He reached out one hand and touched something as smooth as though it were polished and gently warm. "Mr. Adam!" said a voice suddenly, and he recognized it as Jake's. "Are you all right, Mr. Adam?"
"I think so, but my legs are caught."
"I'll get you free in a minute. Anybody else?"
"I got hit in the belly," came a voice. "Where's Flack?"
The engineer was lifting something. "Can you get out there now, Mr. Adam? We'll be all right in a minute." Adam gave a heave, felt his entangled legs slide free and pulled himself onto a pile of debris just as a light glared on like a star from one of the other men.
"Are we all here? Where's Flack?" There was a counting of noses and a general feeling of bodies for bruises. Above them, where the wall of the cylinder stopped, they could make out that the sudden break through had carried them down some twenty feet. "Here he is. Just an arm sticking out. I'm afraid he's done for. Come here, everyone."
One of the digging machines was brought into play and they labored to get the prisoned man free, but as they cleared the broken stone and rubble from around his face, it became evident that the effort was useless. The eyes were glazed, the head hung limp. Adam stepped back against the wall of the cave-in around them, and as he did so his hand touched it. Once more he noticed it was both smooth and warm. He turned, and in the light of the atomic lamps now blazing across the top of the cave-in examined it. It was not only smooth and warm, but polished; and just over his head he could see where the rock stopped and metal began—a clean-fitted job, a manufactured wall!
"Jake!" he called excitedly, "bring that digging machine over here for a second. The one with the cutting head."
The little engineer turned, and bounded over in a couple of steps, digging machine in hand. "Why, that's a metal wall," he cried, and applied the head for a moment in a brief surge of power. The bit cut out an inch-deep circle of metal, dropping it on some of the rubble with a tinny clang. Jake bent to pick it up.
"It's light enough to be beryllium," he said, handing the disc to Adam, and turning back to the wall, drove his cutter into it with renewed energy.