‘That’s weird. What’s that?’ Coral pointed to a solidified puddle on the rock floor. The ground around it was grey and rough. This patch looked shiny and new. Norman bent to examine it.
‘Looks like volcanic lava. Like it’s melted from somewhere.’
He traced a line of dribbles back up the wall. ‘It’s run down from somewhere. Here!’
He pressed his torch flat against the wall.
‘Another opening! See it? But circular this time.’
‘Looks like the entrance to another tunnel.’ Coral ran a hand over the surface. ‘Closed off, like the aperture in a camera lens.’
‘It’s better disguised than the other one,’ Norman said, rapping a knuckle against it. ‘But it’s still metal.’
‘More dishwash?’ Ludokrus said.
* * *
Alkemy was propped in a corner of the trough resting on her elbows, her eyes shut tight, breathing in short gasps. She’d tried to drag herself free of the goo, but that was as far as she’d got. Her lower body was still submerged and Tim could see ripples of activity around her as it bubbled and seethed.
‘Alkemy! Alkemy!’
He ran towards her, calling her name. Her eyelids flickered and she whimpered like an injured puppy, then screwed them tight against a stab of pain. Although her arms and face were free of the substance, there were deep black burns where she’d been caught by splashes. He shuddered to think what the rest of her must be like.
He got his hands beneath her shoulders and braced himself. He wasn’t weedy, but he was no muscle-man either. He might only get one go at this.
He let his mind dwell on the Sentinels and what they’d done to her, let the rage boil up inside him, then channelled every ounce of it into his arms and legs. He moved smoothly, remembering how the goo seemed to lock hard at sudden shocks, and straightened his legs, drawing her up and out.
There was a slurping, sucking sound, as if it was unwilling to let her go.
He sat her on the edge, gasping, then he pushed up his sleeve, reached a hand beneath her still submerged legs and lifted them free.
The stinging from the goo began immediately. He half-carried, half-dragged her to the water channel and sat her in it, scooping and sloshing water over her.
She shuddered with relief. He could feel it cooling his arm too. But it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
The goo had leached the colour from her jeans and, though it had eaten through in places, they had at least provided a layer of protection. But in the thinner, worn patches where it had got through, the wounds were awful. Deep blue-black pits fringed with fiery red. If she was conscious at all, Tim thought, she must be in agony.
‘I’ll get you out of here. I promise,’ he said, but as soon as the words were out he realised how powerless he was. He didn’t know what to do. His hands were shaking with helplessness and rage. But if water was good, more water must be better.
He couldn’t carry her, but he could drag her. He took off his jacket, looped it underneath her arms, and used the sleeves like a tow rope. She groaned as he took the weight, but they were soon moving steadily through the smooth-walled passage. As they went, water banked up behind her hips then flowed down around her sides, flushing over her legs, cleaning out the last vestiges of goo.
He plodded on, moving steadily, checking her from time to time. The water was soothing her wounds, but she looked very pale. Back past the Y-junction, through the cathedral-like cave with its glorious ribbon of light, all the way back to where they’d first entered the maze of pink passages.
In the back of his mind he was hoping the Sentinels had triggered the door release. Perhaps by accident in their desperation to escape the salty water, or perhaps just to get rid of them, but as he rounded the last bend he saw his hopes were dashed. The door was still shut tight.
* * *
‘Oh man, what is that stink?’ Coral said as the first streaky holes appeared in the circular hatch.
‘Not fresh air, that’s for sure,’ Norman said. ‘Which means it’s probably not a way out.’
‘There you go, being cheerful again.’
The holes grew larger and the drift of nanodust kept Ludokrus busy, scraping it to one side, adding it to a pile where other nanomachines were busy reconstituting the metal.
Norman peeled off one of the strips between the dribbles. ‘It doesn’t smell that bad. Just rotten meat.’
‘At least we won’t starve then.’
The last shards came away, still bubbling with nanomachines. They dragged them aside and stood studying the smooth wall of the circular passage.
‘How did they cut this?’ Norman ran a hand over the surface. ‘It’s like it’s been melted.’
‘High-energy laser,’ Ludokrus said.
‘That’s what we need.’
‘Yeah, I wish.’
Norman scrambled in.
‘Hey, who said you were first?’ Coral said.
‘I discovered it, didn’t I? Anyway, you keep complaining about the smell. If you go first and woof your cookies, we’ll have to crawl through it.’
She turned to Ludokrus for support but found him smiling. ‘Yeah, is right. You last!’ Then his manner became serious. ‘But careful, yes? Go slow. One by one.’
Norman disappeared. A minute later his voice came back up the shaft. ‘All clear. Another dead-end, but come and look at this.’
Ludokrus made his way up the passage. Coral held her nose and followed.
‘Is that one of those killer robots?’ Norman said, keeping his distance from the object on the ground. He’d heard about the damage they could do.
‘No. The eyes are wrong. Not enough.’ Ludokrus said. ‘The Emissary have eyes all round the head.’
He moved closer. Coral leaned back into the passage they’d just come through and took a gulp of air. The stench in the closed space made her feel sick.
A machine of some sort lay crushed beneath a mountain of rock. It was clearly robotic — the head and shoulder and extended arm showed that — but the revolting part was the lumpy puddle in which it lay, a soup of what looked like half-digested meat.
‘Also, looks like it once have skin to cover,’ Ludokrus added. ‘That is smell. Something make decay.’
Norman edged closer. ‘What happened to its head?’
Whatever corrosive fluid had attacked it, it had focussed on the head. In other places, shiny metal parts shone through, but the skull was dull and deeply pitted. Norman nudged it with his foot. It had been lying side-on. Now it rolled back and stared straight up at them. Ludokrus gasped and drew away.
‘What is it?’
They stared at him. His face was pale in the torchlight.
‘Albert,’ he said in a choking whisper. ‘Is Albert.’
‘Are you sure?’ Norman got down on his hands and knees.
Ludokrus shrunk back, slumped against a rock and nodded.
Norman, who hardly knew the syntho, was fascinated. He studied the intricate connections of the metal skeleton, awestruck by the complexity and the finely made parts. He was surprised he could identify many of them. Servos, actuators, hydraulic linkages, dampers ...
Coral moved to comfort Ludokrus, but he seemed more dazed than anything.
‘I do not mean for this,’ he said. ‘He make me mad sometime. Always with the secret. So annoy. But this. This he does not deserve.’
‘It’s all right, it’s not your fault.’
He looked down at the remains. Coral put an arm around him, but he didn’t respond. Still in shock, she guessed.
Norman raised a skeletal arm from the meaty soup. Fibres and strands still stuck in places, tearing and dropping off with soft plops.
‘Do you have to be so gross?’ she said, but he ignored her, lifting the arm higher, excavating some of the loose stones around the shoulder with his free hand and directing his torch into the gap.
‘This might sound a bit insensitive, but there’s a lot of raw material here, you know.’
‘Insensitive? Insensitive? Ludokrus has just discovered his guardian’s dead and you’re already dissecting him!’
Norman ignored her and asked quietly, ‘How was he powered?’
Ludokrus blinked and disengaged himself from Coral. ‘The biologic part is like us. By eat and drink. But core machine power come from micro-fusion generator.’
‘I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like it could produce a lot of energy.’
‘Yeah, of course.’
Norman pointed to the side passage. ‘Enough to cut a hole like that?’