Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (88 page)

After a couple of seconds he turned his attention back to the biolock. The inner door should have opened by now. He passed his hand in front of it again, his body giving him an intense jolt of adrenalin as he felt the first stirrings of panic. Nothing happened. He looked closer at the device, until he could make out the digital display. It was telling him in typical short Sellite manner that his biosign had been removed from that lock, that he was not authorized to re-enter the 1st skyrise.

He realized immediately what had happened, and who must have been responsible. Atheron had ensured that he would get out through the airlock but not back in. Atheron had indeed thought of everything. It was a bitter, bitter realization. His only hope was that Mandalon 50 open the airlock from the inside. He turned towards the young boy he had brought to kill, holding one large hand out in supplication as the lack of air and the hostile atmosphere began to cut into him.

Mandalon 50 was still slumped against the wall of the inside corridor, trying to recover. He saw the guard reach out to him, saw that the biolock had not reacted to the man’s biosigns. He tried to scramble to his feet to help the guard. And then his sense of self preservation stepped in. The thought came clearly into his mind, and Gorgamon read it as easily as if it had been spoken out loud. If I release you, you will kill me.

The boy met Gorgamon’s with sad resignation, and he slid back down the wall as his legs failed him once more. He watched as the large Sellite guard died in front of him. Tears came to the young boy’s face. He didn’t know what they were. Relief, anger, shame and worry over the orthogel’s state all mixed together.

He was still trembling when they found him twelve hours later. He would need the rest of his life to forget how he had deliberately watched a man die. 

LEDIN CRICKED HIS neck as far back as it would go, and still couldn’t grasp the absolute enormity of the Xianthes. It was as if some giant hand had piled mountain upon mountain upon mountain upon mountain, the resultant structure rising majestically up through the atmosphere of Xiantha. Although his eyes could only follow the soaring rock as far up as the heavy cloud base, he had heard that it went right through the troposphere into the stratosphere, and that the top part of it was actually in outer space. He tried to see past the first clouds, straining his eyes to penetrate them and follow the rock as it continued upwards, but it was impossible.
 

Then he looked off to his right, and saw that there was another similar formation in the distance, just visible across a strangely dimpled valley.

“They are even more impressive than I had imagined!” he said.

Cimma nodded. “They are thought to be the result of a collision with another planetary body, or a major asteroid, many thousands of years ago.”

“What, it just tore through part of Xiantha?”

“Exactly.” She pointed to the valley beneath them. “If you look closely you can see that this valley was gouged out by something spherical. Of course, there are years and years of sediment on top of it now, but the shape is still clear.”

Ledin looked. And now that he looked, he was able to see that the impressive valley was indeed rounded in a circular shape. “This is where the planet hit Xiantha?”

“It tore through the rock, and the edges were extruded, curling upwards and outwards, driven by trillions of millions of tons of thrust to pile up at the edges of the valley. The force was such that the rock in the middle of the impact was vapourized altogether, and it was only that at the very edge of impact which survived, although molten and twisted. It cooled rapidly as it rose upwards, and formed the two Xianthes.”

“Impressive!” Ledin found it hard to look at anything except the towering wall of rock, now that they were only a few metres from the base. He shivered. “Is it safe?”

“Nobody knows. But they have been here for a very long time, so I guess they aren’t likely to fall down now. What do you think?”

“I have never seen anything like it. So a lot of people visit?”

Cimma nodded again. “Oh yes. The entrance is just over there.” She indicated a small cabin at the base of the Xianthe, where a portly ticket collector could be made out. “That is why visitors come here in their thousands. The rock is very highly magnetized and you can now travel right around this Xianthe in a cage.”

“Up through the troposphere?”

“Through the troposphere and the stratosphere. It takes you right over the top, practically in outer space, and back around past the lightning zone on the other side. The cages have a stabilizing function so that you are not actually upside down for that part of the journey.” The Sellite woman smiled, remembering a previous trip. “On the way up you get to see the blue rays, the sprites and the elves – the most incredible auroras that you will ever see. And on the way down you tremble in the most powerful electric storm which you could ever imagine too.”

Ledin felt a shiver run right down his spine. “And they might have taken Grace up there?”

Six and Diva, who had galloped off on their canths to find out whether Atheron and Xenon had been seen in the area, came back to a halt in front of them, throwing up a small cloud of surface dust.
 

Six waved his arms. “The sled is over there!” he shouted. “Behind the first flank of the Xianthe. They have taken a cage up. We are too late!”

Ledin looked automatically towards Arcan, who darkened in colour. “Can you take us directly into the cage, Arcan?”

“I can try,” said Arcan. “If the visitor’s sphere can get close enough to see exactly where they are, that is.”

“I am on my way,” crackled the globe, disappearing from sight and hurtling upwards at a huge rate. They tried to keep their eyes on it as it dwindled into a speck above them, but after one or two seconds it was already too high for them to detect it.
 

Diva glared around her, hating having to wait – never one of her best points. Six looked at her, feeling suddenly protective. She hated doing nothing almost as much as he hated having to sit through speeches! He smiled to himself.

“Something funny, nomus?” Diva snapped. “Maybe you could share it?”

He shook his head, grinning even more, but was saved from more of her wrath by the reappearance of the video camera, which was coming down so fast that it barely managed to stop before impacting in the ground. It struggled to raise itself to its usual hover, and then gave a long burst of static. “I am unable to approach the cages,” it said. “The magnetic pull of the Xianthe spur is so great that it interferes with all my systems. I regret that, in this instance, I can be of no further help to any of you. I have, however, managed to capture the position of the Blue Ray platform, where Arcan can transport you all to wait for the cage.”

Arcan shimmered. “I have it,” he said. “Who shall I take up?”

Diva looked around. “Ledin, Cimma, Six and I,” she said. Then she raised an inquiring eyebrow at the three Xianthans from the Donor Headquarters who had accompanied them. 

The canth keeper thought for a moment. “I have to detail these men to take all the magsleds back to the Donor Headquarters. We cannot risk their safety; they are an integral part of the program. But I will accompany you myself. It is important that there is somebody from Xiantha to attest to the happenings here.” He gave the pertinent instructions to his men, who nodded, one of them setting off at a walk to claim back the missing sled. Then the man who kept canths nodded respectfully in Arcan’s direction. “I am ready.”

At once the scenery blurred, the canths were left behind, and the small party found themselves three-quarters of the way up the Xianthe, above the clouds and well into the stratosphere.

THEY LOOKED AROUND them, awestruck into silence.

When Six finally spoke it was with a slow whistle of appreciation. “Well,” he said, “now we know that the reports were not exaggerated.”

Ledin nodded dumbly and gazed out of the platform, away from the Xianthe itself. There, covering the sky, was a collection of bright red threads which interlinked into a shape like a Coriolan mushroom, with tentacles of orange flashes edged with emerald green reaching miles down towards the land below, shrouded in cloud. According to a picture set into a display case, these were the elves and the sprites. At a level with his eyes, he could see the blue rays, electric blue ethereal threads stretching from one side of the sky to the other. He took a breath finally, and blinked. The scene was still there, he had not imagined it. Now he could detect flashes of lightning way below them, down around the level of the clouds.

“
When
you two have stopped gaping,” Diva was tapping her foot. “
perhaps
we could start trying to find Grace.”

“I don’t think there is very much we can do just at the moment, Diva,” Six told her with resignation, “except wait.”

Ledin heard a faint scraping of metal against metal. “Look!” he said. “Here comes the first cage!”

They all raced eagerly over to the back of the platform, where the compartment would pause to allow its occupants to disembark and admire the view more slowly. The cage came slowly into view.
 

It was made of metallic bars on the outside, but there was a transparent rexelene box on the inside, with tubes running along it to provide oxygen, heat, humidity and the right pressure for its occupants. Inside the box were rexelene seats. All the rexelene was completely transparent, enabling the occupants of the cage to see for as far as their eyes were capable. The seats were suspended by some complicated contraption so that they could be twisted and turned to give the occupants the best view of the outside phenomena.

This one was empty. It stopped when it reached their level, and Ledin eyed it suspiciously. “Why do they have these metal bars all around it?” he asked. “And how does it stay attached to the rails?”

The canth keeper, who had been chatting politely in the background with Cimma, lifted his head.
 

“The bars are there for when the cage gets around to the other side,” he said. “There are perpetual lightning storms there that are so fierce that one bolt can turn half a forest into a burnt crisp. The bars somehow protect the occupants from the lightning. Even if the cage is hit, the people inside it are protected. They feel a slightly uncomfortable charge, nothing more.

“And the cages stay attached to the rails because of the huge magnetism of the Xianthes. When the planet gouged out the valley, it instantly vapourized most of the rock, but at the edges the rock was simply liquefied. The metallic parts then cooled more rapidly than the rock, forming the Xianthes, which are almost purely metallic, and very magnetic. The cages have safety features of a more conventional type, of course, but one of the main reasons they don’t fall is the magnetic attraction between the cage and the metal in the rock face.”

Six and Ledin walked inside the cage and looked around it, trying to visualize Grace’s position, trying to spot ways to help her. It was soon fairly apparent that there was no way to stop the cages, or to block the doors. That, the canth keeper told them sadly, could not be done. Diva strode agitatedly from side to side of the Blue Ray platform with a mutinous expression, and Cimma stared at the cage with unseeing eyes.
 

The cage maintained its spot at the half-way house for about ten minutes, and then a buzzer sounded a minute’s warning before the gates closed again and the cage disappeared on its upward journey, giving Six and Ledin time to disembark before it moved on.
 

“We have half an hour until the next one,” The canth keeper informed them.
 

Ledin realized at that moment that time really was relative. Never had half an hour seemed so long – and so short.

GRACE WAS BEING held upright by her bonds, and was looking out as the cage finally rose out of the cloud base and into the clear sky. She registered the hanging crimson shapes of the elves and the brilliant green and orange of the sprites with only minimal interest, since most of her energy was going on trying to think of a way to escape from the Sellites. Planning just how to escape when being held in a cage miles from the surface of the planet was taking up all her concentration, and she was making no progress whatsoever. She was tired, and cold and uncomfortable. They had put a gag in her mouth, so she was finding it difficult to breathe, and her heart was thumping with indignity at such treatment.

Atheron was looking out at the northern lights with little interest.
 

“We will wait,” he told Xenon, “until we are in the lightning zone, once we have crowned the summit. It would be quite natural that a particularly fierce bolt of lightning should cause the door to the cage to swing open, and who could wonder at it if one of the occupants should be … most unfortunately … unable to stop herself from plummeting to the ground.”

Xenon nodded. “And it is such a long way down,” he agreed. “There would be no chance at all of surviving such a fall.”

Atheron was almost cheery. “None at all,” he agreed. “The chances of being struck by lightning must be very high, and if the person falling were to escape that, then the lack of air would kill them, or the cold, of course.” He looked satisfied. “And in any case they would impact upon the ground at a large velocity, which would probably serve to make the actual cause of death totally unknowable.”

Grace felt her blood turn to ice at the thought of what was going to happen to her. She felt faint, and had to close her eyes tightly to stop herself from slumping into unconsciousness. It looked horribly as if Arcan and the others were simply not going to make it in time. She thought about the people she would never see again, and one tear tracked down her cheek. She began to shiver with terror, an unwelcome reaction, but one she found herself unable to stop.
 

Atheron’s fingers went to a small satchel he was carrying, and he opened it. Grace’s eyes widened even more as she saw him draw out a slim canister. He did something to the top of it, and then paused.

“They will be waiting at one of the stops,” he said calmly. “Either here, at the Blue Ray platform or at the Summit, or at Lightning Corner. We must be ready to act at all three.”

Xenon slid his eyes furtively in the direction of his sister, and then looked just as quickly away again. “True,” he agreed. “—If we want the other part of the plan to work.”

“Of course it will. They won’t have even considered our motives. The orthogel entity is too naïve, and the others are too hasty. They will have no thought of anything except saving their friend. Once they realize that we have another agenda, it will be far too late for them to do anything about it!”