Planet Hell (4 page)

“I can't believe you're here!” said the girl. “Are all trolls like you? You don't seem as scary as in my dreams. All my life I've been terrified of trolls. I've been such a stupid cry baby!”

“Shh! What was that?” cried Sam. He thought he'd heard something outside the cave, but Anna shook her head.

“There's nobody here but me.”

They did not see Jen peeping into the cave. They did not hear her run away again.

“I'm Sam,” he said. “I don't know why you keep talking about trolls. I don't even know what trolls are! I'm human.”

Anna stared. “I'm Anna. And
I'm
human. My people come from another planet. Planet Earth.”

“No, that can't be right,” said Sam. “That's where the Miners came from.
My
people.”

“What miners?” said Anna. “We've been here for a really long time and I never heard anything about miners.”

Sam's mouth went dry. “How long?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” said Anna. “We learned all about it in school but, well, I didn't really listen. The War is over. Earth is dead. So who cares?”

“
What
did you say about Earth?” gasped Sam.

Anna looked surprised. “I said Earth is dead. Because of the Final War killing everything. That's why we left. You must know that.”

“That can't be true,” cried Sam. “Earth can't be dead. It can't be! The Mine is here to make power for Earth. We work for the Mining Company. We're very important. We dig the Ore that makes the power and then we send the power back to Earth. We've been sending power home for hundreds of years …”

Anna looked at him in horror.

“Oh Sam,” she whispered. “We didn't know.”

Sam's heart hurt.

“What didn't you know?” he asked. “I don't understand.”

Anna swallowed hard. She tried to remember her school lessons. “There was a Mining Company. The robots told us about that. That was before the Final War. The Mining Company sent out ships to explore. They were looking for new power. That was when they thought the Earth could be saved. But it couldn't. It was too late. Everyone had to leave.”

“But the ships?” asked Sam. “The ones looking for new power?”

“Nobody ever heard from them again,” said Anna. “I think the Mining Company ended at the same time Earth did. Everything was a mess at the end.”

Sam looked at her. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

Anna said, “My people were the last to get away from Earth. And then they travelled for such a long time before they found Hell. They only stopped here because the ship was damaged. They thought they were going to die here. Then they found the power supply coming from the ground. They took the ship apart and built the robots out of it, to take care of us.”

Sam was shaking his head. “No. No! You're not making any sense. We've been here, sending power back to Earth for more years than anybody can remember. Earth needs us. We keep it going!”

“The power didn't get to Earth, Sam. We found it, when we got here. So we used it. We thought it was free.”

“Free? FREE?” shouted Sam.

He had picked up the bottle again and was holding it like a weapon.

Anna stepped back. He was scaring her.

“There it is! There's the troll! Kill it!” cried a voice.

It was Jen, standing at the opening of the cave. And behind her was a silver robot holding a laser gun.

“You have been crying,” the robot said to Anna. “Are you unhappy?”

“Yes. I mean, no!” said Anna and at the same moment Sam shouted, “I'm not a troll! I'm a human!”

The robot was confused. “You say you are a human? But she says you are a troll? You are making these humans unhappy? I must speak to the other robots. Trolls do not exist. Trolls are just stories, told by the humans to make themselves happy. Humans like scary stories.”

“I'm not a story,” yelled Sam. “And I'm not a troll. I'm me. A human. A Miner.”

“What are you waiting for?” Jen shouted at the robot. “Kill it! Before it kills us!”

But the robot just stood there. It had frozen up. Robots went like that when they needed to talk with all the other robots.

Jen dragged the gun from its hand and aimed it at Sam. Without thinking, Anna stepped in front of Sam.

“Get out of my way!” hissed Jen. “I'm going to kill it before it kills us!”

But Anna shook her head.

“GET OUT OF MY WAY!” screamed Jen and she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger.

There was a flash of bright light from the gun.

“What have you done?” cried the robot, coming back to life. “Have you killed them?”

But Jen couldn't answer.

Because there was no one there. Sam and Anna had disappeared.

Down, down. Sam and Anna were sliding down the air shaft, out of control. Anna didn't know what was happening.

Sam had grabbed her and jumped back and suddenly the floor disappeared and she was falling through the dark.

But Sam knew what was happening.
We're going to die … we're going to die … we're going to die!
The words were screaming in his head, as they crashed down the air shaft, faster and faster, until …

Something caught them.

Someone had put a net across the shaft.

Anna and Sam were bruised, and out of breath, hurting and scared. But they weren't dead.

Yet.

“Looks like we've caught something,” a voice called out.

“Gotcha!” said someone else.

Sam groaned. He knew those voices. Someone lit an electric candle and Sam saw the Gang staring down at him.

“Did you really think you could get away from us?” one of them hissed.

“We knew you'd have to come back this way, once you found out what the Surface was really like,” said another. “No one can live up there.”

The Gang tipped up the net but they had caught more than they expected.

As soon as they saw Anna, the Gang stepped back and stared at her in shock.

“Who is that?”