Jonnie looked at the drills. There were armored bits and they could stand an awful lot of heat. But they were smoking. How fast could they drill? He looked at his watch and saw how many sections they were down already. This was going to be close!

Up the lake, five miles away, the old mine hand that Dwight had sent and two assistants were sliding and slithering around in the silt beside the battleship wreck. They were sinking almost to their hips. The flying platform they had taken had to be reflown by its operator every few minutes to prevent it from simply sinking out of sight in the ooze.

What a gigantic wreck! No wonder they couldn't put those down in atmosphere. They must assemble them on that moon, Asart, above Tolnep. Probably they flew the pieces up there section by section. Only intricate calculations of planetary gravity and gravitic force flows would let those things fly at all.

He wondered for a sad moment whether Glencannon's body was in there somewhere. But even a Mark 32 couldn't stand up to that internal blast. That ship was really a graveyard. There must be charred chunks of fifteen hundred Tolneps in that twisted, blackened wreck. How long was it? Two thousand feet? Three thousand? Hard to tell from here, so much was buried. But it was sure making a great dam. One would have thought it would have buried itself deeper. Then he saw what really was the case. It had made a sort of crater and it was the crater edge that was restraining the water.

He took a small scope from his pocket to see exactly what the men were doing. Yes, they were doubling up blast cord over the far crater edge and then another one of them was doing the same thing on the near crater edge. They needed no advice.

The drills were screaming through the rock, steam shooting up from their overheated water-coolant jets.

Twenty men were rigging a line from the lake water to a mine pump. They were getting more cooling water.

Ow, the silt! It was hard to walk without sliding and nearly all the crews by now were caked with mud.

He looked at his watch. It would be very touch and go. To drill a hundred feet of hole in three hours would be a bit of a feat; they had to do it in about one and a half! They were really leaning on those drills. Four men on each were adding their weight to the handles.

He hoped that flashing signal on the small gray man's ship would hold good. They had skeletonized their defense force to handle this dam and they were wide open to attack with no cable armor.

His mine radio came alive. It was the party at the wreck calling Dwight.

They were ready to fire. Dwight looked over to Jonnie.

With his scope, Jonnie tried to see the generator intake ports in the dam. Were they closed? Muddy, muddy water. He couldn't see from here. He called the Chinese engineers inside the dam. Chief Chong-won was in there.

“It needs five minutes to close the last port,” the chief's voice came back.

“They've got the excess spillway ports closed. I am sorry, Lord Jonnie. I don't think these levers and wheels have been moved for years.”

“Make it a thousand,” said Jonnie. “How many men have you got in there?”

"Seventy-two," said the chief.

Good lord, he had half his force inside that dam.

“You're doing great. Finish it up and then get everyone out of there. That dam could go, the whole thing, with these blasts.”

“We'll hurry,” said the chief.

There was a roar and Stormalong took up slack on the defense cable. He was using his plane's bullhorns. “Ready to rip!” he yelled. “Tell me when everyone is clear!”

The big marine attack plane was hanging in the air at the dam end. Grapnels had the cable and it was loose from the junction box. Men were scrambling away there.

Jonnie yelled to the men on the port-a-packs. “Stand clear!”

Unwilling to leave their drills, they nevertheless shut them off and went slipping and sliding away from the cliff edge.

Jonnie checked it. They were in the clear all along what must be the cable path. “Let her rip!” he yelled into his mine radio.

In the plane, Stormalong poured it on. The cable, like a gigantic snake, jerking and resisting, began to come out of the ground. It was stalling the plane. Stormalong began to dance the huge ship up and down, yanking at the cable. Foot by foot and yard by yard it worked free of the ground. The plane rose higher and higher, working along the cliff edge.

He had almost half of it out of the ground!

There was a ripping pop. The cable parted!

Stormalong's ship catapulted toward the sky, trailing two hundred yards of cable.

He checked the rise. That Stormalong could fly. He took the broken piece up the lake and laid it on the shore. He triggered his quick release and dropped it.

Stormalong came back overhead. Someone in the plane was lowering the grapnels. “Hook me up!” yelled Stormalong through the bullhorn above.

Men went slithering down to the cliff edge. They caught the grapnel and got it securely fastened to the torn cable end.

It could be patched. But all this was taking time and the drill crews weren't drilling.

They got it fastened again and once more Stormalong was pulling the remaining length from the bed in which it had rested for centuries.

He got it free of the blast area and dropped it.

The men raced back to their drills.

“We're all finished here!” came Chief Chong-won's voice on the mine radio.

“Excellent,” said Jonnie. “Now clear every man out of there and tell me when they're gone, including you!”

He could see them streaming out of the powerhouse and up the far roadway, tiny figures in blue work clothes. At last they were safely away from the dam. “All clear, Lord Jonnie," said Chief Chong-won.

It wouldn't stop the drilling. Jonnie signaled Dwight. Dwight gave the crew at the wreck their orders. “Fire in the hole!” yelled Dwight. Jonnie could see them setting fuses. Then they slipped and slithered and plowed through the ooze to their flying platform and boarded it. They had to bodily haul the last one onto it by his collar and fly off with his legs still dangling. The platform went over to a safe area and landed. Jonnie watched the wreck area.

Blowie! Blowie! The sharp cracks of blast cord exploding.

A long line of mud catapulted into the sky. Smoke and spattering goo obscured the wreck for a moment.

A shock wave made the ground tremble. A small roll of water ran down the lake. Twenty-four seconds after the blast the sound of it reached them like a hard buffet with a big hand.

The smoke was clearing away up there. The enormous wreck had not moved but a channel had been cut through the upper and lower crater edges. A trickle of water started through the farther one. Just a trickle?

Jonnie held his breath, eyeing it with a scope, afraid that in their shortness of time they would have to shoot again. “Come on! Come on!” he was saying. “More, more!” He knew water was very erosive and tended to chew and widen its own way. “Come on!”

The farther side was at least two feet higher than the lake at the dam. It should have more push than that!

Right then some object in the way of the flow was worked out by the water. It was a big blast gun. It twisted in the swirl and then at last went tumbling away.

The water burst through the far crater wall. It swirled and surged in the crater, a boiling, frothing churn of discolored mud. Water thrust the upper channel wider. More water burst through.

Now it was working at the nearest ditch the blast cord had dug. It gnawed at obstruction and debris. And then it started through!

A third surge in the upper crater. Pieces were tearing loose. There was a roaring torrent there now. The bowl was filling; it was emptying into the lower lake.

They had gotten the river running again. Jonnie told Dwight to give them a very well done. The drills were raving and smoking. Jonnie looked at his watch. They only had about twenty minutes left. Where had the time gone? “How many drill sections have you gotten into those holes?” asked Jonnie to Thor.