“No good. The Bug is smashed and he’s inside it. We’ll need torches and I’ll need one of you to help.” He looked at me and then gave Stone a long look. “Peter, you’d better come.”
“Wait,” said Stone. His face was very white. “Let me go down with you.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” The Major tossed him a torch. “Peter, check these hitches and lower us slowly. If you see any kind of trouble, _anything_, cast yourself free and back off this thing, do you understand? This whole ledge may go.”
They went over the ledge. I let the cable down bit by bit until it hit two hundred feet and slacked off.
“Bad,” said the Major. “We’ll have to work fast. This whole side of the crevasse is ready to crumble. Down a little more.”
Minutes passed without a sound. I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. Then I felt the ground shift, and the tractor lurched to the side.
The Major shouted, “_It’s going, Peter—pull back!_” and I threw the tractor into reverse, jerked the controls as the tractor rumbled off the shelf. The cable snapped, coiled up in front like a broken clockspring. The whole surface under me was shaking wildly now; ash rose in huge gray clouds. Then, with a roar, the whole shelf lurched and slid sideways. It teetered on the edge for seconds before it crashed into the crevasse, tearing the side wall down with it in a mammoth slide. I jerked the tractor to a halt as the dust and flame billowed up.
They were gone—all three of them, McIvers and the Major and Jack Stone—buried under a thousand tons of rock and zinc and molten lead. There wasn’t any danger of anybody ever finding their bones.
Peter Claney leaned back, finishing his drink, rubbing his scarred face as he looked across at Baron.
Slowly, Baron’s grip relaxed on the chair arm. “_You_ got back,” he said.
Claney nodded. “I got back, sure. I had the tractor and the sledges. I had seven days to drive back under that yellow Sun. I had plenty of time to think.”
“You took the wrong man along,” Baron said. “That was your mistake. Without him you would have made it.”
“Never.” Claney shook his head. “That’s what I was thinking the first day or so—that it was _McIvers’_ fault, that _he_ was to blame. But that isn’t true. He was wild, reckless and had lots of nerve.”