‘Right,’ Mum agreed. ‘But take one of those walkie-talkies.’ She pointed to a row of handsets on the shelf to her left. ‘They don’t rely on these complicated comms, so they should work fine.’
‘Makes sense.’ Dad snatched two walkie-talkies from the shelf and checked they were on the same channel. He handed one to Mum and clipped the other to his belt. ‘Stay in touch,’ he said as he and Zak left.
12
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
As soon as he entered the North Tunnel, Zak stopped as if he’d hit a brick wall. His breath caught in his chest, and all he could do was stare.
The figure was back.
The same one he’d seen in The Hub, but this time there were no shadows to hide it. This time it was standing at the end of the tunnel, directly beneath the furthest spotlight. Clear as day. No mistake.
Well, not exactly clear as day. Because as Zak’s breath came back to him, and he studied the figure, he thought there was something grey and vague about it; as if it were a shadow. Or a ghost. Or a—
Pain.
Sharp, clean, pain drove through Zak’s head like a hot needle.
It lasted a fraction of a second, and was gone. The figure, however, remained where it was. The man – Zak was sure it had to be a man – was dressed exactly as he had been when he last saw him. The old-fashioned weatherproof jacket, the huge furry mittens, the hood, and the goggles that made him look like a giant insect.
‘Do you… see something?’ Dad whispered.
Zak opened his mouth to speak but his tongue was dry. His lips felt numb. ‘See something?’ he managed. ‘Like what?’ If Dad could see it, then he wasn’t imagining this. It wasn’t some crazy episode, like the doctors said he might get.
‘I’m not sure.’ Dad was still whispering. ‘Like… a shadow. At the end of the tunnel?’
‘You see it too?’
‘I… I don’t know. No. I thought there was something but…’ Dad’s voice trailed away as if he was trying to decide what he had or hadn’t seen.
But Zak could still see it.
Right there.
The figure was no more than ten metres away but the more he stared at it, the more unclear he realized it was. The weatherproof coat was like ones he had seen in old photos on the Internet, of explorers standing on the ice, but there was no detail on it other than a few creases. The knee-length boots were dark grey, the hood was white, and the round goggles were filled with the blackest glass. The huge mittens were speckled black and grey and white. The figure didn’t have any colour. Just like in those old photos.
It raised one hand, curling its fingers, beckoning to Zak.
Beckoning? Does it want me to go to it?
It stepped forward, arm extended, flickering like a dodgy image from a CCTV camera. There was movement beneath the woollen balaclava covering its face, as if it were speaking, but Zak couldn’t hear its voice. And there was no sound as it moved. But there was a single flash of colour as the light caught on the surface of the goggles. A muddle of blue and red and green.
Like beetles’ wings.
It’s not there, Zak told himself. It’s not there. There’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s in my imagination.
‘Must be my imagination.’ Dad’s words echoed Zak’s thoughts. ‘I’m seeing things.’
But it was still there, moving towards Zak, one jerking step at a time, flickering as if it were trying to break through from another world.
‘You don’t see anything?’ Zak’s voice was a quiet whisper.
‘No. Come on.’
‘Dad…’ Zak wanted to stop him, but Dad moved forward, on a collision course with the ghostly explorer, and—
It was gone. Just like that. The figure vanished as if it had never been there. The tunnel was as empty as the others had been.
‘Dad?’ Zak stared at the far end of the tunnel. ‘Tell me what you saw. When we first came in.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’ Zak insisted. ‘Tell me what it was. What did you see?’
Dad stopped and turned to him. He tightened his lips and fixed his eyes on the floor. He shook his head before meeting Zak’s gaze again. ‘Nothing.’
‘Dad.’
‘All right. Look, I don’t want to scare you, but… a shadow maybe. It felt like there was something there, but…’ He turned towards the far door. ‘But there’s nothing there now, and I don’t believe in ghosts so—’
‘Ghosts? What made you say that?’
‘It’s just my mind playing tricks on me, Zak.’
‘Except I saw something too.’
‘What? Really?’
‘Yeah. A shadow. Something… that wasn’t there.’
Dad watched Zak as if he were expecting this to be a joke.
‘I really did,’ Zak said. ‘I really did see something.’
Dad smiled. It was a sad and sympathetic expression, and Zak knew what it meant.
He thinks I’m imagining stuff. He thinks I’m going bonkers.
‘A trick of the light,’ Dad said. ‘That’s all. Probably our own shadows as we came into the tunnel. There’s definitely something weird going on here, but there’ll be an explanation, and I promise it won’t be anything to do with ghosts.’
Yeah, not ghosts, Zak thought, but something. Something rotten.
As soon as Dad punched the button, the door to the Drone Bay slipped open to reveal a large, silent room beyond.
Dad went straight in, but Zak stayed in the doorway as if trying to break through an invisible barrier. The headache was gone, but this room gave him the strongest sense of something being wrong. Whatever had happened, it was somehow connected with this place. He scanned the room, searching for the figure he’d seen in the tunnel, but the Drone Bay was free of ghosts. For now.
White walls, white floor, white ceiling, the place was more like an operating theatre than a workshop, but there was still the faint smell of oil and electricity in the air, mingled with the metallic tang of hot steel. Zak could taste the Drone Bay.
In the centre of the room was a large disc about four metres in diameter that was used as an elevator to lower the Spider drones on to the ice below. When Outpost One – the base on Mars – was completed, the whole module would be a giant airlock to give the Spiders access to the surface of the planet.
Around the edges of the disc, spare parts were laid out in cabinets, and tools were arranged like surgeon’s instruments on white benches. Wires snaked out from machines ready to be plugged into the Spiders, for diagnosing faults, and keeping them charged.
At the back of the room there were three large bays, each with a name stencilled on the wall above it in black paint. HAL, ROY, and ED – each of them named after a robot from one of Mum and Dad’s favourite sci-fi movies. Right now, HAL and ROY were empty, but the bay with ED above it was home to something that was one of the most amazing things Zak had ever seen. And one of the scariest.
The Spider was slightly bigger than a two-seater Smart car, and was made of a flat oval casing about a metre and a half deep that housed the robot’s ‘brain’. On top of that, the bulk of its body was a ribbed dome, like a bloated tick that had filled itself with too much blood. It had four legs, each jointed in six places, giving it the look of a weird, grey metal spider. Close to the front, it had four narrow arms designed to accept interchangeable attachments. For now, the arms were tipped with pincers.