wall of the hangar, and rummaged among the scattered debris for some minutes. The hangar had evidently been a swirl point for the huge volume of air that had gushed through it when the mine emptied; wreckage, rubbish and dust had blown wildly about the chamber, before falling and settling in the vacuum.
Most of the wreckage seemed to be objects that had been torn away, or blown over, by the air rushing through the hangar. Equipment lay scattered everywhere – tools, maintenance records, seats, cables, spacesuit helmets – all in a dust-covered jumble on the floor.
Matt picked up a large flashlight he found on the floor, blew the dust off it, and flicked it on. Its white LEDs glowed briefly, and then faded. No charge left. He dropped it back into the dust.
The others were picking their way through the debris, but nobody seemed to have found anything useful. Matt turned round, and looked at the open doors in the end wall, leading off into the mine.
‘You know, I think we’ll have more luck in the next chamber – that’s the stores area,’ he called across to Clare.
‘Okay, there’s no food or water here, let’s move on,’ Clare shouted. ‘Don’t leave anyone behind. Matt – lead the way with Rick.’
Matt swung his light beam over the edges of the opening as he passed through the rectangular doorway. There were no signs of damage; the two sliding halves of the door were fully open, retracted back into the rock.
He sniffed the air cautiously as he went further into the next chamber, but there was nothing in the darkness but the familiar mine-smell of blasted rock and chill air.
As he followed at the back of the group, Abrams saw Elliott standing by the control box for the doors. He had switched on his flashlight while he unfastened an access panel, and was about to remove it.
‘Hey,’ Abrams cautioned, ‘I think you should leave that how it is for now. We don’t want to disturb any evidence until we’ve got time to do it properly.’
‘Oh, uh, sure, I guess you’re right,’ Elliott said. He stared at the panel, then pushed it back into place and slowly refastened it. ‘I just wanted to take a look at the position of the control interlocks.’
‘You think something’s wrong with them?’
‘Well, all three doors can’t have opened together if the controls were working properly. Airlocks are fundamental to mine integrity; it’s just not – possible.’ Elliott’s voice showed a trace of frustration as he clicked off his flashlight, and followed Abrams into the third chamber.
The stores area was the same size as the maintenance hangar, about forty metres wide by twenty-five deep, and the beams of their lights showed a chamber filled from floor to ceiling with warehouse shelves, arranged in ordered rows with wide aisles between them. Equipment, engineering spares, and stores of all kinds filled the shelves, or sat on pallets on the floor. In most cases, the objects were too heavy to have been disturbed by the gale that had blown through here, but here and there were landslides of stores where a case had burst open and spilled its contents.
Some of the storage bays had heavy mesh cages and locked doors protecting their contents. Bergman pointed to one filled with air cylinders with a rueful smile. Matt walked further along the row, past a cage filled with spacesuits, and stopped at the next one.
‘Rescue equipment. This is what we’re after. Can I break this open?’ He looked at Abrams, who thought for a moment before responding.
‘I guess so. I don’t think any of this is implicated in the accident. Just try not to disturb anything you don’t need to.’
Matt called to the robot, which stood patiently near the doorway.
‘Bob Five! Come here!’
The robot’s armoured head swivelled round, and it started towards him, the floor thudding under its weight.
‘Here—’ Matt pointed to the hinges on the mesh door, ‘—and here.’ He indicated the lock. ‘Break, break!’ He smacked one fist into the palm of the other hand.
‘YES, MASTER,’ the robot responded. It shuffled forward, extended one of its arms, and its pincer-like hand laid hold of the top hinge. The pincer closed, shearing effortlessly through the metal, and the hinge parted with a snap. The robot moved on, cutting through the next hinge and the lock. The door fell loose with a rattle of metal, and the robot grasped it and swung it aside. Matt stepped into the enclosed area, followed by Bergman.
‘Okay, let’s pass these out.’ Matt grabbed heavy-duty flashlights, ration packs, medical kits, and a wire rope ladder, and handed them out to Bergman.
The spirits of the group rose as they shared out the haul. It seemed as if they would at least have enough food for the moment. The ration packs were bigger than the small survival packs that each of them had in their suits, and the high-energy bars and sealed packs of pastes and biscuits would keep them going for some time.
‘Is any other food kept in here?’ Clare asked, looking through the wire grille.
‘No, it’ll be in the kitchens, up in the accommodation levels – if it’s lasted,’ Matt said. He passed out some survival blankets and some spare batteries, and paused. ‘Have we got enough stuff for now? We can always come back here.’
‘Yeah, give us a few more flashlights, and can you pass out some of those rucksacks – we could do with something to carry all this stuff in.’
They stowed the food and equipment in the rucksacks, one to each person, and shouldered their loads. With more light to see by, they continued their exploration of the stores area.
Many of the aisles were filled with consumables for mining; roof props, drilling machinery and equipment, barrels of lubricating oil, rock bolts, and vast lengths of electrical cable and ventilation trunking.
There was also a vast stock of maintenance spares for the mining vehicles and visiting spacecraft. They walked past engine nozzles, landing gear struts, airlock hatches, and fuel pumps, all still sealed in their plastic coverings. A huge cutter head for a tunnel-boring machine sat in its support frame, next to a stack of giant tyres for the surface haulage trucks.
One section was devoted to spares for the army of mining robots that performed all the heavy and dangerous tasks in the mine. Matt swooped immediately on a pallet of replacement power packs, and enlisted Bergman’s help to shut Bob Five down and open the main access hatch in the robot’s body. They unlatched the depleted pack and let it crash heavily onto the floor. It took their combined efforts to lift the replacement power pack up and slide it into the robot’s body.
‘How long will that keep it going for?’ Bergman asked, as Matt closed the access hatch and restarted the robot.
‘Well, it’s fully fuelled - several days, I’d guess, depending on his activity level. We can always come back and get another one if we need to.’
‘Yeah,’ Bergman said, watching the robot come back to life. ‘It’s funny, I know he’s only a machine, but I’d be sorry if we couldn’t keep him going. If it wasn’t for old Bob Five here, we’d never have made it out of the hangar.’ He slapped the robot affectionately on its metal back as they moved off again.
As they passed down more aisles, they realised that there was more useful stuff here than they could possibly carry, and Clare told them to take only items that they would be likely to need in the next 24 hours. As she
