Tunnels 05 - Spiral

“I’ve also taken the precaution of installing an anti-tamper fuse on the inspection panel, and a trembler. So in the unlikely event that the Styx were to come all the way down here and stumble across our little surprise, it’ll go off as they attempt to open or move it . . . and the job will be done. This opening will be one almighty mass of fused silica, and nothing will ever get through again.” He turned to look down at the darkness of the zero-gravity belt. “Not that it’s a viable route to the surface for them, anyway.”
    “And the second bomb?” Elliott asked.
    “You and Colonel Bismarck know the terrain, so I want you to help me locate the Ancients’ passage,” Drake replied. He squinted up at the sun. “If we use both boosters on full power, we can really motor it as far as we can get to the top. Then we’ll lug the device the rest of the way. And thank God for the low gravity.”
    The boosters did help, but when the frequent bursts from them weren’t enough to counter the increasing pull of gravity, everybody had to muck in. In pairs they took turns to haul the nuclear weapon up the forty-five-degree incline, and it was a good twelve hours before they arrived at the massive crater that marked the top of the void.
    “Here are we,” Drake said, putting on a pair of sunglasses. “Hope you all remembered to pack some sunblock.”
    They were covered in the red soil, and so exhausted and cramped from the climb that they could hardly stand.
    Sweeney stretched his back with a groan. As he removed his hat to mop his forehead, the full force of the globe in the sky above hit him. “Crikey!” he gasped. “That’s bright. It’s worse than the bloomin’ tropics.”
    “Welcome to the Garden of the Second Sun,” Will said. “Or
,
according to what my dad thought,
Eden
.”
    “Pretty bloody far from my idea of Eden,” Sweeney complained, putting his hat back on and surveying the surrounding foothills, which were covered with patchy woodland.
    “Try jumping,” the Colonel suggested to Drake and Sweeney.
    The two men regarded him for a moment, then Sweeney crouched down and leaped into the air. He reached three or four times the height he’d have been able to achieve Topsoil. They heard him chortling as he came back to Earth. He immediately jumped again, using his powerful legs to drive himself even higher. When he landed, he had a look of schoolboy glee on his face.
    “Maybe this place isn’t so bad, after all.” He grinned.

    Drake, Elliott, and Colonel Bismarck left with the nuclear device, and Sweeney found somewhere he and Will could wait out. He chose a depression on the side of the nearest foothill. It didn’t exactly give them much protection from the sun, but at least they weren’t in full view if any Styx decided to wander by.
    Meanwhile, Elliott didn’t take long to locate the stream that would lead them to the waterfall and the entrance to the Ancients’ passage. But as they emerged from the jungle, what the three of them saw stopped them dead in their tracks.
    The waterfall shielding the entrance had been dammed, and there was no sign of the idyllic pool, with the iridescent dragonflies, that it had originally drained into.
    But that wasn’t what brought them to a halt.
    As far as the eye could see, the trees had been cut down and the jungle turned into fields of sun-hardened mud. And on these fields an unbelievable number of tanks, personnel carriers, large-bore guns, and military aircraft had been assembled, all carefully arranged in ranks as if ready to bring into the tunnel at a moment’s notice.
    “My army” was all Colonel Bismarck could murmur as he shook his head in disbelief.
    “We didn’t get here a moment too soon,” Drake said. “If the Styx had finished widening the way through, this little lot would have found its way Topsoil . . . as toys for the Styx Warrior Class.” Drake was already scanning between the lines of equipment. “And there are bound to be sentries dotted about — we need to get in and out as quickly as we can.”
    As Elliott kept watch, Drake and the Colonel took the bomb into the passage. Once they’d rejoined Elliott, Drake again used his radio detonator to prime it, pressing the sequence of buttons.
    “Rock ’n’ roll?” Colonel Bismarck asked.
    Drake nodded. “All done. Let’s get back to Will and Sparks at the rendezvous, then we can all go home again,” he said.
    “I
am
home,” Colonel Bismarck pointed out.

    Will