Hollow Moon (19 page)

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.

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 into 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?”