Below Mercury

Bergman couldn’t make it up the ladder and get into the refuge before the skip hit him. He reached up and to the left, gripped the ledge of the refuge with both hands, swung out and hung there, holding his body close to the shaft wall.

With a deep whoosh of air that pummelled his chest, the skip tore past the refuge, grazing one of his heels. The sudden blow pulled one of his hands from the ledge, and he was left dangling from one hand. Bergman yelled in terror as the fingers started to slip; he knew he was going to fall.

A hand grabbed his wrist, just as his last fingers slipped, and he hung there, terrified. The skip hissed away down the shaft.

‘Give me your free hand!’

Bergman reached up and grabbed the outstretched hand, and Matt pulled him upwards and onto the refuge, where they both lay, panting from the exertion.

‘Thanks, Matt,’ Bergman whispered, ‘I thought I was going to fall.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

They lay there in the refuge, getting their breath back, until Matt spoke again.

‘We can’t stay here. It’s only a hundred metres to the top of the shaft. We’ve got to keep moving.’

Bergman nodded. He didn’t want to go out into the shaft again, but Matt was right. They were trapped here; they had to get clear of the shaft.

Matt swung himself back onto the ladder. He flinched as a blur tore past close by, but it was just the counterweight, flying upwards in its guide ropes as the skip neared the bottom of the shaft.

Bergman swung onto the ladder below Matt, and the two of them continued their climb. Their arms and legs ached with fatigue, but they moved upward with determination; they were too near the top of the shaft to give up now.

Way below them, the skip hoist slowed and halted, sending long waves up and down the wire ropes. After a moment, the ropes started moving again, but in the opposite direction; the skip was coming back up the shaft towards them.

The wire ropes picked up speed rapidly, and the counterweight fell past again on its journey down the shaft. Matt and Bergman pushed on grimly, forcing their aching limbs to haul them up the ladder. They were getting close now, though, and their spirits rose as they neared the top of the shaft.

‘Nearly there,’ Matt called down, and Bergman looked up hopefully. There above them, no more than twenty metres away, the guide rails of the upper shaft station could be made out in the light spilling in from the passage, and something else, too, silhouetted against the light.

Two robot heads looked down at them, their eyes glowing red. Matt continued his climb as if he hadn’t seen them, and Bergman called out in warning: ‘Matt, hold on! There’s two robots—’

Matt actually laughed, and swung sideways off the ladder to the right, into a large, unlit passage.

‘We’re not going that way,’ he said, as Bergman hauled himself up. The rectangular passage they were in sloped upwards, as steep as the roof of a house, and there was a set of narrow steps and a handrail in the near wall.

‘This is the bypass duct I was telling you about. It takes excess air past the refinery and into the main return airway.’

‘Well, that’s going to piss them off,’ Bergman said, ‘can they get in here?’

‘Not without crawling up here behind us. We’re safe from here on in. Come on.’ Now that the immediate danger was past, Matt was thinking again of the countdown clock, ticking away in the silo.

They climbed up the steep stairway, hanging on to the rail on their left. The narrow steps, and the sides and floor of the duct, were thick with dust brought up from the mine over the years. The duct bored its way upwards and away from the shaft, and finally levelled off at a set of partly open pressure doors, also covered in dust; they were used to balance the bypass airflow. Light flooded through the gap into the darkness of the duct.

They stepped through the doors, and found themselves at the confluence of two major passages. Behind them, to their left, the fresh air from the refinery joined up with the bypass duct, and ahead, a set of three giant fans turned sluggishly in the faint air current from below. Ducting and pipework ran across the walls and roof of the junction, carrying gases from the refinery for correcting the air blend.

They were at the far end of the main return airway, and ahead of them, past the fans, the airway sloped gently upwards, past the silo complex and back under the crater floor to the mine.

‘Come on!’ Matt was jubilant now, and walked forward confidently. Through the walkway to one side of the fans, then a short way up the passage, and they would be at the silos.

The two of them had just passed by a complex junction of gas ducting, when Matt heard the sudden whine of a power pack coming out of standby.

He spun round, and a pair of red eyes flickered on in the shadows by the pipe fittings, and the huge bulk of a mining robot stepped out from where it had been standing, waiting for them.

‘Rick!’ Matt yelled at the top of his voice, but the robot had already reached Bergman, and grabbed him by the neck and body with its pincered hands. Bergman’s eyes bulged, and his legs thrashed as the robot lifted him off his feet and held him above the ground.

Bergman turned his head to look at Matt, his mouth moving as if to say something, and then the robot’s pincer closed round his neck, severing the head from the body in a spray of blood that showered over the robot.

With a whine of motors, it tossed Bergman’s body aside, blood still spurting from the severed neck, and moved towards Matt, its red eyes blazing. It covered the space between them with a terrible speed, and as Matt turned and ran, he felt the deadly swoop of air behind him as the robot just missed him with its claw.

To the side of the fans, a single pressure door allowed access to the maintenance walkway, and Matt just made it inside as another blow from the robot smashed into the frame.

Matt stumbled through the walkway, the robot pounding behind him, thudding off the narrow walls. Its motors whined in overdrive as it strove to catch him and tear him apart, but Matt was faster, and he emerged from the walkway through another pressure door, slamming the door close button behind him.

The robot reached the door just as it was closing. It thrust one hand through the closing gap, then another, and slowly forced the door into reverse, pushing it aside. There was a loud bang and a flash as the door motors burned out, and the door flew back, letting the robot through.

Twenty metres ahead, Matt was beginning to falter; the long climb, the low air pressure, and the shock of what had happened to Bergman, was taking its toll. His legs shook with each stride, as if they were made of rubber, but he knew he had to make it to the silo. He saw Bergman’s head falling from his body, he saw Bergman being tossed aside, and the robot was just behind him now. He was filled with a sudden rage that gave him the strength to keep moving, and open up the gap between him and the robot.

‘If I ever – get out of this alive,’ he hissed between breaths, ‘I will come after you bastards. He had a wife, and a kid – and you fucking killed him – if I get the slightest chance to destroy you – I fucking will, you cock sucking – mother fucking company!’

Suddenly, a sharp left turn opened on the left; the entrance to the silo. The huge roof fall blocked the airway some way ahead, and rocks and boulders were scattered all down the passage.

With his last strength, Matt staggered through the pressure doors in the silo entrance passage. Holding on to the door frame, he slammed the manual door close button, and fumbled for the isolation switch to lock the door against the following robot.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Inside the silo, a fresh rumble reverberated through the corridors; the robots would soon be through the rock fall in the passage outside.

Wilson appeared in the entrance doorway of the shuttlecraft.

‘That’s it, we’re all ready to go. I’m going to load up the bars, then we’ll close the door and be on our way.’

‘We’re not taking them,’ Clare said in a flat voice.