Lair of the Sentinels

by Geoff Palmer

  A centimetre in, it struck something. Resistance. He pushed harder, jamming the other end into the palm of his hand, breaking the skin. But he didn’t feel a thing because the rock wall in front of him slid silently away.

  For one absurd moment it seemed like it had been a waste of time. The door vanished, but the force field still held things in place. He remembered pushing through it from mineshaft. Like battling a strong wind. He could see through it. Could see what looked like the faces of his friends gawping at him. The view a fish must have from inside its bowl.

  Then the pressure grew too much, the force field collapsed, and he and Alkemy tumbled out in a cascade of water.

  41 : Another Problem

  Coral, Ludokrus and Norman leapt back as a wall of water surged towards them, rushing up the floor of the mineshaft like a tidal wave. Their torch beams swung about wildly as they leapt back, but the mineshaft sloped down, angled like a beach, and the wave broke with a rushing sigh that left two lumps of debris in its wake. One was coughing and splashing about in the shallows. The other floated on a raft of green matting and looked like she’d been on a gentle cruise.

  ‘That had to be the most amazing entrance ever,’ Norman grinned. ‘It looked like you were swimming around behind glass like a couple of goldfish, then someone broke the bowl.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it felt like,’ Tim said, going over what had happened while drying out his sodden clothes by the still-glowing exit passage.

  He looked over at Alkemy. She was still unconscious, but her breathing was slow and steady. The fungus anaesthetic had slowed down her whole system, which was probably what had saved her.

  He looked at the laser cutter set on a sturdy tripod, the feet of which were now permanently welded to the floor by streams of cooling lava. Then he squatted to examine the passage it had cut. It was a metre wide and inclined at an angle of ten degrees. At the far end he made out a patch of late afternoon sky and felt his heart leap at the prospect of the open air and a view of distant hills.

  ‘Careful,’ Ludokrus said. ‘If machine restart, it mine your head!’

  He ducked back as Ludokrus swivelled the tunneller to one side then detached it from the tripod.

  ‘Safe now.’

  ‘The level’s still rising,’ Coral said, coming past with a saucepan of water and sloshing it up the exit tunnel. A great cloud of steam engulfed her for moment. ‘It makes our job easier though. Not so far to go each time.’

  Ludokrus had fashioned a couple of pans from leftover scraps of metal and now he and Coral were using them to cool the glowing rock.

  ‘We’ve got one more problem,’ Norman said, stopping them before they could go back for another load.

  ‘Great, what now?’

  ‘I think we’re all agreed this whole thing’s been a set-up from the start,’ he said. ‘The Sentinels caught Albert and used him as bait to get us, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So how did they know where we were? What we were doing outside there in the gully? How did they know when to start and stop the flashing lights? To set off that landslide? There’s only one way they could have known: they’ve got the gully under surveillance.’

  ‘So?’ Coral said. ‘Watching doesn’t mean they can actually do anything. We’ll give them a wave as we go.’

  ‘You won’t get a chance. We know they’ve set off explosions above two of the mines already. One to trap Albert, one to trap us. What if they’ve got the whole place rigged? They could bring the entire gully down on us before we get halfway to the hut.’

  ‘Can’t we just wait till it gets dark?’

  ‘They probably have infra-red cameras or image intensifiers too. Maybe both. It was getting dark when they got Albert.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Tim said, ‘we should do it now. While they’re still mopping up that salt water.’

  ‘Well?’ Coral turned to Norman. ‘I hope you’ve got a plan.’

  ‘As a matter of fact ...’ he grinned.

  42 : Odd Man Out

  The fungus made great insulating material, Norman thought. Tim had stuffed his jacket with it for buoyancy, and now Norman was leaning on a wad of the stuff, elbows down, kicking with his feet as he pushed his way up the exit passage. The slope was gentle and the tunnel glassy-smooth, but the surface was still hot, especially near the middle where the cooling air and splashed water hadn’t yet reached it, so he went as fast as he could. The fungus mat dried quickly. Became crisp and brittle. Began to smoke. The toes of his runners began to melt too. He could feel the heat in his feet and sensed them sticking to the scorching rock.

  He pushed on. He had no choice. He couldn’t stop now or he’d be barbecued.

  Then the rock began to cool again as he neared the exit.

  Fresh air hit him like a cold shower and the late afternoon sunlight was blinding after the gloomy mineshaft. He staggered out, shielding his eyes, and found himself in a very different place to the one he’d entered a few hours before. The plateau where the bikes had been parked, the bikes themselves, and the switchback track to the gully floor were gone, swept away by the explosion and landslide.

  ‘OK, I’m out,’ he called back down. ‘Heading off now.’

  ‘Good luck.’ Tim’s acknowledgement echoed back, accompanied by a waft of steam from another tunnel-cooling splash of water.

  The slope was steep and difficult to walk down. He slid part of the way on his bottom, using the last scraps of the fungus mat as a sledge. Reaching the gully floor, he leapt to his feet and started towards the hut at a steady jog.

  The good thing about being the odd man out was that the Sentinels wouldn’t pay him much attention. At least that was the theory. Why bring the gully down on one hapless human they hadn’t seen before when it was Alkemy and Ludokrus they were really after? If they were watching, the Sentinels would be waiting for the others to emerge, keeping one last surprise in store for them.

  He hoped.

  So far, so good, he told himself as he reached the hut, grabbed Ludokrus’s bike and hit the starter.

  There was a faint cough from the engine. His heart sank. Was it still water-logged? He wasn’t sure if it had started, so he let go the handlebars and gave it a shove. The bike bounced upright. It was running!

  He wheeled the rickshaw-like trailer out from where Ludokrus had assembled it, attached it to the tow bar, and rode away up the zigzag path, leaving the gully behind. The trailer moved smoothly, its wheels were well sprung, and it didn’t affect the bike’s performance. That was good. No, that was critical.

  He reached the summit, paused briefly by the signs, picked out a route, then headed off again, blazing a new trail along the top of the gully’s eastern slope. The view was spectacular but the drop down both sides of the sharply pointed peak was alarming. He tried not to think about it and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, searching out the safest route and anticipating every turn and bump.

  Suddenly, behind him, the trailer slipped into a dip and slid sideways off the narrow peak. The back end of the bike was dragged with it. Norman felt it go and resisted the temptation to leap off and save himself. Without him, the bike and trailer would go crashing down into the gully below.

  He threw his weight forward, forcing the bike’s auto-stabilisers to lean with him, and accelerated hard. The back wheel skidded, gripped, then bit, hauling the trailer back in line so suddenly he was forced to brake hard to stop from going off the other side.

  He paused for a second, caught his breath and wiped his clammy hands on his T-shirt. ‘Not far now,’ he told himself and pressed on.

  The slope above the exit passage wasn’t quite so steep. He was able to weave a zigzag path down to it, a long series of wide, gentle turns. A track of any sort would help Ludokrus when he headed back up, especially with Alkemy in tow.

  He stopped above the exit hole, left the motor running, chocked the wheels with stones, then called down to the others to say he
was back. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. Good timing. The tunnel should be safely cooled by now.

  Tim was first to emerge, blinking and squinting in the sunlight, his damp clothes dishevelled. Coral followed. Norman directed them down the slope. ‘See you at the hut.’

  ‘You OK here?’ Tim said.

  ‘Hell yeah. This has to be the safest spot in the gully.’

  With no mineshafts above them, there weren’t likely to be any more explosives above them either.

  He settled down and watched Tim and Coral descend, calling out their progress to Ludokrus.

  ‘That’s it, they’ve reached the hut.’

  ‘OK. We come now.’

  Ludokrus slid Alkemy, still wrapped in fungus, into the exit passage, got behind and pushed for all he was worth. She moved easily enough, but he had to keep going. If he paused, they’d both slide back down the smooth slope.

  As they neared the top, Norman reached in and took the strain, helping to slide her out into the open air. They strapped her into the trailer, then Norman saw them off, watching as they followed his zigzag trail up to the ridge line before heading back towards the the gully mouth. Satisfied they were safely under way, he headed down himself, following Tim and Coral’s trail, skidding and sliding, this time without the benefit of the fungus mat.

  Coral had gone on ahead. Tim was waiting for him at the hut by the last remaining bike. It was running and ready to go. Tim gestured for him to take the rider’s seat then clambered on behind.

  They caught up with the others on the hill overlooking the entrance to the gully, tired, dusty, but elated. Alkemy blinked back at them from the stretcher. The fresh air and the bouncing traverse across the ridge had woken her.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Numb,’ she said. ‘But thank you. I remember what you do.’

  The sun was sinking. Gizzard Gully was calm and still. It looked like nothing had stirred down there for a hundred years or more.

  Coral said, ‘This is the last I ever want to see of that place.’

  They all heartily agreed, turned their bikes and headed for home.

  43 : Declaration of War

  To the people of Wellington, the mirror-windowed office block was just another bland government building amongst dozens of others. Except this one had a number of surveillance cameras concealed in bubble-like blisters on the underside of its broad verandas and exceptionally strong stainless steel bollards around it, spaced along the pavement at regular intervals to prevent people from parking there — or ramming their way in.

  On the fifth floor, Director General Johnson Johns turned from his window at the knock on his door and watched a smart young man in a smart new suit enter.

  ‘Morning Darling.’

  ‘Morning sir.’

  The young man was carrying a red manilla folder. Johnson Johns hadn’t been in the job long, but he’d been there long enough to know that red meant trouble.

  ‘Thought you’d better see this, sir. ‘A pri one sit-rep from the Yanks.’

  ‘A priority one situation report from our Americans cousins, Mr Darling?’ The DG couldn’t abide service jargon. ‘What is it this time? The ambassador caught speeding again? Mrs Ambassador got a parking ticket?’ He took the folder and flicked through the closely printed pages.

  ‘Bit more than that, sir.’ Darling’s eyes were bright with anticipation. ‘It seems that one of their comm sat nets ... er ... commercial satellite networks responsible for relaying satellite phone messages went off-line yesterday. Sixteen satellites in total. They swivelled away from Earth, broadcast a sequence of coded signals into deep space, swivelled back, and came back online again.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with us?’

  ‘Seems they were hijacked. Someone told them to do it, and the techs have traced the originating call to a handset registered to the Nine News Network.’

  Johnson Johns raised an eyebrow as Darling moved to a pair of detailed maps on the wall; the North and South Islands side by side.

  ‘What’s more — and our base at Waihopai have confirmed it — the call came from here.’ He indicated a remote spot on the West Coast of the South Island.

  The Director General got up for a closer look. ‘What, in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Not quite nowhere, sir. Did you see the TV news last night?’

  * * *

  ‘More scrambled eggs anyone?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Yes please, Mrs Townsend!’

  ‘At least someone’s got an appetite.’ Em glanced at Tim and Coral as she topped up Norman’s plate. They looked tired. Yesterday’s walk must have worn them out, especially getting caught in that storm. They’d arrived home damp and dirty. ‘You really don’t have to be up so early, you know. It is a holiday.’

  It couldn’t have felt less like a holiday.

  Tim made a shot at a smile. ‘Don’t want to miss the day,’ he said, his voice sounding brighter than he felt.

  Coral gave him a look. He knew what she meant. It was the last day. The adventure was over. By late this evening, Alkemy and Ludokrus would be heading for home. This time tomorrow, the three of them would be getting ready for school.

  ‘What do you reckon they’ll do now?’ Norman whispered.

  ‘Who?’

  He glanced over his shoulder and checked under the table, looking for the cat. ‘The you-know-whats?’

  ‘You mean the Sentinels?’ Coral said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There’s not much they can do now. Not stuck in that old mine.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate them,’ Tim said.

  Coral gave a brittle laugh. ‘Are you serious? The Eltherian ship will be here in ...’ she checked her watch, ‘... less than twelve hours, and all they’ve got to use against it is a cat and an ancient school principal. Colour me terrified.’

  Norman helped himself to another slice of toast. ‘What’ll the Sentinels do when they’ve gone?’

  ‘Pack up and go too, I guess,’ Tim said.

  ‘We should go back up there later. In a few weeks’ time, I mean. Once everyone’s gone. Take a proper look round. We’ve got a way in now, and who knows what cool stuff they’ll leave behind.’

  ‘Have nice walk,’ Coral said.

  Norman glanced at Tim. He hadn’t been planning on walking.

  ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘in a few weeks time it’ll be the end of term. We’ll be heading back to Auckland.’

  Tim made a face.

  ‘At the very least I’d like to see that trough they pushed Alkemy into. You said she seemed to dance on it at first.’ Norman piled scrambled egg on the toast and crammed it in his mouth.

  ‘It was weird. It seemed like while she kept moving she was OK, but as soon as she stopped, she sank.’

  ‘Oobleck,’ Norman said.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘What did you say then?’

  ‘Oobleck. I said it sounds like oobleck.’

  ‘What the hell is—?’

  ‘Oh, it’s great fun. Have you never made some?’

  Tim shook his head.

  Norman scooped up the last of the scrambled egg with a crust. ‘You can make it yourself by mixing water and corn starch. I once went through the shop’s entire stock and made a whole sink full. It was really neat. But Mum wasn’t too happy.’

  ‘What’s so special about water and corn starch?’

  ‘It makes a liquid that doesn’t behave like a proper liquid. They call it a non-Newtonian fluid. You can dip your finger in it if you do it slowly, but if you give it a sharp tap it behaves like a solid.’

  Tim thought of Alkemy’s odd side-to-side dance.

  ‘Any sudden shock makes its molecules lock together. Once the shock’s been absorbed, it behaves like a liquid again.’

  As soon as the Sentinel blocked her and stopped her moving, Alkemy started
sinking.

  ‘So if you step in it and try to snatch your foot out ...?’

  ‘It’ll lock. Solid. But you’d be able to pull it out if you moved slowly.’

  Which was exactly how he’d dragged her out.

  ‘Obviously that Sentinel stuff was a lot nastier than water and corn starch,’ Norman continued, ‘but the principle’s the same.’

  ‘What was that stuff for?’ Coral said.

  Tim shook his head. He didn’t know. But the Sentinels singled her out for it. He remembered the greasy-looking antenna pad that seemed to study his face before pushing him aside.

  ‘Speaking of Alkemy,’ Coral picked up her plate. ‘We should get these done and see how she’s doing. Provided of course that Dustbin here has finished.’

  Norman wiped a finger round his plate and licked it. ‘All done.’

  ‘I’ll get my stuff,’ Tim said, once they’d done the dishes.

  Smudge lay in wait in the hallway, coiled like a spring. The moment he trotted past, she launched herself at him, sinking her claws and teeth into his jeans-clad leg. Tim leapt back in shock and spun around, but that made Smudge cling tighter and sink her claws in deeper.

  ‘Get her off! Get her off!’ he cried, but Coral and Norman stared, stunned and a little frightened by the ferocity of the attack.

  Alice appeared. ‘Oh! No, no, no puss. No,’ she called. ‘Bad cat!’

  Smudge wasn’t listening.

  Em rushed in from out the back and helped Tim pry the cat loose. Even then, Smudge continued snarling and lashing at him as she was dragged away.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Em said, dabbing antiseptic on his wounds. He had a few scratches and the dent of teeth marks, but they hadn’t broken the skin. His jeans had saved him. ‘She’s never done anything like that before. You must’ve startled her.’

  ‘What was that about?’ Coral said as they headed for the shortcut to the reserve.

  Tim’s leg still stung. ‘I reckon it’s revenge for what I did to the Sentinels. Especially that one I splashed with salt water.’

  ‘Nah, it’s more than that,’ Norman said.