Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  There was a short silence, which Martha ended. “We can’t hang about here. We’re deep in spider country.”

  “But what about Will?” Chester asked, frowning. “When I saw him he was moving like the wind. Do you think he’s OK?”

  Martha took a deep breath. “Even if he did get clear, he’s not going to be able to follow us into here. I say we try to get to the Wolf Caves,” she said, staring into the tunnels behind them. “If we reach them, we can wait for him there.”

  “What do you mean if? “ Chester said.

  PART 4

  THE UNDERGROUND HARBOR

  20

  THREE DAYS LATER and with the food nearly exhausted, Will and Dr. Burrows were badly in need of rest. The inclined seam had been interrupted by a number of vertical faults, which meant they had to make it across some terrifyingly deep ravines in order to continue their journey. If these ravines had been on the surface, they wouldn’t have stood a chance of crossing them, but in the low gravity environment they could simply leap from one side to the other.

  They had just traversed another ravine when Dr. Burrows began to whistle random notes through his teeth. He was pottering along with his chin in the air, exactly as if he was out for a Sunday stroll. It irked Will that his father appeared to be so relaxed about their situation. But within less than half a mile, they came to the top of the seam and found themselves squeezing through an extremely narrow passage, a rock corridor with jaggedly uneven sides.

  Dr. Burrows ceased his whistling and was instead making a series of grunts as he struggled through the claustrophobic space.

  The whistling had been bad enough, but the grunts were getting to be too much for Will to bear. All of a sudden he stopped, forcing his father to pull up sharply behind him in the corridor.

  “What am I doing!” he blurted, kicking out at a loose rock. “Why am I even here with you?”

  “Something on your mind?” Dr. Burrows asked.

  “Yeah. Other than being totally knackered and starving, I’ve made a terrible mistake. I should have found a way back to Chester and the others. I didn’t try hard enough. I just know they’ll be waiting for me at the Wolf Caves.”

  “We did try,” Dr. Burrows replied evenly. “There wasn’t a safe way through.”

  Will shook his head. “We should’ve just taken the first passage we came across, the one with the young spiders in it, and chanced it. I bet it would have been OK. And we didn’t really explore whether there were passages off the other side of the seam. What if there was one that led straight to the Wolf Caves?” He kicked at another rock, which rebounded off the walls of the corridor. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  “Will, we did look for passages on the right, and we didn’t find any, did we? Just calm down,” Dr. Burrows urged him.

  “No, I won’t! What if they were hurt in the explosion? Chester might need my help.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. The renegade woman will look after him, and that girl with all the explosives — she was no shrinking violet. Bet she knows the ropes down here,” Dr. Burrows said.

  “Her name is Elliott,” Will fumed, throwing his father a look of irritation. “And she’s just as lost down in this place as we are. And at this rate were going to get ourselves doubly lost.”

  “I think not,” his father countered.

  Will was about to vent more of his frustration when he stopped himself. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if you had been paying attention for the last couple of miles, you would have observed those.” Dr. Burrows shone his luminescent orb on an area higher up the wall. Although the paint was faded and had peeled away in places, a red triangle was immediately above where Will was standing, one of its tips pointing in the direction they were heading. “There were just a few at the beginning, but now they’re running at about five-hundred-yard intervals.”

  Will was instantly curious. “Do you think the crew from the submarine left them?”

  “Possibly,” Dr. Burrows said. “But we’re going to find out for ourselves what’s at the end of the trail.”

  “No way…. I’ve got to go back for the others,” Will insisted, but his words had lost some of their conviction, and his eyes widened as his insatiable thirst for discovery took hold. “Though … I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to follow the signs for a bit.”

  Without further ado, he pushed on into the narrow chasm.

  “That’s my boy,” Dr. Burrows said under his breath.

  They struggled through the claustrophobic corridor for several more miles. Then, suddenly, the reports of their footfalls seemed to have a different quality to them, the echoes indicating that they were coming to a much larger space.

  “Light — more light,” Dr. Burrows ordered as they stepped from the corridor and found to their surprise that they were on some sort of level platform. Will turned up his lantern several clicks. “This is concrete!” Dr. Burrows said, grinding his heel into the surface. Then he dropped onto one knee to examine it more closely, all the time wittering to himself. “Concrete … probably cold-poured.”

  But Will was so excited he wasn’t listening. “Look! There’s a line!” he shouted as he directed his lantern before them. Its light revealed a thick white line, running straight across the way ahead. And just beyond the line, something glinted darkly, giving the impression of movement.

  Father and son immediately advanced toward it, trying to make out what was there.

  “Careful,” Dr. Burrows warned Will.

  “It’s OK, it’s just water,” Will said as they came to the line and stopped. The line marked the edge of the platform, and as they both peered down, they could see there was a drop of several feet to where the expanse of water began. Although it appeared to be quite deep, it was clear enough that rocks were visible at the bottom.

  “Yes, some sort of subterranean pool,” Dr. Burrows confirmed. “I wonder what else is here.”

  Will immediately began to shine his beam out over the gently lapping surface. As he did this, shifting crescents were thrown against the far wall to the left of the cavern. They both squinted at it through the murky gloom.

  “This place is enormous,” Will said unnecessarily. He switched his lantern to its full setting so he could see farther along the cavern wall.

  “It is,” Dr. Burrows murmured, although he still seemed to be more interested in the platform underfoot, turning his attention to it again. “What’s a great big slab of concrete doing down here? What the dickens is it for?” he posed to himself as he scraped his boot slowly across its surface.

  “I’m going to check up here,” Will said as he followed the white line where it ran to the left. Finding that the platform terminated at the cavern wall, he shouted, “Nothing doing — dead end!” He went back to where his father was standing but didn’t stop, passing behind him. He thought he’d reached the other end of the platform as he came to a large pile of rubble, but as he climbed over it he found the concrete extended far into the darkness, its level surface only interrupted by the odd crack or pieces of rock strewn across it.

  “There’s more here!” he reported to his father, then discovered that the platform, still edged with the white line, turned a corner. “Hurry up, Dad! Come and look at this!” he yelled. Dr. Burrows caught up with him and, side by side, they began to make their way down the new stretch.

  Then Will pointed his lantern at the way ahead. A lighter patch stood out in the distance, and as they came closer to it they saw a definite shape.

  Will held the circle of light steady.

  “What is that?” Dr. Burrows asked with bated breath. He and Will froze. There was a suggestion of something regular over by the wall — a building. Dr. Burrows immediately stormed toward it.

  As the structure loomed out of the darkness, Will wasn’t so quick to follow. The idea suddenly popped into his head that stumbling across such a place might not be such good news.

  “Hey, Dad,” Will shouted weakly, as he remembered Ca
l’s description of the Bunker in the Deeps. Although Will hadn’t seen it for himself, he recalled that it, too, was made from concrete, and it occurred to him that this place could also have something to do with the Styx. Maybe it was one of their outposts. In the same instant he realized how improbable that was. Martha had been emphatic that the Styx’s preserve didn’t extend this far down. Will shook his head, dismissing the concern. No, this wasn’t something the Styx had put here.

  “What is it, Will?” Dr. Burrows finally responded.

  “Nothing,” Will said as he hurried to catch up with his father.

  The building consisted of a single story in which there was a row of square windows, ten in total, and beyond these a door. Will was at the door in an instant. It was painted gray-blue, with the occasional brown streak where rust had begun to etch into its surface. And in the center of the door was a wheel — clearly some sort of opening mechanism. Dr. Burrows hung his luminescent orb around his neck and tried to rotate the wheel. He swore as it refused to move.

  “You’ll have to help me,” he mumbled to Will, who clipped his lantern to his jacket and joined his father in trying to turn the mechanism.

  After several attempts, they gave up.

  “Blast!” Dr. Burrows exclaimed, then drove his heel into the wheel several times in an attempt to loosen it.

  “Hang on,” Will said as he spotted a length of metal tubing lying at the foot of the wall. He snatched it up and stuck it through the spokes of the wheel.

  “A lever! Good thinking!” Dr. Burrows praised him. They leaned on it with all their weight. As the wheel turned, the tubing slipped from the spokes and fell onto the floor, filling the cavern with clanking echoes. Will went to retrieve it.

  “Don’t bother,” Dr. Burrows said. “I think we’ve got it now.” He grunted as he rotated the wheel. There was a solid clunk as it reached the limit of its revolution. “Open, Sesame,” he announced, and heaved on the door. It swung out a little until its base grated loudly on the concrete platform. “This is a heck of a door—it’s nearly two feet thick!” Although he continued to heave, the door wouldn’t move any farther. “Let’s get all this out of the way,” he suggested, kicking at the pieces of rock under its edge.

  Will helped him, sweeping aside the larger debris with his boot and then getting down on his knees to brush away the gravel with his hands.

  “That should do it. Let’s have another go,” Dr. Burrows suggested. There was enough of a gap for him to poke his fingers inside the door and get a good grip on it. “Ready … steady … go!” Dr. Burrows shouted as he used all his strength to yank on the door. With Will simultaneously pulling on the handle, the door opened a little farther, providing sufficient room for them to squeeze through, which they did with breathless anticipation.

  Stepping inside, they found a rectangular chamber around thirty by sixty feet. In the center was a small campaign table surrounded by some folding chairs.

  “Hey, Dad, get a load of this!” Will shouted excitedly. On the wall directly opposite the door was a complicated-looking panel of dials and switches. “What on earth is it?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest, but that door certainly did its job and kept the damp out. There’s no sign of any corrosion at all,” Dr. Burrows noted as he and his son’s gaze both fell on the lower corner of the panel, where there were five large breaker switches. The words MAIN POWER CONSOLE were written above them.

  Dr. Burrows began to whistle in his usual atonal way, which usually meant he was deep in thought. Then he spoke. “All these handles are up, which means that no connection is being made … so they’re in the Off position.” It was as though a silent and irresistible invitation had been issued to try them. Will nodded, fascinated to see what his father was going to do next.

  Dr. Burrows was reaching for the first of the handles when Will spotted some words stenciled in red on the wall to the side of the panel. “Hey, Dad — To Be Operated By Authorized Personnel Only,” he read out quickly.

  This caused Dr. Burrows to hesitate, holding his hand a few inches away from the handle. He hummed undecidedly as he rubbed his thumb against his fingers.

  “Well, are we going to try it or not?” Will said.

  Dr. Burrows drew in a breath, then let it out with a contemplative hum.

  “All this looks like it came out of the ark,” he said. “It probably won’t work, anyway … so I don’t see why we shouldn’t give it a shot.”

  “Yeah, do it, Dad,” Will urged him.

  “Yeah,” Dr. Burrows echoed, although he never normally used the word. He took hold of the first handle and swung it down so it clicked firmly into place. They peered around the room, the light of Will’s lantern slashing through the gloom, but nothing appeared to have changed. They could hear water dripping outside, but all else was silent.

  “Do you really think —?” Will said, as he began to ask himself if they should find out what the switches were for before they went any further.

  But Dr. Burrows had already gripped the second handle and whipped it down. There was a large blue flash as the contacts met, and a sizzling sound. Father and son jumped back in surprise. The room was immediately flooded with illumination from an array of wall-mounted bulkhead lights.

  “Ohh, that’s bright!” Will exclaimed, shielding his eyes.

  Although it took them awhile to get used to the brilliance, they now had a clear view of their surroundings. Dr. Burrows tried the other switches and found that two of the remaining three were working, as they crackled with blue sparks. On the panel above, the needles in the circular dials twitched and clicked under their hazy glass. Right in the middle of the panel, a pointer crept across a large rectangular gauge.

  “That must be the overall power level,” Dr. Burrows said, wiping the dust from it.

  “How do you know that?” Will asked, fully aware that his father found any gadget more complicated than a toaster a challenge.

  “Educated guess,” Dr. Burrows said with a smile. He indicated the row of figures under the needle. “This scale seems to be in megawatts, so I’m probably right.”

  Will nodded as he began to study the room more closely. It had a low ceiling and unpainted concrete walls, and other than the metal table and chairs it was completely empty. “Over there,” Will said, pointing. At the far end of the room was a door that was easily twice as wide as the one they had come through.

  “Leave it for the moment,” Dr. Burrows told him, still examining the vacillating needles in the smaller dials. “This switching panel has to be decades old, so the power can’t be coming from batteries or any sort of stored charge. The state of this place — good as it is — doesn’t really lead one to believe that it’s been maintained, and batteries would have run out by now. That leaves a connection to the grid above, which is also impossible, bec —”

  “Because we’re too far down for that?” Will cut in.

  “Precisely,” Dr. Burrows continued, scratching his whiskery chin. “So it’s either geothermal or hydroelectric power. Given the water outside, I’d put my money on hydroelectric.”

  “One thing’s for sure, this has nothing to do with the Colony, does it?” Will asked.

  “No, it’s ours. It’s surface technology,” Dr. Burrows said, wiping more of the dust from the dials with his thumb. “But from yonks ago by the looks of it.” His hand hovered over a bank of chunky switches under the heading EXTERNAL, each labeled with a letter from A to K. “In for a penny!” he declared before clicking them all on. The dial on the large central meter swerved momentarily to the left, then crawled back to the center, where it seemed to settle down again. Dr. Burrows twisted around to the dust-filmed windows. “Yes, I think that’s done the trick,” he muttered as they both went to the windows and saw the glow outside.

  They hurriedly exited the building through the partially opened door. Glaring lights hung down from rails strung across the roof of the cavern, revealing the full extent of the platform, and that a pier — also c
onstructed of concrete and approximately fifty feet long — branched off it and out into the lagoon. Down both sides, this pier had rusted iron bollards set into its surface, several of which had chains hanging from them, although it wasn’t obvious what these were for since they trailed into the water. Will ran to the side to see them more clearly.

  “Dad, what are those down there? Boats?” he asked, spying several vessels — basic-looking dinghies — attached to the chains but lying on the bottom of the lagoon. They were either made of plastic or fiberglass, and were all in varying stages of disintegration. Others were completely broken up, and now the cavern was so well lit Will could see their remains scattering the far bank among the craggy rocks.

  “They certainly are. And see over there, Will!” Dr. Burrows shouted. “It’s a barge!”

  As he peered into the far corner of the cavern, Will spotted a long vessel in the water, its sides mottled with a patina of rust. It appeared to have broken free from its mooring and drifted to its current position, its bow touching the cavern wall. At the helm there was a small cabin, and the rest of the vessel was open, with metal crates stacked in it.

  “Will, can you believe it, this is some kind of underground harbor!” Dr. Burrows said, his words clipped by his sheer excitement. He immediately began to survey what was on the rest of the quay, which continued for several hundred feet from where they were standing. As he and Will spotted more buildings along the base of the cavern wall, they broke into a run to reach the nearest of them. The first had a door with another rotating handle in the center, and Dr. Burrows wasted no time tackling it.

  “Want me to have a go?” Will offered as his father struggled with it.

  “No, leave it to me,” Dr. Burrows replied as he spat on his palms and resumed his efforts. He strained hard and the handle finally began to move, then he pulled the door open. There was a hiss as air was released from inside.

  “Oh, yeuch!” Will gasped, wrinkling his nose as they both ventured in. “Dad, that wasn’t you, was it?”