“I only hope the monster stays down there.” Petra had to shout to make herself heard above the appalling noise. Tremors raced through the ground every time the bulldozer impacted with the sides of its rocky prison. Apparently driven by some malign and supernatural force, the machine showed no sign of slackening its efforts to escape. The shriek of metal grinding on rusty metal continued to assault the senses, and every now and then there was the rumble of falling earth and masonry.
Jan looked down into the clamorous turmoil. “It’s bringing down a lot of broken rock. If it keeps on doing that it might be able to build a sort of ramp…climb out…”
Petra inclined her head towards the jungle’s edge. “The sooner we get in among those trees the better.”
They set out on legs which were still weary from running and the unnerving din of the bulldozer gradually faded behind them as they neared the inviting cover of the dense foliage. By the time they had penetrated a kilometre into the gigantic, dripping trees they were surrounded by comparative quietness—the sound of the jungle’s wild creatures no longer seemed as threatening as before—and they began to relax a little.
“I wonder if we should stop for a little while,” Jan said, wiping sweat from his brow.
“There’s no need—my legs feel all right again.”
“It’s all very well for you.” Jan gave Petra a rueful glance. “Back home you spent half your time sprinting around race tracks, while I was crammed inside the Seeker getting weak and flabby.”
“Excuses!” Petra taunted.
“Seriously though, we ought to eat something to keep up our strength,” Jan said. “I can’t remember the last time I even saw food.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Ozburt.” Petra pointed at a fallen tree whose trunk offered a good place on which to sit. “Why don’t you park your worn-out old body over there?”
“That looks fine—but I’m not taking any more chances.” Jan drew his sword and drove the point of it into the tree in several places. The blade met with a satisfying woody resistance, so he invited Petra to be seated with an exaggerated courtly gesture.
Joining in the game, she gathered up an imaginary crinoline skirt and sat down on the natural bench. “Talking about Ozburt—where do you think he is now?”
“My guess is that he’s been taken back to Jacksonville by this time.”
“I wonder if he’ll contact my parents and let them know what’s been happening.”
“He will,” Jan said confidently. “You know, I see now that I’ve been giving Ozburt a rough deal. I’m always ribbing him or getting at him for this and that, but when the chips were down he turned out to be an absolute ace. Not many people would have had the guts—or even the ability—to back me up the way he did. Considering the way I’ve been treating him, I’m amazed that he stuck with Dad and me on the Seeker project as long as he did.”
Petra gave him a sympathetic look. “We all know things haven’t been easy for you.”
“Thanks, but I still wish I had put things right with Ozburt before…” Deciding it would be better to abandon the subject, Jan opened his pouch and took out a squeezebulb of colourless liquid and a block of what might have been chocolate but when unwrapped proved to be a substance resembling grey plastic. He bit a corner off the block with some difficulty and began chewing.
Petra did likewise and a look of dismay appeared on her face. “My God, Jan, what’s this stuff meant to be? It looks like old tennis shoes, it smells like old tennis shoes…” She scrutinised the block in her hand. “I think it actually is old tennis shoes.”
“Eat up—it’s good for you,” Jan said, vainly trying to look enthusiastic. “It’s loaded with good stuff…protein…and vitamins…and…”
“Old tennis shoes.” Petra took a sip from her squeezebulb and her expression of distaste became even more evident. “Ugh! Sugary water!”
“For your information, that’s a high-energy glucose drink—scientifically designed to keep you going.”
“To the bathroom?” Petra showed her opinion of the drink by squirting some of it over Jan’s boots. “Next time we go on a picnic, Jan Hazard, I’m packing the hamper, and I’ll start off with something that’s worth eating.”
“Do me a favour and throw in some decent food for me,” Jan said, pretending to puke. “This stuff is pretty awful, isn’t it? My Dad chose the rations, and nobody can say he was planning to spoil himself on this trip.”
“Still, if we’d been loaded down with goodies we might not have gotten away from the bulldozer.” Petra’s eyes grew sombre as she recalled the narrowness of their escape. “The skeleton at the wheel looked horrible and spooky, but we know it had nothing to do with the bulldozer coming to life. It was just the remains of the poor driver who was…How can things like this happen, Jan? How could a bulldozer come to life?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, and not getting very far,” Jan said, toying with the unappetising foodstuff. “The official theory about Verdia…about planetary electromagnetic forces somehow entering machines and making them go haywire…has always seemed a bit too pat to me, too easy, too much of a cop-out—but at least it was based on the laws of Nature.”
“So you’re saying the bulldozer was taken over by something…supernatural?”
Jan shook his head. “I don’t want to say that—it goes against everything I was ever taught—but we both know what happened back there. The dozer came after us, hunted us, as if it was being controlled by some kind of an evil spirit. I can’t come up with a logical explanation for that, and I doubt if any of the eggheads back on Earth could, either.”
“We’re a long way from Earth,” Petra said pensively. “It might be that things work differently here. Perhaps the natural laws that we know, don’t apply in this part of the galaxy.”
“If that’s true, the odds against us are worse than we imagined. I was a real smart-ass, Petra. I was so sure I had everything worked out in advance, and now…”
“You’ve done well,” Petra said softly. “Your father would be proud of you.”
“Thanks.” Jan gave her a wry smile. “I wish I had been able to speak to him before I took off.”
“He knows where you are and what you’re doing.”
“He’ll be worried, that’s for sure. You see, my mother was killed in a tourist plane crash on Cerulea when I was three. Then Bari disappeared. And now I’ve vanished into the same jungle without even a radio to maintain any kind of contact. Dad must feel that space is an enemy that robs him of his family, one by one. That’s why he was so determined to go it alone in the Seeker.”
“There’s no need for you to feel guilty,” Petra said.
Jan shrugged. “I know—but somehow I can’t help it.”
“Look at it this way.” Petra tentatively placed her hand over Jan’s. “You and I are good runners in pretty well peak physical condition, but we beat that bulldozer by only a couple of metres. Your father was detained, but if he had been there instead of us the monster would have caught up on him—and that fact alone justifies everything you’ve done.”
Jan was comforted by her words and warmed by her touch. He drained his squeezebulb and threw it away into the surrounding undergrowth, causing a pitter-patter as droplets cascaded from the disturbed leaves. The grey cloud ceiling seemed lower than ever, hiding the tops of the highest trees, and sheet lightning flickered incessantly through the gloom.
“We’d better get going again,” he said, rising to his feet, feeling a renewal of confidence in spite of the depressing environment. “We’ve barely got started on the job.”