They began unloading equipment—a small portable nuclear-electric conversion unit, a powerful solenoid-hammer, crowbars and intrenching tools, tins of blasting-plastic. They took out the two hunting rifles, and the auto-carbines, and Altamont showed the young men of Murray Hughes' detail how to use them.
"If you'll pardon me, sir," the Tenant said to Altamont, "I think it would be a good idea if your companion went up in the flying machine and circled around over us, to keep watch for Scowrers. There are quite a few of them, particularly farther up the rivers, to the east, where the damage was not so great and they can find cellars and shelters and buildings to live in."
"Good idea; that way, we won't have to put out guards," Altamont said. "From the looks of this, we'll need everybody to help dig into that thing. Hand out one of the portable radios, Jim, and go up to about a thousand feet. If you see anything suspicious, give us a yell, and then spray it with bullets, and find out what it is afterward."
They waited until the helicopter had climbed to position and was circling above, and then turned their attention to the place where the sheet of fused earth and stone bulged upward. It must have been almost ground-zero of one of the hydrogen-bombs; the wreckage of the Cathedral of Learning had fallen predominantly to the north, and the Carnegie Library was tumbled to the east.
"I think the entrance would be on this side, toward the Library," Altamont said. "Let's try it, to begin with."
He used the solenoid-hammer, slowly pounding a hole into the glaze, and placed a small charge of the plastic explosive. Chunks of the lavalike stuff pelted down between the little mound and the huge one of the old library, blowing a hole six feet in diameter and two and a half deep, revealing concrete bonded with crushed steel-mill slag.
"We missed the door," he said. "That means we'll have to tunnel in through who knows how much concrete. Well—"
He used a second and larger charge, after digging a hole a foot deep. When he and his helpers came up to look, they found a large mass of concrete blown out, and solid steel behind it. Altamont cut two more holes sidewise, one on either side of the blown-out place, and fired a charge in each of them, bringing down more concrete. He found that he hadn't missed the door, after all. It had merely been concreted over.
A few more shots cleared it, and after some work, they got it open. There was a room inside, concrete-floored and entirely empty. With the others crowding behind him, Altamont stood in the doorway and inspected the interior with his flashlight; he heard somebody back of him say something about a most peculiar sort of a dark-lantern. Across the small room, on the opposite wall, was a bronze plaque.