The Flaming Mountain Part 25

Rick and Scotty got back to the hole as often as they could, but there was much doing elsewhere. The Hot Springs Hotel swarmed with scientists and observers, and there were heated conferences and late evaluation sessions. The Spindrift scientists were always in demand, and their faces grew gaunt as the days pa.s.sed.

The hole gave its own location because of the shock waves it sent through the earth to the recorders, and even Rick's untrained eye could see the traces slowly closing with the magma front.

Earthquakes increased in frequency until Rick and Scotty felt as though the ground never ceased shuddering.

The air became noisy with planes as the Military Air Transport Command began ferrying in troops. Flight after flight of huge transports roared in for a landing at the Calor airport, discharged the soldiers, and took off again at once.

And still the diamond hunt continued.

Then, at one o'clock in the afternoon, Hartson Brant called a halt.

"The magma's moving up through the dike," he reported. "It's now or never. Captain Montoya, we will ask the troops to clear the area.

Commander Jameson, withdraw all men and equipment except those necessary for the final packing. Dr. Cantrell, please be ready to place the charge at dawn tomorrow."

The final phase of the operation swung into action. The troops gathered at Redondo and marched shoulder to shoulder southward along the mountain slopes. They herded the diamond seekers before them, sometimes with enough roughness to overcome protests, but mostly with little difficulty. They herded the population entirely around El Viejo, and established a perimeter from Calor northward, with the population confined to a narrow segment of the island along the seaward side.

Loud-speaker trucks roamed along the perimeter, rea.s.suring the people.

Military disaster units cooked huge quant.i.ties of food and prepared thousands of gallons of coffee and reconst.i.tuted milk. American soldiers played with cute little San Luzian kids and--after the diamond seekers became convinced they had never had a chance to find diamonds--the whole affair became one big picnic.

But it was a picnic with overtones of fear.

Rick and Scotty watched the placement of the nuclear explosive--a simple steel can, from the outside--in the big hole. They watched the remaining handful of Seabees load tons of rock in after it. Only the wires connecting the device to a radio firing unit on the beach gave evidence that an explosion equal to ten thousand tons of TNT was about to take place.

Rick asked, "Won't all those rocks keep the volcano from erupting?"

Hartson Brant smiled. "Rick, compared with the force of the volcano, that atomic device is like a firecracker compared with a hurricane. But even to the nuclear explosion those rocks won't mean much. They're just to confine it a little."

The night pa.s.sed. San Souci was empty of people. The Seabees were back aboard ship. The scientific instruments were in place. Only a small group of scientists remained, their helicopter standing by. They checked out the radio firing unit, threw switches according to their check list, then announced:

"We're ready!"

CHAPTER XIX

The Old One Yields

Rick banked the Sky Wagon over the fleet. Scotty, in the front pa.s.senger seat, had the camera ready. Hartson Brant, in the rear seat, had a motion-picture camera poised. Governor Montoya, the fourth in the party, even had his personal camera along.

Their cameras were not the only ones. Nearly every ship had its official photographers, and there were photography planes in the air.

Directly under the Sky Wagon now was a U. S. destroyer. Aboard her was the nuclear firing party from Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, and the UN Observer Group. On other ships of the fleet were the representatives of the interested nations and the Seabees.

Rick turned up the volume of his plane radio. By agreement, the countdown was to be broadcast to all aircraft over one of the airport frequencies.

"Thirty seconds!" the voice said.

"Won't we need dark gla.s.ses?" Scotty asked.

"No," Hartson Brant replied. "The nuclear fireball won't emerge. If it gets a little too bright, squint and turn your head."

"How long after the nuclear shot will the volcano go?" Rick asked.

"We don't know. Anywhere from seconds to hours. It depends on how much of a path the nuclear shot cracks."

"Ten seconds!"

Rick made sure they had a good view of El Viejo's western slope, and held the plane on course.

"Five, four, three, two, one ...

"Zero!"

There was an instant of quiet, then dust spurted from the deep hole, followed by billowing clouds of pulverized rock. Down below, the earth heaved as though from another earthquake, and a line of waves appeared, running from sh.o.r.e outward!

The dust settled slowly, hanging in the air like a great gray ball.

The nuclear explosion, deep underground, had gone off.

"Now what?" Rick wondered.

Hartson Brant said quietly, "We may have to wait a while."

"That explosion sure didn't look like the pictures I've seen of shots in Nevada," Rick told him.

"No, Rick. This was too far underground. They've had those in Nevada, too, but the pictures don't get much publicity because they're not spectacular."

Far below, where the end of the big hole had been, the huge chamber blown by the atomic explosion was white-hot with trapped heat and radioactivity. Below the chamber the earth was shattered, with myriad tiny cracks reaching far down.

Some cracks reached the white-hot magma. Instantly the magma exploited the new weakness, pressure was released until ...

"Look!" Even in the plane Scotty's yell was loud.

Rick turned in time to see the side of El Viejo blow off in an explosion that made ten kilotons of fission seem puny indeed. For an instant he saw thousands of tons of white-hot lava rise into the air, then it fell into the sea. Instantly steam clouds blanketed the area, but the steam was mixed with traces of red and gray from the rock carried upward.

A great boulder, weighing many tons, was hurled high in the air to fall into the steam cloud. The great rift in the volcano widened, and the molten lava was visible until steam rose again.

Under the steam cloud was an inferno, but it was only occasionally visible as the wind tore rents in the vapor. The noise must be deafening, Rick knew, but only a low rumble and an occasional hissing could be heard in the plane.

"Well," Hartson Brant said wearily, "it worked."

Governor Luis Montoya spoke gently. "Yes, my friend. It did indeed work.

And it has saved our island. I doubt that a single life was lost, thanks to you and your a.s.sociates."

"We'd better be sure." The scientist smiled. "Rick, suppose you fly us around the island?"

"Yes, sir." Rick instantly swung the Sky Wagon onto a northward course that would take them past the erupting volcano and on to the north. He kept well out to sea, because now and then he could see big rocks flying through the air as the volcano spouted.