Spiral (46 page)

As arranged, a handful of Eddie’s former Limiters turned up to help with the work on the tunnel. It was odd watching them laboring in silence, but Will was grateful for the extra manpower.

It took three more rounds with the explosives to punch a way through the rock plug in the tunnel. And, at the end of the process, so much spoil had been generated that in places it reached up to the cellar roof. Even the motorcycle Drake had so admired had been completely buried. The only relatively clear area was a corridor from the bottom of the stairs to the tunnel entrance.

“Let’s have a look, shall we?” Drake said, pushing aside the debris so he and Will could move deeper into the tunnel, past where the blockage had been.

“This brings back a few memories,” Will murmured, as they followed the passage around a corner. And there it was — the crescent-shaped chamber with walls of milky rock, which Will had first discovered with Chester.

As Will and Drake peered around, the beams from their miner’s lights seemed to penetrate the translucent rock itself and make it glow. Much of the grotto floor was submerged under rust-colored water. Will was wading quickly through this in his haste to reach the door he knew lay at the far end of the grotto, when he turned to Drake. “You know, I thought this place was the best thing I’d ev —”

“STOP!” Drake yelled, his voice booming within the confines of the chamber.

Will almost lost his footing as he threw himself into reverse.

In the blink of an eye Drake was beside him. “Keep — Very — Still,” he said in a deliberate way that told Will it was critical he did precisely as he’d been told. “Not an inch backward — or forward,” Drake added. “You’re hooked up.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked. Keeping his head still, he swiveled his eyes as far as he could. Drake’s outstretched hand was poised by a taut wire, which extended horizontally across the cavern and directly in their path.

“Blimey. I’m touching it,” Will whispered as he realized that the wire was actually resting against his chest. It was so fine as to be almost invisible. All that gave it away was the glistening droplets of moisture along its length as Drake’s miner’s light played on them.

“Very bloody sneaky-weaky,” Drake said. He traced where the wire ran to the middle of the grotto, culminating among the wreckage of a machine that lay in the deeper water. Whatever the machine had once been, it was now a mass of corroded iron cogs in a twisted frame.

“So the tripwire’s secured there . . . ,” Drake whispered, then moved behind Will so he could trace the route of the wire in the opposite direction. “Always be on the lookout for secondaries,” he said, taking extra care about where he was treading in the shallow water. He reached the grotto wall and extracted several items from a pouch on his belt.

Will couldn’t see what he was doing. “What’s there? Can I move now?” he asked, barely daring to breathe.

“Mot . . . am . . . mufscle,” Drake replied, a screwdriver gripped between his teeth. He swapped it for the penknife he’d been using, then another minute passed before he finally announced, “OK. Done.”

The tripwire suddenly zinged away toward the ruined machine, and Will finally let out his breath.

“Here!” Drake lobbed something at Will. With a cry of alarm, he caught it. Many dull marble-sized ball bearings spilled from a small canister, dropping all around Will’s feet with little splashes. Drake had removed a panel in the canister and a few remaining bearings rattled around inside it, against a stick of what looked like plasticine.

“Styx antipersonnel explosive device mark 3. Guaranteed to ruin your day, or your money back,” Drake said. “In the future, Sweeney or I will take point.”

“You got it,” Will agreed, tipping the last of the bearings from the canister.

Because there wasn’t enough room in the cellar, all their equipment was taken into the living room and laid out so Drake could give it a last check. Will and Elliott watched as Sweeney and Colonel Bismarck lugged the second of the two nuclear weapons into the hallway. Mrs. Burrows immediately shut the front door behind them.

“They look heavy,” Will remarked. The stainless-steel box was only around four by six feet in size, but the two men were grunting with the effort as they carried it, using the handles at either end.

“OK. Everyone on me,” Drake called from the sitting room.

“Where do you want the second TND, boss?” Sweeney asked as he and the Colonel entered, sidestepping around a coffee table.

“Over there will do — by the first,” Drake answered.

Will was at the door, peering at the impressive amount of kit inside the room. “If that woman could see what was going on in her home right now!” he said.

Sweeney grinned. “Yes, reckon she might be a little brassed off that her view of the telly was blocked by a couple of atom bombs.”

“Particularly if
ER
was on,” Mrs. Burrows added, as Sweeney and the Colonel lowered the device beside the second one, and then straightened up, rubbing their hands.

Drake had been squatting beside a curious-looking piece of equipment lying on the coffee table. “Come in and shut the door, Will,” he said, as if even now he didn’t completely trust Eddie’s men, who were still in the house.

“Right, before we set off, there are a few things I need to say.” He indicated the devices in front of the television. “Moving the nukes is going to be a real backbreaker until we reach the lower-grav environment toward the center of the Earth. The bombs themselves aren’t that heavy, but because of their antiquated design, there’s a hunk of lead in the casings around them.”

“Then can’t we just lose the casings?” Elliott proposed.

“The fissile plutonium in the bombs throws off too much radiation — we’d be glowing like neon signs before we’d gone any distance. But it might come to that yet,” Drake said, his expression grim. “This mission isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” He ran his eyes over Mrs. Burrows, who had Colly beside her, the Colonel, then Will, Elliott, and Sweeney. “And Eddie’s not going to be with us on this one.”

“Because of his head?” Will asked, not looking at Elliott.

Drake nodded. “He needs time to recover, but it’s not that. I don’t know what the current situation is in the Colony, but if the Styx are still there in any number, it’s better he keeps out of sight. Anyway, he’s more use to us here on the surface, where he and his men can work with Parry and the Old Guard to find the Styx women.”

“Unless they’ve all gone underground,” Colonel Bismarck said.

“True,” Drake concurred. “What Danforth told us about resuming the Phase in the inner world might have been nothing more than a ploy to throw us off the scent. However, we need to find that out for ourselves.” He took a breath. “Right, unless anyone has any questions, let’s saddle up,” he said.

“I have,” Will said. “What’s that? A weapon?” He was looking at the device on the coffee table. Three slim metal tanks, each a yard in length, were welded together, with a pistol grip halfway down, and some sort of funnel or nozzle mounted at one end.

“A little something my mechanic friend outside in the van knocked up for me,” Drake replied. “In fact, he’s made me several versions of it.”

Will edged closer to the table to inspect the device. By the base of the nozzle, tubes from the three tanks were intertwined in a Gordian knot on which there were a number of knurled knobs.

Drake picked up the device and, taking hold of the grip, slid back a catch and clicked the trigger. A blinding blue flame roared from the nozzle.

Will leaped back in surprise, raising an arm to shield his face from the heat. “It’s a flamethrower!”

“No, this isn’t a weapon. I won’t bore you with the principles,” Drake said, the flame phutting out as he released the trigger, “but two high-octane propellants mix with oxygen to create a powerful propulsion device . . . a booster. So we don’t have to rely on a Sten to produce the thrust to get us across the zero-grav belt, like you and your father did.”

“That’s so cool,” Will said. “I can’t believe you know how to do that. It looks really complicated.”

“Nah — it’s hardly rocket science,” Drake said dismissively, then frowned. “No, I suppose it really
is
rocket science,” he added, correcting himself.

Having gathered up their equipment, Will and Elliott went down to the cellar. Eddie’s men were waiting there — Drake had said that they’d collapse the mouth of the tunnel so the Topsoil authorities wouldn’t find it.

Elliott spoke to several of them in the Styx language, then she and Will entered the tunnel, quickly moving to the far end of the crescent-shaped grotto. Will showed her the iron door with the three handles down one side that he and Chester had first discovered together.

“This was where it all kicked off,” he told her, rapping its battered surface with his knuckles. It rang with a low, resounding tone, until he touched it again, tracing around an area of shiny black paint with a fingertip, and remembering. “There was no turning back when I found this door — well, not for me, anyway. I don’t think Chester was happy about it at the time, but he still came along.”

“Poor old Chester — he’s like that. He’s a loyal friend to you,” Elliott said.

And look where it got him,
Will was thinking as Drake appeared. “You can open up. I’ve checked for Styx antipersonnel mines,” Drake said.

Will immediately clunked up the three handles on the side of the door, then stepped back. “Ladies first,” he said to Elliott.

She leaned on the door and it groaned open on its hinges. Then she stepped over the metal lip at the base of the doorframe and went into the cylindrical chamber. Once they’d gone the short distance to the other side, Drake joined them, and Will cranked the three handles on the second door, which was identical to the first.

Then, without even troubling to glance through the hazy porthole, he heaved it open. There was a sibilant hiss as the air pressure equalized.

“At least that means the Fan Stations are still operating, doesn’t it? So the Colony’s getting air,” Will said to Drake.

“I hope so,” Drake replied noncommittally.

Will and Elliott moved through the antechamber, the beam from Will’s miner’s light lancing the moisture-laden air. The walls themselves were a patchwork quilt of rusted metal plates studded with rivets.

Will caught his breath as he made out the shaft up ahead. There, waiting for them, was the cage elevator itself, ready to take them down.

Will went to open the trellis door to the elevator but glanced at Drake to see if he should proceed.

Drake nodded, his miner’s light bouncing up, then Will slid the gate back and went in.

“Safe as houses,” he whispered to himself, but this time he didn’t feel like jumping up and down.

The equipment and nuclear weapons were ferried down in several trips because Drake didn’t want to overload the old elevator. When it had all been moved and everyone was down, too, Will started for the door to the second metal chamber.

“Hold up,” Drake said. “I need to investigate that airlock first. I haven’t risked opening it yet, in case it’s alarmed.” He turned to everyone. “Weapons at the ready. And you should also have your tranquilizer guns close to hand in case we bump into any Colonists.” He paused for a moment. “There’s something you should be aware of. When we were last in London, I picked up a distress signal from the Colony.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Burrows asked.

“I left a radio beacon with your friend the Second Officer. It was tuned to a specific frequency, and I told him to use it if things got difficult in the Colony and he needed help. Well, he did.”

Mrs. Burrows looked troubled. “Why didn’t you mention this before n —”

“Because we had bigger fish to fry at the time,” Drake interrupted. “So I’ve really no idea quite what we’re going to find when we go through that airlock.”

Mrs. Burrows was shaking her head as she placed her hand protectively on the Hunter at her side, who immediately began to purr loudly. “I brought Colly along because I wanted to take her home. If I’d known what you’ve just told me, I’d have made other plans — I’d have left her with Sergeant Finch.”