“A secret passage!” exclaimed Surya. “I wonder where it goes?”
Ostara grimaced. “I bet I can guess.”
Even with her cat’s anxious meows guiding the way, Ravana was worried she would not be able to find the cliff-side cave in the dark, but as it happened she had no problems. The cave Wak had directed them to was indeed the same one she had climbed to on the day of Surya’s kidnap. Wak’s engineers, having found as she did that the original stone steps had vanished in a rock slide, had erected a sturdy scaffold up the side of the cliff. What was more, at the top of the scaffold by the entrance to the cave, a platform had been built to serve as a convenient landing pad for the hovertruck.
The scaffold tower gave a metallic groan as the hovertruck settled to a rest, but appeared to be in no danger of collapsing. Ravana and Zotz quickly disembarked and stepped gingerly towards the cave entrance, her electric cat having gaily bounded ahead. Ravana left the hovertruck’s headlamps switched on to illuminate the scene and they could see where the rear wall of the cave had been partially demolished to reveal a dark, concrete-lined passageway beyond.
The cave floor was littered with huge lumps of rubble. The engineers’ work had at some point caused a further rock slide, which had collapsed on top of some apparatus on the far side of the rocky ledge.
“No!” cried Ravana. She hurried to the buried equipment.
Startled, Zotz followed. The reason for her concern was clear. The rock fall had come down on top of the generator and a particularly large boulder had ruptured the fuel tank, rendering it useless. Ravana sank to her knees in despair. Her cat, leaping out of her way, scurried across the rubble-strewn floor towards the hole at the back of the cave.
“I’ve failed,” sobbed Ravana. Tears welled in her eyes. “Why is nothing going right?”
“You weren’t to know the generator would be broken,” Zotz consoled her. “You’ve done all you can and so much more!”
“But it wasn’t enough!” she retorted. Zotz looked quite taken aback by the vehemence of her words. “What do we do now? And where’s blasted Jones got to?”
“Into the tunnel,” Zotz replied meekly. “Shall I go and get it?”
When Ravana did not reply, Zotz fetched his bag from the hovertruck, withdrew a torch and went to peer into the dark space beyond the broken cave wall, wobbling slightly in the reduced gravity. A stale breeze wafted from the tunnel, the walls of which were covered in a strange purple mould. Inside, Ravana’s cat sniffed at a patch of slime beneath a sign that read: ‘ACCESS TUNNEL B’. Further along, Zotz was surprised to see a strange vehicle on rails that looked like a smaller roofless version of the hollow moon’s monorail cars, looking incredibly old and thick with dust. The beam of the torch revealed the tunnel was free from rock falls as far as the eye could see. Switching off the torch, Zotz returned to where Ravana sat hunched and moping with her knees below her chin.
“There is something we could try,” he said cautiously.
Ravana looked up and regarded him wearily.
“The tunnel seems clear,” Zotz continued. “We could go down and see if we can find the reactor. Whatever’s draining the power may be something really simple to fix.”
“Don’t you think Wak’s engineers have already tried that?”
“They hadn’t finished unblocking the entrance,” Zotz pointed out. “It’s my guess they were called away before they had a chance to look, but I think the hole is big enough for us to squeeze through.”
“That tunnel is four kilometres long,” she reminded him. “That’s quite a walk.”
“We may not need to walk,” he replied cryptically.
“What about the mad priest? Ostara is convinced Taranis is hiding back there.”
Ravana felt weary and reluctant to commit to more adventures. The pilot’s daughter just wanted to be back at her father’s side, but Zotz’s words had found their mark. Ravana, the trainee engineer, understood that if they could do something to save the Dandridge Cole they should. Her unspoken fear was that she did not want to face Fenris again. Her gaze met Zotz’s own, then fell upon the bag at the boy’s feet.
“We do this together,” she said. “The Flying Fox will always be near, eh?”
Zotz blinked in mock surprise. “I don’t know what you mean!”
“I can see part of your birdsuit sticking out of your bag!”
“Never seen it before in my life,” he retorted. “I wonder how it got in there?”
“Zotz!” cried Ravana.
Zotz looked crestfallen. “It was supposed to be a secret,” he mumbled. “I wanted to be your hero, to look out for you, but I know you never saw me that way. So I invented him.”
“The Flying Fox?”
“You said I reminded you of the flying foxes by the lake and I took it from there.”
“You have always been there when I needed a friend,” Ravana said gently. “Now it’s time for you to lead the way. I’ve had my turn at being heroic and it’s worn me out.”
Zotz nodded, picked up his bag and shuffled to the edge of the cave.
“Can you turn around?” he asked nervously. “I won’t be long.”
Ravana solemnly climbed to her feet, retreated to the far side of the cave and politely turned her back. Moments later she heard faint grunts and the squeak of tight fabric as the unseen superhero struggled into his one-piece birdsuit, followed by a sudden metallic clang when a jet pack slipped from a clumsy grip and fell to the floor. In the hush that followed, she heard a myriad of whirrs and clicks as electronic catches pulled the ensemble together, then a loud hiss reached her ears and the cave began to fill with white smoke.
Unable to avert her gaze any longer, Ravana turned and regarded the defiant figure now before her. The masked birdman stood with scarlet wings outstretched, half-concealed by the smoke billowing from his backpack. The artificial muscles of his suit rippled convincingly and for a moment she found herself going quite weak at the knees.
“The Flying Fox at your service!” he declared. “It is time to save this world!”
The aged railcar rocketed down the tunnel, propelled by the flaring jet pack of the birdman at the rear, himself heroically battling to stop himself falling onto the rails below. Ravana and her cat, crouched low upon a seat before him, peered nervously over the front of the carriage as it recklessly clattered along the ancient railroad. She tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong on a hundred-year-old vehicle pushed to its limits and several anxious minutes went by before the end of the tunnel finally appeared in the gloom. The railcar had no power to any circuits so it was fortunate that the emergency brake was a simple mechanical lever. Nevertheless, it took the combined effort of both Ravana and The Flying Fox to bring the carriage to a halt, which they did mere metres from the end of the track.
“Wow,” said Ravana, clambering out. Her cat was not so impressed and had leapt out of the railcar several metres earlier. “That was some ride!”
The Flying Fox strode towards the end of the tunnel with his torch held before him. Ahead was a metal doorway so corroded that the cat had no problems finding a hole big enough to slip through to the other side. Reaching the door, the birdman threw it open with such a bang that it broke from its rusty hinges and crashed to the floor.
“Follow that cat!” he declared.