"Oh dear." Since they had all heard the exchange, Johnny, who had replaced the digger's pilot, followed the lead of Ke-ola's vehicle.
"Marmie, Honu thought-talks to us too," Murel said. "We could cover all the craters faster if we left the flitters to look around different craters. We could ask the Honu if there were people nearby."
"It's too dangerous for you out there unprotected," Marmie said.
"It's more dangerous for the survivors right now," Ronan said. "We'll be as careful as we can but if a big meteor came down and landed on the flitter, in spite of what you told that Cally, I bet we would get hurt. It's not like anyplace in this area is exactly safe."
Marmie gave a Gallic shrug and said, "So, you don't think the shields I invented for his sake would save us, eh? You are of course correct. Remind me never to try to do a business deal with you. You have come to know me far too well. So, proceed, mes petits, but with caution please."
The twins pulled on their helmets and gloves, reset their boots, and stepped out onto the wounded planet.
Ke-ola jumped heavily out of the flitter they'd been following and lumbered away from it.
Ronan slogged off in the opposite direction asking, Honu, you can read Murel and me from the ship too, can't you?
I can, the Honu replied.
You'll let me know if you sense survivors if they're nearby, as you did with Ke-ola?
Yes, Honu said.
I don't suppose you could tell us where to look for people as well, if we're getting warmer or colder?
I do not understand. It is warm where the sky rocks have fallen. You will be colder when you are farther from them.
That's not what I mean. I mean, warmer by am I nearer to the survivors or farther from them.
Walk on and I will try to sense the answer through you.
Ronan trudged on to the next area where it looked like a structure had collapsed under the onslaught of the meteor shower. Here?
Not there.
How about here?
No, no one is there.
Over here?
No.
There's something weird about all this, don't you think?
Murel's thought reached Ronan. She had walked away from the flitter in a position that triangulated his and Ke-ola's. Ronan could tell she was scared of what she might find, and he also caught thought pictures of crushed and burned bodies as his sister imagined what the meteors that had ruined the landscape might have done to living beings.
Meteor showers are sudden, not easy to predict without special equipment, Murel continued. But there are no people here, not even injured ones or bodies. Why not?
How could they have known in time to take cover the way Ke-ola seems to think they did?
They knew, the Honu said, because Honus know. My relatives living among the people warned them. The people fled to safety long before the sky rocks fell.
But how did Honus know the sky rocks were going to fall? Ronan asked. He didn't expect a scientific answer and he didn't get one. He knew what the Honu would say. It was the same thing any sensible creature on Petaybee would say, fleeing before a natural disaster could overtake it.
Honus know, the sea turtle said simply. Then, Ke-ola knows too.
Ronan and Murel looked toward their friend and saw him striding purposefully toward something orange. A piece of cloth? A flag? It moved against the stark background of a barren hill.
"What's that?" Ronan asked him through the helmet com. "What do you see?
What's the orange thing?"
Ke-ola was panting as he answered, "There's a guy waving the orange thing."
Ronan and Murel began to run toward him, but Marmie's voice crackled into their helmets. "Stop. The flitters will be faster."
Even as she spoke, the flitter skimmed the rocky, pitted ground as it swung toward them, pausing long enough for them to climb aboard before chasing down Ke-ola.
There, they could spot the man waving the flag. It might have been his shirt, since he wasn't wearing one.
"Keoki!" Ke-ola yelled. The com unit shrilled painfully loud feedback. "That's my bruthah, Keoki," he explained, his voice, though quieter, quivering with excitement.
"Excellent!" Marmie said.
By then the flitter had set down, the hatch was opened, and Keoki was practically on top of it before Ke-ola and the others could climb out. The brothers wrapped their arms around each other, but while they were still entangled Keoki began steering Ke-ola back into the hill.
After Johnny gave the other flitters their location and told them to stand by, the twins, Marmie, and Johnny followed.
There was a cave entrance in the hill. Keoki lit a torch while Johnny and Marmie flicked the switches in their suits that turned the fingers of their gloves into flashlights and activated another powerful beam on each helmet. Ahead of them a long black tunnel curved sharply downward.
"Lava tube, not the root canal!" Ke-ola crowed to the others. "Of course! Sure! I should have thought of that. These hills are full of them. Old volcanoes from long time ago, way before we came here."
Unencumbered by space gear, Keoki, torch in hand, trotted well ahead of them.
"The meteors never hit our settlements while I lived here," Ke-ola said, "but us kids found the tubes. We wanted to explore them but our folks always said it was too dangerous. Then one of my uncles who'd joined the Corps and come back with one leg missing said instruments on the expeditionary ship that brought him back showed subterranean water, bigger than what was in the canals. But they were really deep down so we never got to go all the way down while I was living at home. They'd make a good shelter, though, deeper than most of the meteors could penetrate and with water for the Honus and the others. Yeah. Makes sense."
He pulled off his helmet and shook loose his dark hair, which had grown to shoulder length since he left school. "Ahh, good air. Better than in the canals."
Johnny referred to the tiny control panel on his wrist again. "It does seem safe enough."
They removed their helmets and continued down the tube.
The tunnel was of black rock that looked as if it had dried after being poured around the cave. In places it was perfectly smooth, in others the floor and walls rippled and undulated. There were no stalactites and stalagmites toothing the passage as they did in the communion caves on Petaybee. Also, deeper and farther along, huge roots pierced through the walls and ceiling of the passage.
It's as if they grow upside down, Murel said. These roots are more like their branches than the part that grows aboveground.
The cave smelled pleasantly of life growing and decaying. Moisture soothed their nostrils, dry from breathing the recycled air of the helmets.
Soon they began hearing noises: an occasional shout or even a laugh, some splashing, coughs, the slap of bare feet, the shuffle of shoes, the rustle of clothing or the rattle of rocks displaced by shifting bodies, sniffs, a sob, a low fevered repetition of unintelligible words that could have been a chant or could have been nonsense. There was even a little singing.
It grew louder as they walked deeper into the tube. The twins' knees ached with the steepness of the descent. Their lights bounced off the broadening lava walls as they rounded a bend, ducked under a curtain of low-hanging roots. Keoki waited for them, torch in hand, and made a right-angle turn. The tube flared into a vast cavern and the lava floor gave way to a wide black shining lake. All around it people gathered in groups. Within it several people swam or floated, as did several very large Honu and a few small ones.
Keoki called out something to the other people in his and Ke-ola's language. He pulled Ke-ola forward and thumped him on the back, then beckoned Marmie,
Johnny, and the twins.