Geology -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction
That day, bolster-trucks began to roll out of Survey Headquarters.
They rolled very, very smoothly, and they trailed a fog of chilled air
behind them. And presently there were men with heavy gloves on their
hands taking long things like sausages out of the bolster-trucks and
untying the ends and lowering them down into holes bored in the topsoil
until they reached places where wetness made the holes close up again.
Then the men from Survey pushed those frozen sausages underground still
further by long poles with carefully padded--and refrigerated--ends.
And then they went on to other holes.
The first day there were five hundred such sausages thrust down into
holes in the ground, which holes to all intents and purposes closed up
behind them. The second day there were four thousand. The third day
there were eight. On the fourth the solution of ship-fuel in brine in
the lake did not give adequate EMF in the little battery-cell designed
to show how much corrosive substance there was in the brine. Hardwick
took samples from the fluid draining into the lake. It was not mud any
longer. Brine flowed at the top of bedrock, and it left the mud behind
it, because salt water remarkably hindered the suspension of former
globigerinous ooze particles. It was practically colloid. Salt water
practically coagulated it.
The brine flowing from the salt-water tunnels upwind showed no more
ship-fuel in it. Hardwick called Sandringham and told him.
"I can call in the civilians!" said Sandringham. "You've mopped up the
leaked stuff! It couldn't have been done--"
"Not anywhere but here, with bedrock handy just underneath, and
slanting," said Hardwick. "But I wouldn't advise it. Tell them they can
come if they want to. They'll sort of drift in. I want to tap some more
ship-fuel for the rest of those bore-holes. From the tanks that haven't
leaked."
Sandringham hesitated.
"Twenty thousand holes," said Hardwick tiredly. "Each one had a
six-hundred block of frozen saturated brine dumped in it, with roughly
one pound of ship-fuel in solution. You have gone that far. Might as
well go the rest of the way. How's the barometer?"
"Up a tenth," said Sandringham. "Still rising."
Hardwick blinked at him, because he had trouble keeping his eyes open
now.
"Let's ride it, Sandringham!"
Sandringham hesitated. Then he said:
"Go ahead."
Hardwick waved his arms at his associates, whom he admired with great
fervor in his then-foggy mind, because they were always ready to work
when it was needed, and it had not stopped being needed for five days
running. He explained very lucidly that there were only three more
miles of holes to be filled up, and therefore they would just draw so
much of ship-fuel and blend it carefully with an appropriate amount of
suitable chilled brine and then freeze it in appropriate sausages--
Young Lieutenant Barnes said gravely:
"Yes, sir. I'll take care of it. You remember me, sir! I'll take care
of it."
Hardwick said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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