by Ben Bova
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Azalea Dream had rolled quite a few times before finally coming to rest with the floor remarkably level, tilting to the port side at only a slight angle. Eric had twisted around in his restraints and leaned heavily on the wall, his back flat against the viewport. He sat unmoving for what seemed several minutes, trying to examine his surroundings but finding it difficult to focus his eyes in the dingy shadows cast by the red emergency lighting. It was uncomfortably warm in the cabin, and as he felt droplets of sweat rolling freely down his forehead and beneath his arms, he wondered idly how much time had passed.
There was a groan in front of him as he faced the opposite row of seats, and he struggled to get unbuckled. "Father! Are you all right?" Finally free of the belt, he knelt at the side of Javas' seat, carefully working his father's restraints loose.
"I'm—ah!" He pitched forward dizzily once the belt was off and rubbed tenderly at his right biceps. "I'm fine." He pushed himself upright, wincing at the pain in his arm, and looked Eric over with obvious relief that his son had escaped serious injury.
"Glenney?"
"He's on the floor," Eric replied, "up front." They both stood carefully, picking their way tentatively over the cushions and galley items that had come loose in the crash, and made their way forward.
That Glenney was dead was immediately clear to both of them. He lay on his back, neck and both arms bent at unnatural angles. His mouth was open, his jaw askew, and a puddle of blood collected beneath him that looked, bathed in the red lighting, more like thick black paint.
"He wasn't strapped in when we broke loose from the shielding," Eric said, remembering how the shuttle had tumbled on impact, tossing the hapless Security Chief violently about the cabin. The floor shuddered as the wreck settled, angling slightly forward, and Eric watched in queasy fascination as Glenney's head rolled to one side and the puddle of blood ran across the floor and up against the forward bulkhead.
"I think we're on the slope on the south side of the grounds," the Emperor said. "We'd better get out of here before we fall the rest of the way down."
Eric agreed and the two of them went immediately to the rear of the cabin where the exit door was located. Through there they would have access to the lower aft deck and the main shuttle hatch, but the door would not budge. The Emperor put a foot on the frame and pulled again, but stopped when the pain in his arm grew too severe. "Here, let me give it a try," Eric said, grabbing the door handle. "Open the access panel and see if turning the release bar manually helps." His father easily popped open a small panel to the left of the door and groped around inside while Eric pulled.
"Wait. Wait a minute." Javas peered inside, trying not to block what little light there was, and reached in once more. "The release bar's in place," he said, puzzled, "but take a look at this and tell me what you think." He pulled his arm out and stood out of Eric's way.
Feeling inside the panel, the Prince grasped the release and turned it several times before giving up and removing his arm. "It spins freely, as if it's not attached to anything."
His father nodded agreement. "That's exactly what I thought. And I don't believe it was damaged in the fall."
Eric, his back to the door, allowed himself to slide to a sitting position on the floor. He was sweating heavily now, and he removed the Imperial dress jacket he'd donned in preparation for the landing. He rolled it into a ball and tossed it the length of the cabin, then leaned his head back against the hard, warm surface of the door. "A second shield projected above the House shielding, effectively sabotaging the shuttle landing. Communications and shuttle systems that should have withstood the initial impact damaged… How about your integrator? Is it still being blocked?"
"Let me try—" Javas fell silent as he removed his own jacket and unbuttoned his shirt collar. He folded the jacket once, dropped it to the floor and sat on it as a cushion. A full minute passed before he inhaled deeply and sighed, adding simply, "Yes."
"And now we find…" Eric stood, angrily kicking the door squarely in its center. An idea came to him and he pressed his ear to the warm metal, listening carefully for sounds from the other side. He looked around at his feet and found a small pitcher that had been shaken loose from the galley. He banged it sharply against the door four times in quick succession, paused, struck the door four more times, then listened closely again. Nothing. "And now we find that the main exit door has been disabled from the other side. Fairly obvious, isn't it, Father?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," he replied soberly. He sat forward, indicating that Eric should be seated where he was. "Here's what we're up against, then: That door has been sealed, and it appears that everyone in the aft station is either dead or immobilized, so we can't count on their help. My integrator is effectively gone for the time being, so we can't count on getting help that way. For that matter, if someone's gone to the trouble of jamming my implants, it's a fair bet they've already neutralized House communications as well."
Eric crossed his legs as he sat, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. And if no one outside the House knows we've left Luna, he realized, then we won't be missed any time soon. "I've got a feeling that we can't rely on any physical help from inside the grounds, either, if that second shield is still in place."
"And it probably is," his father agreed. "This has all been too well organized for us to assume that the shield has been dissolved. One thing is clear, however. Whoever is responsible for this won't simply assume that we've died in the crash. I imagine they're on their way to us now." He paused, then added, "If they're not already sitting outside, waiting for us, that is." Grasping the back of one of the seats, Javas pulled himself to his feet. He wiped his face and forehead on the back of a shirt sleeve and let out a long, slow breath as he looked around the cabin.
Eric watched as his father grew increasingly uncomfortable in the heat, and noted that his own breath was coming with just as much difficulty. He inhaled deeply, noticing a distinct hot-plastic smell to the air. "It's just as clear that we can't stay in here. With the shuttle systems all down we'll bake sitting here in the sun. Or suffocate."
The craft moved again suddenly, with the floor angling slightly more to the front of the shuttle. The fatigued metal complained loudly, but when the shifting stopped, they both heard a noise that sounded like it was coming from somewhere other than the weakened internal structure itself.
Eric tilted his head, trying to determine the sound's direction. "Up front!" The sudden exclamation caused an odd burning sensation in his throat, making him cough, and he realized that the plastic smell he'd noticed earlier was much heavier than before. His eyes stung and had begun watering freely.
They again stepped carefully down the sloping aisle to the front of the shuttle. Glenney's body had rolled farther, his face turned and now partially hidden beneath some light debris, but several streamers of black blood ran from his body toward the front bulkhead, pooling again where wall met floor. He tried to ignore the sight and concentrated instead on the sounds coming from behind the door leading to the front corridor and flight deck.
There it was, an irregular thunk-clunk coming from somewhere forward, perhaps from the cockpit itself. Closer inspection of the door revealed that despite the warped bulkhead that had prevented Glenney from opening it earlier, it was now a few millimeters ajar. Whatever the sound was, Eric reasoned, it may have been there all along and they were only now able to hear it.
"That last movement," the Emperor suggested. He was coughing now, and in the pale red light Eric could see him rubbing his eyes frequently. "It must have stressed the door frame enough to partially free it." Several items had rolled forward, and he quickly grabbed something and banged at the door. "Hello?" He hammered again, but when they listened the irregular sound continued, unchanged.
"Eric, help me pull. If we can—" He coughed violently, gasping for breath. "If we can get this open, we can take the lower corridor from the flight deck to the aft station." His father
strained hard on the door handle while Eric curled his fingers under the lip of the door. Pulling together, they managed to open the door another full centimeter. They caught their breath for a moment and pulled again, both of them tumbling backward when the door finally freed itself, letting in a sudden burst of natural sunlight and fresh air. Eric was first on his feet, and hastily opened the door fully, allowing it to rest against the bulkhead where the shuttle's downward angle kept it in place.
He helped his father up, and as soon as they had made their way to the flight deck it became obvious that taking the lower corridor to the exit would not be necessary, as most of the front of the shuttle—nearly the entire cockpit, for that matter—had been torn away in the crash and resultant cartwheeling down the hillside. What was left of the pilot, his body horribly mangled by the jagged metal that had crumpled around him on the way down the hill, was still strapped into his seat. The copilot's chair was missing entirely.
Anxious to be clear of the foul air in the cabin, they moved hurriedly, but carefully, onto the flight deck. There was a brisk breeze, and they inhaled deeply of the untainted air. Although the nose of the Azalea Dream was angled downward, the forward end was pointed toward the uphill side, giving them a clear view of the path they had taken down the hill. The ship must have tumbled at least six hundred meters or more down the hillside, and a path of debris and flattened, splintered trees and saplings zigzagged up toward the estate, now hidden among the trees and limestone outcroppings near the top of their fall.
The branches of a downed maple extended into the cockpit, the occasional breeze causing it to hammer thunk-clunk against an exposed section of the hull. "Be careful," he said when Eric inched toward the jagged edge of the opening. He nodded back to his father and removed the dead pilot's gloves, surprised at how easily he dealt with death after seeing so much of it in so short a time. He pulled them on and gingerly clambered to a position where he could carefully peer outside.
Debris was everywhere, and there was a faint hissing sound coming from somewhere underneath the wreck, but no sign of movement as far as he could tell anywhere nearby. "I think you were right," he said when he climbed back up to his father in the doorway to the flight deck. "I think we are on the south side of the grounds, but I can't see the House or tell for sure just how far up the side it is. We've got a bit of a climb at best."
"Then we'd better put some distance between us and the shuttle," Javas replied, turning back to the cabin. "But I doubt if we can get into the aft station from the outside. Better see what we can find in here." The air in the cabin had grown even more noxious, and they found that they had to return frequently to the flight deck for air. They scavenged what they could, gathering some food and filling a small flask with what water they were able to coax from the galley dispenser, then retrieved their jackets and stuffed the pockets with anything useful they could find. As a last measure his father hastily examined Glenney's body, turning up two weapons—a concealed knife in a boot sheath, and a pin laser clipped to an inside pocket. Eric knew that neither was particularly deadly, but was grateful that the macabre task of searching Glenney's body had occurred to his father: Both weapons could prove useful if they were forced to spend any amount of time in the backwoods. Back on the flight deck, Javas kept the knife for himself, slipping it into his boot, and handed the laser to him.
The wreck shifted again, and they wasted no further time getting off. Eric still had the pilot's gloves and climbed easily to the ground, then tossed them back up to his father while he surveyed the damaged ship.
The shuttle had come solidly to rest on an exposed outcropping overlooking the entire valley that spread below the royal family's estate. Closer examination showed that despite the unnerving way the wreck had shifted while they were still inside, there had been little danger of it sliding farther. The angle steepened sharply a hundred meters below the outcropping and they couldn't see the river itself, but they could see it reflecting in the sunlight as it meandered through the mountainous Kentucky countryside far to the northwest.
The July air felt pleasantly hot and humid as they examined the crash site, not nearly as stifling as it had been inside the wrecked shuttle. The craft leaked from a dozen places and a thin, smoky haze poured from the exposed cockpit. Whatever was leaking was volatilizing quickly, and must have been connected not only with the hissing that continued from underneath the wreck but with the deteriorating atmosphere inside the shuttle. The hissing diminished in volume as he moved around to the rear of the wreck, enough so that the buzz of grasshoppers in the sunny clearing could easily be heard.
"Father, you'd better take a look at this," Eric called from the back of the now-derelict ship.
Javas came around quickly, staring worriedly at what Eric had found. The main hatch had been opened, but because of the way the shuttle had come to rest with its nose on the upward angle of the hill, the opening hung fully two and a half meters over the limestone and scrub at their feet. There was a good deal of debris directly below the hatch, almost all of it thrown or fallen from the opening above. A discarded extinguisher lay several meters away and fire foam dripped steadily from the lip of the opening. There was also a good deal of blood on the ground, and bushes had been flattened as if someone had jumped down from the hatch. More blood had dripped on the rocks several meters up the hill, and the direction the vegetation had been flattened indicated that someone had left the clearing in a hurry, going due north. There still was no movement except the wind, however, and no sound other than the constant buzz of grasshoppers.
"I think I'm the obvious choice," Eric said, indicating the opening above their heads. "How's your arm?"
Javas ignored the question and scanned the wreck, frowning. The smoke pouring from the front of the ship was getting thicker, and he clearly was not pleased with Eric's offer to go inside. "Make it a fast look."
His father cupped his hands in front of him and Eric stepped carefully into the makeshift stirrup they formed. Javas lifted upward, giving his son the boost he needed to grab onto the edge of the hatch and scramble up before disappearing inside.
Despite the open hatch, the air was even worse in here than it had been in the cabin. He looked around quickly and spent no more than a minute inside, although he wasn't certain if it was because of the worsening air or the appalling sight that greeted him.
"Eric!" No sooner had his father called to him than a sharp metallic clang resounded from the hull of the shuttle.
He returned to the opening and knelt at the edge, lowering a nylon bag into Javas' upstretched hands. There was another shot; now at the open hatch, he heard the gunshot itself this time. Rubbing his eyes, he took several deep breaths, then went back in for the remainder of what he'd found, tossing down a smaller, zippered case which his father easily caught. Another shot ricocheted loudly off the hull. He sat hurriedly on the lip of the hatch, his legs dangling, then placed his hands on the edge and swung around in a smooth motion with his arms to hang briefly from the opening before dropping the rest of the way to the ground.
"Come on!" he barked as soon as he was down. "Follow me." He slung the nylon bag over his shoulder and started immediately for the cover of the trees at the edge of the outcropping.
His father followed without a word. Several more shots were fired, and while one cut through the scrub and dug into the ground mere meters in front of Eric, none of the projec-tiles found their mark. Whoever was firing at them was either an incredibly poor marksman, considering how exposed they were out here in the open, or he was deliberately avoiding hitting them in an effort to pin them down at the wreckage. For that reason, if no other, Eric wanted to get his father away from the shuttle as quickly as possible. The shots seemed to originate from the trees at the top of the clearing in the same direction the trail of blood from the shuttle hatch had led.
Once in the sheltering cover of the woods Eric's pace didn't slow, but he looked around him, trying to recognize landmarks and get his bearings. He stom
ped several hundred meters through the backwoods before finally stopping in an area that, while still angled, had leveled considerably. He looked around again, then pointed to a series of shallow depressions near another outcropping of limestone. The air was much cooler under the canopy of trees, but he refused to allow himself to enjoy it. Not yet. "There. Come on."
There were three sinkholes set into the side of the hill. Dry leaves and branches filled the first two and Eric ignored them and crossed directly to the third: a deeper, rockier hollow set into the side of the landscape. The uphill side was a rocky, nearly vertical wall about five meters high, but the sides and bottom of the depression were mostly moss and ferns covering the gently sloping earth that had filled in the sides and floor of the depression countless years ago. Leaves had piled up at the bottom of this depression, just as at the other two, but an opening was visible at the base of the rocky wall of this sink, the rock surface around the opening moist and covered with moss and lichens. Even though the air in the constant shade of the backwoods was more comfortable than the relentless summer sunshine out in the open, the steady damp breeze issuing from the opening must have been a full ten or fifteen degrees cooler still and felt deliciously refreshing.
On a sign from Eric, both slid carefully to the bottom of the depression. "Do you recognize this, Father?" Eric asked.
He shook his head. "No, I don't think so." The Emperor watched nervously as he dug at the piled leaves at the opening, tossing them behind him like a dog after a favorite bone. "You've been here before, I take it?"
Eric dropped the bag into the enlarged opening, then fell to his knees, pushing the bundle into the darkness in front of him. "Bend low, and watch your head on the ceiling." With that he shoved the bag inside and disappeared in after it.
