Mark Anson - Below Mercury

Bergman grabbed Matt’s ankle and signed urgently downwards. There, in the maintenance refuge that they had only just left, a robot leaned out, its red eyes staring up at the two men.

As they watched, it moved back in again, and disappeared.

Matt looked down at Bergman’s face, three metres below him on the ladder.

‘Is there another entrance halfway up?’ Bergman asked.

‘No, this one goes straight up without stopping.’

‘Where’s the robot gone, then?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m not hanging around to find out.’ Matt turned back to the climb.

The shaft rose up through the brecciated rock at the edge of Chao Meng-fu crater. Even though the gravity was only a third of Earth’s, the climb up the ladder was exhausting. Bend and raise a knee, push up, reach up, in a perpetual cycle, as they climbed higher and higher up the sides of the shaft. The ladder had no safety hoops round it; there was no room between the ladder and the passing skips, and they became increasingly aware of the long fall below them should they slip and fall off.

About two hundred metres up, there was another maintenance refuge, and Matt and Bergman threw themselves up and onto it, grateful for the chance to rest their aching leg and arm muscles.

They didn’t speak; there wasn’t anything to say, except to ask how much further it was, and neither of them wanted to know the answer.

Matt was anxious to keep moving; he felt that time was ticking away, and after a short rest, they set off up the ladder again. Their tired muscles protested with pain, and Bergman grimaced as he forced his aching arms and legs to bend and straighten. He felt as if his world had shrunk to the size of a narrow tube, and they seemed to be inching their way up it like spiders crawling up a plughole. He focused on the pain, trying not to think of the enormous length of shaft still above them.

Long minutes passed as they crawled steadily upwards. Bergman’s fingers ached from gripping on to the metal rungs. How far had they come now? He didn’t want to ask; he knew it would only be a few metres, and then he would have to steel himself to climb once more. Better just to keep going, mechanically moving arms and legs, keeping moving, steadily upwards.

Matt’s foot slipped, and he fell downwards a rung. He clung on with his hands, his legs flailing until he found a foothold again.

‘You okay?’ Bergman called up.

‘Sure. Just slipped, that’s all. Let’s take a minute here.’

They paused mid-climb, resting their tired limbs as best they could while clinging on to the ladder. They had covered just over half of the distance to the next refuge.

‘Okay,’ Matt said after a minute, ‘let’s keep going. Last push, then we’ll take a proper rest.’

Suddenly in the shaft, a deep groan rang out, and a shriek of seized metal. It echoed down the hollow chamber, and the two men looked round in alarm.

‘Okay, what was that?’ Bergman asked. ‘It isn’t going to be good, whatever it is.’

Matt said nothing. One of the wire ropes hanging in the shaft moved slightly.

‘I think this could be very bad, Rick’, he said softly.

The wire rope started to move, downwards.

‘Rick, climb, as fast you can!’ Matt yelled down, and set off again, his arms and legs moving quickly.

For a moment, Bergman didn’t understand, then he realised with a cold slide of fear that the skip loader high above them was heading down the shaft , straight for them. With hardly any clearance between the skip and the shaft ladder, it would slice them from the wall as it passed.

Bergman raced up the ladder, his muscles screaming. How far was it to the refuge? How fast did the skip move? Faster than he could climb, he was certain. As he climbed, he wondered what would happen when the several tonnes of the skip struck him. It would wipe him off the ladder without even noticing, and then there would be the long fall, down the shaft, to be smashed against the girders and metalwork of the skip loading stations far below. He wondered if it would hurt, or if it would be over with quickly.

A singing noise came from the four guide ropes, and the balance rope, hanging below the skip, hissed past. The skip was very close. In a few moments, it would be here.

Bergman looked up, and he saw the skip approaching; a rapidly expanding square of darkness against the gloom of the shaft.

Matt’s face appeared suddenly, looking down at him.

‘Grab the ledge, Rick!’

Matt was already in the refuge, up and to Bergman’s left.

Bergman couldn’t make it up the ladder and get into the refuge before the skip hit him. He reached up and to the left, gripped the ledge of the refuge with both hands, swung out and hung there, holding his body close to the shaft wall.

With a deep whoosh of air that pummelled his chest, the skip tore past the refuge, grazing one of his heels. The sudden blow pulled one of his hands from the ledge, and he was left dangling from one hand. Bergman yelled in terror as the fingers started to slip; he knew he was going to fall.

A hand grabbed his wrist, just as his last fingers slipped, and he hung there, terrified. The skip hissed away down the shaft.

‘Give me your free hand!’

Bergman reached up and grabbed the outstretched hand, and Matt pulled him upwards and onto the refuge, where they both lay, panting from the exertion.

‘Thanks, Matt,’ Bergman whispered, ‘I thought I was going to fall.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

They lay there in the refuge, getting their breath back, until Matt spoke again.

‘We can’t stay here. It’s only a hundred metres to the top of the shaft. We’ve got to keep moving.’

Bergman nodded. He didn’t want to go out into the shaft again, but Matt was right. They were trapped here; they had to get clear of the shaft.

Matt swung himself back onto the ladder. He flinched as a blur tore past close by, but it was just the counterweight, flying upwards in its guide ropes as the skip neared the bottom of the shaft.

Bergman swung onto the ladder below Matt, and the two of them continued their climb. Their arms and legs ached with fatigue, but they moved upward with determination; they were too near the top of the shaft to give up now.

Way below them, the skip hoist slowed and halted, sending long waves up and down the wire ropes. After a moment, the ropes started moving again, but in the opposite direction; the skip was coming back up the shaft towards them.

The wire ropes picked up speed rapidly, and the counterweight fell past again on its journey down the shaft. Matt and Bergman pushed on grimly, forcing their aching limbs to haul them up the ladder. They were getting close now, though, and their spirits rose as they neared the top of the shaft.

‘Nearly there,’ Matt called down, and Bergman looked up hopefully. There above them, no more than twenty metres away, the guide rails of the upper shaft station could be made out in the light spilling in from the passage, and something else, too, silhouetted against the light.

Two robot heads looked down at them, their eyes glowing red. Matt continued his climb as if he hadn’t seen them, and Bergman called out in warning: ‘Matt, hold on! There’s two robots—’

Matt actually laughed, and swung sideways off the ladder to the right, into a large, unlit passage.

‘We’re not going that way,’ he said, as Bergman hauled himself up. The rectangular passage they were in sloped upwards, as steep as the roof of a house, and there was a set of narrow steps and a handrail in the near wall.

‘This is the bypass duct I was telling you about. It takes excess air past the refinery and into the main return airway.’

‘Well, that’s going to piss them off,’ Bergman said, ‘can they get in here?’