The timber did not fall and the shaft grew still again.
I crawled over the mound, bumped into something round and metallic that my fingertips told me was a wheel on the broken ore cart, and detoured around that. When I relocated the track, I stood up again so I could lift my head above that stifling pall of dust.
It was another ten steps before the congealing graininess began to thin out; the floor around and between the rails seemed clear of debris. I moved with a little more speed, felt the track begin to curve to the left and knew I was coming into the turn where Bascomb's body lay. The jellied feeling in my knees was so strong now it forced me down into a sitting position on one rail, legs out at an angle and head thrown back. The air here was foul and oppressive, smoky, but at least I could breathe it, it was like pure oxygen after the forward section of the tunnel.
Pretty soon the last of the dizziness went away, and some of the fire in my chest with it; my mind began to function more or less normally. I was aware of a dozen separate aches, of a stickiness on my left forearm that had to be blood from a gash or smaller cut. Fear tugged at me. Suppose the entrance was so badly blocked I could not dig my way out? Nobody knew I was in here except the man who had caused the cave-in, the man who had killed Terzian and Bascomb-and how many hours of breathable air could there be? A dozen? Less than that?
I fought down another surge of panic, got a tight hold on myself. One thing at a time, one minute at a time. Let the dust settle, that was the first priority. Then go back up there and check out the extent of the blockage and start digging, it might all just be loose rock and earth and timbers Check it out how? I thought.
I had not been able to see anything earlier and I could not see anything now except blackness. Unless the dust had helped to obscure light, the entrance was completely closed off. How would I know where to dig, what to watch out for? The flashlight was gone, probably buried, and even if I could find it in the dark it had to be damaged and useless. I had no matches-and wasn't that a goddamn nice piece of irony for you? If I had not given up smoking, if I did not have a lesion on one lung, I would have had a pocketful of matches, I would have had the one thing now that I needed desperately.
And then I thought: Bascomb. Christ, Bascomb.
Convulsively, I pushed off the rail and went forward on all fours until I came up next to the body. The smell of it flared my nostrils, made me gag again. I reached out, touched it, felt an arm mushy soft and yielding and jerked my hand up across the front of his shirt, groping for the pocket.
It was empty.
I brought the hand down and fumbled at one trouser pocket, dug inside it; keys and coins, nothing else. I leaned forward, touched the second pocket-and there was something rectangular in there, crinkling sound, cigarette package? I dragged it out with shaking fingers. Cigarette package, yes, Bascomb had been a smoker.
Tucked inside the cellophane wrapping was a booklet of paper matches.
I fished it free, opened the cover. Three-quarters full. I held it tightly in clenched fingers, slid around away from the corpse and crawled back through the turn and sat down on the rail again. Sweat streamed on my body, slick and gritty like oil mixed with dirt. A sudden spasm of coughing left me panting; I tried not to think of what that dust was doing to my lungs, to the lesion that might already be malignant.
How long before the dust settled?
Ten minutes? Fifteen?
I held my left wrist up to my ear and listened to my watch and heard it ticking; somehow it had escaped damage in the cave-in. When I looked at the luminescent hands I saw that they read twelve-fifteen. I put the arm behind me, to keep from staring at the watch, and tried to make myself concentrate on the things I knew that would identify the son of a bitch who had murdered Terzian and Bascomb and sealed me in here. Bascomb's sketch, the wrench, the bloody towels, the Daghestan carpet-all of those things, yes, but how did they fit together? Other things too, dancing out of reach. Round and round, round and round, but none of them quite joining with each other to make a whole or part of a whole…
I had to give it up finally. The tension was too intense, the edge of panic too close to the surface of feeling; learning the name of the man would not matter at all unless I got out of here. I looked at the watch then, and nine minutes had passed. I used a forefinger to clean grit out of my nostrils, wiped away sweat, made an effort to work up saliva to rid my mouth of dust and dryness.
Another three minutes gone.
I stood and stared into the blackness, trying to tell if the air along the shaft was any less clogged with powder, trying to make out a ray or glimmer of light. There was nothing but dark up there, but if I could trust my senses the air did not seem to be as dusty, as abrasive in my throat and lungs.