by Geoff Palmer
‘There must be all sorts of hazards out there for mice — and that’s without Albert and the children.’ She glanced back across the waste ground. ‘But I expect you’ll want to think about it first. Discuss it amongst yourselves. Please do. But please hurry too. I can only give you half an hour. I’ll keep watch while you decide. If I see the others coming back, I’ll try to delay them.
‘When I return, I’ll take the cage with me. If you’re inside, I’ll take you to safety. If you’re not, I’ll assume that you have other plans. OK?’
There was no reply from the bush, not even a bird call.
‘OK,’ Alice said to herself and headed off.
* * *
A rush of air, choking dust, and Norman Smith were Coral’s last impressions. For a moment, she thought she was dead. She railed against the thought of being buried with him sprawled on top of her. What would future archaeologists think? Then he stirred and coughed and rolled aside. Coral struggled to her feet.
Ahead of them, lit by his own torch, Ludokrus was shaking off dust and grit. He looked dazed. ‘What happen?’
‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ Norman said. ‘You came rushing in here like an idiot, she followed you, then the Sentinels set off a landslide.’
Coral recalled a shove from behind, driving her forward, away from the crashing debris. ‘Does that mean ... you just saved my life?’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Norman said, striding off into the darkness. ‘Not that it’ll make much difference now.’
Ludokrus played his torch over the jumble of rocks behind them. The first five metres of the mineshaft was gone.
‘What do you mean it won’t make much difference?’ Coral called.
‘Do you see any other way out?’ Norman’s voice echoed back.
They followed him down the shaft, catching up with him at the far end, adding their torch beams to the light of his.
‘See? I told you there was nothing here.’
‘But—’
‘And don’t forget, I still have this.’ He held up the receiver. ‘If Tim was anywhere nearby it would have picked him up.’
‘But we heard—’
‘Recordings,’ Norman said.
‘What?’
‘Do you still not get it? The Sentinels played recordings of Alkemy and Tim to lure us in here. Then they set off that landslide.’
‘Recordings?’ Coral said. ‘But that must mean—’
‘Yeah, obviously. They’ve already got the others.’
* * *
A metal grille blocked the end of the passage. Solid steel. Thick vertical bars ten centimetres apart. Too narrow to squeeze through. Like the bars on a prison cell.
‘Just like the others,’ Tim said, giving it a shake. It didn’t budge.
‘That make three in row,’ Alkemy said. ‘Maybe fourth time is lucky.’
‘I hope so.’
They sloshed their way back to the junction then headed off down the rightmost passage, the only one still unexplored.
It began like all the others, curving and snaking, seemingly at random. The tunnels were monotonous and the pinkish half-light made him feel sleepy, but the source of it was interesting. It came from strands behind the glassy surface of the walls. They seemed too random and organic to be light fittings. Tim guessed they were some sort of alien glowworm.
Up ahead, Alkemy paused at the next bend and let out a sigh.
‘Don’t tell me. Another grille.’
She shook her head and stood staring as he came up behind her.
‘Oh wow!’
The tunnel opened out into a cathedral-sized cleft in the rock where jagged sloping walls rose to a point high above them. The filament-worms had colonised the entire space, clustering so densely near the top that it seemed as though it was lit by a ribbon of light. The rough walls shimmered and glowed. Except for a U-shaped channel etched into the floor — a continuation of the passage they were standing in — the formation looked entirely natural.
They stood entranced, staring up at the magical light show.
‘Is beautiful,’ Alkemy said.
Tim looked about in wonder as they moved slowly through it. ‘To think, this is buried under that barren valley. Amazing!’
‘The little worm go everywhere except for here.’ Alkemy stopped at a seam of whitish-yellow crystals different from the surrounding rocks. The U-shaped channel skirted round it too, doubling back on itself to avoid it, leaving a drab grey island in a wilderness of pink. Tim picked at the outcrop as they passed and broke off a couple of pieces. It was dry and crumbled easily. He wondered what it was.
They followed the channel to the other side of the fissure. There the circular tunnel began again. Five minutes later, they came to a Y-junction. The passage to the left was barred — Tim tested the grille, but it was fixed solid — and they moved on. After another bend, they found an unusually straight section that ended at yet another grille.
Tim stopped and slumped against the curved wall. ‘That’s it. This really is a dead-end. There’s no way out of here.’
‘The Sentinel must pass,’ Alkemy said.
‘Yeah, but they must carry remote controls or something.’
Alkemy pressed on, seeing it through to the bitter end. He watched her test the grille then turn to one side and examine a section of the wall that was lost in shadow. That was unusual. Everywhere else the light was boringly uniform. He roused himself and sloshed after her.
‘Must be fresh,’ she said, taking out her torch. ‘The glow-strands do not grow here yet.’
This section of tunnel had been widened and there was a trough cut in the floor filled with a milky-looking liquid. Tim knelt and touched a finger to the cloudy surface. It had a consistency like custard and gave off a faint vinegary smell. He rubbed a little between his thumb and forefinger. It felt slimy and unpleasant and stuck to his skin, and after a few seconds he felt it burning. The pain grew sharply and he spun round and doused his fingers in the water in the bottom of the tunnel. He ran them back and forth till the stinging subsided, then took out his hand and studied the tips of his fingers. The skin was red and tender.
‘Wonder what that is,’ he said. ‘Like some sort of acid. Maybe we could use it to eat through the bars.’
He looked up to find Alkemy staring past him, her face frozen in shock.
Following the direction of her gaze, he saw a Sentinel watching them, its bulk filling the tunnel they’d just passed through.
‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he said, then remembered the Y-junction further back.
A movement to his right caught his attention. He turned to find a second Sentinel pressed against the grille at the end of the straight section of tunnel. As he watched, it pressed harder. The metal bars made indentations in its slimy surface. Then all at once it oozed around and through them, reforming on the other side before slithering straight towards them.
34 : Camouflage
Coral slumped against the side of the mineshaft. The rock was cold and hard. ‘That’s it then. They’ve got us all. Game over.’
‘You should not come in here,’ Ludokrus said.
‘I was following you! If you hadn’t charged off like that—’
‘I tell you to go careful from the start. But you, you do not listen.’
‘Yeah, go careful. Pity you didn’t take your own advice.’
‘I hear my sister is in trouble. What you think I do?’
‘Well I heard my brother—’
‘He does not cry out like she. Not upset cry.’
‘No? So where is he then? I can’t seem to see him at the moment.’
‘Jeez, you two,’ Norman said. ‘Give it up! We’ve only got about twenty-four hours worth of oxygen in here.’
They fell silent.
‘Is that all?’ Coral whispered. ‘Really?’
‘Nah. A space this big will have enough breathable oxygen for weeks. We’ll die of thirst first. Or starve.’
‘Oh you’re a bag of laug
hs.’
‘I try,’ Norman said.
Coral turned to Ludokrus and added in a lower tone. ‘Anyway, if I had stayed outside, that landslide would have hit me.’
He looked up. He hadn’t thought of that.
A long moment passed as they stood staring at each other. Then Coral said, ‘Oh Ludokrus!’
Ludokrus said, ‘Oh Coral!’
They fell into each others arms.
‘Oh jeez,’ Norman said, ‘if you’re going to get all soppy, go up the other end please. I’m trying to work here.’
‘Work?’
‘Yeah.’
‘At what?’
‘Trying to find a way out.’
‘We know the way out. It’s kind of blocked right now.’
‘I mean the other way out.’
‘What?’
‘Well there must be one. Where have the Sentinels taken Tim and Alkemy? We saw them come in here, but we haven’t seen them leave.’
‘Oh, I never thought.’
‘What a surprise,’ Norman said.
‘So what exactly are you looking for?’
‘I dunno,’ he sighed, studying the wall with his torch. ‘But I’ll know it when I see it.’
‘Care to give us a clue?’
‘Some sort of door or sliding hatch would be my guess. It must be camouflaged because it’s not obvious, but there’ll be a seam or a gap around the edge where it slots against the real wall.’
The others joined him in his search. Ludokrus started at the dead-end. Coral took the opposite wall. Five minutes later, Ludokrus called out, ‘You mean like this?’
He held his torch flat against the side, swivelling it left and right. The beam picked out ridges in the roughly mined surface, highlighting a small flat rectangular patch high up in the middle of the wall.
‘Yeah, that’s the sort of thing,’ Norman muttered.
The smooth patch was mottled with shades of brown and grey so it looked like the rest of the rock wall. It was easy to see how it would escape a cursory glance.
Norman reached up with the butt of his torch and tapped it. ‘It’s metal. Listen.’ He tapped the rock beside it for comparison.
‘It’s a bit small,’ Coral said. ‘They couldn’t get through there.’
‘It’s not exactly what we’re looking for,’ Norman said, ‘but it’s a start. Remember the flashing light that brought Tim and Alkemy here in the first place? That had to come from somewhere. It must have been pointing directly out the shaft, which would make this an ideal spot for it.’
‘OK, but how do we check? That cover sounds pretty solid.’
‘I know,’ Ludokrus said, reaching for the calculator. ‘Remember my dishwash formula?
* * *
Tim watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the Sentinel slurped through the bars in front of him, oozing and reforming on the other side. He took a step back and collided with Alkemy, who was edging away from the Sentinel coming from the other direction.
‘Go away!’ he yelled.
Two gelatinous antennae snaked out, hovering near his face, gliding to and fro, seeming to examine him, their ends forming suction cup-like pads that pulsed greasily. After a brief exchange of chittering, the Sentinel thrust its antennae at Tim’s chest, their ends spreading, pushing him back against the wall of the passage. At the same moment, the other Sentinel thrust its antennae at Alkemy, pushing her back towards the trough. She stumbled and threw out a hand, trying to find something to hold on to, and ended up grabbing it, but the glutinous substance simply oozed through her fingers and left her clawing empty air.
She tumbled backwards.
Tim cried out and struggled harder, but the antennae pushed him away, sliding him along the smooth-walled passage to where the second Sentinel took over his ejection. He tried fighting back, punching and kicking, but the few jabs that connected ended in dull splats. It was like trying to punch a gigantic jelly.
His last view of Alkemy was of her dancing on the surface of the trough. Something about the liquid resisted sudden impact and she kept switching from foot to foot, taking steps forward and back, then from side to side, but the Sentinel’s bulk blocked her from exiting. It thrust an antenna at her, making her stumble, and immediately one foot sank into the murk. She tried to pull it free, but it locked against the movement. Her other foot went under, and all was lost. She sank slowly, crying out, clawing for the side, but each time the Sentinel pushed her back.
Tim fought harder, punching, kicking and tearing at lumps of the gelatinous goo, and it seemed for a moment he was having some effect. Then the Sentinel drew back, reshaped its antennae into a pair of needle-sharp points and stabbed them at him half a dozen times in quick succession. One struck his forehead, one his cheek, one his neck. It was like being machine-gunned with pins and he was forced to back away.
Sensing its advantage, the Sentinel advanced, stabbing again and again with the pointed antennae, forcing him further and further back as Alkemy’s anxious cries turned to screams. He remembered the burning sensation on his fingers. Her whole body was sinking in that stuff.
‘Stop it! Stop it! Leave her alone!’ he yelled, tears of desperation running down his cheeks. But the pointed antennae kept stabbing at him and the Sentinel kept advancing, forcing him away.
35 : Batter Up!
Rivulets of nanomachines ran down the little hatch door, eating deeper and deeper into the metal surface, leaving a fine dust that drifted to the floor. Once they’d eaten away enough to leave a lip, the dust began piling up along the lower edge, so Ludokrus took a piece of paper from his pocket, folded it in a V, then carefully brushed the powder into it.
‘What are you doing?’ Coral said.
‘Saving the raw material. Maybe we can use.’
‘Raw material?’ She laughed. ‘We’re in a mine. We’re surrounded by raw materials.’
‘Yeah, but much rock must be refine to get at them. And to refine, the nanomachine will need the light. Our battery will not last so long.’ He stooped, made a neat pile of what he’d collected, and went back to gather more.
‘Almost there.’
He picked a large chunk of loosened metal free to reveal a square cut-out set into the wall.
‘Hah!’ Norman said. ‘Look, there’s the flashing light. The speaker too.’
‘Also microphone and camera.’
‘Camera?’ Coral said. ‘D’you mean they’ve been watching us?’
‘Not likely, the hatch was closed.’
‘Well, make sure they don’t.’
‘Easy.’ Ludokrus grabbed the camera and wrenched on it. Something snapped and it came free. He did the same with the other items, adding them to the recycling pile.
‘Right.’ Norman dusted off his hands. ‘That hatch is the sort of thing we’re looking for, just on a larger scale. Big enough for Tim and Alkemy to get through.’
* * *
Tim continued to retreat, the Sentinel continued to advance, stabbing its pointed antennae like a pair of spears and chittering a series of menacing screeches. He tried to force his way past, moving one way then darting back the other, but the Sentinel was too quick and stuck him in the side several times. Pin pricks, certainly, but still painful. Even if he could avoid the stabbing points, he’d still have to get past the creature’s bulk. It could easily squash and suffocate him against the tunnel wall.
Alkemy’s screams faded — that was one small mercy — but his feelings of helplessness and rage continued. He was furious at himself for not recognising the name of the gully, for not insisting on more caution, for not making some sort of weapon. But most of all he was furious at what these monsters were doing to his friend.
He stumbled backwards and found himself in the broad, cathedral-like fissure with its ribbon of light high above. Here he could get past the Sentinel, he thought. If it kept following him, he could simply step out of the etched channel and run past it. But the Sentinel spotted that weakness too and stopped, block
ing the mouth of the tunnel and expanding to fill it completely like an enormous slimy plug.
Tim tried jeers and feints, tried running towards it then backing away, but apart from steadily tracking his movements with the pointed antennae, the Sentinel showed no reaction.
He was desperate now. The memory of Alkemy’s screams burned into his brain. He considered a reckless, suicidal charge. But it was hopeless. He’d be stabbed a hundred times even before he reached the Sentinel itself.
He turned in fury to the fissure, seeking something, anything, to throw, and spotted the crumbly crystals by the kink in the channel. Seizing one of the larger lumps, he rushed back and hurled it at the Sentinel.
It didn’t bounce or shatter, but struck the creature’s upper edge, passing into the gelatinous membrane and causing the tissue to pucker on its passage through. The frequency of the menacing chitters went up a notch and he realised he’d hurt it. He rushed back and gathered more.
‘Come on! Come on, what are you going to do about it?’ he yelled, holding up another piece of rock.
The Sentinel suddenly seemed wary. It flattened the pointed tip of one of antenna, transforming it into a paddle that it used to deflect the second rock.
Tim threw two more in quick succession. The first was knocked aside, but the second struck the paddle squarely and shattered. Fragments of the backscatter pierced the Sentinel and caused tiny puckers in its flesh.
‘Ha! Don’t like that, eh?’ Tim called. ‘Ready for another? Come on. Batter up!’
This time he hurled it deliberately high. The Sentinel tracked it for a second, saw it would miss then dropped its paddle, expecting a second, lower one. None came. The rock shattered on the wall above the passage, releasing a rain of small fragments. The Sentinel gave an alarmed chirrup and backed up.
Tim paused. The reaction seemed out of all proportion. The rock hadn’t hit it directly, yet small fragments seemed to do more damage than a large rock. Most curious of all was the way the Sentinel’s frilly underside reacted to the pieces that had fallen in the water, shrivelling and seeming to turn inside out.
Tim looked back at the whitish-yellow crystals and suddenly realised what they were. Rock salt. Just like terrestrial slugs and snails, the Sentinels couldn’t stand it. That’s why they’d cut the channel around the outcrop. To avoid the stuff entirely!