perfectly still and wouldn't pendulum before he let it go.
He now took the radio out of his shirt and turned it on. There was a built-in ten-minute delay. He put the radio on the bottom of the glory-hole, then covered it with loose chunks of rock. A lot of the explosion's force would be channeled upward anyway, but this was powerful stuff, whatever it was - enough would be left to tear perhaps three vertical feet of bedrock into chunks which they could quickly load into a sling and power-winch up. And the ship would not be hurt. Apparently nothing could do that.
Gardener slid his foot into the sling and shouted: 'Pull me up!'
Nothing happened.
'PULL ME UP, JOHNNY!' he screamed. Once again there was that feeling that his head was splitting along some rotted midseam.
Still nothing.
His wrist-deep plunge into the icy water had dropped Gardener's body temperature perhaps two whole degrees. Nonetheless, a damp and slickly unpleasant sweat suddenly sprang out on his forehead. He looked at his wristwatch. Two minutes had passed since he had turned on the Snoopy radio. From his watch, his eyes moved to the loose pile of chunked granite in the glory-hole. Plenty of time to yank the rocks out and turn off the radio.
Except turning off the radio wouldn't stop whatever was going on inside the radio. He knew that somehow.
He looked up for Enders and Enders wasn't there.
This is how they're getting rid of you, Gard.
A drop of sweat ran into his eye. He brushed it away with the back of his hand.
'ENDERS! HEY, JOHNNY!'
Shinny up the rope, Gard.
Forty feet? Dream on. Maybe in college. Maybe not even then.
He looked at his watch. Three minutes.
Yeah, this is how. Poof. All gone. A sacrifice to the Great Ship. A little something to propitiate the Tommyknockers.
'... start it going yet?'
He looked up so quickly his neck popped, his growing fear turning immediately to rage.
'I started it almost five minutes ago you fucking shit-for-brains! Get me out of here before it goes off and blows me sky-high!'
Enders's mouth dropped into an 0 that was almost comical. He disappeared again and Gardener was left looking at his watch through what was becoming a blur of sweat.
Then the loop around his foot jerked and a moment later he began to rise. Gardener closed his eyes and clung to the rope. Apparently he wasn't quite as ready to sniff the pipe as he thought he was. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing to know, either.
He reached the top of the cut, stepped out, loosened the loop around his foot, and walked over to where Enders stood.
'Sorry,' Enders said, smiling fussily. 'I thought we'd agreed that you'd give me a shout before - '
Gardener hit him. The thing was done and Enders was on the ground, his glasses hanging from one ear and his mouth bloody, before Gardener was even wholly aware of what he meant to do. And although he was not telepathic, he thought he could feel every head in Haven suddenly turn toward this place, alert and listening.
'You left me down there with that thing going, asshole,' he said. 'If you - or anyone else in this town - ever does it again, you better just leave me down there. Do you hear me?'
Rage dawned in Enders's eyes. He fixed his glasses back in place as well as he could and got to his feet. There was dirt on his bald head. 'I don't think you know who you're talking to.'
'I know more than you think,' Gardener said. 'Listen, Johnny. And the rest of you, if you're hearing this, and I think you are, you listen, too. I want an intercom down there. I want some ordinary fucking consideration. I've played square with you; I'm the only one in this town that didn't have to have his brains scrambled to do it, either. I want some fucking consideration. Do you hear me?'
Enders looked at him, but Gardener thought he was listening, too. Listening to other voices. Gardener waited for their decision. He was too angry to really care much.
'All right,' Enders said softly, pressing the back of his hand against his bloody mouth. 'You may have a point. We'll put in an intercom, and we'll see that you have a bit more ... what did you call it?' A contemptuous flick of smile touched his lips. It was a smile with which Gardener was extremely familiar. It was the way the Arbergs and McCardles of the