walked further down the corridor. Most of the remaining rooms contained nothing but empty lockers, and after several minutes of finding nothing of interest, Wilson was about to retrace his steps.
As he reached the end of the corridor, however, he noticed a security door that hung open on its one remaining hinge. He pushed it aside, and looked into a strongroom. Beyond the broken door, two separate barriers of heavy-duty steel bars were set into the rock on all sides. The doors in each barrier had been forced open by heavy equipment, and inside the room, large amounts of dried blood lay spattered over a number of cardboard boxes that were stacked in piles. It looked like someone had retreated into the strongroom, but they had broken in and killed him, Wilson thought, and the anger surfaced again.
He wondered what was inside the boxes. He bent down to the nearest one, and pulled back the sealing tape. A number of tamper-evident security seals popped off with the tape. The box contained about twenty thick cardboard packets, each about ten centimetres wide by twenty long.
He picked one of the packets up. It was incredibly heavy in his hand. He tore back a corner of the cardboard wrapping, and the bright silver of a metal ingot glittered back at him. He unwrapped it completely. The PMI logo was embossed into its surface, with various stamps underneath, showing the metal’s purity, its serial number, and its elemental symbol – Pt. He was holding a solid bar of refined platinum. It felt slightly greasy to the touch, and it shone in the light.
His gaze flickered back to the other bars, and the other boxes. There must have been tonnes of platinum, gold, and rhodium here, awaiting shipment back to Earth. He wondered how much it was all worth. Could they take any of it back with them? There must be some way they could find some room—
‘No.’
Clare’s voice came from behind him, and he spun round, nearly dropping the bar on the floor. She stood in the strongroom doorway, watching him.
‘I was just—’
‘It’s okay.’ Clare raised her hand. ‘You look at it all you want. We can barely carry our own weight, let alone any extra. I came to tell you that the fuel readouts are showing we’ve just enough for the climb –
‘Hey, that’s – that’s great news.’ A smile grew on Wilson’s face as the prospect of getting back to the tug became more certain. He put the bar back in the open box, and stood up. ‘Can we tell the others yet?’
‘Yes, I think we can risk it now. I’ll go out into the main airway and see if I can get a message to them. Can you keep an eye on the fuel pressure?’ Clare left from the doorway, and Wilson heard her footsteps as she walked back down the corridor, towards the exit to the silo.
He looked back at the boxes in the room. Clare was right; they didn’t have the fuel to carry any unnecessary weight.
He knew he should get back and check the tank pressure, but he didn’t seem to be able to leave the room. He bent down again and picked up the bar of platinum. It seemed to have grown heavier since he last handled it, and he turned the metal in the light, watching the reflected gleam run across its liquid surfaces.
He remained like that for a long while, only tearing himself away when he heard the sound of Clare’s footsteps returning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Rick Bergman’s comlink beeped.
He stopped walking, and held it to his ear. Matt stopped a few paces on. They had passed the abandoned shaft station a few minutes ago, and were almost back at the main shaft station.
‘Bergman.’ He listened for a few moments, and a smile broke over his face. ‘Hey, that’s excellent news. Are you sure?’ He listened a few moments more. ‘No, throw out anything you need to. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need to take anything back but ourselves. What? No, we’re not back at the shaft station yet. I still can’t believe it, this is fantastic. Did you get my message earlier?’
He spoke with Clare a little longer, letting her know that Abrams and Elliott were on their way to the peak.
‘No, I haven’t heard anything from them yet. They’re not due to report until one. Okay. Speak to you then.’
He flipped the comlink shut, and turned to Matt. ‘My friend, it looks like we might yet be returning home. The good captain and our trusty copilot are in the final stages of prepping a shuttle for flight, and it’s got just enough fuel to get us back to the
Matt grinned. ‘Well, that’s the best bit of news I’ve ever had in my life. How long before it’s ready?’
‘She reckons several hours to take out all the unnecessary weight, but there’s no point in rushing; the earliest transfer window back to Earth isn’t for a few days.’ Bergman was grinning as well now.
Matt shook his head in disbelief. In less than a day, they had gone from being marooned in an abandoned mine, to figuring out a schedule for returning to Earth. It seemed too good to be true.
‘Is she sure? I mean, is the shuttle serviceable?’
‘That’s exactly what I asked. They’re going over its systems now, but she reckons it’s flightworthy, it’s just the fuel that’s an issue.’
‘Does she need any help? I mean, shouldn’t we go back there and give her a hand?’
‘They’re fine. We need to stay on plan. Come on.’
They set off again, with a new urgency in their step, and soon emerged from the passage, back in the main shaft station.
It was exactly as they had left it; the cage waited at the shaft head, its doors open.
Matt set the hoist controls so that they could control it from the cage. He turned to Bergman, who had picked up two mining helmets from the debris on the chamber floor and was dusting them off.
‘Look, before we go down there, there’s something we need to get straight.’
‘Sure. What?’
‘If anyone’s still alive down there, and they see us, we need to be watch what we say. If there’s been a mutiny, they might not want us to get any messages back to Earth, right?’
Bergman considered, and nodded.
‘So let’s get our story clear. We don’t mention the shuttle, or getting the radio to work. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just two mining engineers on a survey mission that crashed in the crater, and we’re looking for any help we can find, okay?’
‘So we don’t say anything about the others, right?’
‘Right. We say we were the only survivors. If they’re armed, we’ve got to keep something up our sleeve until we can figure out what to do.’
‘I’ll go along with that. But, you know, I’ve been thinking too. Here we are, we’ve turned on the emergency lighting in the mine, we’ve got the hoists working – they must have heard something. If there are survivors down there, surely they’d have come looking by now?’
Matt considered. He wanted to agree with Bergman, but the image of the gunfight in the control centre, and the ransacking of the mine manager’s office, kept returning.
‘I hope you’re right.’ He turned back to the control panel, and punched the selector buttons. ‘Okay, I’ve set the cage to go straight to the four hundred level. Are we ready?’
Matt took the mining helmet that Bergman held out, and the two of them clambered aboard the lower of the two cages, and stood on the short section of rail track in the cage floor. Matt held the interlock handle closed, and turned the control handle to DOWN.
The cage door slid down, the safety gate closed, and the bell rang twice. Matt and Bergman gripped the side rails inside the cage as the brake blocks released, and the cage squealed down its guide rails and into the darkness of the shaft.
The cage fell past the wind slit, a wide, dark opening in the shaft walls where the fresh air entered the shaft. Even though there was no forced ventilation in the mine, a rush of air surged through the open frame and wire
