With the sensation that he was dreaming, Will crossed to the room at the front of the house. He’d always been strictly forbidden from entering because it had been “Rebecca’s” bedroom, but now it was being used as a study. Will cast his eye over the desk and the expensive computer, his gaze settling on the cork bulletin board on the wall behind. In the many photographs pinned to it he recognized the woman who now lived in the house. The pictures had been taken in a variety of different locations, and in most of them she was accompanied by a man who was probably her husband.
Will leaned over and pulled one of them from the board, the pushpin securing it flipping onto the desk. In the photograph the woman and her husband were toasting each other with half coconuts, which had little cocktail umbrellas and stripy straws in them, and a firelit beach was visible behind their relaxed, tanned faces.
Then there were all the baby photographs, so Will knew what he’d probably find when he went into his old bedroom. Sure enough, there was a cot, plush toys everywhere, and the walls were a washed-out azure with fluffy cloud stickers slapped all over them. Not the slightest trace remained of Will’s tenure in the room. Not the shelves where he’d kept his collection of finds, nor the posters he’d taped to the ceiling, of the Roman centurion and the Fire of London. He went to the window, where a mobile of brightly colored caterpillars and butterflies was gently swaying in an air current.
He poked a finger in the face of one of the smug-looking caterpillars. “Don’t bite me! Don’t bite me!” he said in a whimsical voice.
“I’m a Styx Warrior larva, and I am going to bite you,” he replied to himself, assuming a monster’s gruff voice.
“No! Ow! Ow! Ow!” Will said, chuckling to himself as he jabbed at the caterpillar and it bounced around on its length of string. Then he became distracted by the sight of the garden below. The lawn was under snow, but he could tell it wasn’t overgrown as it had been in his time. And there were some recent additions to the garden: a paved area, a circular flower bed, and in front of the new fence at the far end, a child’s swing and sandbox.
Shaking his head, Will let out a breath from the side of his mouth. It wasn’t his garden anymore. It looked like a thousand others.
Perhaps it was better that he simply tore up his past and moved on.
At least what he was living now was genuine and not some Styx construct.
He heard Drake calling for him.
“Eat that, ugly bug!” he said, punching the caterpillar so hard that the whole mobile was spinning wildly as he left the room.
There was a rumble as the first detonation shook the building and the street around it. Everyone except Drake had decamped from the house, and Will and Sweeney were watching from the back of the mock gas van.
“That felt like an earthquake,” Will said as the van rocked slightly on its suspension. The only other signs were some snow sliding from the roof and a couple of car alarms going off farther down the street.
After a moment Drake opened the front door, shrouded by a cloud of dust. He waved at the van.
“We’re on again,” Sweeney said to Will. “No, wait up — we’ve got a neighbor sticking his oar in.”
A man was hanging around on the pavement and peering at the house. Drake went over to speak to him, showing him his fake credentials.
The mechanic in the front of the van had been leaning over to watch the proceedings in his sideview mirror. “If he turns into a problem, I’ll deal with him,” he said, as the curious neighbor scurried off. “Otherwise I’ll just hang on here until you or Mr. Smith need something. And if you make it through to Australia, let me know. I’ve never been there.”
Will and Sweeney jumped out, but Will made a quick detour to the rear of the Bedford, pulling himself up on the tailgate to peer through the canvas awning. Elliott was sitting with Eddie, who clearly hadn’t recovered yet from being struck with the spade. He appeared to be asleep, his eyes closed.
“How’s he doing?” Will asked.
“A little concussed, but he’ll be OK,” Elliott replied. “Styx are pretty thick-headed.”
“Um — yes — that’s good,” Will said, unsure whether Elliott was being serious or not. He was still feeling profoundly ashamed of the way he’d flared up with her after his mother’s outburst.
And Mrs. Burrows also seemed to be regretting her actions; she sat meekly in the corner with Colly. The Colonel had a pistol at the ready while he stood guard over the equipment, which was covered in a tarpaulin and secured with rope. Will glanced at the shapes under the tarpaulin, thinking how strange it was to be that close to atomic weapons.
As he entered the house, he found Sweeney waiting for him in the hallway. “Ready for round two?” the man asked.
“Yep,” Will said, waving his hand through the dust-laden air. He noticed a picture had fallen to the ground and that several rather severe cracks had opened up in the walls. “We’re going to trash this place. What a shame, after all the work they’ve put into it,” he added.
The dust was even thicker in the cellar, where Drake was already shoveling the debris from the tunnel. Will and Sweeney set to work right away, helping him to clear the spoil so they could inspect what progress they’d made.
“We’ve gained another four feet or so,” Drake said. “A couple more goes with the charges should get us through.”
“If the roof holds up,” Will said, inspecting it for any signs of weakness. “Not too bad,” he decided, running his hand over a small fissure in the rock.
“Yes, I’m placing the charges so they direct all their force into the face itself. If Eddie’s right and the Styx didn’t knobble the roof, we’re going to be just fine,” Drake said. “It’s not as if it matters if it gives way after we’ve gone through.”
“Poor house,” Will said.
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.
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“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 noncommitt
ally.
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.”