The three of them nodded.
‘Right, I’m going to send the twelve hundred hours report, then we’ll get going again. Do you want to check out that loco and see if we can use it?’
Matt looked dubious, but he went over to the locomotive while Bergman tried to raise Clare’s team on the comlink.
Matt sat down on the locomotive’s dusty seat and wiped the control panel clean. He found the master switch and switched the power on, but there was no response from the controls; the batteries were completely dead. He looked back at Bergman, who was frowning at the comlink.
‘Any luck?’
Bergman shook his head. ‘They must be out of coverage. I’ll send a text letting them know where we are.’ He tapped at the keypad of the comlink for a few moments, and waited while the message went, then snapped the comlink shut. ‘Okay, guys, let’s move it.’
Bergman and Elliott set off down the continuation of the passage into the mountain, and disappeared from view. The robot lumbered round, preparing to follow. Abrams turned round, expecting Matt to be just behind him, but Matt was still standing there in the shaft station, looking at the wall, a stricken expression on his face.
‘What is it?’ Abrams asked, then saw it as well, and stopped.
In an centuries-old practice that had not been bettered for simplicity and safety, every person going down a mineshaft was issued with a pair of identical, numbered metal tags before they went down the shaft at the start of every shift. One tag had to be surrendered in order to board the cage going down, while the matching tag was collected at the end of the shift. This simple system showed exactly who was down the shaft at any moment, and a check that they had all returned safely.
On the wall, in neat rows on hooks, over a hundred unclaimed metal tags hung, covered in dust.
It was a poignant sight, and it was many long moments before Matt and Abrams could bring themselves to turn away, and follow the others down the passage.
After another 300 metres of level progress, the passage emerged in another shaft station, built similar to the first, but with only one level for loading and offloading. The place seemed to have been abandoned; it had a disused air about it, and damage here seemed to be worse.
Part of the roof near the shaft head had fallen in, covering the chamber with piles of rock and dust. A mining robot lay under the rubble, its upper body buried by the roof fall.
Bergman and Matt stared up at the roof. Lumps of loose rock still adhered to the roof, threatening to come down at the slightest disturbance.
‘What is this place?’ Abrams asked.
‘Secondary intake shaft,’ Matt answered. ‘It was meant to assist the ventilation in the mine, but it never got finished. Keep to this side of the chamber – that roof’s unstable.’
‘Do you think this hoist will still work?’
‘I don’t know,’ Matt said, glancing up at the roof again, ‘but I don’t think it would be safe to try to find out. We’ve got one working hoist – that’s enough. I suggest we leave this place alone.’
Nobody disagreed, and they set off again, along a much narrower passage that continued into the mountain. The rail track ran along the centre, and there was less room to either side. The robot could no longer walk to one side, and instead straddled the narrow track with its rolling gait.
The air was close and still; evidently there was little natural circulation here. The passage, which had been flat, started to climb steeply upwards. Despite the low gravity, they were soon breathing heavily from the exertion and the heavy, stagnant air.
‘How much further is it?’ Abrams gasped after they had covered about five hundred metres, and had stopped for a brief rest.
‘A long way still,’ Matt answered between breaths. ‘This passage is nearly two kilometres long. We’ll just have to do it in stages.’
They resumed their journey once they had rested, and had got their breath back. Ahead, there was a section of the passage where the emergency lighting had failed, and the team plunged into darkness. In the distance, a single red light burned, and drew closer as they followed the passage upwards. They were already higher than the accommodation levels; the passage was taking them up high into the mountain’s heart.
They came to the red emergency light. The lighting seemed to be working from here on upwards; further red lights led into the distance, but it was hard to tell how much further there was to go. The lights came and went, in a seemingly interminable sequence, as they continued their slow journey upwards.
They stopped to rest twice more on the long climb, and Bergman was just about to call another halt, when the lights ahead came to an end. The passage opened up into a shaft station, smaller than the two they had encountered earlier. There was a faint breeze at their backs, and the air seemed less close and heavy. They stood in the red light of the shaft station, getting their breath back.
The shaft opening was on the left here instead of on the right as in the other stations. Compared to the other two stations, this one had almost no trace of any damage. There was a thin coating of dust in the chamber and some scattered paper, but that was it; the force of the escaping air had been less here than in the main airways.
The safety gate in the grille stood wide open, and beyond them, the cage waited. The raise went straight up into the mountain, to emerge two kilometres above them, in its high eyrie on the mountaintop. From there, a walkway wound up into the peaks, weaving its way through a high pass, until at last it emerged in the perpetual sunlight at a peak on the crater ramparts, nearly four kilometres above the surface of the ice field.
Running down the circular shaft of the raise, away from the guide ropes, were the heavy power cables and communications links from the solar power array and antennas on the mountain peak. The raise was narrower than the main shafts of the mine; it had been bored to allow the installation and maintenance of the equipment on the otherwise inaccessible mountaintop, and once the equipment had been installed, only occasional visits were needed.
‘Seems like it’s operational,’ Bergman commented, examining the hoist control panel. ‘I’m going to give it a try.’ He thumbed a few switches and operated the interlock and control handles. The cage door slid down, and the safety gate closed with a shriek of metal on guides. There was the harsh double-ring of the bell, and the cage started to move upwards. Bergman let it run for a few seconds, then halted it and brought it back down.
‘Okay guys, this is where we load you up.’ He opened the gates and indicated the waiting cage.
Elliott ordered Bob Five forward, and once inside, the robot turned round to face them, still carrying the six air cylinders. Abrams took the rucksacks containing the radio equipment from Matt and Bergman, and followed Elliott aboard the cage.
‘You guys clear on what you need to do?’ Bergman asked.
Elliott and Abrams nodded.
‘Okay. I’ve set the hoist to Cage Control, so the cage will stay at the top station until you’re ready to return. Good luck.’
‘See you in the control centre later,’ Abrams said, as the door closed over them and the safety gate screeched shut. The bell rang twice, and the cage started to move.
‘Bye,’ called Elliott from high above, and then the car was gone, climbing up into the long raise on its journey up inside the mountain. The wire ropes quivered slightly from the cage’s motion, but it was otherwise silent in the chamber; the hoist motor was thousands of metres above them, at the top of the raise.
Bergman stood by the gate and craned upwards. High above him, he could see the dwindling light from their companions’ flashlights, as the cage disappeared up into the mountain. A creak ran through the guide ropes.
‘Wonder how long it’ll take them?’ he said.
‘Well, if the other hoist’s anything to go by, they’re going to be a while,’ Matt responded.
‘Yeah. Well, we can’t do anything more to help them now. Shall we go back and take a look at the main shaft?’
‘I suppose we’d better.’ Matt’s voice was resigned.
‘Look, I know we’ve drawn the short straw, but we’ve got a job to do. I don’t like it any better than you do.’
‘I know. I just don’t like the idea of going down the mine, that’s all. Guess I’ve got a bad feeling about what we’re going to find.’
