The Past Through Tomorrow (41 page)

The tunnel beyond looked much the same as the section we had left except that they were no scooter tracks and the lights were temporary, rigged on extensions. A couple of hundred feet away the tunnel was blocked by a bulkhead with a circular door in it. The fat man followed my glance. “That’s the movable lock,” he explained. “No air beyond it. We excavate just ahead of it.”

“Can I see where you’ve been digging?”

“Not without we go back and get you a suit.”

I shook my head. There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel, the size and shape of toy balloons. They seemed to displace exactly their own weight of air; they floated without displaying much tendency to rise or settle. Konski batted one out of his way and answered me before I could ask. “This piece of tunnel was pressurized today,” he told me. “These tag-alongs search out stray leaks. They’re sticky inside. They get sucked up against a leak, break, and the goo gets sucked in, freezes and seals the leak.”

“Is that a permanent repair?” I wanted to know.

“Are you kidding? It just shows the follow-up man where to weld.”

“Show him a flexible joint,” Knowles directed.

“Coming up.” We paused half-way down the tunnel and Konski pointed to a ring segment that ran completely around the tubular tunnel. “We put in a flex joint every hundred feet. It’s glass cloth, gasketed onto the two steel sections it joins. Gives the tunnel a certain amount of springiness.”

“Glass cloth? To make an airtight seal?” I objected.

“The cloth doesn’t seal; it’s for strength. You got ten layers of cloth, with a silicone grease spread between the layers. It gradually goes bad, from the outside in, but it’ll hold five years or more before you have to put on another coat.”

I asked Konski how he liked his job, thinking I might get some story. He shrugged. “It’s all right. Nothing to it. Only one atmosphere of pressure. Now you take when I was working under the Hudson—”

“And getting paid a tenth of what you get here,” put in Knowles.

“Mr. Knowles, you grieve me,” Konski protested. “It ain’t the money; it’s the art of the matter. Take Venus. They pay as well on Venus and a man has to be on his toes. The muck is so loose you have to freeze it. It takes real caisson men to work there. Half of these punks here are just miners; a case of the bends would scare ’em silly.”

“Tell him why you left Venus, Fatso.”

Konski expressed dignity. “Shall we examine the movable shield, gentlemen?” he asked.

We puttered around a while longer and I was ready to go back. There wasn’t much to see, and the more I saw of the place the less I liked it. Konski was undogging the door of the airlock leading back when something happened.

I was down on my hands and knees and the place was pitch dark. Maybe I screamed—I don’t know. There was a ringing in my ears. I tried to get up and then stayed where I was. It was the darkest dark I ever saw, complete blackness. I thought I was blind.

A torchlight beam cut through it, picked me out, and then moved on. “What was it?” I shouted. “What happened? Was it a quake?”

“Stop yelling,” Konski’s voice answered me casually. “That was no quake, it was some sort of explosion. Mr. Knowles—you all right?”

“I guess so.” He gasped for breath. “What happened?”

“Dunno. Let’s look around a bit.” Konski stood up and poked his beam around the tunnel, whistling softly. His light was the sort that has to be pumped; it flickered.

“Looks tight, but I hear—Oh, oh! Sister!” His beam was focused on a part of the flexible joint, near the floor.

The “tag-along” balloons were gathering at this spot. Three were already there; others were drifting in slowly. As we watched, one of them burst and collapsed in a sticky mass that marked the leak.

The hole sucked up the burst balloon and began to hiss. Another rolled onto the spot, joggled about a bit, then it, too, burst. It took a little longer this time for the leak to absorb and swallow the gummy mass.

Konski passed me the light. “Keep pumping it, kid.” He shrugged his right arm out of the suit and placed his bare hand over the spot where, at that moment, a third bladder burst.

“How about it, Fats?” Mr. Knowles demanded.

“Couldn’t say. Feels like a hole as big as my thumb. Sucks like the devil.”

“How could you get a hole like that?”

“Search me. Poked through from the outside, maybe.”

“You got the leak checked?”

“I think so. Go back and check the gage. Jack, give him the light.”

Knowles trotted back to the airlock. Presently he sang out, “Pressure steady!”

“Can you read the vernier?” Konski called to him.

“Sure. Steady by the vernier.”

“How much we lose?”

“Not more than a pound or two. What was the pressure before?”

“Earth-normal.”

“Lost a pound four tenths, then.”

“Not bad. Keep on going, Mr. Knowles. There’s a tool kit just beyond the lock in the next section. Bring me back a number three patch, or bigger.”

“Right.” We heard the door open and clang shut, and we were again in total darkness. I must have made some sound for Konski told me to keep my chin up.

Presently we heard the door, and the blessed light shone out again. “Got it?” said Konski.

“No, Fatso. No…” Knowles’ voice was shaking. “There’s no air on the other side. The other door wouldn’t open.”

“Jammed, maybe?”

“No, I checked the manometer. There’s no pressure in the next section.”

Konski whistled again. “Looks like we’ll wait till they come for us. In that case—Keep the light on me, Mr. Knowles. Jack, help me out of this suit.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“If I can’t get a patch, I got to make one, Mr. Knowles. This suit is the only thing around.” I started to help him—a clumsy job since he had to keep his hand on the leak.

“You can stuff my shirt in the hole,” Knowles suggested.

“I’d as soon bail water with a fork. It’s got to be the suit; there’s nothing else around that will hold the pressure.” When he was free of the suit, he had me smooth out a portion of the back, then, as he snatched his hand away, I slapped the suit down over the leak. Konski promptly sat on it. “There,” he said happily, “we’ve got it corked. Nothing to do but wait.”

I started to ask him why he hadn’t just sat down on the leak while wearing the suit; then I realized that the seat of the suit was corrugated with insulation—he needed a smooth piece to seal on to the sticky stuff left by the balloons.

“Let me see your hand,” Knowles demanded.

“It’s nothing much.” But Knowles examined it anyway. I looked at it and got a little sick. He had a mark like a stigma on the palm, a bloody, oozing wound. Knowles made a compress of his handkerchief and then used mine to tie it in place.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Konski told us, then added, “we’ve got time to kill. How about a little pinochle?”

“With your cards?” asked Knowles.

“Why, Mr. Knowles! Well—never mind. It isn’t right for paymasters to gamble anyhow. Speaking of paymasters, you realize this is pressure work now, Mr. Knowles?”

“For a pound and four tenths differential?”

“I’m sure the union would take that view—in the circumstances.”

“Suppose I sit on the leak?”

“But the rate applies to helpers, too.”

“Okay, miser—triple-time it is.”

“That’s more like your own sweet nature, Mr. Knowles. I hope it’s a nice long wait.”

“How long a wait do you think it will be, Fatso?”

“Well, it shouldn’t take them more than an hour, even if they have to come all the way from Richardson.”

“Hmm…what makes you think they will be looking for us?”

“Huh? Doesn’t your office know where you are?”

“I’m afraid not. I told them I wouldn’t be back today.”

Konski thought about it. “I didn’t drop my time card. They’ll know I’m still inside.”

“Sure they will—tomorrow, when your card doesn’t show up at my office.”

“There’s that lunkhead on the gate. He’ll know he’s got three extra inside.”

“Provided he remembers to tell his relief. And provided he wasn’t caught in it, too.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Konski said thoughtfully. “Jack—better quit pumping that light. You just use up more oxygen.”

We sat there in the darkness for quite a long time, speculating about what had happened. Konski was sure it was an explosion; Knowles said that it put him in mind of a time when he had seen a freight rocket crash on take off. When the talk started to die out, Konski told some stories. I tried to tell one, but I was so nervous—so
afraid
, I should say—that I couldn’t remember the snapper. I wanted to scream.

After a long silence Konski said, “Jack, give us the light again. I got something figured out.”

“What is it?” Knowles asked.

“If we had a patch, you could put on my suit and go for help.”

“There’s no oxygen for the suit.”

“That’s why I mentioned you. You’re the smallest—there’ll be enough air in the suit itself to take you through the next section.”

“Well—okay. What are you going to use for a patch?”

“I’m sitting on it.”

“Huh?”

“This big broad, round thing I’m sitting on. I’ll take my pants off. If I push one of my hams against that hole, I’ll guarantee you it’ll be sealed tight.”

“But—No, Fats, it won’t do. Look what happened to your hand. You’d hemorrhage through your skin and bleed to death before I could get back.”

“I’ll give you two to one I wouldn’t—for fifty, say.”

“If I win, how do I collect?”

“You’re a cute one, Mr. Knowles. But look—I’ve got two or three inches of fat padding me. I won’t bleed much—a strawberry mark, no more.”

Knowles shook his head. “It’s not necessary. If we keep quiet, there’s air enough here for several days.”

“It’s not the air, Mr. Knowles. Noticed it’s getting chilly?”

I had noticed, but hadn’t thought about it. In my misery and funk being cold didn’t seem anything more than appropriate. Now I thought about it. When we lost the power line, we lost the heaters, too. It would keep getting colder and colder…and colder.

Mr. Knowles saw it, too. “Okay, Fats. Let’s get on with it.”

I sat on the suit while Konski got ready. After he got his pants off he snagged one of the tag-alongs, burst it, and smeared the sticky insides on his right buttock. Then he turned to me. “Okay, kid—up off the nest.” We made the swap-over fast, without losing much air, though the leak hissed angrily. “Comfortable as an easy chair, folks.” He grinned.

Knowles hurried into the suit and left, taking the light with him. We were in darkness again.

After a while, I heard Konski’s voice. “There a game we can play in the dark, Jack. You play chess?”

“Why, yes—play at it, that is.”

“A good game. Used to play it in the decompression chamber when I was working under the Hudson. What do you say to twenty on a side, just to make it fun?”

“Uh? Well, all right.” He could have made it a thousand; I didn’t care.

“Fine. King’s pawn to king three.”

“Uh—king’s pawn to king’s four.”

“Conventional, aren’t you? Puts me in mind of a girl I knew in Hoboken—” What he told about her had nothing to do with chess, although it did prove she was conventional, in a manner of speaking. “King’s bishop to queen’s bishop four. Remind me to tell you about her sister, too. Seems she hadn’t always been a redhead, but she wanted people to think so. So she—sorry. Go ahead with your move.”

I tried to think but my head was spinning. “Queen’s pawn to queen three.”

“Queen to king’s bishop three. Anyhow, she—” He went on in great detail. It wasn’t new and I doubt if it ever happened to him, but it cheered me up. I actually smiled, there in the dark. “It’s your move,” he added.

“Oh.” I couldn’t remember the board. I decided to get ready to castle, always fairly safe in the early game. “Queen’s knight to queen’s bishop three.”

“Queen advances to capture your king’s bishop’s pawn—checkmate. You owe me twenty, Jack.”

“Huh? Why that can’t be!”

“Want to run over the moves?” He checked them off.

I managed to visualize them, then said, “Why, I’ll be a dirty name! You hooked me with a fool’s mate!”

He chuckled. “You should have kept your eye on my queen instead of on the redhead.”

I laughed out loud. “Know any more stories?”

“Sure.” He told another. But when I urged him to go on, he said, “I think I’ll just rest a little while, Jack.”

I got up. “You all right, Fats?” He didn’t answer; I felt my way over to him in the dark. His face was cold and he didn’t speak when I touched him. I could hear his heart faintly when I pressed an ear to his chest, but his hands and feet were like ice.

I had to pull him loose; he was frozen to the spot. I could feel the ice, though I knew it must be blood. I started to try to revive him by rubbing him, but the hissing of the leak brought me up short. I tore off my own trousers, had a panicky time before I found the exact spot in the dark, and sat down on it, with my right buttock pressed firmly against the opening.

It grabbed me like a suction cup, icy cold. Then it was fire spreading through my flesh. After a time I couldn’t feel anything at all, except a dull ache and coldness.

There was a light someplace. It flickered on, then went out again. I heard a door clang. I started to shout.

“Knowles!” I screamed. “Mr. Knowles!”

The light flickered on again. “Coming, Jack—”

I started to blubber. “Oh, you made it! You made it.”

“I didn’t make it, Jack. I couldn’t reach the next section. When I got back to the lock I passed out.” He stopped to wheeze. “There’s a crater—” The light flickered off and fell clanging to the floor. “Help me, Jack,” he said querulously. “Can’t you see I need help? I tried to—”

I heard him stumble and fall. I called to him, but he didn’t answer.

I tried to get up, but I was stuck fast, a cork in a bottle…

I came to, lying face down—with a clean sheet under me. “Feeling better?” someone asked. It was Knowles, standing by my bed, dressed in a bathrobe.

“You’re dead,” I told him.

“Not a bit.” He grinned. “They got to us in time.”