“What about my Bartie?” Cain sobbed.
“I’ll find him,” said Knimble.
An unexpected heat burned in Zeke’s stomach. An urgency that bubbled up into his throat. Images flashed through his mind, Dayo, Pin-mei, Enki. He couldn’t stop himself. He leapt to his feet.
“And me! I’ll help.”
A plume of sand danced across the courtyard. Zeke watched uneasily. The grains drifted lazily on the air, then floated down again. He let out a sigh.
“How long?” Cain asked, pacing in circles.
Zeke turned around, taking a last look at the Chasm. The mud-coloured towers, the Grand Hall, the concrete new wings. The school itself was overshadowed by the cliffs of Ophir Chasma. As if an eight-kilometre high wave had petrified in an instant.
Knimble emerged from the Hall. Chandrasar was with him. They stopped on the steps, deep in conversation. Zeke wondered what they were talking about. They were out of earshot. Even so, he couldn’t resist straining to catch their words. He listened hard, and harder still. Voices echoed through his mind. First a man’s.
Why won’t she forget…she thinks she killed him.
Then a woman’s.
Deepak was my life…I’ll never betray him.
Zeke raised his eyebrows. Was that Knimble and Chandrasar thinking? Surely not, after all, wasn’t he rubbish at telepathy?
Cain placed a hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, letting my imagination run riot,” Zeke replied.
Cain gave an angry hmph.
“I’m sure Bartie’s alright,” Zeke said. “Pin will look after him.”
“A twelve year old girl on a planet crawling with menace?”
Knimble was striding towards them.
“Wait up!” It was Scuff, running out of the Grand Hall so fast, he tumbled down the steps.
“Yee-ouch, remind me never to do that again,” he griped, rubbing his backside.
Knimble stroked his goatee. “And who gave you permission to come on our little walkabout?”
Scuff looked the translocation tutor straight in the eye. “Zeke and I are a team.”
Knimble chuckled. “You’re a right little battler, I get it. But we’re not going to a barbie.”
“Tell him, Zeke!” Scuff threw him a wide-eyed stare.
For an instant, Zeke wrestled with his feelings. He didn’t want to put his friend in danger. But it wasn’t his call. It was Scuff’s.
“Sir, Scuff really is—”
Knimble raised his hand. “Fair do’s,” he said simply, and gestured for Scuff to come closer. “Right. Link arms. We’re going to sidestep straight to the mine. Mariner Chinook is waiting for us.”
“Sidestep?” Cain enquired. His face was white.
“Apologies, Mister Cain. It’s slang for translocation.”
“Have you ever been to the mine before?” Cain was turning paler by the moment.
Knimble grinned. “N’ah mate, I haven’t. But I’m no-wet-behind-the-ears first-year.”
Zeke coughed.
“No offence,” Knimble said.
“None taken,” Zeke replied.
“I’m a fully certified Mariner with a PhD in translocation. In short, Mister Cain, trust me.”
Cain mumbled something and nodded.
All four locked arms. Knimble took a deep breath.
“We’re about to slip the surly bonds of reality and take a dimensional shortcut. That’s the easy bit. What perils we’ll face at the Melas mine, who can say. All I know is that I have a bad feeling. The last time I felt this way, four men died.”
“Cheer us up, why don’t you,” Scuff remarked.
Zeke took a deep breath. The world was fading. The rocks and sky and canyons became dim. His heart skipped a beat. Darkness began.
End of Part Two
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Melas Mine
A huge black shape loomed out of the nothingness. Zeke focussed. It was some kind of gigantic needle, three storeys high and resting on four great brackets. Golden letters on its side spelled ‘HUBS’.
“That’s the Zapper,” Knimble said. “The laser drill.”
They were standing outside the mining camp.
“A violation of nature,” Cain added.
“Mars doesn’t have any nature,” Scuff remarked, rolling his eyes.
The Zapper was surrounded by tents, prefabs, crates, and machinery. Short, squat servo-macs scuttled around the camp like beetles, beeping and tooting. Some loaded barrels onto silver tanks.
“So, the barrels are full of helium three?” Zeke asked.
“That’s right, kidda,” Knimble answered. “The power source of the solar system.”
“And sucked from the ground by that abomination,” Cain said.
“U-huh. They call it vacking. The laser beam penetrates underground, loosening dust and rubble. This is vacuum-pumped to the surface,” Knimble explained.
Zeke frowned. “Won’t that create cavities?”
Scuff clicked his tongue. “Hubs Incorporated is the biggest energy company ever. And they’re American. I think we can trust them. As the saying goes, Hubs Inc is the backbone of the Solar System.”
Knimble nodded in agreement.
Cain spat in the dust. “The Hubs family worshipped money for three centuries.”
“Try living without it,” Scuff said acidly.
“We do,” Cain replied, and folded his arms.
The air shimmered. A tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared. Mariner Bobby Chinook.
“Bad news,” he said. “Two horses strayed into camp. No sign of their riders.”
Cain’s mouth dropped.
“First thing tomorrow we’ll start searching,” Knimble said.
“Why not now?” Cain demanded.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Chinook replied. “A blind hunter is a bad hunter.”
Cain snarled a bad word, much to Zeke’s surprise.
“Come,” Chinook said. “The site manager will show you around while I fix up some tents.”
He strode off towards the camp.
“Closer, come closer,” the manager said.
Zeke and Scuff inched nearer and peered over the brink. The ten-metre-wide pit dropped into the bowels of the planet. The bore was as smooth as glass.
“That’s my baby,” the manager said, pointing up at the enormous Zapper. “Cuts sharper than a diamond.”
A chill seeped into Zeke’s bones. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
The manager, a stout Indian in yellow hi-viz gear, threw back his head and laughed. “My boy, no danger means no fun!”
“Fun?” Scuff asked, idly picking his nose.
The man pulled back his safety helmet and scratched his thinning hair. “I’ve mined ore everywhere there’s ore to mine. The Moon, Ceres, Ganymede, even the Mercury Project. It’s the risks that keeps me on my toes.”
“You want it risky?” Zeke asked, wide-eyed.
“If my neck hairs aren’t tingling, I’m doing it wrong.”
He laughed again, a loud braying laugh. “Incidentally, my boys, call me Aariz, Aariz Hammoud.” He vigorously shook their hands. Scuff mouthed a silent ‘ouch’ and massaged his crushed fingers.
“Hubs Incorporated have been here four months and extracted a hundred tons of helium three. I’m very proud of that record.”
Zeke scratched his chin. “But where you’re sucking out dust, couldn’t that leave micro-holes?”
“Never met a hole I didn’t like,” Aariz said, and laughed all over again. He laughed a lot.
Zeke persisted. “And over time, won’t those holes join up?”
Aariz stopped smiling. “A little subsidence is all part of the natural cyc
le. Nothing to get worked up about, is it?”
Scuff nodded enthusiastically.
Zeke opened his mouth to reply. But he didn’t. The tiniest of shudders passed across the ground. It was as though Mars shivered.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
Aariz gave him a bewildered look. “Feel what, my boy?”
Zeke turned to Scuff, who gave a shrug of indifference.
“Maybe I imagined it,” Zeke said.
“Hey there, what’s cracking?” called a voice.
A lanky figure, also wearing hi-viz and a helmet, strolled out from the maze of tents.
“Justice!” Zeke and Scuff cried together.
Justice tipped his helmet to Aariz. “Mind if I say howdy to my best buds here, Mister Manager Sir?”
“Go for it, my boy, you’re off the clock,” Aariz said, and set off for his office, a prefab a few metres from the borehole.
Justice’s toothy grin evaporated. “What’s all this hoo-hah about our little Pinnie?”
Zeke gritted his teeth. “Pin and Bartie are missing. Almost certainly abducted by Doctor Enki.”
“This famous translator, right? What the heck would he want with her?”
Zeke thought for a moment. “Probably to get me to come and rescue her. He needs my help with the Hesperian.”
“Hang on, bro,” Scuff piped up. “I thought he’d more or less worked it out.”
“Maybe he got stuck on a passage.”
“Doesn’t he need psychic brain energy to enter this pocket universe? Maybe that’s why he’s got her?” Scuff asked.
Zeke nodded. “That’s the worst case scenario.”
Justice pushed back his helmet and scratched his hair. “Is this bubble universe so very terrible?”
Zeke sighed. “Well, it’s guarded by a monster and a shortcut for the Spiral.”
Nobody spoke. The blue sunset deepened into indigo. A gentle breeze whispered through the tents.
Justice broke the silence. “Dang, let’s take a look-see at this monster. Right now.”
The boulders glowed pale green from the photon lamps. Zeke, Justice and Scuff were sitting on low rocks, swamped by an ocean of night. The stars seemed faraway, oblivious to mankind.
Zeke pulled a Mylar blanket over his shoulders. Justice lifted up the photon lamp and cast its cold radiance across the scene. The night fractured into huge, threatening shadows. He lowered the lamp, and the shadows merged back.
“My butt’s killing me,” Scuff remarked grumpily.
Zeke and Justice ignored him.
“So what does this thing look like?” Zeke asked.
Justice rubbed his chin. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“And it’s guaranteed to appear?”
“Some nights it comes. Some nights not.”
Scuff glanced around. “Nobody else bothered about it?”
“The other miners are too scared. Not me though,” Justice said, and forced a grin. He was as white as the Martian polar caps.
The figures of Knimble and Chinook formed out of thin air. Both men nodded hello before sitting nearby. They spoke in low whispers. Everyone felt a need to be quiet. The silence was crushing.
Zeke’s neck tingled.
The sand! The sand was dancing.
He turned to his friends, but they were both staring vacantly into the night. He looked down again. The ground blurred with trembling grains.
“Show time,” Justice squeaked. He pointed out beyond the clearing. Lights. Flickering pinpoints of light. And they were moving closer.
Scuff dived behind a boulder.
The lights were like tiny bolts of lightning, burning, crackling, sizzling and surging. All harnessed in one great movement. But how it moved! The patterns made by the sparks formed enormous, sinewy forelegs and haunches. Muscles rippling. A creature composed entirely of electricity.
Zeke’s mouth ran dry as it entered the clearing. The brute was bigger than a hover car. The body was a cross between a hell hound and a crab. Large, fearsome jaws snapped ferociously. Red coals smouldered deep in the eye sockets. And all the time its body blazed with a thousand sparks.
Which each heavy step, the creature gazed left then right.
It’s searching for something, Zeke thought.
Zeke thanked the stars that whatever it was seeking, it wasn’t him. The way it looked right through him made that clear. The thinning of the dimensional walls were a kind of one-way mirror.
The creature faded as it padded away. Its sparks fizzled out as it merged into the night.
“Is it gone yet?” Justice asked. His hands were covering his eyes.
“All clear,” Zeke replied.
“You sure?” Scuff piped up from behind his rock. Zeke grabbed Scuff’s collar and hauled him up.
The two Mariners walked over.
“Boys, go straight back to your tents and stay there,” Kimble said with a stern expression.
“Shucks, there ain’t no danger, Mister Mariner Sir. It’s not really here,” Justice said. But his voice was still in the wrong octave.
“Nonetheless, there is something very wrong happening here. We need to report back to Lutz. In the meantime, do as we say,” Knimble said. His blue-eyed gaze pierced them like a knife.
“No argument from me,” Scuff said.
“Good, stay there, we’ll see you at sun-up.”
Knimble and Chinook translocated away.
“Can’t get there fast enough,” Scuff said, his eyes so wide they looked like they might fall out. He started back to the camp with Justice on his heels.
“C’mon, bro,” Scuff called back, as he walked out of view.
“Don’t dawdle,” Justice added, swinging the photon lamp. The green light died as he too disappeared.
Zeke was alone in the dark. The boulders were reduced to black shapes against a blacker canvas. The Particle Beast couldn’t harm him. Not as long as it stayed on the other side of the dimensional gulf. Still, his heart felt squeezed in a vice.
“Let’s go,” he mumbled.
His feet wouldn’t budge.
“Zeke!” Scuff’s voice echoed through the gullies.
Zeke took a few steps. And then he saw it! Out of nowhere, a small figure stood up. It was faint, ghostly, but unmistakeably human. Carefully, as if taking care not to be the seen, the figure tiptoed in the opposite direction to the Beast. For a split-second the figure hesitated, then glanced over its shoulder. A face stared at Zeke without seeing. His breath caught in his throat.
Pin-mei turned and vanished back into the bubble dimension.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Tent
“This, my young friend, is a grievous situation.”
Mariner Edward Dayo’s hologram hovered outside Zeke’s tent. Zeke was kneeling just inside the flaps with his magnopad. The magnopad was streaming a live broadcast from Dayo’s ship, high in orbit over Mars.
Zeke’s tent was one among a forest of triangles. All around him the assorted wheezes of sleeping miners murmured softly. Scuff was inside their tent, snoring with the grace of a pig.
“Absolutely,” Zeke replied, chewing on his thumbnail.
“So how did the young lady come to be inside this pocket universe?” Dayo asked, his eyes bright with worry.
“Enki must have figured the way in, without me. Pin’s psychic brain is like a battery. If Enki recited the right Hesperian runes, that would connect up the universes.”
“This is not easy to understand.”
Zeke scratched his ear. “Psychic brainwaves power the portal. Like electricity switching on a computer. The runes are like the password you type into the computer to get in.”
“So, young earthworm, you plan to rescue your friend?”
Zeke stared at his boots. �
��I have to.”
“But without Enki’s notes, how can you possibly recall these alien words.”
Zeke raised his head. “I saw them once. That’s enough. It’s the orb, you see. It upgraded my memory.”
He heard the pride in his own voice and blushed a little.
Dayo frowned. “It is a curious turn of events. Should you not wait for the teachers?”
Zeke shook his head. “The more people go in, the more dangerous it becomes. I’m the only one who really understands what’s at stake.”
“This entity that you spoke of, the Spiral?”
“Right. A lot of folk storming around is just what he wants. Anyone might unwittingly help him cross over.”
Dayo wrung his hands.
“Mariner Dayo. Can you wait for me?” Zeke’s voice trembled.
“Young Zeke, I must be at the Hyperbola Space Port to transport colonists in three days time. But remember, translocating across the galaxy is not like jumps within the solar system. The vast mental energy will drain me. I need recovery time. If we go to Alpha Cephei after tomorrow, I will not get back in time.”
“Sir?”
“I mean, we have to leave within twenty-fours or not at all. I am sorry, my young friend, but a Mariner’s duty comes first.”
Zeke’s thoughts raced. He had even less time than he expected. He had to get from the mine to the Space Catapult at Tithonium Central, the capital city of Mars. And from there into orbit, to dock with Dayo’s far-ship. Perhaps he could translocate to Tithonium, but it was far. A very risky leap for an amateur. There again, maybe he could persuade Knimble to escort him. It wasn’t much of a plan. It would have to do.
“Yes, Sir, I’ll be there. Please wait for me that long.”
“And no longer.”
Interference crackled across Dayo’s image and the Mariner was gone.
Zeke stared down at his buddy, muttering in his sleep about burgers. Scuff would be angry to be left behind, Zeke knew that. But he had to do it alone. That’s if he could find the way in. Hastily, Zeke tapped a note onto Scuff’s magnopad. Pin Inside. Gone to get her. Don’t Worry.
The Particle Beast Page 13
