As she settled onto the waste dump to one side, it was to see that another aircar had beaten her to it. Must have been that one of the crews had already arrived to check the adit.

Spooling down, she double-checked the sky out of habit. Mobbers had almost killed her once; she never took the sky for granted. Stepping out, she left her hat and cloak in the aircar, walked past the line of ore cars, and followed the rails to the black maw of the portal.

She stepped inside, not exactly sure why she was here. The cool air in the black shaft smelled of wet rock, seemed to cling damply to her skin. As her eyes adjusted, she pulled the flashlight from her hip and flicked it on.

“This is fart-sucking crazy, Kalico,” she muttered to herself as she started down the rails toward the collapse. Damn it, she just had to see it for herself. So much had been wagered on the Number Three. Completing it would have solved so many problems. For all she, Ghosh, and Ituri knew, it might have dewatered the entire lower part of the mountain. Who knew what kind of wealth that might have freed up?

Her steps echoed in the darkness, hollow-sounding as her soles grated on the broken gravel under the tracks. The light played on the shining steel rails, reflected from irregular pools of water to glow on the surrounding rock. Plopping drips of water could be heard splashing into puddles.

She reached the first of the shoring, let her light play across the squared timbers. This was the leading edge of the shattered rock zone. Overhead, the dark lights and conduit had a forlorn appearance, as if abandoned to eternal darkness.

Kalico chewed thoughtfully on her lips as she stepped close, studied the thick beams of chabacho. Each had been precisely milled. Fitted. Additionally, the ceiling was carefully supported by crosspieces, and in places of greater potential instability, even heavier beams reinforced any fractured head rock.

Damn it, it all looked good. Overengineered if anything. She’d come to associate that with Talovich’s work. Since the man had looked up into the muzzle of her pistol that long-ago morning when Kalico had been ready to shoot him in the head for desertion, Sula Talovich had never, not once, cut a corner. Immaculate craftsmanship might have become a matter of honor with him. Time after time, he’d halted progress because he considered something the others thought adequate to be substandard. Kalico had always backed him on that.

“So why did this fail?” she wondered.

Ahead of her, she heard the characteristic clatter of rock being shifted, the rattle and hollow clack of one angular stone striking another. Someone cursed, a faint whimper following.

Didn’t sound like a crew. Sounded like a lone person.