“Hi, Henry! Ed Pratt.”
Henry nodded. “What’s the situation now?” Ed, who had a house-painting business, was in charge of this team.
“About like our last talk. We got out over a hundred people, but we’ve only dug in about halfway.” He gestured toward some men hauling, tug-of-war fashion, on ropes. “We’re trying to deepen a passage now.” The ropes disappeared in a hole in the mass.
Henry went closer, followed by Lacey. “How hot is it?” He was not aware that he was shouting. The fire storm here was like near, continual thunder. But it was necessary to converse in shouts almost everywhere that night.
Ed waved at the blaze. “Gettin’ warmer in there all the time. Awful-looking thing, ain’t it?”
Henry hardly glanced at the intimidating fire wall. “I mean, radiation hot?”
“Oh! This new tunnel we’re making—I dun no. Got a monitor in there now, measuring!”
The rope-pullers shouted in unison, heaved together, and from the ragged entrance of their “tunnel” they drew forth a huge fragment of floor and ceiling lumber. Henry could see that the opening ran for at least a hundred feet into the wreckage. He shuddered and asked loudly.
“How do you know that cave will hold up?”
He couldn’t see Ed Pratt’s expression but he could guess it from the man’s voice: “We don’t know! Matter of fact, a few hours back one tunnel roof fell. We were trying to work the fire side of this mess then. Lost five of my people—and one of your radiation monitors. Couldn’t get back to ’em. A whole hunk of apartment came down between them and us.”