Moving away from the control panel, Wak unlatched and slid aside the gates, then stood back and stared into the opening jaws of the airlock chamber. A sudden breeze briefly surged from behind and down through the widening gap, but the engineers’ dome and the compressors had done their job and the airlock was no longer open to the vacuum of space. Moments later, the distant sound of falling masonry and accompanying robot shrieks drifted in from the direction of the palace as the stone elephant fell away from the hole in the ruined courtyard.
Ravana, moving clumsily in her emergency suit, came to Wak’s side and shuddered. The top of the long concrete-lined cylinder now open at her feet was brightly lit, revealing the ragged hole that had been crudely hacked into the side of the white curved wall. Yet it was not the kidnappers’ tunnel that immediately caught Ravana’s eye, for twenty metres below the second set of airlock doors were wide open, beyond which the shaft continued on into a dark nothingness. It was hard not to think of Ostara’s words on the cold black void of space.
“It’s a long way down,” she murmured.
“Indeed it is,” Wak agreed. He handed her a length of rope, at the end of which was a large clip. “Best if you attach that to your suit. One slip and a couple of kilometres later you’d be smashing straight through the temporary dome and out into space. I’d hate to have to explain that to your father.”
Ravana gulped. Taking the rope, she clipped it to the safety ring on her suit. The other end she saw was attached to a long handrail that ran alongside the ladder fixed to the wall of the airlock chamber. In the time she had been staring transfixed into the dark shaft, Wak had pulled on his own suit and clipped a second safety line to himself. He now motioned to Ravana to pick up her helmet and follow him into the cab of the hovertruck. Once they were seated, the professor beckoned to Ostara, who up until now had taken great care to maintain a wary distance from the edge of the airlock.
“Stay by the control panel and keep your wristpad audio channel open,” he instructed. “If anything happens, we’re relying on you to close the airlock as quick as you can.”
“If anything happens?” asked Ostara, startled. “Like what?”
Wak ignored her. He put on his helmet, then motioned to Ravana to do likewise.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, waving to Ostara. His voice sounded tinny and slightly distorted through Ravana’s helmet speaker.
“Loud and clear,” replied Ostara, speaking into her wristpad.
“Ready to go, Ravana?” asked Wak, turning his helmet visor towards her.
Ravana nodded. With one hand on the control stick, Wak tapped in the start code on the hovertruck’s control panel and the thrusters roared into life, sending Ostara scurrying for cover. The truck lurched into the air, then slowly edged forward through the gate until it was hovering above the open shaft. Ravana peered over the side of the truck and looked down into the abyss. Her left hand was clamped around the handle on the edge of the windscreen, while her right held the safety rope attached to her suit, which looped down out of the cab before coming back up to the rail inside the airlock. Now they were directly over the open airlock doors, a mere length of rope seemed very flimsy protection indeed.
Wak throttled back the thrusters by the merest fraction and the truck slowly descended into the airlock. They were soon level with the large ragged hole, which Ravana guessed had been made by the Astromole on its way to the palace. Wak manoeuvred them into a position where they could see straight into the kidnappers’ tunnel. To Ravana’s surprise, she saw just inside was a wider section with a huge net attached the wall, behind which was wedged a variety of equipment. On the tunnel floor nearby, presumably also firmly fixed to the rock, was what looked like a mountaineering survival tent.
“The scoundrels set up camp underground!” exclaimed Wak, raising his voice against the sound of the hovertruck thrusters.
“You should look for evidence,” suggested Ostara over the helmet speaker.
“Isn’t a great big hole evidence enough?” retorted the professor. “You can do your detective work later. My priority is to close this damn airlock.”
Wak turned the hovertruck away from the hole and guided it towards a control panel upon the wall. As soon as the panel was within reach, he outstretched his right hand and tried a few experimental taps on the keypad. However, unlike the control panel in the shed above, this one displayed no warning lights and was evidently not working.
“It looks like it has been over-ridden from outside,” Wak informed his listeners. Squinting through the open doors below, he peered into the dark shaft. “I can see another panel beyond the airlock. I’ll have to take the truck further down.”
Ravana gulped as the hovertruck began to descend once more. Soon the entire airlock was above them. The walls of the shaft had become the grey rock of the asteroid, streaked with the dark veins of century-old cement pumped in to stabilise the structure. The lights of the airlock chamber above were partly masked by the lower doors and Wak was forced to switch on the truck’s headlights to dispel the shadows. As they levelled off near the lower control panel, Ravana watched as Wak attempted and failed to reach it, concentrating as he was on keeping the hovertruck steady. Eventually, he gave up and turned to Ravana.
“This one is recessed into the wall and I can’t reach it without letting go of the stick,” he told her. “You’ll have to work the panel for me.”
“I’ll do my best,” Ravana told him.
Wak swung the truck around and the panel came into view. She could see what he meant, for the control panel was installed in a shallow alcove in the wall of the shaft. It was a stretch even for her, but by leaning out of the side of the truck and clinging to the side of the windscreen she found she could just about touch the keypad, only to find there was no response. There was a grey box taped to the side of the panel and Ravana could see a number of wires running from it to the back of the keypad.
“This one is dead too,” she told the professor. “There’s some sort of device connected to it which may be affecting the circuits.”
“Damnation!” exclaimed Wak. “This airlock needs to be closed!”
“Airlock to be closed?” crackled Ostara’s voice. “Right away!”
With a sudden clang of steel, the upper doors of the airlock began to slide shut.
“What!?” retorted Wak. “No!”
Startled, Ravana twisted around to see what was happening, forgetting that hasty movements were unwise in the bulky emergency suit. Her grip slipped from the edge of the windscreen and before she could grab it again, she lost her balance and fell against the shaft wall, then felt the hovertruck slide from beneath her. Ravana’s cry of panic became a heart-rending scream, drowning out the professor’s own anguished shout. Her boot slipped from its precarious perch. All of a sudden, she was tumbling into the void.
“Ravana!” cried Wak.
Free of her weight, the hovertruck lurched up through the lower airlock doors, accompanied by a second strangled cry from Wak as he fought to regain control. Her eyes wide with fear, Ravana fell away from the airlock, her rope streaming behind her. A split second later, the rope snapped tight and she came to an abrupt stomach-churning halt.
Above her, the lower airlock doors had somehow come to life. Ravana watched helplessly as they slid together, then clanged shut like the lid of a tomb. She was trapped.