Scott watched his brother stride away toward Thunderbird Two, Mrs. Orizova barely burden enough to slow his stride. He turned back to the yurt. Stepping up close, he saw where the felt walls were tied onto an underlying lattice, and got to work. As he remove the heavy cloth from the side walls, the underlying structure became apparent, and when he had the felt removed, he started on the long staves that had held up the roof.

Scott admired the design of the tent, but after thirty minutes of lifting the heavy staves, he was very glad when Virgil at last appeared from Thunderbird Two, ready to help. Scott did a doubletake as his brother approached. "You okay?"

Virgil rolled his eyes, running his thumb over a scratch on his jaw line. "Yeah, I'm fine. The minute she saw the needle, she went berserk." Virgil shook his head. "You know, I'm thinking that she's done time in a mental institution. I don't think this is just because of the accident."

Scott glanced back at Thunderbird Two. "You're probably right, but it doesn't change things."

"Yeah." Virgil inspected the tent, which only had a few roof-staves left "You got a lot done."

"Much to my surprise, it didn't take an engineering degree to figure out the eaves had to come down next."

Virgil's eyes twinkled as he teased, "Yes, but you went around the wrong way. Any good engineer would go counter-clockwise when taking it down. You go clockwise when putting it up."

That bit of silliness lightened Scott's heart, and he laughed out loud. "Just for that, you can take down the rest of the roof yourself while I put in a call to Base."

Virgil mock-bowed, "Yes, oh mighty leader."

Still smiling, Scott lightly punched his brother in the shoulder before stepping away to make his call. "Thunderbird One to Thunderbird Five, Alan, put me through to Dad, would you?"

"Sure thing, Scott."

"Scott? How's it going, son?"

"It's moving slowly at the moment, Dad. We're taking down the yurt that was covering the mine, and that's taking some time. The woman who called us in has had a breakdown, so Virgil has her under sedation in the infirmary. We're going to need to divert to a hospital when it's all said and done."

"I'll have Alan make the arrangements. Anything else?"

"No. Until we start tunneling, it's hard to say what kind of timeframe we're looking at."

"Son, I don't want you boys underground for any longer than thirty minutes, understand? If you can't do it quickly, I want you out of there."

"Understood, Father." Scott responded formally. "I'll be back in touch when I have anything new to report."

"FAB."

Scott turned back to the site to discover that his brother had completed removing the ribs of the roof and was working on dismantling the latticework side walls. As Scott moved to join him, Virgil lifted a section of the wall free, and folded it up like an accordion. "Nifty."

Virgil looked up with a grin. "Yeah, I really like the way these things are designed. If we had a couple of camels, we could load up the whole thing and go caravanning."

"Uh huh. Well, you can keep your camels, I'll stick with Thunderbird One and a pup tent."

Virgil chuckled, and the two men continued their work. It was only a matter of a few minutes before they had the last section of wall neatly stacked with the roof staves and felt pieces. In silent accord, they both moved to look down the hole.

In the harsh light of day, the so-called mine looked even worse to Scott's eye. It looked to be no more than 20 inches across, and if he had stumbled across it elsewhere, he would have sworn that no human would have willingly gone down it.

Next to him, Virgil was shaking his head sadly, "God, Scott, can you imagine what their lives had to have been like to make them dig a hole like this? You know, they didn't do it in just a day. Having to face going back down there day after day… it had to have been Hell."

Scott nodded, unable to speak, just as caught as his brother in sudden empathy for the woman's husband and sons. After a few moments, he pulled himself together. "Okay, let's get to work."