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Doctor MacDermott's stomach stayed a thousand feet up. The nearby white and red blur of canyon walls streaked past the open door and he stared at it open-mouthed, barely able to hold on.
Jo
There was the crack of the sonic boom. The recon drone had passed.
Du
Smoke was coming from the platform motor housings, blue smoke, different from the geysers of spray.
The ice-pressured river was taking full advantage of the hole just made to geyser its way to freedom.
Andrew was pounding on the encrusted winch with a sledge. Then he dropped the sledge and seized a bottle of burning gas and tried to open its controls in order to burn the cable in two. The bottle was thick with ice and would not open.
The passenger plane came down to twenty-five feet from the top of the platform, Jo
“Doctor Mac!” shouted Jo
The old man fumbled with the coils. He could not tell one cable from another. Then he found an end. He pitched it out the door.
Scrambling, he let about fifty feet uncoil and then fastened the cable to a clamp in the plane as best he could. Jo
“I ca
Jo
“You, Andrew!” shouted Du
Twenty feet of cable from the plane coiled down on the platform and was promptly covered with spray that instantly turned to ice.
Andrew took a turn of cable around his arm.
“Don't put it around your arm!” shouted Jo
Tongues of flame were coming from the motor housing of the platform.
Andrew managed to break the sledge loose from the ice. He took two turns of cable around the head of it.
“Grab hold!” yelled Jo
Andrew grabbed the slippery sledge handle with his mittened hands.
Jo
“The captain abandons ship!” said Du
Jo
Andrew was hanging to the sledge twenty feet below the passenger plane. Du
“I think this clamp is slipping!” wailed Doctor MacDermott in the back.
The iced mittens of the men below were certainly slipping. It was impossible to raise them a thousand feet to the top of the gorge. Jo
The flying platform below exploded in a violence of orange flame.
The passenger plane bucked in the concussion.
Jo
Jo
He dipped the plane. Du
He saw a shelf beside the river, narrow and snow-covered.
Bringing the plane within feet of the canyon wall, he lowered Du
Andrew's gloves, which had been slipping down the sledge handle inch by inch, let go, and he fell the last ten feet. He almost went off the ledge. Du
Jo
The two men scrambled in, helped by Doctor MacDermott.
Andrew reeled in the cable and got the side door shut. Jo
Doctor MacDermott was stammering with apologies to the two men. “I could not find a second rope.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Du
Doctor MacDermott was clucking over his charred leggings, terribly relieved to find Du
“I had my chance to be a hero,” said Doctor MacDermott “and I muffed it!”
“You did just fine,” said Andrew. “Just fine.”
Jo
Shaking his head, Jo
Jo
The shift boss and Du
“No more of these acrobatics in thin air,” said Jo
They followed him back to the pad. He pointed straight down. “Below us,” said Jo
They were silent. “But that fissure out there...we can't blast: it would knock the face of the cliff off.”
“We're just going to have to use drills.
Point drills to go in with parallel holes. Then vibrating spades to literally cut the rock. It will take time. We can work hard and maybe get there.”
Underground? It dawned on them it was a great idea.
The shift boss and Du
“Get it set up and rolling before the next pass-over of the drone,” said Jo
The sound of the plane revved up. Du
We might make it yet, thought Jo