"Who's down there?" asked Paulette.
The man saluted. "First Mate Longworth," he replied. "Six men with him. We're trying communication by radio, but haven't got in touch with him yet."
An icy hand gripped tightly at Paulette's heart.
"Adam!" she cried and was surprised to discover there were tears in her eyes, as a touch fell on her shoulder, and she looked around to see the face of Captain Walter McCausland.
"What's the matter, my dear?" he asked.
"Your dear!" she half shrieked. "I'm not your dear, and I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on Earth! You did this!"
The captain's mouth curled in a sneer. "So that's it, is it? He's persuaded you he can run you as well as the expedition. Well, I hope he can run things down where he is as well as he can everything else." He turned on his heel and walked away without another word.
It seemed useless to go any deeper, but Adam, driving the digging machines hard at the bottom of the excavation, was determined not to give up till he was called back. There would be no more excavations; there was no more fuel to take the Goddard to another spot. The lights, led down from the ship, flared about them, the tongues of the atomic power rasps worked against the rocks with an annoying, grating sound, discharging their take of powdered rock into the machine that fused it, and worked slowly around the circular wall of the excavation behind them, plastering it with white-hot material that cooled rapidly into the smooth, stony cylinder that towered far above to join with the ship.
Suddenly, one of the diggers took on a new, high-pitched note. Adam turned; and as he turned felt himself slipping, clutched at something, and the next minute was sliding down, down, a long slant it seemed into total darkness. A weight gripped him around the chest; he rolled over, but his hands caught only loose stones, and when the slide came to a stop as abrupt as its beginning, he found himself lying on his back, the weight across his legs, looking up, far up toward where a speck of light from the ship seemed miles away.