Manhra's eyes turned away to the side, his hands moved away from his head and rested on the windowsill, "You're lying to me. I know. You've all lied to me, all this time… But that's okay. I won't kill you… Okay. Go and get everyone working. Today's plan is to double the workload. Go and tell everyone that."
Chum turned toward the window and looked at the Sky again, "I don't know how much stronger humans are, but their Sky is a hundred times more beautiful than ours."
Same on March 25.
After explaining all matters: family and work, Gabriel finally took charge of the purification. The task was extremely difficult – to clean no more than 12 tons. Ah, what a difficult word "no more" was, and what it meant to the miners. They had to hit that number: more than that, and the 253rd catfish would give everyone a long life; less than that, they themselves would give everyone a long life; the others were on a slightly different calculation, but still they would probably get some too.
In the past, coal was cleaned automatically – it was placed on a conveyor belt with water sprayers along it, which was necessary to prevent methane from condensing: it penetrates the lungs and can explode. Now we used our hands. Everything was long, and there was nothing to breathe, and everyone worked, and eventually everyone died from it.
The commander was somewhere in the middle of the hall when Deputy Rich approached him: "Commander, urgent business."
"What else? Some of the chums are in danger of not fulfilling their plan to stone us – do we need to help?" – Gora looked at his assistant with a look characterized by the phrase "we will help in this – we will help in this, as long as our old men are not touched" (only the old men kept them from "running over" to the Maquis).
"Kolya. The black laborer. I'm told he has something to say…" "Which one of us doesn't?"
Nikolay Zemlyakov (number 52436483C3) is one of only two black workers of 381 Soma, the other was Sergey Chernousov (number 77242388C3).
What could he say – they prepared him a royal "exit" – 20 kilograms. Is it too much for him? Nevertheless, seventeen minutes later Gabriel was standing by the pit, "You called, buddy?"
The six-meter-deep pit seemed like an infinite space, that all the coal mined for a month could be thrown in there, but in fact it reeked of rotten decomposing corpses of former workers: and no matter how many of them died there, the space did not get smaller – it is hard to believe that the bodies of the dead can so easily fold into nothing…, but it is so. Inside, the miners got used to it quite quickly, but those who came out of there alive told me that even after a full day's work the first week it was impossible to fall asleep, and then it was terrible to wake up, in the bones of their comrades and continue working.