The Quillian Sector

Life was cheap on Ealius. Only the skilled technicians were of value, the rest were easily replaced. Those in authority could decide that he wasn't worth the trouble and effort to save. Better to let him lie, to be covered in, buried, forgotten. But the cutting had to be kept open, the great channel formed and smoothed, the passage through the mountain maintained.

After what seemed hours, Dumarest felt and heard the grating vibration of mechanical jaws.

They were not being operated with any care for the vulnerability of a human body. The steel teeth dropped, closed, lifted with a load of clay to set it aside and return for more. Only a concern to avoid marring the sides of the channel made the operator take small bites at the mound he had dropped. The fact that any of the scoops could have sheared through a body didn't seem to have occurred to him.

Dumarest had a more personal interest. He felt a touch against one leg, kicked, felt metal beneath his foot and then the rasp of the teeth over his thigh. Luck had saved him; a few more inches and his foot would have been caught, his leg ripped from its socket as the grab lifted with resistless force. Before it could return he heaved, squandering the last of his conserved energy, fighting the crushing weight on back and shoulders as he thrust himself back to where the clay had been lifted from his legs. When next the grab returned, he was ready. As the open jaws dug into the mound he threw himself into the grab, ducking as the serrated edges closed, one hand caught between two of the steel teeth of the low jaw, the upper halting an inch from his wrist as it closed on a stone.

Then up and out to one side, the grab halting, turning, opening as it jerked to shower its load into the open body of the truck waiting below. As Dumarest fell, he heard a yell.

"It's Earl! By damn, it's Earl!"

Carl Devoy, the one who had shouted, his face taut beneath a tangle of rust-colored hair now smeared with ocher clay. He ran to the side of the truck, heaving himself up and staring over the side.

"Earl?" He sucked in his breath as Dumarest moved. "By God, he's still alive! Give a hand here! Give a hand!"

He was small, but with a temper to match the color of his hair, and two men ran to obey. A third arrived with a bucket of water as they lowered Dumarest to the ground and, without preamble, threw the contents over the clay smeared figure.

"Earl?"

"I'm all right." Dumarest straightened, breathing deeply, water running down his head and face to soak his coverall. As he wiped his hands on his sides, he said, "Who was operating the digger?"

"Menser, He's still operating it." Devoy glanced at the man seated in the cab of the machine. A transparent canopy gave weather protection, its clarity now marred with dirt. Behind it, the face and figure of the operator were blurred. "I saw the bucket jerk and yelled but I was too late."

"No," said Dumarest. "If you hadn't shouted I'd be dead now. And then?"

"After the load dropped?" Devoy shrugged. "They figured you had to be dead and would have left you but Strick wanted the cutting to be cleared. Ten minutes later and he'd have left it for the next shift to clear up the mess."

Ten minutes-the difference between life and death. Dumarest looked at the orange sky, at the bulk of the digger etched against it, at the dark face which peered at him from behind the canopy. As a whistle blew the face moved, became a part of the body which climbed down from the cab, a man who stood almost seven-feet tall and with shoulders to match. A black giant with massive hands and thighs like trees. A man who stepped to where Dumarest stood waiting, to halt, to part his lips in a grin before spitting on the ground.

"Mister, you were lucky."

"No," said Dumarest. "You were careless."

"Meaning the accident?"

"If it was one."

"Hell, man, how can you doubt it? A cable locked and I had to snap it clear. That's why I swung the grab over and away from the truck. Sometimes the catch slips and you drop the load."

"On me?"

"I didn't see you." Menser spat again. "I had other things to think about."

Truth or lie, there was no way of telling and certainly nothing could be proved. Dumarest studied the man, seeing the eyes, white rims showing around the irises, the corners tinged with red. The telltale signs of the drug he chewed, as was the purple spittle he had vented on the ground. The pungent, shredded leaf which gave euphoria at the cost of sanity.

Then, as the whistle shrilled again, Devoy said, "Come on, Earl, let's get away from here. The next shift's taking over."

The residential quarters matched the workings; hard, rough, severely functional. Sleeping was done in dormitories, eating in a communal mess, washing in a long, low room flanked by shallow troughs above which showers supplied water ranging from tepid to steaming hot. The place itself was filled with steam; writhing vapor which blurred details in a manmade fog. In it shapes loomed, indistinct, voices muffled as men called to each other.