Hollow Moon (18 page)

The ride was doing Ravana good and already her anger was
fading. Leaving the streets of Petit Havre behind she sped onwards down the
road, the gates of the palace now visible in the distance. Up ahead, the road
passed a large brick maintenance shed, outside which stood Professor Wak’s
familiar blue hovertruck, the flatbed loaded with tools and ropes. Ravana
decided to stop and see whether Zotz was there with his father.

As she parked the monocycle behind the battered
hovertruck, Ravana spied the professor himself walking up and down outside the
open doors of the shed, looking gloomy. She was pleased to see that Ostara was
with him, for although some people made fun of the security officer’s misguided
enthusiasm, Ravana liked her a lot and often went to her for advice on personal
matters, particularly those she would not have been comfortable taking to her
father. Ostara was kind and always ready to chat, for she understood that
Ravana was of an age where men and women started looking like they were from
totally different planets. Seeing Ravana arrive, Ostara waved in greeting.

“It’s a mess!” Wak was saying. “The kidnappers knew the
Dandridge
Cole
well, but it baffles me as to why they
were so destructive. There was no need!”

“Hullo, Ravana!” greeted Ostara, ignoring Wak. “On the
way to the palace?”

“I wasn’t invited,” replied Ravana glumly, thinking of
the visitors from Ascension. She found herself distracted by the professor, who
was pacing in circles and running a hand across his mop of ginger hair in
exasperation. “Hello, Professor Wak.”

The professor gave a vague wave, his mind clearly
elsewhere.

“The kidnappers blew the end off a maintenance shaft
which runs to the outside,” Ostara said to Ravana. “The top of the shaft comes
up inside this shed.”

She explained that a robot probe, sent out by Wak to fly
alongside the
Dandridge Cole
, had
discovered that a control bunker on the surface of the asteroid had been ripped
open by an explosion. The bunker was one of four housing the thrusters used to
keep the asteroid on course and spinning at the right speed, but they also
capped four long excavation shafts, bored into the centre of the asteroid when
the hollowing-out of the
Dandridge Cole
had first begun. Wak had a team of engineers out on the surface of the
asteroid assessing the damage to the bunker, but there was no question it had
been deliberate, for it appeared that it was into one of these shafts that the
kidnappers had guided the stolen
Nellie Chapman
.

Her search for her cat forgotten, Ravana looked with
renewed interest at the nearby brick shed, which she now noted was barely fifty
metres from the palace gate.

“Do you think the Astromole I saw burrowed towards the
shaft to escape?” she asked.

“Maybe,” muttered Wak. “All I know is that the airlock in
the floor of the shed is damaged and the maintenance shaft is open to space
when it should not be.”

“Never mind!” replied Ostara brightly. “It gives your
team something to get their teeth into. It must be quite exciting to go outside
and see the asteroid in space.”

“My team are skilled engineers, not dare-devil
bricklayers!” retorted Wak. “The prospect of directing a bunch of
concrete-laying robots whilst clinging to the side of a spinning lump of rock
is not their idea of excitement. We were already very busy trying to find the
power drain affecting the
Dandridge Cole
’s
systems. We have lost remote access to the reactor controls!” he exclaimed. “I
need my team here, opening the old tunnels to the engine rooms, but instead
I’ve got them outside erecting a temporary dome over the damaged bunker, so
they can waste even more time repairing this senseless demolition!”

Ostara looked humbled. “It sounds bad.”

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Ravana.

“Another pair of hands is always welcome,” Wak replied,
inadvertently drawing her attention to his mechanical left hand, the artificial
skin of which was a markedly different colour to his own flesh tones. “My
engineers outside already have the dome in place and I’m just waiting for
confirmation that it’s all sealed and secure. Once that’s done, we can
re-pressurise the shaft and have a look inside. I am more than happy for you to
dangle on the end of a rope on my behalf.”

Ravana’s eyes grew wide. “Will it come to that?”

Wak smiled. “Probably not. The airlock should be big
enough to take the hovertruck.”

He was interrupted by a tinny yet insistent beeping noise
from his wristpad. Glancing down, he read the brief message that had appeared
on the tiny screen.

“The shaft is sealed,” he said. “Let’s see if it will
hold some air.”

Without waiting to see if Ostara and Ravana followed, Wak
stalked towards the open doors of the maintenance shed and entered the gloomy
interior.

The airlock hatch at the head of the maintenance shaft
was a ten-metre-wide circular door in the concrete floor, painted yellow and
split down the centre so that the two halves of the steel hatch could slide
open. The waist-high wire fence that ran around the perimeter of the airlock
included a wide double gate at the edge of the hatch nearest to the shed door.
On the right-hand gatepost was a control panel, upon which red flashing lights
and warning buzzers were doing their utmost to attract everyone’s attention.
Ravana and Ostara watched Wak tap at the panel keypad, then heard a loud
vibrating drone as the airlock air compressors rattled into life.

“This may take a while,” Wak informed them. “The maintenance
shaft is two kilometres long and the whole lot needs to be pressurised before
the damaged airlock will open. In the meantime, I suggest you suit up.”

“Pardon?” exclaimed Ostara, looking slightly
panic-stricken.

Wak pointed to the row of spacesuits hanging on a rack
beside the door.

“No one is going through the airlock without a suit,” he
said firmly. “The dome sealing the end of the shaft could give way at any
time.”

“I am not wearing a spacesuit!” protested Ostara. “I’m
claustrophobic!”

“I don’t mind,” ventured Ravana.

“Fine,” snapped Wak. “Ostara, you wait here and keep an
eye on the airlock panel. Ravana, grab a couple of suits and get ready to come
with me.”

Wak stalked out of the shed and made for his hovertruck.
Ravana gave Ostara an apologetic shrug, then walked to the rack of spacesuits.
There were four of them in a variety of sizes; all lightweight emergency suits
in bright orange rather than full spacewalkers, each with a matching helmet.
Ravana selected her usual size and another that looked big enough for the
professor, then returned to where Ostara stared pensively at the airlock door.

“You probably think I’m silly,” sighed Ostara, glancing
at Ravana. “Being scared of wearing a spacesuit, I mean.”

“Are you scared?” asked Ravana. She placed Wak’s suit
over the top of the gate, then carefully stepped into a leg opening of her own.

“Aren’t you?” asked Ostara. She pointed to the circular
hatch in the floor. “Doesn’t it bother you that beyond that door is nothing?
That we’re separated from the cold, dark depths of space by just a few
centimetres of metal?”

Ravana looked at the airlock door. “I never really
thought about it,” she admitted.

She inserted her other foot into the spacesuit and pulled
it up around her. Emergency suits were designed to be donned quickly over
normal clothing and shoes, so were extremely loose-fitting but not very
flexible, thanks to internal reinforcing tubes of spring wire. The result made
the wearer look as if they had been gorging on chocolate cake, while trying to
move in one was like dancing at a fancy-dress party whilst dressed as an
airship. As Ravana slid her arms into the voluminous sleeves and wriggled her
fingers into the elasticated gloves at the end, she saw Ostara was trying hard
not to laugh.

“You look like a toy animal with too much stuffing,”
Ostara told her.

Behind them, Wak’s hovertruck arrived at the entrance to
the shed. The professor’s face, framed by the scratched windscreen, was a
picture of fierce concentration as he carefully manoeuvred the vehicle through
the gap between open doors. The truck was of a basic design; the crew
compartment at the front was open to the elements and had a simple bench seat
for the operator and a passenger, behind which was a flatbed furnished with
removable side rails and a couple of straps to keep any cargo in place. The
vehicle flew using jets of hot gas and the exhaust blast filled the shed with
dust and noise as Wak halted before the airlock, then throttled back the
thrusters to let the truck drop clumsily onto its spring-loaded landing struts.
Ravana collected his spacesuit from where she had left it on the gate and
handed it to him as he stepped down from the cab.

The drone of the compressors finally changed to a less
manic tone. In the comparative quiet that followed, they became aware that the
airlock control panel was no longer buzzing its warning, though a red light
continued to flash. Suit in hand, Wak went to the panel and scrutinised the
tiny digital display above the keypad. Seemingly satisfied, he pressed the large
green button at the bottom of the panel.

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.”