Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (73 page)

THE FIRST STRETCH was nightmarish. Six had been used to climbing when he was young, but this surpassed even the crags and cliffs on Kwaide, and he was out of practice. The surface was vertical and smooth, offering few handholds and footholds. He would have given up at the start, had the visitor not told him that the rock face would be much easier to climb further on. He took his progress slowly, knowing that neither of the two girls would be as fast as he was.
 

They were only a few metres into the climb when the avifauna saw what was happening. To Six’s utter surprise, the whole flock turned towards them, and the avians began to scale the rock behind them. He was close enough to see how easy this was for them. They used their large claws to scrabble quite efficiently up the rock. Grace, who was the last of the three climbers, had a look of intense worry at this latest development, and kept looking over her shoulder at the creatures who were following.

“Don’t look down, Grace!” he shouted. “They are keeping their distance, so just ignore them. They obviously formed a bond with Diva!”

“That’s right, blame me!”

“Why else would they be following us?” asked Six reasonably.

“How am I supposed to know? Perhaps they didn’t want to starve to death down there?”

At last they got to the top of the first fifty metres, and Six saw, to his great relief, that it did indeed spread out. He waited for the girls to catch up.

“Look. The going is much easier for the next hundred metres or so,” he pointed out. “The rock surface is more weathered here, see? It flows up almost in waves. We should be able to make good time. And if you look hard enough, you can see a tiny patch of light above us – that must be the opening the visitor told us about.”

Grace gulped as she stared up at the rock above her. It was interminable, she thought. Then she felt something crawl over her fingers and gave a shriek of pure terror, as her automatic reflexes came into action and she snatched her hand away. Something big and hairy fell off into the gloom. The others jumped.

Six touched her gently on the shoulder. “All right, Grace?”
 

She bit her lip. “F-fine! I d-don’t much like insects.” She thought, and then added, for the sake of honesty, “Or rocks.”

“You will be all right, you know. This bit is much easier than that vertical climb you just managed.”

“It’s not this bit that I am worried about! Even though you said it was going to be like going up a hill, but it is much harder than that.” She stared towards the tiny ring of light overhead, trying to make out the details. “The visitor says it is impossible higher up!”

Six smiled. “Don’t worry about the last bit. I can go up first, and there is some rope in the shuttle, so I can help you with that part.”

Grace brightened. “Really? That sounds better!”

“You won’t have any trouble,” Six assured her. “Just keep your hands away from those insects. Some of them look poisonous.”
 

“Oh terrific!” said Diva. “Now we have poisonous insects just to make the whole excursion more fun.”

“And watch the bats. They are insect eaters, I think, but they might not take kindly to sharing their habitat with us.”

“Anything else?” Diva’s voice was laden with sarcasm.

He gazed around into the half-gloom. “I suppose that is why the avifauna are at home in these caverns. They probably survive by eating all the insects in here. I expect they have been swarming up and down these rock faces for generations.”

Grace blew some stray hairs away from her eyes, and bent her head. She would be able to do this. The worst was over. She would
not
break down and cry. She was not a silly little girl; she was a grown woman who had proved herself in battles. Surely it was time to get over all this fear every time things got difficult? She was never going to be a real heroine at the rate she was going! So what were a few insects? And a few rocks? And a few bats? And a long drop down into a dark cavern? Surreptitiously, she looked sideways at Diva. The Coriolan girl, as usual, was perfectly comfortable. Only Diva could climb a 50 metre sheer drop and turn not a hair!
 

Grace gave an inward sigh, and her chin came up. Six gave her an approving nod, which made her feel better.
 

The rock had been cold to the touch near the surface of the ortholiquid lake, but got even colder as they moved up the rock face, until each grasp of the fingers was painful. Six found his hands stiffening, and losing their strength. He cursed to himself, but doggedly kept moving. “Nearly at the next resting point!” he shouted over his shoulder, although in fact it would take them at least another hour to get to the spot the visitor had told him about. “Not long now! It is going very well!”

“M-my h-hands are cold,” shouted Grace.

“Yes! Just keep moving. It will be worse if we stop.” Six looked around to see where the small sphere which was hovering above them had got to. When he detected it, he sent it back to chivvy Grace. “She has very little experience of anything like this,” he told it. “Just try to keep her going, talk to her – make the time pass more quickly.”

The visitor crackled its understanding, and disappeared. Six peered back into the gloom below him. He could hear the avians, so they were still following them, but the light just here was not good enough to see them. He hoped that the birds would make it out of the cavern. It seemed very unfair that these creatures should die just because they had been at the wrong place and the wrong time. Still, Six knew better than to expect fairness out of a world that had often treated everyone he knew unjustly. 

He trudged on, step after step, checking the girls’ progress automatically every few seconds, and trying to ignore the increasing physical discomfort. It was slow, laborious progress. The sheer effort of lifting his own body weight through so many metres was causing him to sweat under the bodywrap, and every breath he took now was a painful effort.

A shriek from below made him pause.

“All – all right, Diva?” he shouted.

“Any reason I – I shouldn’t be?” came back the cross answer. “Just saw some nice bats, is all.”

He grinned to himself in the dark. “Just wondering if you were weakening, is all.”

“Dream on, no-name! I am j … just f … fine. Don’t know w …why you have to go s … so slow!” The words came back accompanied by pauses to take huge gulps of air.

“Not finding it hard going?”

“Never! Can’t you go a bit faster?”

AT LAST THEY reached the small platform which Six and the visitor had marked out as the resting spot. The girls pulled themselves up to his level, and lay gasping. The visitor took advantage, disappearing above them to investigate the next step of the climb, and Six rubbed his fingers together to try to get full feeling back.

“Managing, Grace?”

The Sellite girl nodded back, but her face was as white as a sheet, and pinched with fear. “I’m good.”

“We will rest here for an hour, and then we have to get up to the next stage. The longer it takes, the less energy we will have. We have no food or water, and that is going to take its toll.”

“Don’t worry about me. I will make it.”

Six saw her pallour and doubted her words, but kept his opinion to himself. He thought privately that the sooner they got to the next stage, the better. Grace was running on pure nerve at the moment. When the adrenalin stopped, she would shut down and probably be unable to move at all.

The visitor arrived back with its characteristic whirring sound. “You have another hundred metres or so, and then the rock face narrows to the opening. It is worse than vertical for those last sixty metres.”

Six nodded. “I will scale that by myself,” he said. “Then I can get a rope and come back for the girls.”

Diva bristled up immediately. “I shall come with you!” she said, with an imperious tap of one foot.

“You won’t. There is no point in both of us risking our necks at the same time. I shall go first, and if I fall, then you will have your turn.”

“Oh.”

Six thought of something. “What time of day is it up there, Visitor?”

The visitor disappeared again, coming back a few minutes later. “It is dark, and there is a very strong wind blowing. I was unable to hold my position.”

“Good. That means that by the time we get up there it should be morning again, and that vile wind will have dropped. No point going from a bad situation to a worse one, is there?”

But nobody answered him. Both girls were staring into the distance with unfocused eyes, and he fell silent himself. He hadn’t much liked the sound of that comment of the visitor’s. Worse than vertical. That wasn’t good. Not good at all.

AND WHEN THEY finally completed the next hundred metres and reached the bottom of the chimney they saw that it was, indeed, anything but good. Only the loose shale and scree of the last stretch had presented any real problem, although struggling upwards over them had not been easy. Now the sheer rock face in front of them now was daunting. The rock soared upwards towards the small round hole at the top at an impossible angle. It was a cylinder about five metres wide, and at least sixty in height.
 

Grace gave a wail. “You can’t get up there!”

Diva examined it with interest. “There are still waves of stone,” she pointed out, “but they look awfully shallow. You won’t find much grip on there.” Her eyes traversed up to the tiny patch of brightening sky above, and gave a whistle. Six thought that she looked worried, for the first time.

“No problem,” he told them. “I can do it!”

Grace turned to him impulsively. “Six! Are you sure?”

“You know me. Spent my life in the uninhabitable zone. Climbed everything in it, feels like. Know it like the back of my hand.”

“Last time you said that,” Diva pointed out dryly, “you got us all lost.”

“Well hang it, Diva! I can’t get us lost here, can I? Straight up. Can’t miss it.”

She gave a snort. “I suppose.”

“Then shut up, will you? I tell you – I’ll have shimmied up there before you two have even got your breath back. Just make sure you are rested for when I come back with the rope. Even with a rope that isn’t going to be an easy climb.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get going, will you?”

Grace’s eyes glittered. “Be careful, won’t you, Six?”

He gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ve climbed far worse. Don’t worry!”
 

He gave himself another hour, to make sure that his hands had recovered, and then got to his feet. Grace gave him a tight hug, not wanting to let him go and even Diva pulled him close to her for a second in a quick embrace.

“Watch out for the avifauna,” he warned. “They can’t be far behind!” Then he cricked his neck from side to side, and began to climb, the visitor hovering close by his shoulder and giving advice from time to time about the best hand or foot holes.

AFTER AN HOUR and a half Six was only about half way up the cylinder, and his hands were already dangerously slippery with sweat. His eyes pricked with the saline drops which trickled from his forehead, and he was breathing stertorously through his teeth. He was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to make it through the narrowing gullet. The small waves in the rock were almost imperceptible, and that gave him very little to grasp strongly enough to hold himself in place. His heart was thumping, and his fingers and toes were hurting him. He found himself talking to the visitor, to try to keep the inner despair he was feeling at bay.

“Is it looking any easier above?” he muttered.

The visitor considered. “Not really. I suppose there is one small area where you could rest – an indentation really, but the rest is more or less the same.”

“Doesn’t it get narrow enough for me to chimney?”

The globe buzzed. “A chimney is something which evacuates smoke,” it informed him helpfully.

Six closed his eyes. “Thanks for nothing,” he murmured.

“You are quite welcome.”