It stood solidly on the floor, ten feet high, twelve wide, square and black with twin coils and a thick projection like an enormous gun on the top. Men jammed around it, bent and gripped a ledge near the bottom, heaved up. Loath to move, it rocked a bit, then was hoisted off the ground. They staggered forward with it. The hole in the wall was far too small. "Miners! The best of you, and I don't want braggarts and second-raters, but the best! Tear down that wall!" Revel stood on a case and roared his commands. Men pushed out of the tunnel's throng, big bearded men, small tough men. They stood shoulder to shoulder and at a word began to swing their picks. Up and down, up and down, smite, smite, carve the rock away.... Soon they picked up the machine again, and manhandled it out into the tunnel. The crowd pressed back, and the Mink bellowed for the distant ones to go up the shaft to the top. "How you going to get it up to the ground?" asked John. His voice had a kind of confidence in it, a respect for Revel that surprised the big miner. John evidently believed in him, was even relying on his mind when John himself was so overwhelmingly intelligent. Revel wondered: if he, the Mink, were to fall asleep and wake in a future time, knowing all his friends and relatives were dead long since, knowing his whole world had vanished ... would he be as calm and alert and interested in things as John? There was a man, by--what was the expression he used?--by god! "We'll get it there," he said. "So long as you can work it, John, there aren't any worries." "Understatement of the millenium, or is that the word I want? Optimistic crack o' the year. Okay, Revel. It's your baby." Slowly the men carried the machine to the lip of the shaft. Nothingness yawned above for ninety feet, below for over a hundred. The shaft was twenty feet across. "Now what?" asked Lady Nirea. "There's an ore bucket at the bottom; we toss our coal down the shaft, and once a day the bucket's drawn up to the top, by a hoisting mechanism worked by ten men, and the coal's emptied out and taken away in small loads. The bucket fills that shaft. It's two feet deep but so broad it holds plenty of coal. You can see the cable out there in the center; it's as tough as anything on earth." "I see your idea," said John. "I _hope_ that cable's tough. The machine weighs a couple of tons." "Tons?" "I mean it's heavy!" * * * * * Revel bawled for the men at the top to start the winch. Shortly they heard the creak and groan of the ore bucket, coming slowly toward their level. When its rim was just level with the floor of the tunnel, the Mink let go a yell that halted the men on the windlass like a pickax blow in the belly; then Revel said, "All right, move it onto the bucket!"