The door opened suddenly, and two rebel soldiers in trance appeared at the doorstep, armed with laser lenses. The air in the cavern had become clear again, so they could go out safely even without a spacesuit helmet.
“Follow me,” the same voice told him on the holophone; again, he didn’t see any soldiers moving their lips.
“What happened with the attack?” he asked them.
No one answered his question.
“Were they repulsed?” he made another vain attempt to start a discussion.
“Follow me,” the voice repeated in the same neutral tone.
A four-seat, driverless magneto-jet steered by an artificial intelligence was waiting for them near the dome. They started off quickly, Gill sitting in a front seat and the two silent guards in the rear seats. The cockpit was transparent, so he could see the landscape in all directions, which was a very nice thing in case he might be forced to flee again. They turned toward the left wall of the cavern on a gentle slope between the domes. The road led to an irregular opening at the edge of a small plateau above the buildings.
As soon as they drove into the gallery, Gill felt he had stepped into the magical realm of Melchida the Greedy: they were inside a geode greater than imagination could conceive, its gray walls covered in large purple crystals, magically shining in the lights of their jet. Unfortunately, his unconscious companions—so accustomed to the riches of the mining planet—didn’t let him gaze at the crystal wonders around them. A small magnetic platform hurried up with a twitch, changing the direction several times to follow the meanders of the geode. Sometimes the walls were so close they almost touched their jet.
When they reached the end of the formation, they found another small crevice leading to a wide, twisted gallery dug into a dark green conglomerate, without crystals. From place to place, other magnetic elevators or tunnels opened on its sides. The floor was covered in a thick layer of mining dust, patched here and there by black hydrocarbon blobs. In several places, Gill could see streaks and circular marks left by some heavy containers dragged to the platforms. The deeper ones had stirred a snowlike salt.
Near the largest exit, the gallery was horribly torn on the right side of their path. They could barely squeeze around the hole, yet the magnetic field was still working. Something big had fallen through an elevator shaft and smashed the massive rock wall like a shell, biting the tunnel’s floor. Through this hole, they could gaze at the inhabited cavern they just left. Gill could see the mangled debris of some metal containers holding blue lumps of ore scattered around several destroyed domes, close to the road they had just followed into the geode. He couldn’t understand how the cavern remained pressurized if the temple soldiers reached so close to it, but undoubtedly, the architects had installed several safety measures to guard the precious atmosphere of the underground city from the insatiable hunger of the vacuum.
After they passed the crash site, the road continued with ups and downs through various shafts and deep caverns. Although the caves were huge at first, they slowly became smaller and darker. The last ones were little more than small uninhabited holes linked by artificial corridors. Finally, the jet reached a glass elevator and began to descend vertically for several miles.
They reached a layer of pitch-black rock, the walls of the horizontal gallery being covered with tiny crystals shining in myriad iridescences. For about fifty yards, a burst of yellow sulfur crystals precipitated in rivers of fire, alternating with black stripes of the other mineral.
They stopped on a platform close to a parking lot for magneto-jets. From there, it seemed they had to travel on foot.
“Put your helmet on!” the voice ordered on his holophone.
Gill hesitated to do so, failing to understand the reasons of the hidden Antyran. Why did he ask such a thing? Were they about to enter an area without air so far from the battlefield? Or maybe he wants to keep me hidden from the other townsfolk? The disturbing thought stung him. Regardless, Gill was convinced that asking for an explanation would be in vain because the voice wouldn’t bother to answer. Therefore, he slowly sealed his helmet and followed his companions.
The path led to a fairly large tunnel excavated into the familiar blue layer, following the meanders of the ore vein. After another door, he stepped on a narrow street bordered by rooms dug directly into the rock. Their front walls were adorned by rivers of tiny lights whirling in strange patterns. He suspected that the lights were some sort of orientation devices in the underground. The rivers had different hues and usually led to a larger building painted in the same shade as them… maybe the famous game nests he had heard so much about… Gill wanted to look inside, but his guards rushed him to hurry his steps. A couple of times, though, he managed to glimpse the gamers coiled in colorful nests or directly on the warm floors, all connected to the virtual world.
The road gave way to an impressive square. A massive two-story dome resembling a pair of coils placed one on top of the other stood right in the middle of it.
One of the guards entered the building, so Gill followed his steps. It took a while to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but then he saw several groups of Antyrans lying in niches carved into the walls, all of them immersed in a deep trance, totally unaware of their presence. A real trance for once—unlike his guards, who, although sleeping, were able to move around just fine.
They walked upstairs to an acajaa storeroom. The first guard touched an empty shelf, which promptly folded into the floor, exposing the wall behind it. The soldier stepped forward, vanishing through the stone! It was a concealed passage camouflaged by a hologram. Beyond it, a narrow corridor descended steeply far below the ground floor. It ended in another tunnel—this time so narrow that two Antyrans could barely walk side by side, yet its walls were over sixty feet in height. It didn’t appear very long, though, but that was just an illusion due to the camouflage. Gill realized that only now he had reached the core of the forbidden city.
Once they passed through another hidden wall, they reached a big cavern resembling a hive, populated by hundreds of ghostlike Antyrans walking in all directions. For the first time, he had the opportunity to meet townsfolk with their eyes open. Sometimes they appeared from a wall, only to vanish inside another rock or descend some concealed stairs. A couple of times, he only saw a head or a torso popping out before it disappeared under the camouflage. Dizzy and bewildered, Gill understood he had no chance of finding his way alone. If Baila could see what his eyes saw, he would realize that any attempt to seize Ropolis by force was doomed.
Behind another camouflage, there was a small tunnel leading to a square surrounded by small stone facades. They weren’t buildings in the true sense, just simple walls closing the holes carved in the sides of the cavern.
They entered one of them, and the guards stopped for a brief moment, giving him a chance to look closely at the Antyrans coiled in nests or in the niches dug into the walls. They seemed immersed in a deep coma, and he immediately noticed something even more disturbing: quite a number of them had artificial feeding tubes coming out of their bellies; a few were connected to devices to keep them alive. Had they been wounded in the fight? Strangely, no one was helping them… But then he noticed that all the intubated were old and wrinkled—mere shadows of their former selves, most likely unable to support their weight on their feeble feet with all the help of the planet’s low gravity… much less carry around a laser lens…
The younger bixanids had no tubes or other devices, save for the interfaces attached to their spikes—they looked just like any other Antyrans of their age.