Mark Anson - Below Mercury

They walked on, and eventually Matt said: ‘You’re right. We’ve got to consider every possibility.’ His voice was reluctant. ‘But that one doesn’t feel right to me.’

Bergman said nothing, and let the subject drop, but he stole a quick glance at his companion a few minutes later, and saw that Matt was still deep in thought.

They had been walking for some time, and had travelled nearly a kilometre along the passage, passing two more pressure doors along the way. Just after the last door, they came upon a lifeless mining robot, slumped against the wall of the passage, staring at the ground with its dead eyes. They debated if they should try to restart it or not, but couldn’t think of a use for it, and left it where it lay.

Three hundred metres further on, they came to a fork in the haulage way; one way continued ahead, through another set of pressure doors, while the other curved to the left. Matt took the left-hand turn, and after a few metres, the passage opened up into another shaft station.

‘Sub-main shaft,’ Matt announced, ‘let’s hope it’s working.’

There was no cage at the station, but the safety gate had been forced aside, and stood wide open. The noise of falling water came from the shaft.

They clung on to the sides of the opening, and looked down, their flashlights piercing the gloom of the shaft.

Immediately below the station, the guide rails for the cage extended down for several metres, then flared outwards. The wire rope that hauled the cage plunged down into the exact centre of the dark shaft. Just below the guide rails, a steady torrent of water flowed out from the wide opening of the wind slit, and cascaded down the shaft, bouncing off the pipework and fittings fastened to the sides. Sprays of escaping droplets disappeared down the shaft in an endless fall into the abyss. A warm, moist air welled up from the shaft, carrying a faint smell of stagnant water.

‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Matt groaned, ‘how long has this been running?’

Bergman stared down the shaft, and then moved his body back into the safety of the shaft station again.

‘Where’s it coming from?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Meltwater from the ice mining levels, I guess. It must have overflowed somewhere and found its way into the ventilation airways. Without anyone to seal it off, this could have been running for years.’ Matt sniffed the breeze that rose into his face. ‘I don’t like the smell of that, either. There’s foul air down there.’

The cage was near the bottom of the shaft, but the hoist was still working. While the cage came back up, they sat down and had a brief rest. Bergman tried contacting the others, but there was no response, so he sent a brief message with their position.

‘What’s on this level?’ Bergman asked. He had studied the mine layout as part of the mission preparation, but he had not expected to be going into the workings, and had not memorised their details.

‘Main ice mining levels,’ Matt answered, taking off his helmet. ‘If you’d carried on back at that fork, you’d have gone past the crosscuts that connect to the return airway, then this haulage way runs all the way out into the deep ice, and the room and pillar workings.’

‘Have you ever been out there, into the ice workings?’

Matt nodded.

‘Several times. It’s mainly automated, and the robots do all the dangerous work, but new developments need surveying, and all the mining needs to be checked. The workings are like huge halls of black marble, with massive pillars to hold the roof up, and all the time there’s this constant noise from the cutting machines, and the haulage vehicles coming and going.’

‘Must have been quite a sight.’

‘Yeah. I loved it.’ Matt gazed into the distance and was silent for a few moments. ‘When I left here, I was hoping for a promotion. Now, I’d be happy just to work in mining at all.’

‘Haven’t you been able to get work on one of the Martian mines? They must be able to use someone with your experience.’

Matt shook his head.

‘Not with this hanging over me. Once I became an expert witness for the class action, PMI didn’t want to know me, and there’s a list as long as your arm of engineers wanting to work on Mars.’

‘What will you do?’

‘What, if we get back home? I don’t know. Keep trying to make some money doing consultancy work, I guess.’

‘I could have a word with the Mines Inspectorate. They might be able to get you some leads.’

‘Thanks. I’d appreciate that.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Bergman put his head on one side, listening to the note of the hoist motor. ‘Come on, sounds like the cage is nearly here.’

They boarded the sub-main cage, and for the second time, watched as the doors slid shut, and felt the cage drop away down the shaft. As they passed the wind slit in the side of the shaft, the river of falling water thundered onto the roof of the cage and sprayed around the shaft sides. It ran and dripped onto their helmets as the cage left the guide rails behind and started to pick up speed.

The sub-main shaft was an unbroken two kilometres deep, with no workings at intermediate levels. Refuges cut into the walls at 100-metre intervals punctuated the long fall; there were no large shaft stations here. They were below the level of the deepest ice, under the rock floor of the crater.

The only sounds were the hissing of the guide ropes through the greased sleeves, and the rush of air through the bottom of the cage, as they fell into the depths.

The sides of the shaft were wet with water streaming down from above; their flashlight beams reflected back off a glistening, hollow waterfall that ran down around the cage.

Long minutes passed as the cage plummeted down the shaft. The air gradually became warmer, and the smell of foul water grew stronger. The only clues to the huge depths to which they were descending came from the passing signs on the refuges announcing how deep they were. One thousand metres passed by, then two thousand, and still the shaft went on.

Finally, at the 2,200 level, they passed a shaft station. It slid past the cage in darkness; not even the emergency lighting worked down here. A new sound grew as they neared the bottom of the shaft, a liquid slithering that neither of them had heard before. Matt knelt down, and pointed his flashlight through the framework of the cage floor, down the shaft.

For a moment, he couldn’t see anything. Then, in the distance, he saw a glittering white light. It seemed to be coming closer. He puzzled over it for a moment, then he realised with a shock that he was looking at the growing reflection of his own flashlight in a deep pool of water. The slithering sound came from the balance rope underneath the cage, as it ran down into the water and back up the other side of the shaft.

He stood up quickly, and turned the control handle to Slow. Moments later, the cage jerked as the distant hoist applied the brakes, and the cage’s motion slowed. Matt let it come down to walking pace, watching the approaching water.

The surface drew closer, and Matt slowed the cage to a crawl. Five metres away, then four, three, two – Matt brought the cage to a halt, just as the top edge of the shaft station came into view. The cage bounced gently at the end of the wire rope, barely dipping into the water’s surface.

The waterfall high above had been emptying into the shaft for years. The sump had flooded long ago, and had overflowed into the shaft station. From there, the water had crept its slow way along the passages until it found the workings, and had trickled into the stopes and the orepasses, the crosscuts and the drifts, little by little filling the empty spaces with its cold tendrils, until the whole workings were drowned under water.