“I told you…” Prof began to say.
Nobby tumbled face first into a large blue-green blister, which burst under his impact. He didn’t even have time to scream. His fists beat the rock and his feet kicked feebly for a second but subsided and stopped before anyone could reach him.
“Nobby!” cried Prof.
Nobby didn’t answer.
“Careful!” warned Mercy.
They turned him over to a collective gasp of horror. Atkins turned his face away.
“Jesus!”
“Poor sod!”
Nellie gasped and buried her head in Porgy’s webbing. Atkins had seen many things on the Front and worse here, but this had them beat.
The front of Nobby’s head and chest — his uniform, flesh, muscle, fat, cartilage, down to his sternum — had gone. It had been eaten off where he’d fallen into the thing. There was nothing but fizzing bone. Through his ribs, his internal organs continued to dissolve into a slop from the inside out where he’d breathed the stuff in.
“Nobby!”
Pot Shot held Prof back.
“He’s gone, Prof,” said Pot Shot. “He’s gone.”
“No!” Prof slumped in his arms. “I warned him. I told him a thousand times to be careful, the soft bugger.” Prof’s voice trailed off. He looked lost. He’d taken it upon himself to shepherd the hapless Nobby through the war. He’d got all the way through the Somme, and three months of this place and the clumsy sod trips over his own feet and dies.
With nothing else to do, they buried Nobby under stones from the scree slope. There wasn’t even an identity disc to collect. The acid had seen to that. Useless, clumsy Nobby. Nobody deserved a death like that.
AS THEY SAID a prayer over Nobby’s grave, a flash of light caused them to shield their eyes.
“What the hell?” Atkins squinted up to find the source.
There, on the canyon wall, where the scree slope met the rock face, a large expanse of metal had been exposed by the rock fall and was catching the sunlight. It was a flat, featureless wall of dull silver metal, hidden behind the rock until it had been blasted away.
Atkins looked to Napoo, who just shrugged. Chandar let out a long wet hiss that set its mouth palps flapping.
“Holy Mary mother of God, will y’look at that.”
“Blood and sand!”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” said Porgy. “It has to be the result of some sort of manufactory, though. I mean, look at it. There is no way that’s natural. Maybe whatever brought us here is inside. I’ll bet this is exactly the sort of thing the Lieutenant wants us to keep a look out for.”
Atkins pushed back the cap on his head and puffed out his cheeks. Hopes suddenly welled up, unbidden. It was true. There was no way this could be natural. It was artificial, made, constructed. And if that was the case, somebody must have built it. They may even still be in there. Could this be it? Could the reason they found themselves here be found in there? Maybe even a way home? Home to Flora. The thought overwhelmed almost all else. He had to know.
“Gutsy, you and the others take cover on the far side of this rock fall while me and Porgy go up and investigate. Gazette? Keep us covered. If anything goes wrong, you should be able to make it out of the canyon.”
“If anything goes wrong? What the bloody hell are you planning to do, Only? We’ve got orders. We’ve got to find the tank.”
“Shh!” snapped Atkins, flicking his eyes toward Chandar.
“Sorry,” said Porgy sarcastically. “Skarra.”
“Look, Porgy. This is the first thing we’ve found here that isn’t built out of dirt or sticks; no offence, Napoo. Don’t you want to know?”
Atkins and Porgy scrambled up the scree slope towards the metal wall. Rocks and stones slipped away beneath their feet and skittered down to the canyon floor as they clawed their way up the spoil. “Look for a door, a hatch, anything,” Atkins said. “There must be a way in.”
Prof turned towards him. “And what do we do if we find one? Nothing else has been too friendly lately.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?”
As they drew closer, he could see that the metal wall had been hidden behind a crust of rock three or four feet deep. The surface wasn’t polished, but brushed; their reflections were misty shapeless hazes of khaki, like a fogged funfair mirror.
A cursory examination, however, revealed no seams or rivets, no joins of any kind. Porgy rapped on the metal with his knuckles. It was solid. Atkins unshouldered his rifle and slammed the butt into the metal, half expecting — half hoping — to hear a hollow ring. All he got was a dull, solid thud. He tried scratching it with his bayonet but the blade slid impotently across the surface patina without leaving a mark. He smacked it with the palms of his hands. “Hello! Hello? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me? Open up!” Nothing.
He put his ear to the metal, expecting it to be cold, only to find it warm. He looked at Porgy and put a finger to his lips hoping to hear signs of life within. He heard nothing; no gentle electrical hums, no machinery and no great thrum of turbines, nothing, except the rocks shifting and clattering beneath his feet as he tried to maintain his balance. Not that that meant anything in itself. The wall could be so thick as to prevent him hearing anything. Anger and frustration welled up. Were there beings in there now, observing them, judging them?
He was contemplating his next move when there was a shout from the canyon floor. The dull crack of a rifle shot echoed briefly round the canyon walls. Atkins glanced along the scree. The Yrredetti were emerging from behind large fallen blocks of stone, and were scuttling across the slope towards the two men. They seemed to have found their nerve. That, or they were desperate.
“All right, Porgy, time to get out of here.”
“No argument from me.”
Porgy turned and started scrambling clumsily down the scree, half running, half trying to keep his balance, riding a small wave of rock fall as the spoil slipped from beneath his feet.
Several more shots rang out from below. Atkins took aim at an Yrredetti that was hunkered low along the scree line and fired. The creature’s head exploded and the body tumbled several yards down the slope before coming to a halt. Atkins grimaced as several other Yrredetti turned their attention to it instead, and began tearing at it and cracking its carapace with rocks to get at the still warm meat within.
Porgy had almost reached the base of the scree and hands were reaching out to grab him.
Atkins was about to follow when he hesitated. “Ah, what the hell. It’s worth a shot.”
He pulled a Mills bomb from a pouch on his webbing and hastily set it against the base of the metal face, jamming it between two rocks. Maybe he could blast a hole in it. He took a deep breath, pulled the pin and leapt down the scree slope. He landed heavily, skidded, stumbled, and lost his footing. The world became a disorientating whirl and tumble as he careened head over heels down the slope.
Seconds later the concussion wave of the grenade blast caught him, propelling him further and showering him with dust and dirt. Small pieces of rubble rained down about him.
He felt hands pick him up and set him right, dust him off and thrust his rifle back into his grip, even as he blinked tears from his eyes and coughed out dust. Words gradually resolved from the ringing in his ears.
“Well, Only, you scared them Yrredetti off, good and proper,” Gutsy was saying. “Scuttled back under their rocks like spiders in a privy. You should have seen ’em.”
Atkins doubled over and coughed again, a deep chesty cough that made his diaphragm ache, before hawking out a gobbet of dusty spit. “Good. What about the wall?”
Gutsy shrugged.