The Steam Mole by Dave Freer Read Free Book Online

looking at her. She rushed out, calling, “Clara! Clara? Where are you, Clara?”
    Linda was fairly sure she was not going to get a reply.
    One thing was certain. It would be a rotten time, for the next few days, to meet Nicky at night as he suggested. If Clara had run away, police would investigate every young woman they could find out on the street.

    â€œGunna have to change at Mooree,” said Sandy. “I’m on the Tjarri Power Station, that’s sixty miles from Dajarra, but we’re pushing north. Dajarra is the last power station pushing south from Sheba. So you’ll haveta change tonight at Mooree. That’s where the Alice Line splits off. You go on to Alice, across to Sheba, and then down to Dajarra. That’s the last part of the back-cut towards us. They’ve got maybe thirty miles to go, and one more power station, before the line opens all the way to Ceduna. They’re pushing hard, but it’s hard rock country.”
    He tapped the fellow with the handlebar moustache on the shoulder. “Mick’s going to Sheba. He’ll see you through and onto the supply clanker to Dajarra. Not many going that way on this trip, I reckon. They got some real crook bastards workin’ the shifts up there. My shift-captain worked there for a while, but he don’t like some of that crew. The station boss, he’s all right, though, I reckon. Feller called McGurk. Talk straight to him, I reckon. No use pretending you’re not there.”

    The big difference, Tim decided, between the exhausting work on the steam mole and the submarine—where work could be exhausting, too—was the power stations. The steam mole would do thirty-six hours at the bore-face and then be pulled back to thepower station, and the next mole would be cantilevered in. The crew would get some proper sleep, then re-tip the drill heads, then have some more time off in the cavernous power station. You didn’t have to live with the crew in the confined space of the mole, which was like the submarine in that sense, for months on end. His cubby on the steam mole was smaller, and the noise and vibration were such that it was hard to sleep well—but for thirty-six hours you could get by on exhausted catnaps. It made, however, for even more bad-tempered companions.
    â€œWhat you writing, Blackfeller? I didn’t know you blacks could write. I thought it was too much for your brains,” said the burly steam-biscuit foreman, staring at Tim, huddled in his cubby-bunk, trying to gather his thoughts with a precious piece of paper and an indelible pencil. Writing to Clara wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to moan. And he didn’t want to say anything about needing to break his contract and get back to the Cuttlefish . Heaven alone knew what that girl might do. The thought made him smile. Capable of taking on a wildfire with a thimble full of water, was Clara.
    It wasn’t what the steam-biscuit foreman wanted. “I said, what you writing, Blackfeller? You answer me when I talk to you.”
    As far as they were concerned he was one of the aboriginals, and that, it seemed, was enough to make some of the steam-mole crew nasty. And a fight with this big bruiser wouldn’t help.
    â€œA letter,” Tim answered.
    â€œOooh…a letter now. Black boy’s writing a letter. I didn’t think you boongs could write your own name. Lemme see.” And he snatched it from Tim’s hand.
    â€œGive that back!” yelled Tim, stretching for it. He didn’t have any more paper and he’d gone to such effort to clean his hands before touching it. Now this oaf with coal-black thumbs was smearing it.
    The foreman held it out of reach. “Dear Clara,” he read. “Ooh, black boy’s got hisself a woman. I didn’t know you wrote to them. I thought you blackfellers just pulled their skirts off.” And as heturned to the rest of the watching audience in their