![]() But it had been discovered that, like the process of living itself, there was more to modern mining than logic. The logically optimum answer was available at the touch of a button. Logical decision, and the facts on which to base decision were supplied by the computer element in the equipment. He was seated before the control panels of the console like the identity before the brain. And a touch of megalomania did him no harm on the job. The single engineer on shift at the time controlled all this. As the mine machinery moved, it created and abandoned surface shafts, elevator tubes, new exploratory levels and stopes and extended the vast central cavern through which the heavier machinery and its controlling console slid with the work in progress, laying down rails before and taking them up behind. On various levels it gnawed out the gold-bearing ore, ground it up to pebble-sized chunks, and sent it by the carload up six hundred feet or more to the open air and the equipment above. Like some ponderous, many-purposed organism, the mine walked in the layered rock. ![]() It consisted of some hundred and eighty million dollars’ worth of equipment, spread out through three and a half cubic miles of gold-ore-bearing rock-granite and quartz-all controlled by the single console where the shift engineer on duty sat. ![]() The mine, generally speaking, was automatic. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Science Fiction, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.Īll characters in this book are fictitious. ![]() ![]() No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. Dickson.įirst Start Science Fiction edition 2013.Īll Rights Reserved. ![]()
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