Tunnels 05 - Spiral

immediately shut the front door behind them.
    “They look heavy,” Will remarked. The stainless-steel box was only around four by six feet in size, but the two men were grunting with the effort as they carried it, using the handles at either end.
    “OK. Everyone on me,” Drake called from the sitting room.
    “Where do you want the second TND, boss?” Sweeney asked as he and the Colonel entered, sidestepping around a coffee table.
    “Over there will do — by the first,” Drake answered.
    Will was at the door, peering at the impressive amount of kit inside the room. “If that woman could see what was going on in her home right now!” he said.
    Sweeney grinned. “Yes, reckon she might be a little brassed off that her view of the telly was blocked by a couple of atom bombs.”
    “Particularly if
ER
was on,” Mrs. Burrows added, as Sweeney and the Colonel lowered the device beside the second one, and then straightened up, rubbing their hands.
    Drake had been squatting beside a curious-looking piece of equipment lying on the coffee table. “Come in and shut the door, Will,” he said, as if even now he didn’t completely trust Eddie’s men, who were still in the house.
    “Right, before we set off, there are a few things I need to say.” He indicated the devices in front of the television. “Moving the nukes is going to be a real backbreaker until we reach the lower-grav environment toward the center of the Earth. The bombs themselves aren’t that heavy, but because of their antiquated design, there’s a hunk of lead in the casings around them.”
    “Then can’t we just lose the casings?” Elliott proposed.
    “The fissile plutonium in the bombs throws off too much radiation — we’d be glowing like neon signs before we’d gone any distance. But it might come to that yet,” Drake said, his expression grim. “This mission isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” He ran his eyes over Mrs. Burrows, who had Colly beside her, the Colonel, then Will, Elliott, and Sweeney. “And Eddie’s not going to be with us on this one.”
    “Because of his head?” Will asked, not looking at Elliott.
    Drake nodded. “He needs time to recover, but it’s not that. I don’t know what the current situation is in the Colony, but if the Styx are still there in any number, it’s better he keeps out of sight. Anyway, he’s more use to us here on the surface, where he and his men can work with Parry and the Old Guard to find the Styx women.”
    “Unless they’ve all gone underground,” Colonel Bismarck said.
    “True,” Drake concurred. “What Danforth told us about resuming the Phase in the inner world might have been nothing more than a ploy to throw us off the scent. However, we need to find that out for ourselves.” He took a breath. “Right, unless anyone has any questions, let’s saddle up,” he said.
    “I have,” Will said. “What’s that? A weapon?” He was looking at the device on the coffee table. Three slim metal tanks, each a yard in length, were welded together, with a pistol grip halfway down, and some sort of funnel or nozzle mounted at one end.
    “A little something my mechanic friend outside in the van knocked up for me,” Drake replied. “In fact, he’s made me several versions of it.”
    Will edged closer to the table to inspect the device. By the base of the nozzle, tubes from the three tanks were intertwined in a Gordian knot on which there were a number of knurled knobs.

    Drake picked up the device and, taking hold of the grip, slid back a catch and clicked the trigger. A blinding blue flame roared from the nozzle.
    Will leaped back in surprise, raising an arm to shield his face from the heat. “It’s a flamethrower!”
    “No, this isn’t a weapon. I won’t bore you with the principles,” Drake said, the flame phutting out as he released the trigger, “but two high-octane propellants mix with oxygen to create a powerful propulsion device . . . a booster. So we don’t have to rely on a Sten to produce the thrust to get us across the zero-grav belt, like you and your father did.”
    “That’s so cool,” Will said. “I can’t believe you know how to do that. It looks really complicated.”
    “Nah — it’s hardly rocket science,” Drake said dismissively, then frowned. “No, I suppose it really
is
rocket science,” he added, correcting himself.
    Having gathered up their equipment, Will and Elliott went down to the cellar. Eddie’s men were waiting there