“May I have a look, miss?” asked Bellona. Miss Clymene handed her the book.
“The slate has engineering plans for the Dandridge Cole,” Endymion revealed. “Ravana did mention that Fenris was the inside man for the Raja’s kidnap.”
“Indeed he was,” said Ravana, appearing at the door. “The scumbag.”
She went to the bed and knelt beside the motionless form of her father. Miss Clymene and Bellona had replaced the bandages on his head and chest. A small metal dish on the nearby cabinet held half a dozen fragments of bloody shrapnel, removed by Bellona’s steady hand. Quirinus remained unconscious, but Ravana took some reassurance from the pink blush upon his face, for earlier her father had looked as pale as a ghost.
“How is he?” she asked Miss Clymene.
“He’s no longer critical,” she replied, startling Ravana who had not been told that he was to begin with. “He should make a full recovery. Except…”
“Except what?” asked Ravana, her heart sinking.
“His eyes,” Bellona said quietly. “We need the autosurgeon to save his eyesight.”
Fighting back her tears, Ravana took hold of her father’s hand and clutched it tightly. The pain and anguish she had suffered the last few days had become unbearable. At the forefront of her thoughts was that Fenris was to blame. Everything bad that had happened to her father; his arrest, his imprisonment, the bomb on the Platypus; Fenris had been there. She did not care for the bigger picture, that of Taranis and Kartikeya and their grand schemes for some far-flung moon, for it was Fenris alone who had personally caused so much grief. It was Fenris who was going to have to pay for what he had done.
“I love you, father,” she whispered. “We will make you well again. I promise.”
Ravana looked up at the solemn faces of Miss Clymene, Endymion, Philyra and Bellona, suddenly feeling lost and alone in a room full of strangers.
“Fenris will not take away my family,” she said. “He will not get away with this.”
The hovertruck sped through the gloomy void of the hollow moon, its headlamps picking out one deserted scene after another as it followed the monorail track to Petit Havre. All four of its passengers were squashed and securely strapped into the front bench seat, for Ravana had made it clear she was in no mood for taking things slowly.
They had left Dockside barely ten minutes ago and stopped just once to collect Ravana’s errant cat from near the lake, but already the hovertruck was surging past one of the central pylons that supported the mangled artificial sun. The bright lights of the Sun Wukong could be seen overhead, though as yet Ravana had heard no word from Hanuman and Ganesa on whether they had been successful in pulling the Platypus free.
“Do you always drive this fast?” Ostara yelled to Ravana, raising her voice against the oncoming rush of wind. The hovertruck’s open cabin was not designed for rapid flight.
“I did warn you!” Ravana shouted back. The headlamp beams momentarily fell upon a stray mob of confused wallabies, causing them to bound away in fright into a nearby coppice. “Anyway, eighty kilometres an hour is not that fast.”
Zotz nervously clutched the cat on his lap and squeezed his knees to hold firm the bag on the floor between his legs. Beside him, Surya stared captivated by the strange landscape that had lain ignored beyond the palace grounds all these years. Ostara thought it a pity that his first proper look at the interior of the Dandridge Cole would possibly also be his last.
Five minutes later, the hovertruck shot over the perimeter wall of the palace gardens and touched down on the edge of a small courtyard. Ravana looked momentarily bemused to see that they had landed next to the fallen stone statue of an elephant, for the incident with the Astromole seemed a lifetime ago. Ostara almost fell off the truck in her haste to get back onto solid ground, though Surya was no less relieved to follow.
“You’re doing all you can for him,” she reassured Ravana, seeing the girl’s anxious face. “Just try not to drop the generator on the way back.”
“I’ll do my best,” replied Ravana, managing a smile. “And you be careful. Fenris is a sly one.”
Ostara grinned, then quickly led Surya away from the hovertruck towards the palace, leaving Ravana and Zotz to depart in a cloud of dust behind them. Ahead, the entire palace was in darkness, yet she saw the double doors within the nearby porch were already open, revealing an ink-black interior. Reaching the entrance, Ostara watched as Surya cautiously stepped over the threshold and peered into the murky silence beyond. There was not a soul in sight.
“It looks like they did all leave on the Indra after all,” whispered Ostara.
“Why are you whispering?” asked Surya, his own voice hushed.
“I have no idea. Why are you?”
“I don’t like the dark,” he confessed. “I never knew home could be so creepy.”
“Is this a good time to mention that I forgot to bring a torch?”
Surya grinned. “I have one in my room,” he said. “Follow me.”
The corridor floors were bathed in dim red light as the last few watts from back-up fuel cells illuminated the way to emergency exits. Surya could have found his way with his eyes closed and hastened Ostara through a maze of passages to his own private quarters.
The Raja’s room was in near darkness. Surya went straight to his bed and knelt to look beneath, whereupon Ostara heard him mumble something about his things being disturbed in his absence and a box having been moved. He quickly found his torch and personal slate. Ostara pondered on the realisation that until a few days ago, the most adventurous thing the Raja had probably ever done was secretly read under the sheets long after he was supposed to be asleep. The torch was fully charged and Surya switched it on in lantern mode.
“This is your room?” asked Ostara, blinking in the sudden rush of illumination. “This is bigger than my entire living quarters and my office combined!”
The furnishings reminded her of the elaborate staterooms at Kubera, while the bed alone looked large enough to sleep six. She never imagined there was anything as grand on the Dandridge Cole. Surya turned away, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” Ostara said. “It’s very nice. What’s that thing?”
“No idea,” Surya remarked. He had pulled a box from under the bed whilst getting his torch. “It appeared from nowhere about a month ago. I meant to ask my mother about it, but then accidentally dropped it and I think I broke it. I’m pretty sure the box didn’t rattle before.”
“Clumsy boy! Can you show me Fenris’ room?”
Surya nodded. Back in the hallway, he pointed to the far end of the passage to where a door stood ajar. A faint light glimmered through the gap from the room beyond.
“There,” he told her. “His door isn’t usually left unlocked like that though.”
Ostara crept to the door and peered through the gap, listening anxiously for any sound of movement within. Hearing nothing, she gingerly pushed the door open and braced herself for a surprise attack that never came. It quickly became apparent the room was deserted. Feeling a little more confident, she stepped through the door and paused.
“What on Frigg…?” she murmured.
The room was similar to Surya’s, though not so lavishly decorated. The sight that had caught her attention was a huge ragged hole in the wall, presumably one that had once been hidden by the wardrobe that now stood pushed to one side. This part of the palace evidently backed onto the cliff, for the hole was the start of a long tunnel, bored up through the rock of the asteroid itself and lit by a series of lamps hung upon the rough-hewn wall.