A loud clang reverberated around the shed as the securing bolts of the airlock door were released. Then, with a screech of steel that made both Ravana and Ostara jump, the two halves of the hatch began to slide apart.
Moving away from the control panel, Wak unlatched and slid aside the gates, then stood back and stared into the opening jaws of the airlock chamber. A sudden breeze briefly surged from behind and down through the widening gap, but the engineers’ dome and the compressors had done their job and the airlock was no longer open to the vacuum of space. Moments later, the distant sound of falling masonry and accompanying robot shrieks drifted in from the direction of the palace as the stone elephant fell away from the hole in the ruined courtyard.
Ravana, moving clumsily in her emergency suit, came to Wak’s side and shuddered. The top of the long concrete-lined cylinder now open at her feet was brightly lit, revealing the ragged hole that had been crudely hacked into the side of the white curved wall. Yet it was not the kidnappers’ tunnel that immediately caught Ravana’s eye, for twenty metres below the second set of airlock doors were wide open, beyond which the shaft continued on into a dark nothingness. It was hard not to think of Ostara’s words on the cold black void of space.
“It’s a long way down,” she murmured.
“Indeed it is,” Wak agreed. He handed her a length of rope, at the end of which was a large clip. “Best if you attach that to your suit. One slip and a couple of kilometres later you’d be smashing straight through the temporary dome and out into space. I’d hate to have to explain that to your father.”
Ravana gulped. Taking the rope, she clipped it to the safety ring on her suit. The other end she saw was attached to a long handrail that ran alongside the ladder fixed to the wall of the airlock chamber. In the time she had been staring transfixed into the dark shaft, Wak had pulled on his own suit and clipped a second safety line to himself. He now motioned to Ravana to pick up her helmet and follow him into the cab of the hovertruck. Once they were seated, the professor beckoned to Ostara, who up until now had taken great care to maintain a wary distance from the edge of the airlock.
“Stay by the control panel and keep your wristpad audio channel open,” he instructed. “If anything happens, we’re relying on you to close the airlock as quick as you can.”
“If anything happens?” asked Ostara, startled. “Like what?”
Wak ignored her. He put on his helmet, then motioned to Ravana to do likewise.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, waving to Ostara. His voice sounded tinny and slightly distorted through Ravana’s helmet speaker.
“Loud and clear,” replied Ostara, speaking into her wristpad.
“Ready to go, Ravana?” asked Wak, turning his helmet visor towards her.
Ravana nodded. With one hand on the control stick, Wak tapped in the start code on the hovertruck’s control panel and the thrusters roared into life, sending Ostara scurrying for cover. The truck lurched into the air, then slowly edged forward through the gate until it was hovering above the open shaft. Ravana peered over the side of the truck and looked down into the abyss. Her left hand was clamped around the handle on the edge of the windscreen, while her right held the safety rope attached to her suit, which looped down out of the cab before coming back up to the rail inside the airlock. Now they were directly over the open airlock doors, a mere length of rope seemed very flimsy protection indeed.
Wak throttled back the thrusters by the merest fraction and the truck slowly descended into the airlock. They were soon level with the large ragged hole, which Ravana guessed had been made by the Astromole on its way to the palace. Wak manoeuvred them into a position where they could see straight into the kidnappers’ tunnel. To Ravana’s surprise, she saw just inside was a wider section with a huge net attached the wall, behind which was wedged a variety of equipment. On the tunnel floor nearby, presumably also firmly fixed to the rock, was what looked like a mountaineering survival tent.
“The scoundrels set up camp underground!” exclaimed Wak, raising his voice against the sound of the hovertruck thrusters.
“You should look for evidence,” suggested Ostara over the helmet speaker.
“Isn’t a great big hole evidence enough?” retorted the professor. “You can do your detective work later. My priority is to close this damn airlock.”
Wak turned the hovertruck away from the hole and guided it towards a control panel upon the wall. As soon as the panel was within reach, he outstretched his right hand and tried a few experimental taps on the keypad. However, unlike the control panel in the shed above, this one displayed no warning lights and was evidently not working.
“It looks like it has been over-ridden from outside,” Wak informed his listeners. Squinting through the open doors below, he peered into the dark shaft. “I can see another panel beyond the airlock. I’ll have to take the truck further down.”
Ravana gulped as the hovertruck began to descend once more. Soon the entire airlock was above them. The walls of the shaft had become the grey rock of the asteroid, streaked with the dark veins of century-old cement pumped in to stabilise the structure. The lights of the airlock chamber above were partly masked by the lower doors and Wak was forced to switch on the truck’s headlights to dispel the shadows. As they levelled off near the lower control panel, Ravana watched as Wak attempted and failed to reach it, concentrating as he was on keeping the hovertruck steady. Eventually, he gave up and turned to Ravana.
“This one is recessed into the wall and I can’t reach it without letting go of the stick,” he told her. “You’ll have to work the panel for me.”
“I’ll do my best,” Ravana told him.
Wak swung the truck around and the panel came into view. She could see what he meant, for the control panel was installed in a shallow alcove in the wall of the shaft. It was a stretch even for her, but by leaning out of the side of the truck and clinging to the side of the windscreen she found she could just about touch the keypad, only to find there was no response. There was a grey box taped to the side of the panel and Ravana could see a number of wires running from it to the back of the keypad.
“This one is dead too,” she told the professor. “There’s some sort of device connected to it which may be affecting the circuits.”
“Damnation!” exclaimed Wak. “This airlock needs to be closed!”
“Airlock to be closed?” crackled Ostara’s voice. “Right away!”
With a sudden clang of steel, the upper doors of the airlock began to slide shut.
“What!?” retorted Wak. “No!”
Startled, Ravana twisted around to see what was happening, forgetting that hasty movements were unwise in the bulky emergency suit. Her grip slipped from the edge of the windscreen and before she could grab it again, she lost her balance and fell against the shaft wall, then felt the hovertruck slide from beneath her. Ravana’s cry of panic became a heart-rending scream, drowning out the professor’s own anguished shout. Her boot slipped from its precarious perch. All of a sudden, she was tumbling into the void.
“Ravana!” cried Wak.
Free of her weight, the hovertruck lurched up through the lower airlock doors, accompanied by a second strangled cry from Wak as he fought to regain control. Her eyes wide with fear, Ravana fell away from the airlock, her rope streaming behind her. A split second later, the rope snapped tight and she came to an abrupt stomach-churning halt.
Above her, the lower airlock doors had somehow come to life. Ravana watched helplessly as they slid together, then clanged shut like the lid of a tomb. She was trapped.
Chapter Six
The Flying Fox
HIGH ABOVE THE PALACE soared a hero of the skies, exquisitely framed by the bat-like wings of a red birdsuit as his eyes scanned the ground for his damsel in distress. In the low pseudo-gravity near the axis of the hollow moon the flying was easy and the masked figure swooped and swirled with a panache surpassed only by the real birds of feather and flesh that darted in his wake
. With a deft flick of artificial wings, the birdman banked towards the cliff at the rear of the hollow moon and skimmed the vertical rock face with playful zeal. Spying a familiar shape, he veered sharply towards the rock, performed a delicate aerial somersault, then crashed heavily onto the floor of a shallow cave in the side of the cliff.
“I really must practice landings,” the figure muttered, climbing to his feet.
He folded back his scarlet wings and solemnly regarded the black cat meowing pathetically at his feet. Ravana’s electric pet looked at him with an air of apprehension, for the ginger-haired winged intruder offered a completely different challenge to the gull it had previously decapitated at this very spot. There was something quite unnerving about the mask that covered the top half of the figure’s pale face.
“So what brings you up here, little Jones?” asked the birdman.
The cat meowed again and feebly scratched at a crack in the wall at the back of the cave. Moments later it found itself plucked from the ground by red-gloved hands, an act it chose to reward by sinking its claws into the birdman’s arms.
“Ow!” cried the figure, dropping the cat. “I’m trying to rescue you, stupid moggy!”
He tried again, this time giving it reassuring strokes as he tucked it gently yet firmly under his right arm. Turning away, he stepped towards the edge of the cave floor and calmly regarded the cliff dropping away at his feet. The fingers of his left hand reached for the miniature joystick at the end of the suit’s control arm and pressed the switch to snap the bat-like aerofoils into position. The figure paused, then stepped off the cliff.
His wings bit the air and he quickly banked to the left, keeping the cliff to his side as he glided in a slow descent towards the ground. The concave landscape of the hollow moon rolled slowly below, bringing the Maharani’s palace around from above until it lay straight ahead. Ravana’s cat remained remarkably still under his arm, perhaps recalling the foul-smelling pond of mud that had greeted it the last time it was here.
In the palace garden ahead, Endymion shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up at the birdsuit-clad figure gliding towards them. Miss Clymene and Bellona were waving like lunatics at his side, leaving Philyra to sulk alone. Dinner with the Maharani had proved to be an awkward and short-lived affair. After the incident with Surya’s cyberclone, the visitors from Newbrum had quickly made their excuses and left.
“Why didn’t you tell me the boy was a clone?” wailed Philyra, not in the least bit interested in the approaching birdman. “I looked an idiot!”
“Is that a bird?” asked Miss Clymene, ignoring her.
“Is it a spaceplane?” queried Bellona.
“No, it seems to be a ginger man wearing a birdsuit,” murmured Endymion.
“He looks like a big bat,” grumbled Philyra, returning her attention to her wristpad.
The figure came in to land just outside the palace grounds, his descent slowed by tiny bursts of gas from the birdsuit’s built-in jet pack. With Endymion leading the way, the four visitors hurried past the robots trying to move a fallen stone elephant and headed to the palace gates. By the time they reached the road, the mysterious birdman was picking himself up from another rough landing, his movements hampered somewhat by the cat clinging to his arm. The figure acknowledged the approaching figures with a curt nod, glanced at his wristpad and then strode away. Eager for a bit of excitement, Endymion and the girls promptly ran after him, leaving Miss Clymene to wearily bring up the rear.
Upon reaching a brick maintenance shed, the scarlet-clad hero paused by the parked monocycle to take in his surroundings, then slipped through the open doors and out of sight.
“Who is that masked man?” murmured Miss Clymene, wonderingly.
*
Ravana stopped screaming and opened her eyes, not that it made much difference in the cloying darkness. She swung at the end of the rope, nursing the mother of all headaches but with remarkably few actual injuries other than several bruises from where she had hit the shaft wall as she fell.
“Ravana!” The professor’s cry crackled loud in her helmet. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she hesitantly confirmed. “What happened?”
“You fell,” replied Wak, stating the obvious. “I have no idea how the lower doors managed to close behind you. Regrettably I too find myself trapped.”
“You’re in the airlock?”
“I fell off the truck and somehow got my false hand trapped in the gap between the doors,” he told her, sounding sheepish. “That daft woman closed the doors above me and I’m not sure she has the wit to get us out. I’m afraid my wristpad has also been crushed.”
Ravana tried hard not to panic. Her own wristpad was visible through the clear plastic window on the sleeve of her suit but an on-screen message made it clear that the subterranean shaft was beyond the range of the Dandridge Cole’s network. There was also a large crack across the screen, no doubt a result of her having crashed into the shaft wall.
“There’s no signal down here,” she told Wak. “What now?”
“Can you reach the airlock control panel?”
Ravana looked into the darkness above. The rope disappeared into a blackness that clung to her like treacle. Reaching out with an exploratory hand, she did at least manage to locate the wall of the shaft, although her bruises had already told her that it could not be far away. She had no idea how far she had fallen.
“Maybe,” she said. Her headache was getting worse. “If I could see it, that is.”
“Try,” came the anxious reply. “Your wristpad screen may give you a bit of light.”
Ravana gripped hold of the rope with both hands and strained to pull herself up. Being skinny did have its advantages, but she was not particularly strong and her weak right arm was starting to throb quite painfully. With a great deal of effort she managed to haul herself high enough to allow her feet to grip the rope dangling below. After that she made better progress, but it took several agonising minutes of climbing before her hand touched the airlock door above her. A faint glimmer of light filtered through the gap between the two halves, for both her rope and Wak’s crushed prosthesis had prevented the airlock doors from closing completely. Miraculously, she saw the control panel was within reach.
“I’ve reached the airlock,” she gasped breathlessly. “And I can see the panel.”
“Excellent! Is it working?”
Swaying gently upon the rope, Ravana extended a hand and tried the keypad.
“It’s still dead,” she told him despondently.
She glared at the control panel, then gave it an impatient slap. Her gloved hand caught the edge of the strange grey box next to it, just as her headache flared again. At the exact same moment, she felt the grey surface yield beneath her fingers like a touch-sensitive switch. A split second later she was staring at the box in disbelief, for it was as if a key had turned inside her head. Incredibly, for the briefest of moments, she had seen the airlock control mechanism laid out in her mind.
“It can’t be,” she murmured.
“What did you say?” asked Wak.
Ravana stared at the grey box. To her amazement the airlock schematic popped back into her head as clear as day; yet this was a picture that could be twisted, prodded and turned. An idea both fantastic and unbelievable came to her. She concentrated upon the image again, this time with the eyes of Ravana the trainee engineer, then flexed the image in her mind.
“Open sesame,” she declared.
Above her, the airlock doors gave a metallic screech and slowly began to slide open. As quick as a flash, Ravana clambered up the rope and hauled herself through the widening gap into the airlock beyond. Without stopping to consider how she was doing it, she threw another mental manipulation at the image in her mind to reverse the opening of the doors. She paused, glanced up and tried the same trick for the airlock entrance above.
She did not know whether to look smug or just relieved when the upper doors promptly squealed int
o life and began to open. Professor Wak pulled free his mangled hand, staggered back to lean against the hovertruck and regarded Ravana with a look of disbelief.
“How did that happen?” he asked, amazed.
“Positive thinking,” she murmured, somewhat stunned.
Wak began hastily isolating the power supply so that the lower doors could not open again. Ravana made for the ladder, eager to get out of the airlock. Upon reaching the top she was alarmed to find Ostara lying unconscious on the floor near the edge of the shaft. After relieving herself of the safety rope and her helmet, Ravana knelt down beside the crumpled figure to see if her friend was okay. She did not notice the arrival of the masked birdman behind her.
“Ostara!” hissed Ravana. “Wake up!”
Ostara’s eyes flickered open and she frantically shot out a hand to point over the girl’s shoulder. Ravana whirled around and saw a figure in a red birdsuit shuffling hesitantly towards them, who upon seeing her fierce expression cautiously lowered a squirming bundle of fur to the ground and stepped back again. The electric cat thanked him with a vicious hiss and ran towards Ravana and Ostara.
“The devil’s come to get me!” Ostara shrieked.
“It’s just an idiot in a custom birdsuit,” Ravana reassured her.
She gave the cat a stroke as it came to her side, comforted by its gentle purrs. Still shaking from her ordeal, she stood up and gave the birdman a weary look.
“What’s with the mask and the fancy costume?” she asked. The suit bulged with muscles that did not look entirely real. “Are you supposed to be some sort of superhero?”
The figure gave a proud salute. “I am The Flying Fox!” he declared. Ravana smiled at his attempt to project his pre-pubescent voice in a way that fitted the heroic facade. “I have rescued Jones the cat from extreme danger!”
Hollow Moon Page 14