The corridor floors were bathed in dim red light as the last few watts from back-up fuel cells illuminated the way to emergency exits. Surya could have found his way with his eyes closed and hastened Ostara through a maze of passages to his own private quarters.
The Raja’s room was in near darkness. Surya went straight to his bed and knelt to look beneath, whereupon Ostara heard him mumble something about his things being disturbed in his absence and a box having been moved. He quickly found his torch and personal slate. Ostara pondered on the realisation that until a few days ago, the most adventurous thing the Raja had probably ever done was secretly read under the sheets long after he was supposed to be asleep. The torch was fully charged and Surya switched it on in lantern mode.
“This is your room?” asked Ostara, blinking in the sudden rush of illumination. “This is bigger than my entire living quarters and my office combined!”
The furnishings reminded her of the elaborate staterooms at Kubera, while the bed alone looked large enough to sleep six. She never imagined there was anything as grand on the Dandridge Cole. Surya turned away, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” Ostara said. “It’s very nice. What’s that thing?”
“No idea,” Surya remarked. He had pulled a box from under the bed whilst getting his torch. “It appeared from nowhere about a month ago. I meant to ask my mother about it, but then accidentally dropped it and I think I broke it. I’m pretty sure the box didn’t rattle before.”
“Clumsy boy! Can you show me Fenris’ room?”
Surya nodded. Back in the hallway, he pointed to the far end of the passage to where a door stood ajar. A faint light glimmered through the gap from the room beyond.
“There,” he told her. “His door isn’t usually left unlocked like that though.”
Ostara crept to the door and peered through the gap, listening anxiously for any sound of movement within. Hearing nothing, she gingerly pushed the door open and braced herself for a surprise attack that never came. It quickly became apparent the room was deserted. Feeling a little more confident, she stepped through the door and paused.
“What on Frigg…?” she murmured.
The room was similar to Surya’s, though not so lavishly decorated. The sight that had caught her attention was a huge ragged hole in the wall, presumably one that had once been hidden by the wardrobe that now stood pushed to one side. This part of the palace evidently backed onto the cliff, for the hole was the start of a long tunnel, bored up through the rock of the asteroid itself and lit by a series of lamps hung upon the rough-hewn wall.
“A secret passage!” exclaimed Surya. “I wonder where it goes?”
Ostara grimaced. “I bet I can guess.”
*
Even with her cat’s anxious meows guiding the way, Ravana was worried she would not be able to find the cliff-side cave in the dark, but as it happened she had no problems. The cave Wak had directed them to was indeed the same one she had climbed to on the day of Surya’s kidnap. Wak’s engineers, having found as she did that the original stone steps had vanished in a rock slide, had erected a sturdy scaffold up the side of the cliff. What was more, at the top of the scaffold by the entrance to the cave, a platform had been built to serve as a convenient landing pad for the hovertruck.
The scaffold tower gave a metallic groan as the hovertruck settled to a rest, but appeared to be in no danger of collapsing. Ravana and Zotz quickly disembarked and stepped gingerly towards the cave entrance, her electric cat having gaily bounded ahead. Ravana left the hovertruck’s headlamps switched on to illuminate the scene and they could see where the rear wall of the cave had been partially demolished to reveal a dark, concrete-lined passageway beyond.
The cave floor was littered with huge lumps of rubble. The engineers’ work had at some point caused a further rock slide, which had collapsed on top of some apparatus on the far side of the rocky ledge.
“No!” cried Ravana. She hurried to the buried equipment.
Startled, Zotz followed. The reason for her concern was clear. The rock fall had come down on top of the generator and a particularly large boulder had ruptured the fuel tank, rendering it useless. Ravana sank to her knees in despair. Her cat, leaping out of her way, scurried across the rubble-strewn floor towards the hole at the back of the cave.
“I’ve failed,” sobbed Ravana. Tears welled in her eyes. “Why is nothing going right?”
“You weren’t to know the generator would be broken,” Zotz consoled her. “You’ve done all you can and so much more!”
“But it wasn’t enough!” she retorted. Zotz looked quite taken aback by the vehemence of her words. “What do we do now? And where’s blasted Jones got to?”
“Into the tunnel,” Zotz replied meekly. “Shall I go and get it?”
When Ravana did not reply, Zotz fetched his bag from the hovertruck, withdrew a torch and went to peer into the dark space beyond the broken cave wall, wobbling slightly in the reduced gravity. A stale breeze wafted from the tunnel, the walls of which were covered in a strange purple mould. Inside, Ravana’s cat sniffed at a patch of slime beneath a sign that read: ‘ACCESS TUNNEL B’. Further along, Zotz was surprised to see a strange vehicle on rails that looked like a smaller roofless version of the hollow moon’s monorail cars, looking incredibly old and thick with dust. The beam of the torch revealed the tunnel was free from rock falls as far as the eye could see. Switching off the torch, Zotz returned to where Ravana sat hunched and moping with her knees below her chin.
“There is something we could try,” he said cautiously.
Ravana looked up and regarded him wearily.
“The tunnel seems clear,” Zotz continued. “We could go down and see if we can find the reactor. Whatever’s draining the power may be something really simple to fix.”
“Don’t you think Wak’s engineers have already tried that?”
“They hadn’t finished unblocking the entrance,” Zotz pointed out. “It’s my guess they were called away before they had a chance to look, but I think the hole is big enough for us to squeeze through.”
“That tunnel is four kilometres long,” she reminded him. “That’s quite a walk.”
“We may not need to walk,” he replied cryptically.
“What about the mad priest? Ostara is convinced Taranis is hiding back there.”
Ravana felt weary and reluctant to commit to more adventures. The pilot’s daughter just wanted to be back at her father’s side, but Zotz’s words had found their mark. Ravana, the trainee engineer, understood that if they could do something to save the Dandridge Cole they should. Her unspoken fear was that she did not want to face Fenris again. Her gaze met Zotz’s own, then fell upon the bag at the boy’s feet.
“We do this together,” she said. “The Flying Fox will always be near, eh?”
Zotz blinked in mock surprise. “I don’t know what you mean!”
“I can see part of your birdsuit sticking out of your bag!”
“Never seen it before in my life,” he retorted. “I wonder how it got in there?”
“Zotz!” cried Ravana.
Zotz looked crestfallen. “It was supposed to be a secret,” he mumbled. “I wanted to be your hero, to look out for you, but I know you never saw me that way. So I invented him.”
“The Flying Fox?”
“You said I reminded you of the flying foxes by the lake and I took it from there.”
“You have always been there when I needed a friend,” Ravana said gently. “Now it’s time for you to lead the way. I’ve had my turn at being heroic and it’s worn me out.”
Zotz nodded, picked up his bag and shuffled to the edge of the cave.
“Can you turn around?” he asked nervously. “I won’t be long.”
Ravana solemnly climbed to her feet, retreated to the far side of the cave and politely turned her back. Moments later she heard faint grunts and the squeak of tight fabric as the unseen superhero struggled into his one-piece birdsuit, followed by a sudd
en metallic clang when a jet pack slipped from a clumsy grip and fell to the floor. In the hush that followed, she heard a myriad of whirrs and clicks as electronic catches pulled the ensemble together, then a loud hiss reached her ears and the cave began to fill with white smoke.
Unable to avert her gaze any longer, Ravana turned and regarded the defiant figure now before her. The masked birdman stood with scarlet wings outstretched, half-concealed by the smoke billowing from his backpack. The artificial muscles of his suit rippled convincingly and for a moment she found herself going quite weak at the knees.
“The Flying Fox at your service!” he declared. “It is time to save this world!”
*
The aged railcar rocketed down the tunnel, propelled by the flaring jet pack of the birdman at the rear, himself heroically battling to stop himself falling onto the rails below. Ravana and her cat, crouched low upon a seat before him, peered nervously over the front of the carriage as it recklessly clattered along the ancient railroad. She tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong on a hundred-year-old vehicle pushed to its limits and several anxious minutes went by before the end of the tunnel finally appeared in the gloom. The railcar had no power to any circuits so it was fortunate that the emergency brake was a simple mechanical lever. Nevertheless, it took the combined effort of both Ravana and The Flying Fox to bring the carriage to a halt, which they did mere metres from the end of the track.
“Wow,” said Ravana, clambering out. Her cat was not so impressed and had leapt out of the railcar several metres earlier. “That was some ride!”
The Flying Fox strode towards the end of the tunnel with his torch held before him. Ahead was a metal doorway so corroded that the cat had no problems finding a hole big enough to slip through to the other side. Reaching the door, the birdman threw it open with such a bang that it broke from its rusty hinges and crashed to the floor.
“Follow that cat!” he declared.
Ravana stepped over the fallen door and followed him through to an empty concrete-walled chamber. To their left was a plain metal door, covered in the same mould they had seen in the tunnel, upon which was a sign with the words: ‘TO REACTOR A’. Nearby, the cat pawed at a low-level ventilation grill and hissed madly at the purple fungus that oozed from the rusty aperture.
In front of them was a hefty airtight hatch, operated by a hand wheel, that had a notice above it that read: ‘REACTOR B’. There was a tiny spy hole in the hatch and upon seeing nothing dangerous on the other side, The Flying Fox began to turn the handle. The airtight hatch had withstood the test of time and remained in one piece when the birdman finally pulled it open. The door revealed a short corridor and an identical hatch ahead.
“An airlock?” he asked.
“There’s no pressurisation controls,” Ravana pointed out. “I think it’s just a link between sealed sections, like that between two space station modules.”
The second hatch opened easily. Beyond was a sight that took Ravana’s breath away. Before her was a cathedral to the god of engineering; a vast, brightly-lit cylindrical cavern with walls that curved from beneath a steel grid floor below to an apex twenty metres above their heads. The centre of the hall was dominated by a huge spherical nuclear reactor, behind which was an even larger conical construction extending horizontally through the far wall.
A complex network of pipes and electrical conduits ran in all directions and a strained humming noise hung in the air. The hatch had brought them out onto an open gallery, which was one of several running around the perimeter of the chamber at various levels. These in turn were all linked to one another and to the floor below by a series of metal staircases.
“This is amazing,” she murmured. “They don’t build stuff like this anyone. Do you see the huge cone behind the reactor?” she asked the birdman, pointing across the cavern. “That’s one of the main engines! I’ve never seen anything like it on this scale before!”
“Reactor A and B,” he remarked, switching off the torch. “Two engines.”
The walls of the chamber were made of plates of riveted steel strengthened by a lattice gantry. Ravana was puzzled why this reinforcement was needed when the engine room was surrounded by kilometres of rock. Looking closer, she saw that the circumference of the flat wall at their backs was punctuated at regular intervals by red barrel-shaped devices marked with warning symbols. Near the hatch to their right was an archaic control desk covered in dust and she went over to have a closer look.
“I can’t see anything obvious causing the power drain,” she said eventually. “But someone has been here recently. These controls have been bypassed.”
“The problem must be with Reactor A,” declared The Flying Fox. “We must go!”
“And run into Fenris and the mad priest?”
“There’s no time to lose!”
As quick as a flash, the birdman darted back through the hatch. Ravana heard a strangled cry and the sound of someone crashing to the floor. She found The Flying Fox lying in the dark on the other side of the first hatch, having apparently slipped and fallen whilst pulling open the door marked: ‘TO REACTOR A’. The strange mouldy smell they noticed earlier was stronger than ever.
“Did you trip over your shoe laces?” Ravana asked, teasing him.
“It was blasted Jones!” the birdman exclaimed. “Acting like a lunatic!”
The cat meowed, jumped lightly over the birdman’s prone body and disappeared through the door, its electric nose excitedly sniffing the air. Bemused, Ravana waited until The Flying Fox regained his feet and switched on his torch, then followed.
Her cat had not gone far. Ravana gazed wearily at the spiral staircase beyond the door, then down at her pet, which responded with a casual scratch of an ear. The dark stairwell was three hundred metres high and her cat’s pitiful meow made it clear that it did not intend to use its own legs. The Flying Fox peered up into the distance as if considering the options.
“Jet pack?” he suggested.
Ravana smiled weakly. “I thought you’d never ask.”
*
The centrifugal pull of the spinning asteroid grew weaker as they ascended the stairwell. Upon reaching the halfway point, gravity faded completely. Here, the staircase broke off to leave just a couple of handrails running through a hole in a rotten safety net, beyond which was the one thing Ravana never expected to find on the Dandridge Cole. It was a window, buried deep in an alcove barely a metre across, with triple-glazed glass scarred by countless micrometeoroids, but a proper window nonetheless. It looked out of the asteroid from between the two huge engine nozzles, upon a slowly-rotating vista of the star-spangled void. As they floated before the window, gazing out at the spread of infinity beyond, Ravana thought it poignant that the only natural view the original settlers may have had was not of what they were heading towards, but of what they were leaving behind.
The Flying Fox remained eager to make progress. It was not easy for him to fly with Ravana hanging from his shoulders and a wriggling cat under his arm, but soon they were descending the second half of the darkened staircase and feeling the spin of the hollow moon once more. At one point, the birdman wobbled violently and shone the torch towards the staircase, but Ravana could not see what he was looking at.
When they finally landed at the other end of the staircase, they found a door leading to a room that was the mirror image of the one where the birdman had tripped over the cat. The torchlight revealed walls encrusted with thick purple mould and other strange fungal growths that the cat, upon being let loose once more, appeared to find both frightening and fascinating in equal measure. They were now on the opposite side of the hollow moon and presumably somewhere far behind the palace.
“Did you see her?” asked the birdman excitedly. “On the stairs?”
“See who?” asked Ravana. “Ostara?”
“I don’t think so.”
They both returned to the staircase and peered up, but saw nothing. It was then they heard distant
voices drifting from the room behind and paused to listen. Apart from the doorway through which they had come, there was a corroded metal door to their left and a stout hatch to their right with a spy hole and a sign marked: ‘REACTOR A’. Thinking that the voices were coming from behind the hatch, Ravana peered through the spy hole and saw nothing. She realised the sound came from beyond the rusty door.
“There’s someone in the other access tunnel,” Ravana whispered.
“With any luck they’ll trip over Jones and break their necks.”
A sudden loud banging on the door made them both jump. In a panic, Ravana scuttled to hide behind the entrance to the spiral staircase, then peered out again when she realised The Flying Fox and her cat had stayed to face the intruders.
Slowly, the door opened. To her relief, it revealed a friendly and familiar face.
“Ostara!” cried Ravana, coming out of hiding.
“My word!” exclaimed Ostara, clearly startled at finding the masked birdman on the other side of the door. “Here to rescue cats?”
Chapter Fourteen
The secret of the hollow moon
OSTARA LED RAVANA and The Flying Fox through the door to a concrete-lined passage remarkably similar to the one the birdman had propelled them both down earlier. This tunnel was brightly lit and the railcar at the end of the tracks showed signs of recent repairs to bring it back into good running order.
Surya sat at the front of the carriage, his face illuminated by the console screen before him. Ravana saw the railcar had a large fuel cell strapped to the rear and guessed it had been modified, presumably by Fenris, to run on its own power. Another fuel cell on the floor near the door was connected to the lighting circuits. Fenris was evidently a man of more talents than previously revealed.
“We need a plan,” Ostara said to Ravana. “Surya has been speaking to Endymion and we think we’ve found Fenris and the mad priest.”
“Taranis is on the other side of that hatch,” Ravana told her. “Reactor A.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because we’ve just come from Reactor B and he’s definitely not there!”
Hollow Moon Page 33