“We will let a rope down for you, Grace,” said Ledin. “There is no way you can scale that on your own.”
A sensation of heaviness settled in her heart. She was slowing them down already. “I know,” she forced herself to answer lightly. “I will wait here then, until you get a rope down to me.”
Ledin gently touched the discoloured spot on the tip of her nose with his finger, and then turned to the cliff. Within seconds, he was already metres up the rock face, making as good a time as Six. They must have both spend a lot of their childhood shinning up and down cliffs, she mused to herself. She watched until he disappeared into the misty downpour, and then settled back to wait. It seemed only seconds later that a rope uncoiled, and snaked its way back down to her. She tied a mariner’s knot with some difficulty, passed the rope through that to make a harness, and fitted it around her bodywrap. Then she began to make her way up the cliff face, using her hands and feet, but held firmly by four strong arms higher up.
With the support of the rope, it didn’t take her very long to make her way up the cliff. She arrived at the top with some slight bleeding from the scars on her fingers, but shut Ledin up with a look when he opened his mouth to comment on them. He closed his lips with such a hasty snap that Six laughed.
They looked around them. At least the appalling weather on the island would make it difficult to detect or follow them. On the other hand, it also made it nigh on impossible to find their own way about. They carefully curled up the long rope they had used, and hid it underneath one of the many loose boulders. Then Six, who was the one with the keenest sense of direction, took the lead, signing them to make no noise whatsoever.
As they crept along the drenched and foggy undergrowth large metallic walls which surrounded the open-air compound suddenly loomed up out of the mist. Ledin gave a silent whistle. The walls were the rich colour of copper, covered with the unmistakable green patina of oxidation, but they were mottled with patches of black, so must also contain some of the carbon nanographite that caused Arcan so much trouble. He let his hand feel the texture. Some sort of composite, he thought. The walls were smooth and at least two stories high. He couldn’t see Grace getting over one of those, not as she was now. His frown deepened.
But it seemed that Six had no intention of scaling the walls. Once in up close, under their shadow, he simply skirted around them, making more signs to all of them to be absolutely silent. At last they came to a heavily embossed pair of gates, flanked on either side by small turrets. Six signaled to them all to stop and then went on ahead himself to scout out the lie of the land.
The others waited, frozen in place, and trying to breathe carefully, lest the noise of their mask packs be audible. Six must have been away for five minutes – though it felt like ten – before they saw his shape reappear through the streaming rain.
He raised his thumbs and signaled again, to tell them to follow him. One by one they obeyed, edging carefully along the sides of the copper composite wall, still concentrating on minimizing the sound of their breathing. Grace could feel her own heart bounding inside her ribcage and somehow seeming to lodge itself in her throat. They passed the turrets and found, as Six had before, that the main gate had a smaller portal inset near the centre. This was closed, but unlocked – a few scratches on the surface showed where Six had worked his magic on the tumblers.
It was a moment’s work to slip through, and close the door behind them. The key – very similar to those used on both Kwaide and Coriolis – had been left on a string hanging up behind the door, so Six abstracted the key, and relocked the door behind them. Then he made signs to the girls to follow him, and indicated to Ledin that he should bring up the rear, and keep a tight surveillance behind them. Ledin nodded his understanding. They stopped for a moment to change mask packs. Diva risked a slight breath of the air, and then regretted it, for it seemed to sear her throat as she breathed in, and she felt that it set her lungs on fire. She could taste a rather sulphurous tinge, too. With great difficulty, she managed to suppress the automatic cough, and returned Six’s glare with one of her own. The others made sure not to breathe the local atmosphere after seeing her distress.
Six moved off. They were now inside the enclosure, but the undergrowth was much the same as it had been outside. There had been no sign of the local inhabitants, but that was about to come to an end. Six stopped dead in mid stride as he picked up movement in front of him, and the others immediately copied him. A shadowy figure passed, at the very edge of their perception. Even so, Grace almost recoiled, because the shape was much larger than she had imagined. She couldn’t make out any details, but it was almost twice her own height. She gave a gulp.
The shadowy figure showed no signs of noticing them, moving slowly off and disappearing smoothly into the masking mist. They waited for some little time, and then continued their journey, creeping gingerly around the open-air compound. The only buildings which broke up the green scrubland were the small huts which loomed out of the mist every so often; more copper composite walls which this time didn’t reach so high. The huts must have been merely entrances, for they were not big enough to be offices or dwellings of any kind – not for creatures as big as the ones Grace had just seen. Arcan’s map had been right – the work was carried out underground, and these were merely entrances to the different bunkers.
Grace wondered how on Sacras Six was finding his way around; he was quite firm and determined, and seemed to know exactly where he was going. She had lost count of these copper huts – they must have passed at least twenty already. The rain lashed down on them, and even the bodywrap was beginning to feel uncomfortably hot and sweaty.
AT LAST THEY arrived at the particular hut that Six had been aiming for. The door was locked, but the same key that he had taken from the entrance gate opened it easily. This species had clearly never needed high security on their home planet, at least until now. So there were no threats to their safety in the near vicinity. It was a good sign. He began to feel that the operation could be a success. Not that it would be easy – they were still only at the very beginning – but it helped a lot that their opponents were clearly not expecting any sort of rescue operation. It seemed that they had, after all, decided that the recent apparition in their skies had been due to natural causes.
Inside, there was a double-rimmed cylinder of water glittering in the dim light. It was about three times the width of Ledin, and seemed to disappear down into the nether regions of the island. Water was noisily streaming out of the top of the inner cylinder, over the side, and down to the depths again on the outside of the inner cylinder, but contained within the outer one. It looked to be a long trip down, and the flow of water upwards meant that none of them could possibly dive down through the steep pressure gradient. The Dessites obviously used the cylinders only for ascent. Then Diva opened her eyes wide, and pointed. Curving around the double rimmed cylinder was a spiral slideway, which disappeared into the gloom below. Beside the start of the slide there was a pile of mats, made out of some rough black material, which was stiff but pliant. The front of each mat curved upwards, to protect its occupant.
Diva danced on the spot, her eyes begging for the chance to try out this unusual form of transport. Six hesitated, and then peered down into the gloom, and shrugged. There was no other way to get down. It was this, or nothing. He gave a reluctant nod.
Since the Dessites were much bigger than they were, there was room for two of them on each mat. Diva leapt onto the first mat and settled herself comfortably at the front. Six raised his eyes heavenwards and wedged himself in behind her, extending one arm to each side of her body to hold firmly onto the front curve of the mat. Diva’s eyes tracked to the arms to either side of her, appeared to be thinking about a comment, then turned back to the slide in front of them. With a wicked grin she pushed them off from the horizontal launch platform, and they plunged into the darkness, accelerated rapidly and disappeared. Even so, Grace could just make out a muffled whoop of glee a
s the mat build up speed.
Ledin pulled out the following mat, and gestured to Grace to climb aboard. She hopped nimbly onto it, and sat down. Then he copied Six and positioned himself behind her, with arms to either side of her body holding the front curve of the mat. She felt safe, and he bent forward to give her the slightest of touches at the back of her neck. It was hardly a kiss – it couldn’t be because of the mask pack protection – but it felt good. She nodded her head slightly and then pushed them off.
There were a few seconds of expectation as the mat began to pick up speed. Then a few more of enjoyment as a sense of exhilaration kicked in. Then everything began to flash past much too quickly and the spiraling of the mat around the column of water began to make Grace feel horribly dizzy. Her stomach seemed to have been left behind.
She found that she couldn’t hold on because of her hands, and would have been pushed against the walls if it hadn’t been for the steely arms of Ledin holding her firmly in place. She closed her eyes, but that seemed to make it worse. She hoped she wasn’t going to be sick.
They plunged further and further down, and the mat seemed to be traveling faster and faster. The copper-composite chute glistened a rich red colour in the semi-darkness, but flashed by so fast it all became a blur. It went on, and on, and on.
At long last the spiral leveled out into a long stretch of straight slide, and the mat began to slow down. It didn’t stop Grace’s head from spinning, although it did help her stomach. The mat hurtled its way along the shining chute, and slipped into a slightly uphill zone, where it began to decelerate rapidly. Finally they drew to a stop on a platform, and Ledin helped Grace out.
Diva and Six were making sure that there were no aliens around, so they missed their friends’ arrival. Ledin and Grace clutched at each other until the platform stopped turning ominously, and then managed to stand upright on their own as the dizzy effects wore off. Grace gave a puff of relief. It seemed she was not going to be sick, after all.
But it looked as if their luck was about to run out. Six was making frantic signs to them to hide, and they could hear some sort of shuffling, rasping sound from below the platform. Quickly, they ducked behind a pile of mats, and froze into place.
A huge figure moved directly past them, and began to open a hatch in the wall. Although they had been hidden before, Ledin and Grace were now in full view of the Dessite. Luckily, its whole attention was on the locking device of the hatch. They edged round the corner of the mats, amazed at the creature in front of them.
It was covered in membranes. They ran the length of its body, about forty or fifty of them, Grace thought. Each membrane was a fold of flesh protruding out of the body in a semicircle, as if the spikes of a hedgehog had been joined together in ridges from top to tail. These folds moved continuously, undulating from one side to another in a sinuous wave. There was a distinct head, but this too was covered in membranes. Although much less protuberant than those on the body, they were also in continual movement. The eyes were the only part of the head which was still. These were two huge plates set in concentric deep folds of skin. The eyes were black and seemed very flat, instead of the rounded ones usually seen on the binary system. Grace could see no sign of a mouth or ears. Perhaps the Dessites needed neither, as they had quantum non-locality to use for communication?
She looked down to the ground, to see what kind of legs the creature had, but could see none. The membranes, when they reached the floor, seemed to splay out – so the Dessite had either more than fifty feet, or none at all. It moved smoothly, though, and quite quickly. The shuffling noise they had heard was the sound the membranes made on the floor of the facility as the strange-looking creature flowed along it. There was another projection on each membrane about half-way down the body, and the creature in front of them was now using a handful of these to manipulate the cross bars which held the hatch tightly shut. The membranes rippled in a cascade effect, and seemed to effortlessly carry the iron bars along with them. The Dessites were a strong race, then.
In a very short time, the Dessite had the hatch open. It then propelled itself inside, head first, and pulled the porthole-like door to behind it. Grace and Ledin saw the iron bars slam back into position, and then heard a gurgling noise. The hatch was apparently filling with water. There was a long pause, and then a sudden rushing noise announced that the Dessite had exited the facility and was now on its way up to the surface.
“Best way out, if you ask me,” said Six, coming up so silently that he made both of them jump. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m certainly not too keen on trying to make it back out up that cylinder of water.”
Ledin was eyeing the hatch in front of him rather doubtfully, and raised one eyebrow. Six clapped him on the back. “Thinking of making a life here, are you?”
“Just hoping we can get out at all,” came back the laconic answer. “But I’m not complaining. It was almost worth coming just to ride that slide.”
“Great, wasn’t it? But you can see why they choose to exit via the sea, can’t you? In any case, we couldn’t take the upward column of water if we wanted to – there are no decompression stops. It would kill us.”
“Do you mind if we get on with trying to find the visitor?” Diva had come up while they were talking, and looked nettled.
Six touched an imaginary forelock, and bowed. “Kept modom waiting, have we? Please accept our humble excuses.”
“You wouldn’t know humble if it came up and introduced itself, nomus!”
“Look who’s talking!”
Diva gave a sort of growl low in her throat and tossed her head. The effect was somewhat spoilt by being encased in a mask pack. She gave up. “Oh, do come ON!”
“All right, all right. We’re on our way, your royal shirtiness.”
“I don’t know what you two find to chat on about all the time. You are worse than a pair of old washerwomen,” she snapped.
Both Six and Ledin looked most indignant and Grace giggled. They all fell in behind Diva and scurried as quietly as they could out of the slide chamber. Then Six took over again as expedition leader, and they filed after him, Ledin bringing up the rear.
They had to dodge several other Dessites on their way to find the visitor, and they began to wonder if the aliens were completely deaf. It seemed impossible that their progress should not have been heard. Despite walking as stealthily as they could, they were still making too much noise, and it surely couldn’t have been luck that had kept them from being discovered so far. They still managed to hear the Dessites in time to hide.
Their eyesight didn’t look too good either. It seemed as though Arcan was right: they had developed the ultra-violet part of the spectrum due to their watery environment, and could not see well in the longer wavelengths.
Even so, progress was sketchy and it took them three more mask pack changes before they reached the chamber where the visitor had said it was being held.
This was where their luck seemed to run out; there were two burly Dessites keeping a very good guard on the visitor. Six ducked back quickly out of sight.
“Ideas?” he said.
They thought about it. “Distraction?” suggested Ledin.
“What sort?”
“Err … noise won’t work; they don’t seem to have ears. How about if one of us runs past them?”
“Considering they can all communicate instantaneously with each other that doesn’t sound such a great idea to me,” said Six, with a shake of his head.
Grace began to speak, “What we need—” they all turned around with hopeful expressions, “—is a natural distraction. Suppose … suppose one of their hatches out into the ocean sprang a leak? We are so far down that they would have to take that seriously, wouldn’t they? Even if they themselves could survive underwater, all these installations certainly wouldn’t.”
Six’s face cleared. “Brilliant!” He looked around at them. “Okay. Ledin, you and Grace go and sort that out. We … ” he raised an enqui
ring eyebrow in Diva’s direction and received a fierce nod back, “ … will stay here and wait. Once these two guards are on the move it should be a piece of cake to get the visitor out of there. If you open one of their stopcocks on the port side, that should leave the starboard side fairly free for us to make our escape.”
Ledin nodded. “Shall we stay in case you need back-up?”
Six thought for a minute and then moved his head from side to side. “I don’t think so. You would be isolated on that side of the island, surrounded by Dessites. I think the risk of being discovered would escalate exponentially. It simply isn’t worth it. No, you should be long away before they even discover that there is a problem. So make sure you are. We will meet you back at the shuttle. Oh – and remember to release that vial of altered titanium oxide if you see any Dessites when you hit the water.”
“Very well. What does it do?” Ledin fingered a small vial which he had been handed earlier on.
“Arcan told me that the Dessites only see in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum – that is partly why we are difficult for them to see. They can’t pick up reds at all – and these new bodywraps from the Independence are only a black tinge short of red. If you release the vial into the water, it will, to all extents and purposes, blind them to anything else. It will show up so vividly on their retina rods that it should give you time to disappear into the ocean.”
Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 Page 9