Reynolds frowned. A small but distinct tremor had shaken the ground underfoot. A few feet away, a small pebble balanced atop another toppled and fell with a faint clatter.
'Probably a big rock fragment falling,' he said. At that moment, a second vibration shook the earth, stronger this time. Reynolds heard a rumble and a distant impact as rock fell from the side of the newly blasted excavation. He whirled to the control shed as the door swung back and Second Engineer Mayfield appeared.
'Take a look at this, Pete!'
Reynolds went across to the hut, stepped inside. Mayfield was bending over the profiling table.
'What do you make of it?' he pointed. Superimposed on the heavy red contour representing the detonation of the shaped charge that had completed the drilling of the final pile core were two other traces, weak but distinct.
'About.1 intensity.' Mayfield looked puzzled. 'What-'
The tracking needle dipped suddenly, swept up the screen to peak at.21, dropped back. The hut trembled. A stylus fell from the edge of the table. The red face of Mayor Dougherty burst through the door.
'Reynolds, have you lost your mind? What's the idea of blasting while I'm standing out in the open? I might have been killed!'
'I'm not blasting,' Reynolds snapped. 'Jim, get Eaton on the line, see if they know anything.' He stepped to the door, shouted. A heavyset man in sweat-darkened coveralls swung down from the seat of a cable-lift rig.
'Boss, what goes on?' he called as he came up. 'Damn near shook me out of my seat!'
'I don't know. You haven't set any trim charges?'
'Jesus, no, boss. I wouldn't set no charges without your say-so.'
'Come on.' Reynolds started out across the rubble-littered stretch of barren ground selected by the Authority as the site of the new spaceport. Halfway to the open mouth of the newly blasted pit, the ground under his feet rocked violently enough to make him stumble. A gout of dust rose from the excavation ahead. Loose rock danced on the ground. Beside him the drilling chief grabbed his arm.
'Boss, we better get back!'
Reynolds shook him off, kept going. The drill chief swore and followed. The shaking of the ground went on, a sharp series of thumps interrupting a steady trembling.
'It's a quake!' Reynolds yelled over the low rumbling sound.
He and the chief were at the rim of the core now.
'It can't be a quake, boss,' the latter shouted. 'Not in these formations!'
'Tell it to the geologists-' The rock slab they were standing on rose a foot, dropped back. Both men fell. The slab bucked like a small boat in choppy water.
'Let's get out of here!' Reynolds was up and running. Ahead, a fissure opened, gaped a foot wide. He jumped it, caught a glimpse of black depths, a glint of wet clay twenty feet below-
A hoarse scream stopped him in his tracks. He spun, saw the drill chief down, a heavy splinter of rock across his legs. He jumped to him, heaved at the rock. There was blood on the man's shirt. The chief's hands beat the dusty rock before him. Then other men were there, grunting, sweaty hands gripping beside Reynolds. The ground rocked. The roar from under the earth had risen to a deep, steady rumble. They lifted the rock aside, picked up the injured man, and stumbled with him to the aid shack.
The mayor was there, white-faced.
'What is it, Reynolds? By God, if you're responsible-'
'Shut up!' Reynolds brushed him aside, grabbed the phone, punched keys.
'Eaton! What have you got on this temblor?'
'Temblor, hell.' The small face on the four-inch screen looked like a ruffled hen. 'What in the name of Order are you doing out there? I'm reading a whole series of displacements originating from that last core of yours! What did you do, leave a pile of trim charges lying around?'
'It's a quake. Trim charges, hell! This thing's broken up two hundred yards of surface rock. It seems to be traveling north-northeast-'
'I see that; a traveling earthquake!' Eaton flapped his arms, a tiny and ridiculous figure against a background of wall charts and framed diplomas. 'Well-do something, Reynolds! Where's Mayor Dougherty?'
'Underfoot!' Reynolds snapped, and cut off.
Outside, a layer of sunset-stained dust obscured the sweep of level plain. A rock-dozer rumbled up, ground to a halt by Reynolds. A man jumped down.
'I got the boys moving equipment out,' he panted. 'The thing's cutting a trail straight as a rule for the highway!' He pointed to a raised roadbed a quarter mile away.
'How fast is it moving?'
'She's done a hundred yards; it hasn't been ten minutes yet!'
'If it keeps up another twenty minutes, it'll be into the Intermix!'
'Scratch a few million cees and six months' work then, Pete!'
'And Southside Mall's a couple miles farther.'
'Hell, it'll damp out before then!'
'Maybe. Grab a field car, Dan.'
'Pete!' Mayfield came up at a trot. 'This thing's building! The centroid's moving on a heading of oh-two- two-'
'How far subsurface?'
'It's rising; started at two-twenty yards, and it's up to one-eighty!'
'What the hell have we stirred up?' Reynolds stared at Mayfield as the field car skidded to a stop beside them.
'Stay with it, Jim. Give me anything new. We're taking a closer look.' He climbed into the rugged vehicle.
'Take a blast truck-'
'No time!' He waved and the car gunned away into the pall of dust.
3
The rock car pulled to a stop at the crest of the three-level Intermix on a lay-by designed to permit tourists to enjoy the view of the site of the proposed port, a hundred feet below. Reynolds studied the progress of the quake through field glasses. From this vantage point, the path of the phenomenon was a clearly defined trail of tilted and broken rock, some of the slabs twenty feet across. As he watched, the fissure lengthened.
'It looks like a mole's trail.' Reynolds handed the glasses to his companion, thumbed the send key on the car radio.
'Jim, get Eaton and tell him to divert all traffic from the Circular south of Zone Nine. Cars are already clogging the right-of-way. The dust is visible from a mile away, and when the word gets out there's something going on, we'll be swamped.'
'I'll tell him, but he won't like it!'
'This isn't politics! This thing will be into the outer pad area in another twenty minutes!'
'It won't last-'
'How deep does it read now?'
'One-five!' There was a moment's silence. 'Pete, if it stays on course, it'll surface at about where you're parked!'
'Uh-huh. It looks like you can scratch one Intermix. Better tell Eaton to get a story ready for the press.'
'Pete, talking about news hounds-' Dan said beside him. Reynolds switched off, turned to see a man in a gay- colored driving outfit coming across from a battered Monojag sportster which had pulled up behind the rock car. A big camera case was slung across his shoulder.
'Say, what's going on down there?' he called.
'Rock slide,' Reynolds said shortly. 'I'll have to ask you to drive on. The road's closed to all traffic-'
'Who're you?' The man looked belligerent.
'I'm the engineer in charge. Now pull out, brother.' He turned back to the radio. 'Jim, get every piece of heavy
