by Samuel Best
It spun counterclockwise immediately, then slowed and spun the other way. The needle pegged back and forth like a metronome, until finally settling into a straight line. The sharper end of the needle pointed deeper into the tunnel. The flat end pointed back toward the ship.
A makeshift compass on Earth would align itself along a north-south axis. Merritt didn’t know if the same rules applied on Galena, but he had nothing else to go on. The wreckage of the Halcyon was behind him, being mostly to the west when he fell into the underground cavern. If his compass was indeed orientated on a north-south axis, that would mean…
Merritt looked down the dark tunnel, into blackness.
East, he thought. Toward the mountains.
He glanced back at Ivan, who still rested against the rocky tunnel wall with his eyes closed, his thin chest rising and falling with shuddering breaths.
Merritt placed the instruction paper and needle back into the plastic snap-case and stuffed it into one pocket of his coveralls as he walked back. He pulled off Ivan’s shoes, pants, and shirt. Ivan’s eyelids fluttered open briefly but he didn’t make a sound.
The puddle was shallow, but deep enough to submerge one piece of clothing at a time. He rubbed each garment on the rocky bottom of the puddle and wrung them out as best he could. For the tattered shoes, he dipped one side at a time and rubbed the outer fabric underwater with a flat rock he found nearby. He laid out the wet clothes on the ground and goose-stepped over the puddle, trying not to soak his own shoes.
The tunnel widened shortly after. It curved gradually to the south, and Merritt realized he would have to stop frequently to use the compass if they made any sort of decent progress underground.
A black void appeared before him, stretching up out of sight.
Merritt had stepped out of the tunnel and into a vast underground chamber. He could see neither walls, floor, or ceiling, but he had the distinct impression the space was enormous. The air was cool, still, and utterly silent save for the occasional echo of single droplets falling into water.
In the distance, perhaps a hundred meters opposite the tunnel opening, a soft blue light glowed in the darkness. It illuminated a patch of wet rock at the base of what looked like crooked trees, but Merritt couldn’t be sure at that distance.
He picked up the wet clothes and went back to Ivan, crouching low as he passed back through the narrow tunnel. Ivan watched his approach with bloodshot eyes. A sheen of sweat covered his entire body.
Dark, wet patches covered Ivan’s pale chest and thighs. Their discoloration matched the blisters on his face and lips. He tried to speak but coughed, his thin body convulsing.
Merritt helped him put on his loose T-shirt and pants, then struggled to pull on his wet shoes. He hammered the worn heels with his palm to force them into place. Ivan groaned and leaned back against the wall.
“Sorry,” Merritt said. “The tunnel opens into a huge cavern up ahead. We’ll follow that as far as we can, if you think you can walk.”
Ivan nodded slowly. “Not dying down here.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Merritt quietly as he helped him up. “Low ceiling here. Careful.”
Ivan crawled through the puddle where Merritt had washed his clothes. Merritt followed him, crouching down as he carefully avoided the water.
“Air feels good,” said Ivan as he stood up at the threshold of the pitch-black cavern. He peered at the blue light in the distance.
“Walk slowly,” Merritt advised. “There might be cracks in the rock.”
He half-walked, half-slid his feet forward across the ground, testing the surface before transferring his full weight. The rock floor was mostly flat, with only slight variation in elevation. The rock was smooth, as if the floor of the cavern had once been the bed of a rushing underground river.
“Compass work?” Ivan asked, his weak voice carrying far in the cavern.
“Like a charm,” Merritt replied. “Assuming magnetism works the same here as on Earth.”
“Is more for orienting. Assign one end of needle to north, and you always know east.”
“Learn that in the Boy Scouts?”
Ivan was silent for a moment. “No Boy Scouts in Russia. Not much of anything.”
A fit of violent coughing shook his body, sending him to the hard ground on his hands and knees. The faint blue light ahead glinted off dark fluid streaming from his mouth.
Merritt walked toward him to help him up but Ivan urgently waved him away.
“Nyet!” he hissed, then spat on the ground. He stood up and wavered on shaking legs. “I do this alone.”
He began walking toward the blue light, one leg trailing slightly behind in a shuffling limp.
As they approached the oasis of luminescence, the tree-shaped objects resolved themselves into thick, gnarled roots, tangled together as they rose into the darkness of the cavern.
The light was coming from a cluster of fungus-like plants on the rocky floor. Thick stalks emerged from a crack in the rock, rising as high as Merritt’s knees. A cluster of fleshy spheres topped each stalk, glowing like small blue suns. Merritt peered into the luminous crack but could not see its end. The stalks had snaked their way up from deep below the cavern.
Ivan touched one of the spheres and there was a POP of electric current. He snapped his hand back and wiped it on his wet shirt as a thin wisp of smoke curled up from the glowing sphere. A small black patch where he’d touched the plant slowly vanished, replaced by the uniform blue glow.
Merritt frowned when he noticed the roots weren’t growing from the ground. He tapped one with a knuckle and it swung a few centimeters above the ground like a stiff pendulum.
He looked up, into the darkness above.
“These are growing down from the ceiling.”
Ivan coughed, the noise echoing off distant walls.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “More up ahead.”
Merritt walked out of the small circle of light so his eyes could once again adjust to the shadows. There was another tunnel up ahead, at the far side of the cavern. It appeared no larger than a thumbnail at that distance. Blue light poured through its opening, fighting a losing battle with the darkness of the cavern.
Ivan limped forward, one hand over his stomach, the other hanging lifeless by his side.
Merritt walked into something hard and stepped back, surprised. He put his hands out and caught a swinging root as thick as his own waist. Its bark was wet and gritty. Merritt sniffed his hand and smelled nothing.
The bottom of the dangling root peeled open like a blooming, upside-down flower, casting a blue glow on the rocky ground. Merritt stepped to the side and bumped into another hanging root. The stumpy terminus of the second root barely touched the floor of the cavern. The tip split open into four broad petals that curled up to reveal luminous blue spheres, identical to the ones on the ends of the plant stalks emerging from the crack. Thick, vine-like tendrils retreated up into the thick root when exposed to the cool air of the cavern, tugging the glowing spheres deeper inside their protective sheath.
Merritt backed into Ivan as more roots opened around them, seemingly responding to some invisible stimulus broadcast by the first two he had bumped into.
Like lanterns being lit in the darkness, hundreds of lights swelled into existence near the ground all the way to the bright tunnel on the far side of the cavern, illuminating the massive underground chamber.
Merritt’s gaze drifted up, following one of the thick, gnarled roots along its path to the ceiling of the cavern. It connected to a wide, bare tree trunk sticking straight down from the rocky ceiling. A dozen other dangling roots connected to the same tree trunk, forming a splayed bough, the branches of which lost rigidity farther from the trunk and drooped as they descended toward the cavern floor.
He tried to count the number of bare tree trunks embedded in the ceiling, but lost track after thirty.
“These are the trees from above,” he said. “They’re upside-down. Look there,
closer to the ceiling.” He pointed at broad, spade-shaped leaves hanging limply halfway up the branches. In the dim blue light far below, they appeared black. “This is the forest canopy.”
“Then what is above?” asked Ivan.
“Taproots,” Merritt replied.
“Tap what?”
“It’s a special root, bigger and stronger than the rest, that goes straight down into the ground. Soyflower stalks have them, too. Only these trees are upside-down, so the taproot grows toward the sky.”
“What is the purpose?”
“In this case, it might be a storage organ. Maybe it collects nutrients from the surface atmosphere.”
Ivan looked at him. “I thought you work on ship.”
“I took a farming class with my son.” The thought of Gavin tightened his chest and pushed the air from his lungs. He took a deep breath, and said, “We need to keep moving.”
Merritt took a step and the bottom tips of the nearest branches closed, cutting off their internal light sources. The rest of the branches did the same in rapid succession, their petals rolling down to pinch tightly together. The cavern slowly dimmed until it was plunged once more into near-absolute darkness. Soon the only lights were coming from the small crack in the ground behind Merritt and Ivan, and the bright tunnel up ahead.
Ten long minutes later they made it to the tunnel. Merritt had bumped into two more branches, and Ivan stumbled into three, but none of them had opened at the bottom.
They stood before the rock-lined passageway, bathed in blue light, breathing hard in the thin air.
“Wow,” said Ivan.
The tunnel extended in a straight line through the rock, roughly the size of a hyperrail tunnel on Earth. It gradually descended, until the far end dipped out of sight. Smaller versions of the hanging branches in the large cavern protruded at crooked angles from the gray rock ceiling. The tip of each one was splayed open to reveal marble-sized blue spheres clustered like grapes in knotted clumps of fibrous white strands.
More spheres grew on thick stalks that sprouted from cracks in the walls and floor.
“Is beautiful,” Ivan whispered.
He coughed harshly and doubled over, clenching his stomach. Sweat dripped from his face as he clenched his eyes against the pain. The coughing subsided and he slowly got to his feet.
“Use compass?” he asked, his voice strained.
“It’s the only way to go,” Merritt replied. “We can check it on the other end of the tunnel.” He looked deeper into the long passage, then added, “If there is one.”
As they walked down the tunnel, beneath the flowering branches, Merritt paid closer attention to the walls. They weren’t jagged, as he would expect from a naturally-formed underground cavern. Like the floor of the massive chamber behind them, the walls were worn smooth, as if by the steady passage of water.
Or something else, he thought. But if that were true, nothing would be growing. Anything big enough to touch the walls would scrape away all the plant life.
Ivan coughed again, his hacks punctuating the silence like gunshots. With each cough, the branches in the ceiling twitched.
Merritt stepped forward, approaching a particularly long branch. He clapped his hands right next to it and it shot up into the ceiling, disappearing into a small hole.
“I’ve just had a disturbing thought,” Merritt confided. “Let’s pick up the pace.”
He looked at Ivan to be sure, and Ivan nodded. Merritt moved at just on the brink of a light jog, glancing back frequently. Ivan half-limped, half-stumbled to follow, but he did so without complaint. His jaw was set, his bloodshot eyes were determined, and he refused any offer for help.
“You think this goes under mountains?” he asked.
Merritt looked up at the dangling branches. “I really hope so.”
The glowing branches became sparse as the tunnel widened, eventually opening into a dome-shaped chamber the size of a small house. Several tunnel entrances of varying sizes in the wall led away from the chamber, their interiors occluded by darkness.
A single tree trunk the size of a Sequoia hung suspended from the apex of the dome. Dozens of thick, intertwining branches spread out from its hanging base and gently curved toward the ground, forming an upside-down bowl. The rim of the bowl hovered two meters off the ground. Piercing white light glowed from hairline cracks in the branches and shined off the wet rock walls.
Directly beneath the tree, atop a very slight rise in the floor, was a small, smooth gray boulder. It rested in the middle of a patch of dry green moss, which crawled up its sides, striving to reach the top. Small blue spheres glowed from thin white stalks around its base.
“Bozhe moi,” whispered Ivan. “This is the place.”
He limped past Merritt, climbing the small rise leading to the central stone.
“We can’t stop here,” said Merritt.
Ivan didn’t reply. He limped to the boulder and fell against it as if all his remaining energy had been suddenly yanked away. Merritt hurried to his side as he put his back to the stone and slid down to sit on the ground.
He sighed with great relief and slicked back his wet hair, further accentuating his sharp widow’s peak. More blisters had formed on his face and neck. His skin was a pale, sickly green.
“Always thought diabetes would kill me,” he said. “Not radiation.”
“You’re not dead yet.”
Ivan suppressed a cough and shook his head. “Listen. The big man on ship, the one you make deal with.”
“Tulliver?”
Ivan nodded. “He stole my ticket. He wants in charge. You must stop him.” He sighed heavily. “Is very bad man.”
“We’ll talk about this after we get out of here.”
Ivan’s hand shot out and gripped Merritt’s wrist with surprising strength.
“Don’t let him speak.” He shook Merritt’s wrist for emphasis. “He will ruin everything. You must stop him. For your boy.”
Ivan coughed and released his grip. He leaned back against the rock and looked up at the glowing branches. A faint smile graced his lips.
“You know,” he said weakly, “on Earth, I worth nothing. On ship, I worth nothing.” He looked into Merritt’s eyes. “Thank you for saving me.”
He clutched his stomach and howled in pain, his voice echoing down the tunnels branching off from the chamber. His entire body shook. It bounced against the boulder and the mossy carpeting over the rocky ground.
Merritt gripped his shoulders and tried to steady him. Heat radiated from Ivan’s skin through his wet T-shirt. He spasmed once and his body went limp against the stone, his chin resting on his shoulder.
Merritt felt for a pulse, but found none. He gently tilted Ivan’s head back so it rested against the boulder, then he stepped back and closed his eyes, searing the visual into his brain. No one else would remember Ivan, and Merritt didn’t want to forget.
A low rumble echoed out of one of the tunnels leading away from the dome-shaped chamber.
Merritt opened his eyes, unsure if it was a ground tremor or rushing water he hadn’t noticed before. He walked past the boulder and stood before a trio of tunnels roughly the same shape as the one from which he and Ivan had emerged.
The rumbling sound resolved itself into a distinctive noise of smaller rocks grinding against the tunnel walls. The sound was definitely coming from the tunnel on the left. Merritt swallowed hard, realizing that was the tunnel he would have chosen to take — the one that started more or less in a straight line with the one across the chamber.
He took another step toward the dark tunnel. The rumbling sound grew louder, building to a roar as the floor began to shake. An otherworldly shriek echoed out from deep within the dark passageway.
He stumbled backward, his skin crawling as his breath caught in his throat.
Something else besides Merritt was using those tunnels to travel underground — something big — and it was headed right for him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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LEERA
Leera touched the small goose egg on her right shin where her fracture had been only hours before.
“Can you walk?” asked Uda.
Leera nodded as she stood on unsteady legs. She wiped an itch on her temple with the back of her wrist and smeared warm blood into her hair.
“I’m bleeding,” she said distantly, staring at her wrist.
“Let me see,” said Uda, stepping closer. She gingerly prodded Leera’s hairline. “A small cut. You’ll be fine.”
Something behind Leera caught her eye. She bent down and picked up half of a broken radio spike. Shorn wires splayed from one open end like a nest of snakes.
“Here’s the other one,” said Leera.
She pulled the second spike from a pile of dirt and flipped the power switch.
“Still working,” she said, showing the others its tiny, glowing screen.
Corporal Turner searched the cockpit, climbing over warped sections of the shuttle’s roof. He found his rifle beneath a small mound of dirt and wiped it off, then cleared the chamber with a loud CLACK. A shiny bronze bullet spun through the air and landed softly in the dirt. He retrieved it, brushed it off, and loaded it back into the gun.
“I only have seven rounds,” he explained. “We have to climb up to get to the hatch.”
“Let’s check the hold first,” said Uda. “There might be more radio spikes.”
They climbed the short ladder at the back of the cockpit, then stepped off onto the ceiling of the small cargo hold near the aft of the shuttle.
Turner leaned back over the ladder shaft and looked up.
“Part of the hatch is missing,” he said. “The ramp is twisted. We should be able to crawl out.”
“Here!” said Uda.
She waded through a sea of empty storage crates, toward the back of the hold. The rear wall was covered with cargo netting — pockets of varying sizes that pinned equipment in place.
Uda grabbed the corner of one pocket and peeled it down, popping the snaps. Several radio spikes fell free and clattered on the empty storage crates below.
After a quick check, she said, “These four have been modified.”