Riptide

Chapter 29

Hatch was the last to set foot on the ladder. The others were already stretched out for twenty feet below him. The lights on their helmets played through the murk as they descended hand over hand. A sense of vertigo passed over him, and he looked up, grabbing at the rung. The ladder was rock solid, he knew; even if he fell, the lifeline would keep him from tumbling far.

As they went deeper, a curious hush fell over the team and among the Orthanc crew, monitoring the mission over the live channel. The incessant sounds of the settling Pit, the soft creakings and tickings, filled the air like the whispered teeming of invisible sea creatures. Hatch passed the first cluster of terminal hubs, electrical outlets, and cable jacks that had been set into the ladder at fifteen-foot intervals.

"Everyone all right?" came Neidelman's low voice over the intercom. Positive responses came back, one by one.

"Dr. Magnusen?" Neidelman asked.

"Instruments normal," came the voice from inside Orthanc. "All boards are green."

"Dr. Rankin?"

"Scopes inactive, Captain. No sign of any seismic disturbances or magnetic anomalies."

"Mr. Streeter?"

"All systems on the array are nominal," the laconic voice replied.

"Very well," Neidelman said. "We'll continue descending to the fifty-foot platform, placing sensors as necessary, then stop for a breather. Be careful not to catch your lifelines on any beams. Dr. Bonterre, Dr. Hatch, Mr. Wopner, keep your eyes open. If you see anything strange, I want to know."

"You kidding?" came Wopner's voice. "The whole place is strange."

As he followed the group, Hatch felt almost as if he was sinking into a deep pool of brackish water. The air was clammy and cold, redolent of decay. Each exhalation condensed into a cloud of vapor that hung in the supersaturated air, refusing to dissipate. He looked about, the light on his helmet swiveling with his head. They were now in the tidal zone of the Pit, where the water had formerly risen and fallen twice a day. He was surprised to see the same bands of life he'd observed countless times among rocks and tidal pools at the sea edge: first barnacles, then seaweed, then mussels and limpets; followed by a band of starfish; next, sea cucumbers, periwinkles, sea urchins, and anemones. As he continued to descend, he passed strata of coral and seaweed. Hundreds of whelks still clung pitifully to the walls and beams, hoping in vain for a return of the tide. Now and then a whelk would at last lose its grip and fall into the echoing vastness.

Though an immense amount of flotsam and jetsam had already been removed from the drained Pit, an obstacle course of ancient junk remained. The ladder array had been deftly threaded through rotting beams, tangles of metal, and discarded pieces of drilling apparatus. The team stopped as Neidelman tapped a sensor into a small opening on one side of the Pit. As they waited for Wopner to calibrate the sensor, Hatch found his spirits beginning to flag in the mephitic atmosphere. He wondered if the rest of the team shared the feeling, or if he was simply laboring under the additional knowledge that, somewhere in this cold, dripping labyrinth, lay his brother's body.

"Man, it stinks down here," said Wopner, bending over his handheld computer.

"Air readings normal," came the voice of Neidelman. "We'll be installing a ventilation system over the next few days."

As they descended once again, the original cribbing in the shaft became more clearly defined as thick layers of seaweed gave way to long hanging strings of kelp. A muffled rumble came from above: thunder. Hatch glanced up and saw the mouth of the Pit etched against the sky, the dark bulk of Orthanc rising in a greenish glow. Farther above, lowering clouds had turned the heavens iron gray. A flicker of lightning flashed a momentary, ghastly illumination into the Pit.

Suddenly, the group below him stopped. Glancing down, Hatch could see Neidelman playing his beam into two ragged openings on either side of the shaft, tunnels that led off into darkness.

"What do you think?" asked Neidelman, tapping in another sensor.

"It is not original," said Bonterre, bending carefully into the second opening to affix a sensor and take a closer look. "Look at the cribbing: it is small and ripsawed, not adzed. Perhaps from the Parkhurst expedition of the 1830s, non?"

She straightened, then gazed up at Hatch, the lance of her headlamp illuminating his legs. "I can see up your dress." She smirked.

"Maybe we should switch places," Hatch replied.

They worked their way down the ladder, placing stress sensors into the beams and cribbing as they went, until they reached the narrow platform at the fifty-foot level. In the reflected light of his helmet, Hatch could see the Captain's face was pale with excitement. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat despite the chilly air.

There came another flash of lightning and a distant sound of thunder. The rivulets of water seemed to be trickling faster now, and Hatch guessed it must be raining heavily up top. He looked upward, but the opening was now almost completely obscured by the crisscrossing beams they had passed, the drops of water flying down past his lamp. He wondered if the swell had increased, and hoped the cofferdam would hold it; he had a momentary image of the sea bursting through the cofferdam and roaring back into the Pit, drowning them instantly.

"I'm freezing," complained Wopner. "Why didn't you warn me to bring an electric blanket? And it stinks even worse than before."

"Slightly elevated levels of methane and carbon dioxide," Neidelman said, looking at his monitor. "Nothing to get worried about."

"He is right, though," said Bonterre, adjusting a canteen on her belt. "It is chilly."

"Forty-eight degrees," said Neidelman tersely. "Any other observations?"

There was a silence.

"Let's continue, then. We're likely to start finding more shafts and side tunnels beyond this point. We'll alternate placing the sensors. Since Mr. Wopner must calibrate each of them manually, he's going to fall behind. We'll wait for him at the hundred-foot platform."

At this depth, the crisscrossing support beams had accumulated an incredible variety of trash. Old cables, chains, gears, hoses, even rotting leather gloves were tangled in the crossbeams. They began to come across additional openings cut into the cribbed walls, where tunnels branched off or secondary shafts intersected the main pit. Neidelman took the first one, placing sensors back twenty feet; Bonterre took the next. Then it was his own turn.

Carefully, Hatch played out some line from his harness, stepping back from the ladder into the cross-shaft. He felt his foot sink into yielding ooze. The tunnel was narrow and low, stretching off at a sharp upward angle. It had been crudely hacked out of the glacial till, nothing as elegant as the Water Pit shaft, obviously of a later date. Stooping, he went twenty feet up the tunnel, then fished a piezoelectric sensor from his satchel and drove it into the calcified earth. He returned to the central Pit, placing a small fluorescent flag at the mouth of the shaft to alert Wopner.

As he stepped back onto the array, Hatch heard a loud, agonizing complaint from a nearby timber, followed by a flurry of creakings that whispered quickly up and down the shaft. He froze, gripping the ladder tightly, holding his breath.

"Just the Pit settling," came the voice of Neidelman. He had already set his sensor and moved farther down the ladder to the next cross-shaft. As he spoke, there came another screech— sharp and strangely human—echoing from a side tunnel.

"What the hell was that?" Wopner said, behind them now, his voice a little too loud in the confined space.

"More of the same," said Neidelman. "The protest of old wood."

There was another shriek, followed by a low gibbering.

"That's no goddamn wood," said Wopner. "That sounds alive."

Hatch looked up. The programmer had frozen in the act of calibrating one of the sensors: His palmtop computer was held in one outstretched hand, and the index finger of his other was resting on it, looking ridiculously as if he was pointing into his own palm.

"Get that light out of my eyes, willya?" Wopner said. "The faster I can get these suckers calibrated, the faster I can get out of this shithole."

"You just want to get back to the ship before Christophe steals your glory," said Bonterre good-humoredly. She had emerged from her side shaft and was now descending the ladder.

As they approached the hundred-foot platform, another sight came into view. Until now, the horizontal tunnels opening into the side of the shaft had been crude and ragged, poorly shored, some partially caved in. But here, they could see a tunnel opening that had obviously been carefully formed.

Bonterre shone her light at the square opening. "This is definitely part of the original Pit," she said.

"What's its purpose?" asked Neidelman, pulling a sensor out of his satchel.

Bonterre leaned into the tunnel. "I cannot say for sure. But you can see how Macallan used the natural fissures in the rock for his construction."

"Mr. Wopner?" Neidelman said, glancing up the shaft.

There was a brief silence. Then Hatch heard Wopner respond: "Yes?" It was a quiet, unusually subdued voice. Glancing up, he saw the young man leaning on the ladder perhaps twenty feet above him, beside a flag Hatch had placed, calibrating the sensor. Wet hair was plastered down the sides of his face, and the programmer was shivering.

"Kerry?" Hatch asked. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Neidelman glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes strangely eager. "It'll take him some time to calibrate all the sensors we've placed so far," he said. "Why don't we take a closer look at this side tunnel?"

The Captain stepped across the gap into the shaft, then helped the others across. They found themselves in a long, narrow tunnel, perhaps five feet high and three feet across, shored with massive timbers similar to those in the Water Pit itself. Neidelman took a small knife from his pocket and stuck it into one of the timbers. "Soft for a half inch, and then solid," he said, replacing the knife. "Looks safe."

They moved forward cautiously, stooping in the low tunnel. Neidelman stopped frequently to test the solidity of the beams. The tunnel ran straight ahead for fifty yards. Suddenly, the Captain stopped and gave a low whistle.

Glancing ahead, Hatch could see a curious stone chamber, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. It appeared to have eight sides, each side ending in arches that rose to a groined ceiling. In the center of the floor was an iron grating, puffy with rust, covering an unguessably deep hole. They stood in the entrance to this chamber, each breath adding more mist to the gathering miasma. The quality of the air had grown sharply worse, and Hatch found himself becoming slightly lightheaded. Faint noises came from below the central grate: the whisperings of water, perhaps, or the settling of earth.

Bonterre was flashing her light along the ceiling. "Mon dieu," she breathed, "a classic example of the English Baroque style. A little crude, perhaps, but unmistakable."

Neidelman gazed at the ceiling. "Yes," he said, "you can actually see the hand of Sir William here. Look at that tierceron and lierne work: remarkable."

"Remarkable to think it's been here all this time, a hundred feet beneath the earth," Hatch said. "But what was it for?"

"If I had to guess," Bonterre said, "I would say the room served some kind of hydraulic function, yes?" She blew a long cloud of mist toward the center of the room. They all watched as it glided toward the grate, then was suddenly sucked down into the depths.

"We'll figure it out when we've mapped all this," said Neidelman. "For now, let's set two sensors, here and here." He tapped the sensors into joints between the stones on opposite sides of the room, then rose and glanced at his gas meter. "Carbon dioxide levels are getting a little high," he said. "I think perhaps we ought to cut this visit short."

They returned to the central shaft to find that Wopner had almost caught up with them. "There are two sensors in a room at the end of this tunnel," Neidelman said to him, placing a second flag in the shaft's mouth.

Above, Wopner mumbled something unintelligible, his back to them as he worked with his palmtop computer. Hatch found that if he stayed in one place too long, his breath collected into a cloud of fog around his head, making it difficult to see.

"Dr. Magnusen," Neidelman spoke into his radio. "Status, please."

"Dr. Rankin is getting a few seismic anomalies on the monitors, Captain, but nothing serious. It could well be the weather." As if in response, a low crump of thunder echoed faintly down the shaft.

"Understood." Neidelman turned to Bonterre and Hatch. "Let's get to the bottom and tag the rest of the shafts."

Once again, they began their descent. As Hatch moved past the hundred-foot platform toward the base of the Water Pit, he found his arms and legs beginning to shake from weariness and cold.

"Take a look at this," Neidelman said, swiveling his light around. "Another well-constructed tunnel, directly below the first. No doubt this is part of the original workings, as well." Bonterre placed a sensor into the nearby joist, and they began moving again.

Suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath beneath Hatch, and he heard Bonterre mutter a fervent curse. He looked down, and his heart leaped immediately into his mouth.

Below him, tangled in a massive snarl of junk, lay a partially skeletonized corpse, draped in chains and rusting iron, the eyeless sockets of its skull flickering crazily in the light of Bonterre's headlamp. Ribbons of clothing hung from its shoulders and hips, and its jaw hung open as if laughing at some hilarious joke. Hatch felt a curious feeling of displacement, a detached sensation, even as part of his brain realized that the skeleton was far too big to be that of his brother. Looking away and trembling violently, he leaned against the ladder, fighting to get his breath and heartbeat under control, concentrating on the rush of air into, and out of, his lungs.

"Malin!" came the urgent voice of Bonterre. "Malin! This skeleton is very old. Comprends? Two hundred years old, at least."

Hatch waited another long moment, breathing, until he was sure he could answer. "I understand," he said. Slowly, he unlocked his arm from the titanium rung. Then, equally slowly, he lowered first one foot, then the other, until he was level with Bonterre and Neidelman.

The Captain played his light over the skeleton, fascinated, oblivious to Hatch's reaction. "Look at the design of this shirt," he said. "Homespun, raglan seams, a common garment among early nineteenth-century fishermen. I believe we've found the body of Simon Rutter, the Pit's original victim." They stared at the skeleton until a distant rumble of thunder broke the spell.

The Captain wordlessly aimed his headlamp beneath his feet. Following the beam with his own, Hatch could now make out their final destination: the bottom of the Water Pit itself. A huge snarl of broken crosspieces, rusting iron, hoses, gears, rods, and all manner of machinery poked up out of a pool of mud and silt perhaps twenty feet beneath them. Directly above the snarl, Hatch could see several large shaftways converge onto the main Pit, damp seaweed and kelp dangling like steaming beards from their mouths. Neidelman moved his light around the wildly tangled ruin. Then he turned back to Bonterre and Hatch, his slender form haloed in the chill mist of his own breath.

"Perhaps fifty feet beneath that wreckage," he said in a low voice, "lies a two-billion-dollar treasure." Though his eyes moved between them restlessly, they appeared to be focusing on something far beyond. Then he began to laugh, a low, soft, curious laugh. "Fifty feet," he repeated. "And all we have to do now is dig"

Suddenly, the radio crackled. "Captain, this is Streeter." To Hatch, listening in his headpiece, the dry voice had a note of urgency in it. "We've got a problem here."

"What?" the Captain said, his voice hard, the dreamlike quality suddenly gone.

There was a pause, then Streeter came on again. "Captain, we—just a minute, please—we recommend that you abort your mission and return to the surface at once."

"Why?" Neidelman asked. "Is there some problem with the equipment?"

"No, nothing like that." Streeter seemed uncertain how to proceed. "Let me patch St. John in to you, he'll explain."

Neidelman flashed a quick, questioning look at Bonterre, who shrugged in return.

The clipped tones of the historian came across the radio. "Captain Neidelman, it's Christopher St. John. I'm on the Cerberus. Scylla has just cracked several portions of the journal."

"Excellent," the Captain said. "But what's the emergency?"

"It's what Macallan wrote in this second part. Let me read it to you."

As Hatch stood on the ladder array—waiting in clammy darkness at the heart of the Water Pit—the voice of the Englishman reading Macallan's journal seemed to be coming from a different world entirely:

I have not been easy this se'ennight past. I feel it a certainty that Ockham has plans to dispatch me, as he hath so easily dispatched many others, once my usefulness in this vile enterprise has come to an ende. And so, by dint of the harrowing of my soule in the small hours, I have decided upon a course of action. It is this foul treasure, as much as the pirate Ockham, that is evil, and hath caused our miserie upon this forsaken island; and the death of so many in its taking. It is the treasure of the devil himself, and as such shall I treate it. . .

St. John paused and there was the rustling of a computer printout.

"You want us to abort the mission over this?" The exasperation of Neidelman's voice was plain.

"Captain, there's more. Here it is:

Now that the Treasure Pitt hath been constructed, I know my time draweth to a close. My soule is at rest. Under my direction the pirate Ockham and his bande, unbeknownst, have created a permanent Tombe for these unholie gains, got by such suffering and grief. This hoard shall not be repossessed by mortal means. It is thus that I have labored, by various stratagems and conceits, to place this treasure in such wise that not Ockham, nor any other man, shall ever retrieve it. The Pitt is unconquerable, invincible. Ockham believes that he holds the key, and he shall Die for that belief. I tell ye now, ye who decipher these lines, heed my warning: to descend the Pitt means grave danger to lyfe and limbe; to seize the treasure means certayne Death. Ye who luste after the key to the Treasure Pitt shall find instead the key to the next world, and your carcase shall rot close to the Hell where your soule hath gone."

St. John's voice stopped, and the group remained silent. Hatch looked at Neidelman: a slight tremor had taken hold of his jaw, and his eyes were narrow.

"So you see," St. John began again. "It appears the key to the Water Pit is that there is no key. It must have been Macallan's ultimate revenge against the pirate who kidnapped him: to bury his treasure in such a way that it could never be retrieved. Not by Ockham. Not by anyone."

"The point is," Streeter's voice broke in, "it's not safe for anyone to remain in the Pit until we've deciphered the rest of the code and analyzed this further. It sounds like Macallan has some kind of trap in store for anyone who—"

"Nonsense," interrupted Neidelman. "The danger he's talking about is the booby trap that killed Simon Rutter two hundred years ago and flooded the Pit."

There was another long silence. Hatch looked at Bonterre, then at Neidelman. The Captain's face remained stony, his lips compressed and set.

"Captain?" Streeter's voice came again. "St. John doesn't quite read it that way—"

"This is moot," the Captain snapped. "We're almost done here, just another couple of sensors to set and calibrate, and then we'll come up."

"I think St. John has a point," Hatch said. "We should cut this short, at least until we figure out what Macallan was talking about."

"I agree," said Bonterre.

Neidelman's glance flitted between them. "Absolutely not," he said brusquely. He closed his satchel, then looked upward. "Mr. Wopner?"

The programmer was not on the ladder, and there was no response on the intercom. "He must be down the passage, calibrating the sensors we placed inside the vault," Bonterre said.

"Then let's call him back. Christ, he probably switched off his transmitter." The Captain began to ascend the ladder, brushing past them as he climbed. The ladder trembled slightly under his weight.

Just a moment, Hatch thought. That isn't right. The ladder array had never trembled before.

Then it came again: a slight shudder, barely perceptible beneath his fingertips and under his instep. He looked questioningly at Bonterre, and in her glance he could see that she felt it, too.

"Dr. Magnusen, report!" Neidelman spoke sharply. "What's going on?"

"All normal, Captain."

"Rankin?" Neidelman asked into his radio.

"The scopes show a seismic event, but it's threshold, way below the danger level. Is there a problem?"

"We're feeling a—" the Captain began. Suddenly, a violent shudder twisted the ladder, shaking Hatch's hold. One of his feet skidded from the rung and he grabbed desperately to maintain his purchase. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bonterre clinging tightly to the array. There was another jolt, then another. Above him, Hatch could hear a distant crumbling sound, like earth collapsing, and a low, barely audible rumble.

"What the hell's happening?" the Captain shouted.

"Sir!" came Magnusen's voice. "We're picking up ground displacement somewhere in your vicinity."

"Okay, you win. Let's find Wopner and get the hell out."

They scrambled up the ladder to the hundred-foot platform, the entrance to the vaulted tunnel opening above them, a yawning mouth of rotting wood and earth. Neidelman peered inside, lancing his beam into the dampness. "Wopner? Get a move on. We're aborting the mission."

As Hatch listened, only silence and a faint, chill wind emanated from the tunnel.

Neidelman continued looking into the tunnel for a moment. Then he glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes narrowing.

Suddenly, as if galvanized by the same thought, all three unfastened their karabiners and scrambled toward the mouth of the shaft, stepping inside and running down the tunnel. Hatch didn't remember the low passage being this dark, somehow, or this claustrophobic. The very air felt different.

Then the tunnel opened into a small stone chamber. The two piezoelectric sensors lay on opposite walls of the chamber. Beside one was Wopner's palmtop computer, its RF antenna bent at a crazy angle. Tendrils of mist drifted in the chamber, lanced by their headlamps.

"Wopner?" Neidelman called, swinging his light around. "Where the hell did he go?"

Hatch stepped past Neidelman and saw something that sent a chill through his vitals. One of the massive groined stones of the ceiling had swung down against the chamber wall. Hatch could see a gap in the ceiling, like a missing tooth, from which damp brown earth dribbled. At floor level, where the base of the fallen ceiling stone pressed against the wall, he could make out something black and white. Moving closer, Hatch realized that it was the canvas-and-rubber toe of Wopner's sneaker, peeping out between the slabs. In a moment he was beside it, shining his light between the two faces of stone.

"Oh, my God," Neidelman said behind him.

Hatch could see Wopner, pressed tightly between the two granite faces, one arm pinned to his side, the other canted upward at a crazy angle. His helmeted head was turned to the side, gazing out at Hatch. His eyes were wide and full of tears.

Wopner's mouth worked silently as Hatch stared. Please . . .

"Kerry, try to stay calm," Hatch said, running his beam of light up and down the narrow crack while fumbling with his intercom. My God, it's amazing he's still alive. "Streeter!" he called into the intercom. "We have a man trapped between two slabs of rock. Get some hydraulic jacks down here. I want oxygen, blood, and saline."

He turned back to Wopner. "Kerry, we're going to jack these slabs apart and get you out very, very soon. Right now, I need to know where you hurt."

Again the mouth worked. "I don't know." The response came as a high-pitched exhalation. "I feel ... all broken up inside." The voice was oddly slurred, and Hatch realized that the programmer was barely able to move his jaw to speak. Hatch stepped away from the wall face and tore open his medical kit, pulling out a hypo and sucking up two ccs of morphine. He wormed his hand between the rough slabs of stone and sank the needle into Wopner's shoulder. There was no flinching, no reaction, nothing.

"How is he?" Neidelman said, hovering behind him, the air clouding from his breath.

"Get back, for Chrissakes!" Hatch said. "He needs air." Now he found himself panting, drawing more and more air into his own lungs, feeling increasingly short of breath.

"Be careful!" Bonterre said from behind him. "There may be more than one trap."

A trap? It had not occurred to Hatch that this was a trap. But then, how else could that huge ceiling stone swing down so neatly . . . He tried to reach Wopner's hand to take his pulse, but it was bent too far out of reach.

"Jacks, oxygen, and plasma on their way," came Streeter's voice over the intercom.

"Good. Have a collapsible stretcher lowered to the hundred-foot platform, with inflatable splints and a cervical collar—"

"Water . . ." Wopner breathed.

Bonterre stepped up and handed Hatch a canteen. He reached into the crack, angling a thin stream of water from the canteen down the side of Wopner's helmet. As the tongue fluttered out to catch the water, Hatch could see that it was blue-black, droplets of blood glistening along its length. Jesus, where the hell are those jacks . . .

"Help me, please!" Wopner rattled, and coughed quietly. A few flecks of blood appeared on his chin.

Punctured lung, thought Hatch. "Hold on, Kerry, just a couple of minutes," he said as soothingly as he could, and then turned away and stabbed savagely at his intercom. "Streeter," he hissed, "the jacks, goddamnit, where are the jacks?" He felt a wave of dizziness, and gulped more air.

"Air quality is moving into the red zone," Neidelman said quietly.

"Lowering now," said Streeter amid a burst of static.

Hatch turned to Neidelman and saw he had already gone to retrieve them. "Can you feel your arms and legs?" he asked Wopner.

"I don't know." There was a pause while the programmer gasped for breath. "I can feel one leg. It feels like the bone has come out."

Hatch angled his light down, but was unable to see anything but a twist of trouser in the narrow space, the denim sodden to a dark crimson color. "Kerry, I'm looking at your left hand. Try to move your fingers."

The hand, strangely bluish and plump-looking, remained motionless for a long moment. Then the index and middle fingers twitched slightly. Relief coursed through Hatch. CNS function is still there. If we can get this rock off him in the next few minutes, we've got a chance. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

There was another tremor underfoot and a rain of dirt, and Wopner squealed: a high-pitched, inhuman sound.

"Mon dieu, what was that?" Bonterre said, quickly glancing up at the ceiling.

"I think you'd better leave," said Hatch quietly.

"Absolutely not."

"Kerry?" Hatch peered anxiously into the crack once again. "Kerry, can you answer me?"

Wopner stared out at him, a low, hoarse moan escaping his lips. His breath was now wheezing and gurgling.

Outside the tunnel, Hatch could hear the thud and clatter of machinery as Neidelman pulled in the cable that had been dropped from the surface. He sucked air desperately as a strange buzzing began sounding faintly in his head.

"Can't breathe," Wopner managed to say, his eyes pale and glassy.

"Kerry? You're doing great. Just hold on." Kerry gasped and coughed again. A trickle of blood ran down from his lips to dangle from his chin.

The sound of running footsteps, then Neidelman reappeared. He slung two hydraulic jacks to the ground, followed by a portable oxygen cylinder. Hatch grabbed the mask and began screwing the nozzle onto the regulator. Then he spun the dial on the top of the cylinder and heard the reassuring hiss of oxygen.

Neidelman and Bonterre worked feverishly behind him, tearing off the plastic coverings, unfastening the jacks from the rods, screwing the pieces together. There was another shudder, and Hatch could feel the tall shaft of rock shift under his hand, inching inexorably toward the wall.

"Hurry!" he cried, head swimming. Dialing the flow to maximum, he snaked the oxygen mask into the narrow gap between the rocks. "Kerry," he said, "I'm going to place this mask over your face." He gasped, trying to find the air to keep talking. "I want you to take slow, shallow breaths. Okay? In just a few seconds we're going to jack this rock off you."

He placed the oxygen mask over Kerry's face, trying to slip it beneath the programmer's misshapen helmet. He had to mold the mask with his fingers to make it narrow enough to fit around the programmer's mashed nose and mouth; only now did he realize just how tightly the young man was wedged. The moist, panicked eyes looked at him imploringly.

Neidelman and Bonterre said nothing, working with intense concentration, fitting the pieces of jack together.

Craning to get a glimpse into the thinning space, Hatch could see Wopner's face, narrowed alarmingly, his jaw locked open by the pressure. Blood flowed from his cheeks where the edge of the helmet cut into his flesh. He could no longer speak, or even scream. His left hand twitched spasmodically, caressing the rock face with purple fingertips. A slight sound of escaping air came from his mouth and nostrils. Hatch knew that the pressure of the rock made breathing almost impossible.

"Here it is," Neidelman hissed, handing the jack to Hatch. Hatch tried to jam it in the narrowing crack.

"It's too wide!" he gasped, tossing it back. "Crank it down!"

He turned back to Wopner. "Now Kerry, I want you to breathe along with me. I'll count them with you, okay? One . . . two ..."

With a violent trembling underfoot and a harsh grating sound, the slab lunged closer; Hatch felt his own hand and wrist suddenly squeezed between the tightening rocks. Wopner gave a violent shudder, then a wet gasp. As Hatch watched in horror, the beam of his light angling into the narrow space with pitiless clarity, he saw the programmer's eyes, bulging from his head, turn first pink, then red, then black. There was a splitting sound, and the helmet burst along its seams. Sweat on the crushed cheeks and nose grew tinged with pink as the slab inched still closer. A jet of blood came rushing from one ear, and more blood burst from the tips of Wopner's fingertips. His jaw buckled, sagging sideways, the tongue protruding into the oxygen mask.

"The rock's still slipping!" Hatch screamed. "Get me something, anything, to—"

But even as he spoke, he felt the programmer's head come apart under his hand. The oxygen mask began to burble as its airway grew clogged by a rush of fluids. There was a strange vibration between his fingers and to his horror he realized it was Wopner's tongue, twitching spastically as the nerves that fired the muscles burned out.

"No!" Hatch cried in despair. "Please God, no!"

Black spots appeared before his eyes as he staggered against the rock, unable to catch his breath in the thick air, fighting to pull his own hand free from the increasing pressure.

"Dr. Hatch, step away!" Neidelman warned.

"Malin!" screamed Bonterre.

"Hey, Mal!" Hatch heard his brother, Johnny, whisper out of the rushing darkness. Hey, Mal! Over here!

Then the darkness closed upon him and he knew no more.