Chapter Six
The Flying Fox
HIGH ABOVE THE PALACE soared a hero of the skies, exquisitely framed by the bat-like wings of a red birdsuit as his eyes scanned the ground for his damsel in distress. In the low pseudo-gravity near the axis of the hollow moon the flying was easy and the masked figure swooped and swirled with a panache surpassed only by the real birds of feather and flesh that darted in his wake. With a deft flick of artificial wings, the birdman banked towards the cliff at the rear of the hollow moon and skimmed the vertical rock face with playful zeal. Spying a familiar shape, he veered sharply towards the rock, performed a delicate aerial somersault, then crashed heavily onto the floor of a shallow cave in the side of the cliff.
“I really must practice landings,” the figure muttered, climbing to his feet.
He folded back his scarlet wings and solemnly regarded the black cat meowing pathetically at his feet. Ravana’s electric pet looked at him with an air of apprehension, for the ginger-haired winged intruder offered a completely different challenge to the gull it had previously decapitated at this very spot. There was something quite unnerving about the mask that covered the top half of the figure’s pale face.
“So what brings you up here, little Jones?” asked the birdman.
The cat meowed again and feebly scratched at a crack in the wall at the back of the cave. Moments later it found itself plucked from the ground by red-gloved hands, an act it chose to reward by sinking its claws into the birdman’s arms.
“Ow!” cried the figure, dropping the cat. “I’m trying to rescue you, stupid moggy!”
He tried again, this time giving it reassuring strokes as he tucked it gently yet firmly under his right arm. Turning away, he stepped towards the edge of the cave floor and calmly regarded the cliff dropping away at his feet. The fingers of his left hand reached for the miniature joystick at the end of the suit’s control arm and pressed the switch to snap the bat-like aerofoils into position. The figure paused, then stepped off the cliff.
His wings bit the air and he quickly banked to the left, keeping the cliff to his side as he glided in a slow descent towards the ground. The concave landscape of the hollow moon rolled slowly below, bringing the Maharani’s palace around from above until it lay straight ahead. Ravana’s cat remained remarkably still under his arm, perhaps recalling the foul-smelling pond of mud that had greeted it the last time it was here.
In the palace garden ahead, Endymion shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up at the birdsuit-clad figure gliding towards them. Miss Clymene and Bellona were waving like lunatics at his side, leaving Philyra to sulk alone. Dinner with the Maharani had proved to be an awkward and short-lived affair. After the incident with Surya’s cyberclone, the visitors from Newbrum had quickly made their excuses and left.
“Why didn’t you tell me the boy was a clone?” wailed Philyra, not in the least bit interested in the approaching birdman. “I looked an idiot!”
“Is that a bird?” asked Miss Clymene, ignoring her.
“Is it a spaceplane?” queried Bellona.
“No, it seems to be a ginger man wearing a birdsuit,” murmured Endymion.
“He looks like a big bat,” grumbled Philyra, returning her attention to her wristpad.
The figure came in to land just outside the palace grounds, his descent slowed by tiny bursts of gas from the birdsuit’s built-in jet pack. With Endymion leading the way, the four visitors hurried past the robots trying to move a fallen stone elephant and headed to the palace gates. By the time they reached the road, the mysterious birdman was picking himself up from another rough landing, his movements hampered somewhat by the cat clinging to his arm. The figure acknowledged the approaching figures with a curt nod, glanced at his wristpad and then strode away. Eager for a bit of excitement, Endymion and the girls promptly ran after him, leaving Miss Clymene to wearily bring up the rear.
Upon reaching a brick maintenance shed, the scarlet-clad hero paused by the parked monocycle to take in his surroundings, then slipped through the open doors and out of sight.
“Who is that masked man?” murmured Miss Clymene, wonderingly.
Ravana stopped screaming and opened her eyes, not that it made much difference in the cloying darkness. She swung at the end of the rope, nursing the mother of all headaches but with remarkably few actual injuries other than several bruises from where she had hit the shaft wall as she fell.
“Ravana!” The professor’s cry crackled loud in her helmet. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she hesitantly confirmed. “What happened?”
“You fell,” replied Wak, stating the obvious. “I have no idea how the lower doors managed to close behind you. Regrettably I too find myself trapped.”
“You’re in the airlock?”
“I fell off the truck and somehow got my false hand trapped in the gap between the doors,” he told her, sounding sheepish. “That daft woman closed the doors above me and I’m not sure she has the wit to get us out. I’m afraid my wristpad has also been crushed.”
Ravana tried hard not to panic. Her own wristpad was visible through the clear plastic window on the sleeve of her suit but an on-screen message made it clear that the subterranean shaft was beyond the range of the Dandridge Cole’s network. There was also a large crack across the screen, no doubt a result of her having crashed into the shaft wall.
“There’s no signal down here,” she told Wak. “What now?”
“Can you reach the airlock control panel?”
Ravana looked into the darkness above. The rope disappeared into a blackness that clung to her like treacle. Reaching out with an exploratory hand, she did at least manage to locate the wall of the shaft, although her bruises had already told her that it could not be far away. She had no idea how far she had fallen.
“Maybe,” she said. Her headache was getting worse. “If I could see it, that is.”
“Try,” came the anxious reply. “Your wristpad screen may give you a bit of light.”
Ravana gripped hold of the rope with both hands and strained to pull herself up. Being skinny did have its advantages, but she was not particularly strong and her weak right arm was starting to throb quite painfully. With a great deal of effort she managed to haul herself high enough to allow her feet to grip the rope dangling below. After that she made better progress, but it took several agonising minutes of climbing before her hand touched the airlock door above her. A faint glimmer of light filtered through the gap between the two halves, for both her rope and Wak’s crushed prosthesis had prevented the airlock doors from closing completely. Miraculously, she saw the control panel was within reach.
“I’ve reached the airlock,” she gasped breathlessly. “And I can see the panel.”
“Excellent! Is it working?”
Swaying gently upon the rope, Ravana extended a hand and tried the keypad.
“It’s still dead,” she told him despondently.
She glared at the control panel, then gave it an impatient slap. Her gloved hand caught the edge of the strange grey box next to it, just as her headache flared again. At the exact same moment, she felt the grey surface yield beneath her fingers like a touch-sensitive switch. A split second later she was staring at the box in disbelief, for it was as if a key had turned inside her head. Incredibly, for the briefest of moments, she had seen the airlock control mechanism laid out in her mind.
“It can’t be,” she murmured.
“What did you say?” asked Wak.
Ravana stared at the grey box. To her amazement the airlock schematic popped back into her head as clear as day; yet this was a picture that could be twisted, prodded and turned. An idea both fantastic and unbelievable came to her. She concentrated upon the image again, this time with the eyes of Ravana the trainee engineer, then flexed the image in her mind.