“This is the way out!” she whispered urgently. “There’s a window leading outside.”
“We need to go down here!” the boy protested stubbornly.
“But…” Ravana began, then saw Artorius’ expression. “Okay, have it your way. Don’t blame me if we run into angry lizard monks!”
Artorius led her to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor. These too were locked and this time the wall panel demanded a security code, but Ravana was able to override the control with her implant as easily as before. The door unlocked with a clunk.
“How did you do that?” asked an awestruck Artorius.
“Magic,” she said.
He wriggled past and pushed open the doors. Lights flickered on in the room ahead. Ravana’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she caught the musty metallic odour of raw meat.
“Oh my word,” she murmured.
The space before her was crammed with racks of cages, medical apparatus, work benches and all sort of paraphernalia ideally suited to a mad scientist’s laboratory. The windowless chamber was not large and the chaotic jumble of equipment left little room for manoeuvre. When Ravana saw the empty cages and flecks of blood upon the floor, a tremor ran down her spine. It reminded her of the secret animal-testing laboratory she and her friends had stumbled upon on Yuanshi some months before.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“This way!” cried Artorius, pulling her forward.
Not all the cages were empty. When Ravana saw the final large enclosure, her heart leapt and her head filled with so many different emotions. The caged creatures were the size of small apes, humanoid yet lizard-like with grey hairless skin and mournful almond-shaped eyes peering from an inverted triangular face. Spindly fingers clung despondently to the bars of the cage as they lifted their gazes towards their visitors.
Ravana was one of the few people ever to get close to the greys, the near-mythical aliens of Epsilon Eridani. Incredibly, she recognised one of the creatures now before her. The older-looking grey had distinctive blue markings on its skin that had stayed in her mind ever since a strange encounter in her childhood. Taranis later captured the same creature and awarded it the dubious honour of being the mother to his hybrid cyberclones. The grey was present at the birth of the priest’s disciples on the Dandridge Cole, but despite Ravana’s efforts had been condemned to the same fate as Taranis and his creations. Yet at least two of the clones had survived. So it seemed had their unwilling mother.
“Pretty cool aliens, eh?” remarked Artorius. The younger of the two greys, which wore faint zebra-like red stripes upon its back, was reaching through the bars towards the young boy, its lips twitching in what looked like a smile.
“Greys,” she corrected, cautiously approaching the cage. “We’re the aliens here.”
The elder grey recognised her. The creature reached through the bars and placed a six-fingered hand upon her arm, just like at their last fateful encounter. Ravana began to suspect they were far more intelligent than she had previously given them credit for.
“Thraak thraak!” the grey yelped gently, momentarily startling her. The noise that erupted from the creature’s mouth was like two bursts of static.
“Nana knows you,” said Artorius, impressed.
“It’s a long story,” she admitted. “You can understand them?”
“The angry nurses make me ask them things.”
His reply opened up far too many questions but Ravana knew this was not the time for a discussion on clandestine scientific research. She had tried and failed to save the older grey from Taranis once before. She would not fail again.
“They’re coming with us,” she reassured Artorius. “Is it just these two?”
The boy nodded. “Nana and Stripy.”
“Nana?”
“She’s very old.”
“And Stripy is striped,” Ravana murmured. “How original.”
“Their real names are very long!” Artorius replied haughtily.
The younger grey pointed to a bunch of old-fashioned mechanical keys hanging on a wall hook. Ravana found the one to open the cage and moments later Stripy and Nana were clambering cautiously down to the floor, unsure of their new-found freedom. Neither stood more than chest high to her, though could look Artorius in the eye.
They seemed unwilling to move until they were taken by the hand. While their stubby legs did not look as if they had evolved for speed, Ravana soon had them all out of the strange laboratory and at the door to the interview room. Upon hearing the sound of distant footsteps they hurried into the room, where Ravana used her implant to lock the door behind them.
The room was in near-darkness, with the window in the opposite wall just visible in the gloom. She found the darkness outside puzzling, for a day on Daode was ten times longer than on Earth and the sun had showed no signs of setting when she had been there earlier.
The window remained slightly ajar and a simple shove was enough to open it wide. Using a chair as a step, Ravana helped Artorius and the two greys through, then followed.
The silence of the sea was eerie. A dim glow filled the sky, allowing them to see various shapes in the dark. It was only when Ravana accidentally stumbled into a large screen that she began to suspect things were not quite as expected. Slowly, her eyes began to adjust to the low light and her confusion turned bitter.
“It was all a trick,” she murmured. “One big lie after another.”
Above them soared the inner surface of a vast pressurised dome, one transparent enough to allow a little sunlight through from outside. The screen she had walked into was blank, but there was a triple-lens holovid projector mounted above the window frame, positioned just right so that recorded footage of Pampa Bay would appear real to someone looking through the window from inside. It dawned upon Ravana that her aching bones were right. They were not on Daode after all.
“Where are we going?” asked Artorius. Beside him, the greys looked anxious.
“Far away from here,” she muttered angrily. “Follow me.”
Ravana led them away into the gloom. The low rambling building masquerading as a hospice bordered a hangar-like space that extended as far as the curved wall of the dome. They scurried forward in the gloom and almost ran headlong into a huge mechanical monstrosity on caterpillar tracks, the purpose of which Ravana cared not to guess. Just when she was starting to think they would never find a way out, a large green shape resolved into the familiar six wheels and barrel-shaped hull of a lunar-class personnel carrier, parked in front of a huge airlock door in the side of the dome. The dark windows of the vehicle were strangely inviting.
“There,” she whispered to Artorius. “That’s our way out of here.”
“You’re going to steal a transport?”
“Borrow it,” Ravana corrected him. “Hopefully.”
She scurried to the transport and activated the control to open the rear hatch. Artorius and the greys followed more hesitantly, but before long Ravana was hastening them up the steps, through the airlock and into the passenger cabin. She sealed the hatch behind them.
The lights came on as they entered, revealing bare metal walls with bench seats and overhead lockers on either side. Ravana hurried forward to the cockpit and dropped into the driver’s seat. Sitting before the console felt reassuringly like being on the flight deck of the Platypus to give her confidence, though she had precious little experience driving anything with wheels. Both the dome above and the design of the transport suggested that wherever they were, the world outside was far from welcoming.