Hal tried it. It took no great skill to learn to use the tongs, though it was a little tricky at first, getting a good grip on the blocks without the feeling in his fingers to guide him; and the waldo controls into which his gloves fitted were so responsive that he overcontrolled at first. But within a dozen minutes he was picking up the blocks with fair skill and dropping them into the cars. Sorting, however, was another matter. Whenever he paused to examine the blocks closely, John snapped at him to keep going.
While he was learning, John kept helping him. But Hal picked up speed in handling the blocks swiftly, although he was very aware that he was still rejecting only about one block in ten, whereas John was rejecting more like one in five. Still, the team leader seemed satisfied with just his handling ability; and gradually he let Hal take over more and more of the work until finally he himself was only standing and watching.
"All right," he said at last. "Just keep doing it that way. But take a break now and we'll change crews."
He turned and called up at the crew on the ledge.
"Change!"
The torches hissed and crackled down into silence. Those on the ledge dropped off it and those who had been seated back in the tunnel came forward, pulling their helmets into place and taking the torches from the first workers, climbing up on the ledge to take their place. This time, John was among the torchers, his own helmet pulled into position. He paused for a second, looking over his shoulder, down at Hal.
"Keep your helmet on, until I tell you to take it off," he said. "You hear that?"
"Yes," said Hal.
"All right!" John turned to face the wall and the rest of his crew turned with him. "Let's go!"
So the workshift began. At first Hal sweated over the prospect of handling the stream of blocks without John to back him up. But if there was anything at all in which life had supplied him with experience, it was the process of learning anything new. He quickly became practiced at seizing the blocks firmly with the tongs, so that they did not slip from his grasp or skitter out of reach when he tried to lift them into the cars; and after a while even his choice of the ore-filled blocks, as opposed to those that should be discarded, seemed to improve.
As the shift wore on, the torchers themselves picked up speed. Hal had to struggle anew to not let the blocks coming off the ledge get ahead of him. He succeeded, becoming faster himself. But as he did, the unaccustomed use of the muscles involved in bending and lifting began to build up on him.
Fortunately, he had a chance to stop and catch his breath every fifteen minutes or so when the crews changed. But even with these breaks, as the first half of the shift wore on he began to tire and slow. The lunch break came just in time to save him from getting badly behind the torchers, but food and rest revived him. He started out the second half of the shift keeping up almost easily; but this burst of strength turned out to be temporary. He tired more quickly now than he had in the morning; and to his deep embarrassment the blocks finally got ahead of him to the point where even by working right through a break time, he was losing ground to the torchers.
Sweating, gasping for air inside his suit, he looked longingly every so often at the miners at the rock wall, whom he could see occasionally throwing back their helmets for a brief breath of fresher air. A hundred times he was tempted to lift his own helmet for a second, but the discipline worked into him in his early years helped him to fight off the temptation. Nonetheless, he was literally staggering on his feet, when he finally felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see John standing beside him.
Chapter Nine
"Go take a break," said John. He gave Hal a light shove away from the blocks with which Hal had been working and bent to the task of handling the blocks himself.
On rubbery legs, Hal walked back down the tunnel and slid down the wall into a sitting position on the tunnel floor. He lifted his helmet and breathed more deeply than he could ever remember breathing in his life before.
He had thought John was merely taking over for him. But now he saw not only John, but all the current torchers, knocking back their helmets and coming down off the ledge, which was already too deep to be properly called only a ledge. As he watched, they were joined by the resting crew of torchers and the whole team together began to cut a ramp to the ledge.
They had almost completed this when a train of five empty cars rolled in to join them, with only one passenger aboard; a great, spiderous old man with his helmet thrown back to show oriental features, and tongs at the end of both the long arms depending from his massive, bowed shoulders. This new train braked to a halt beside their own and the old man hopped out. John went over to speak to him; and Hal, too far away to make out what was being said, saw the old man listening with his face at right angle to John's, nodding occasionally and twitching the tongs at the ends of his arms as if impatient to have the conversation over. John finished finally and turned away. The old man took one step to the chunks of rejected rock lying along the base of the rock wall where Hal had thrown them, and attacked them with both sets of tongs.
Attack was the proper word. Hal had thought that John was fast and experienced with the tongs; but this old man was unbelievable. He faced the wall, using both arms at once, and slung the chunks of dead rock behind him without looking. Not only did they all land in the empty car just behind him, but when the car was full, he seemed to know it by instinct and moved on, still without turning to look, to begin filling the car next in line. Hal watched him, fascinated.
"All right, Tad. Let's go."
Hal looked up to see John standing over him and scrambled hastily to his feet, ready to go back to work. Then he realized that the cutting of the ramp was completed but the torchers had not gone back up on the higher level to resume work, themselves. Instead, everyone was climbing into the cars of their own train, perching on top of the ore there.
"Are we through?" Hal said, unable to believe it.
"We're through," said John. "Get aboard."
Lost in his fog of effort, it had not registered on Hal that all the cars of their train were now filled with ore. He glanced once more at the old man and saw that the other had almost finished picking up, in minutes, the rejected rock that Hal had worked a full shift to accumulate.
"What's he doing?" asked Hal, dazedly, as he turned toward the last car of their own train.
"Slag-loading," said John. "Clean-up. He'll take the dead rock for a last sort, in case anything worthwhile's been missed, and pile it at the minehead for pickup and dumping topside on the surface. Get in there, now."
"I can't believe the shift's over," said Hal. He climbed into the last car.
"It's over," said John. He went up and got into the lead car. Hal did not see what controls he used, but as soon as John was aboard the train started moving, backing and filling several times to make the tight turn in the narrow space that would allow it to head back the way they had come.
They hummed and clanked through the tunnels. Perched on the ore in his own half-filled car, Hal abandoned himself to the luxury of being through with the day's work. He felt worn out, but not uncomfortable. In fact, there was a half-pleasant exhausted warmth to his body, now that the labor was done with and he had had some small time to rest. It had been explained to him by Malachi Nasuno within the past year that his immature muscles could not yet be expected to deliver the power that an equal weight of them could provide once he had stopped growing; but that, on the other hand, his recovery rate from exertion would be correspondingly faster than that of an equivalent, older individual—and the older the other individual, the greater Hal's advantage. As he rode the swaying car now, he could feel strength being reborn in him; and this, together with the satisfaction of having gotten through the shift without trouble, left him feeling more secure and comfortable than he had felt at any time since he had left his home on Earth.
It seemed to him that there was now a bond of identity with the other miners riding the ore train back to the skip. He was suddenly close to
them. The dark colors and the enclosing walls of the tunnels made one family of them all. For the first time since he had left Earth, he had a sensation of being accepted and belonging somewhere in the universe.
He was still in the warm grasp of this feeling when they reached the terminus room and the bottom of the skip. Other trains, also loaded with ore, were already there, or just pulling in ahead of theirs. They stopped and everyone in Hal's team piled off the loaded cars—Hal following suit. Only John stayed aboard, and when they were all off, he put the train in motion again, driving it off through a tunnel opening beyond the skip.
"What do we do now?" Hal asked one of the other team members, for they were making no move to go toward the skip, which was standing open and waiting at the bottom of its shaft.
"Wait for John," said the team member, a short, lean man in his mid-twenties with a piratical black mustache drooping its ends around the corners of his lips.
Hal nodded. He stood waiting with the rest; and after three or four minutes, John came walking back out of the tunnel into which he had driven the train and rejoined them.
"Half ton over quota," he said, holding a printed slip before tucking it into a chest pocket of his suit. There was a mutter of approval from the other team members.
"Hey, with a new kip! Good!" The miner Hal had spoken to punched Hal's shoulder in friendly fashion—or rather, tried to, for Hal reflexively swayed away from the fist, riding the blow so that the other's gloved knuckles barely touched him. The other did not seem to notice that his punch had not landed.
"Let's ride up!" said John, and led the way toward the skip, which was half full of men from other teams ready to go up as John led his own people on to it.
"Watch it!" a voice called almost in Hal's ear as he stepped aboard. "Watch your feet. We got a new kip with big boots and no manners."
Hal turned and found himself looking across only inches of space into the face of the lean, big-nosed young miner who had complained about his foot being stepped on by Hal on the way down.
"What's the matter with you, Neif?" said the black-mustached miner from Hal's team. "It's his first day."
"I'm not talking to you, Davies." The miner called Neif glanced at Hal's team member. "Let him answer for himself, if he thinks he belongs down in a mine."
The skip closed its door and started upwards with a jerk.
"I didn't touch your foot," said Hal to Neif.
Neif pushed his face close.
"I'm a liar, am I?"
"What's going on over there?" the voice of John Heikkila reached them through the mass of packed bodies. Hal looked away from Neif and said nothing.
The skip rose. When they reached the top and the gates opened, Hal stepped out quickly and moved away from the bodies behind him. In spite of the close-packed ride to the minehead, some of the warmth and identity with his team members while riding the ore cars back to the terminus had now gone from him.
"This way," he heard John's voice in his ear. "We slip these suits, and I'll show you how to check yours for leaks."
Hal followed him back to the room where he had first been given the suit. There, at John's direction, he took it off and watched as John hooked up to the suit a small hose hanging from the wall below a vernier-shaped scale. John sealed the coveralls, tightened the hose about a valve near the suit's belt level and squeezed the tube. The coveralls inflated.
"Fine," said John after a second, deflating the suit. "No leaks. Never forget to do that after every shift. You won't get a second chance. The first time you inhale hot gases downstairs is it."
"I'll remember," said Hal. "Now what—"
"Dinner in forty minutes," John answered without waiting for the question to be finished. "Why don't you go outside—oh, here's someone looking for you."
The someone was Tonina. John went off and Tonina came forward to stand and look Hal up and down.
"How'd you get back before we did?" Hal asked. "I didn't even see you in the skip this morning."
"The shifts are staggered," she said, "so the slag loaders can have a regular round for clean-up. Beson and the rest of us went down before you, so we came back up before you."
"Oh," said Hal. She had led off and he was automatically following her. "Where are we going?"
"Outside," she said. "I want a look at you under the high lights."
They emerged through a door into the open staging area with its flat and dusty surface bright under the ceiling lights far overhead in the general cavern. What looked to Hal to be most of the other miners not on shift were milling around, talking in groups and obviously waiting for the dinner hour.
"Now stop," said Tonina, once they were well out under the ceiling lights, which had the apparent brightness of the noonday sun on Earth. She squinted up at him. "You look good. All right! I heard you did fine down there."
"I did?" said Hal. "But I kept falling behind. The shift ended just in time or John would have had to have helped me."
"That's still good," said Tonina. "You worked clear through your first shift down. Almost nobody new to the mines does that. It doesn't matter what kind of shape they were in when they got here, either. You use a different set of muscles on the tongs and everybody gets wrung out to start with."
"Hey, you—big foot kip!" said a voice Hal had come to recognize. He turned to see Neif bearing down on them. Now, out of his suit, the other man was less impressive. He was a good half a head shorter than Hal and he looked lean, but Hal's training told him that the other would probably outweigh him by a good twenty per cent more of mature bone and muscle. In the open v-neck of his loose shirt, his neck and chest area showed a deep tan that could only have been achieved here by the use of special tanning lamps. His shoulders were square and broad, his waist narrow, and his eyes very dark.
"I want a couple more words with you," he said.
"Get away from him, Neif," said Tonina. "He's brand new. Pay no attention to him, Tad."
"You stay out of this, Tonina," said Neif. "I'm talking to you, kip. I don't like my foot tramped on and I don't like being called a liar."
There was a sick feeling in Hal. Other miners, attracted by the raised voices, had begun to drift into a circle around them.
"Don't tell me what to do, Neif!" Tonina shoved herself between the two of them, facing Neif. "You ought to know better than to take off on someone new. Where's John? John! John Heikkila, this bastard here's trying to be a big man by taking off on your kip!"
Her voice carried.
"What is it?" said John, a moment later, shoving through the crowd to join them. "What's your problem, Neif?"
"None of your business," said Neif. "This kip of yours rode my foot all the way down in the skip today, then called me a liar when I told him not to do it."
John looked at Hal. Hal shook his head.
Hal's feeling of sickness increased. He was here to be inconspicuous and with every moment this business with Neif was making him more conspicuous. It seemed to him as if everyone at the mine was becoming involved.
"I wasn't on his foot," he said, "but it's all right—"
"You say you weren't on his foot. All right. Then there's no problem," said John. He stood facing Neif like a human tank. But Neif's face twisted.
"You're not my leader. If this kip can't take care of himself what's he doing here?"
"Go crawl in a hole!" Tonina broke in, fiercely. "You heard he had a rep and you want to get a piece of it, that's all."
Neif ignored her. He was looking at John.
"I said, you're not my leader."
"Sure," said John. He looked around at the crowd. "Will?"
Will was standing in the front rank to John's left.
"What about it?" Will said to John, without moving. "We heard he's a troublemaker. You knew that when you took him on. If he isn't, let him stand up for himself. If that rep's true, he maybe engineered this fight himself to show off."
"It's all right," said Hal, hastily. "John, it's all right. I didn't ste
p on his foot, but if he thinks I did, I'm sorry—"
"Sorry, hell!" said Neif. "You think you can call me a liar and just walk away. Either stand up for yourself or get out of the mine."
"John!" said Tonina.
John shrugged and stepped back. The circle of people around them were moving back until Hal and Neif were at the center of a large open space. Tonina waited for a moment longer, then she, too, stepped back.
Hal stood looking at Neif, feeling despair now. The light was very bright and the air was dry and hot about him. The surrounding miners seemed far away and alien. He was as isolated in his own mind as if he stood in the midst of a pack of wolves. He stared at the face of Neif and saw no reasonableness there.
Let him, he thought suddenly to himself. I'll let him do what he wants. That's the only way out of this mess. If he beats me up, then maybe they'll forget that reputation business…
He could see Neif beginning to step toward him, the other man's right shoulder dropping as his fist clenched. Hal's body cried out to move into any one of a dozen defensive postures from his training, but he held it prisoner with his mind. He only put up his fists in what he hoped was a clumsy and amateurish fashion.
Neif came toward him. I will stand still, Hal told himself. He forced himself to stand without moving as Neif stepped close.
… Hal was confused. Something was wrong, but he could not immediately remember what it was. He was on the ground and certain of only one thing, and that was that he had been attacked. He saw a figure of a man over him, stepping toward him and shifting his body weight in a way that announced a kick was coming.
Instinctively his own body reacted, gathering itself up, somersaulting backward to roll on and up once more onto its feet, facing the attacker. He was remembering now that this was the man called Neif; and that he had intended to let the other do what he wanted; but his mind was still fogged and strange and he could not remember why he should do that.