The Power of Five Oblivion

away?
    I transferred my weight to my hands and arms and began to walk forward along the roof of the boat, remaining in the same place. And then the Lady Jane had gone. My feet bumped over the edge and suddenly I was dangling there with only the dark water below me. The others were in front of me and I wondered how the Traveller could possibly find the strength to hang on after everything he had been through.
    But he was grimly determined. “This way!” he shouted. He had his back to me of course but I saw him swing himself forward, moving from one rung to the next. It reminded me of when I was small, in the playground in my village. There had been a climbing frame and I’d often done exactly this. First the Traveller, then Jamie, then me … we clambered along the ladder and all the time the Lady Jane was getting further and further away in front of us. I reckoned it would be out in the light in about ten seconds.
    And what would the policewoman do then, when she saw that nobody was on board? Would she assume that we had somehow drowned?
    “Up!” the Traveller shouted.
    I didn’t know what he meant by that but even as he spoke, I saw him disappear from sight and realized that there was a vertical shaft inside the tunnel, directly above his head. He’d swung himself as far as the opening and then across onto a second ladder that had taken him up. Jamie did the same. One minute he was in front of me, then it was just his feet. Then he had gone altogether. I was the last. Suddenly I was alone in the tunnel, dangling in space with my arms outstretched. I saw the second ladder in front of me. Jamie’s feet were above my head. But I couldn’t follow him. The Lady Jane had reached the tunnel exit and I had to see what happened next.
    I watched as it slid into the open. I could actually see the tiller, the deck where we had just been standing, the name of the boat written in gold letters on the stern. There was no sign of the police or the fly-soldiers but I could imagine them, waiting to pounce. The boat was completely out of the tunnel now, framed by an O of light. I thought of the button that the Traveller had pressed and it was only then that I realized what was about to happen.
    The Lady Jane blew up. The explosion was massive, not just tearing it apart but devouring it in a blazing red fireball. And as I stared, the flames rushed towards me, back through the tunnel. If the bomb had gone off a second earlier, I would have been killed instantly. I had about half a second to get out of there. Desperately, I threw myself onto the second ladder and pulled myself up even as a torpedo of burning air raced past. It must have missed me by less than an inch. I felt the heat on the soles of my feet and, looking down, everything was a dense, brilliant red. I looked up and saw Jamie’s face, also reflecting red, staring in horror. He was already climbing and I followed, putting as much space as I could between myself and the inferno below.
    Ten rungs. Then we came to another opening and a horizontal passageway leading into inky blackness. We were above the water, still far underground. But I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.

THIRTY-NINE
    “This way.”
    The Traveller’s voice, barely more than a whisper, came out of the darkness ahead of me and I shuffled forward on my hands and knees because there wasn’t enough room to stand up. I was in a narrow, dark tube, buried underground and suddenly I found myself on the edge of panic, fighting for breath. But then, about ten metres away, a square of electric light appeared and I realized that a door had been opened. A door into what? I didn’t care. Jamie was already on his way towards it and I followed.
    The door opened into a square room, with a light bulb dangling from the ceiling and breezeblock walls. I thought I could hear the distant hum of machinery. There had to be a generator powering the light. Jamie and the Traveller were being greeted by two people, a man and a woman dressed in grey overalls, both of them in their forties. The woman had fair hair tied in a knot. Her face was filled with concern as she tried to examine the Traveller’s wound.
    “You’ve been shot,” she was saying. “You should have told us. We have to get you to the doctor.”
    “Not yet.” The Traveller shook his head. “I need to see that it worked.”
    “Graham…” the man began. He looked remarkably like the Traveller, with black, curly hair, a lean face and lots