Tunnels 05 - Spiral

the gravity was becoming less powerful.
    And through the front windshield Will caught glimpses of the red glow of lava veins on the sides of the void.
    “You bloody
hooligan
!” Will said. “I can’t believe you just did that!” But he was laughing.

AS THE COPROLITE digger plunged downward, it caught the tip of a fungal ledge protruding from the side of Smoking Jean, slamming straight through it. The obstruction caused the vehicle to flip end over end. Everyone was holding on tight, the motion making them feel more than a little disoriented, and increasingly ill.
    Worse seemed to be in store for them.
    The digger was rotating inexorably toward the side of the Pore. They watched the intermittent view through the windshield with bated breath, but the collision with the rock wall they were all dreading never came. Instead the temperature inside the cabin rocketed due to the proximity of the molten rock. Will was seriously asking himself if they’d all be barbecued where they sat, when, luckily, the digger drifted away from the lava veins and back toward the center of the Pore. And as they continued, coming ever closer to the bottom of Smoking Jean, the digger settled down and was hardly spinning at all.
    On several occasions a hammering echoed around the hull when they passed through bands of suspended rock debris, like a spaceship striking asteroid belts.
    Then, with a last jarring impact, the digger came to a standstill. An unceasing groaning sound reverberated through the vehicle, but at least they were no longer on the move.
    Drake unstrapped himself and floated toward the rear hatch. “Everyone OK?” he asked, looking around. “Someone wake Sparks up!” he exclaimed.
    Unbuckling himself, Will swam over and nudged the big man.
    “Are we there already?” Sweeney asked, yawning.
    “You’re unbelievable,” Will muttered, then he joined Drake by the hatch. Drake swiveled the handle and pushed. The groaning, now deafening, filled the interior. As Elliott, Sweeney, and the Colonel joined them, all they could see were rounded boulders bobbing up and down like apples in a barrel of water.
    Drake closed the hatch so it was easier to hear him. “Right,” he said. “We’re going to rope ourselves together, then we might as well make a start across this zero-grav belt of yours, Will.”
    “Um, there’s two things about that,” the boy began nervously. “First is that it’s bloody humongous, and there’s this thing my dad called the crystal belt across it. I really don’t know if I’ll able to find the way.”
    Drake had the tracker in his hand. He let go of it, allowing it to spin several slow revolutions in the air before he caught it again.
    “Trippy,” Sweeney said. “Never been in space before.”
    Drake moved the tracker around until it let out a burst of clicks, and the needle twitched with the strong signal. It was pointing at the floor of the digger. “That’s the beacon you left by the Russian submarine,” he said.
    “We landed upside down!” Elliott observed. The complete lack of gravity where they were in the Earth actually meant that this made no difference to them.
    Then Drake pointed the tracker in the opposite direction — at the roof of the digger. Although the reaction was far weaker, it again registered a signal. “And that’ll be the beacon you planted in the opening on the other side of the belt, which is our way into the Colonel’s inner world. What could be simpler?”
    “Suppose,” Will sighed, still not convinced.
    “And what was the second thing on your mind?” Drake asked.
    “Can’t we go across in this Coprolite machine?” Will proposed. “It would be safer.”
    “It’s heavy and I want to conserve the propellants in the boosters,” Drake replied. “Better if we travel light.”
    With that they all got themselves ready for the crossing. As though they were survivors from a shipwreck, they were each linked by a length of rope to a makeshift raft, which comprised the two nuclear devices and their other equipment, all lashed together.
    When they exited the digger, both Drake and Will had the boosters ready. Since there was no way they could hear each other over all the noise from the crystal belt, Drake pointed at Will, who angled his booster and gave it the tiniest blip on the trigger.
    The blue flame lanced from the funnel and they were off, but in completely the wrong direction. With several more attempts, Will was feeling more proficient at using