Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

“I must fly,” The Flying Fox told Ravana. “I shall return!”

The masked figure stepped forward, took Ravana’s gloved hand in his own and kissed it gently. Before she had a chance to respond, he spun upon his heels and slipped through the door and out of sight, leaving Ravana somewhat nonplussed.

“How sweet!” said Ostara. “Your very own guardian angel!”

Ravana turned away, embarrassed.

“Why was he wearing a mask?” asked Miss Clymene.

“Perhaps he was on his way to a fancy-dress party,” quipped Philyra.

“A real-life superhero!” Bellona exclaimed. “This place has everything!”

“He isn’t exactly a super…” began Ostara.

Ravana nudged her to be quiet. “He is if he wants to be,” she said softly. There was a note of respect in her voice, for she had been somewhat moved by the strange encounter.

“Hello?” called Wak. “Is anyone listening to me?”

Ravana moved to the edge of the airlock and looked down. The professor had removed his helmet and stood on the back of the parked hovertruck, trying in vain to see what was going on in the shed above. Ravana was acutely aware of Endymion and Bellona peering over her shoulder.

“The people from Newbrum are here,” she called down. “The ones who found the kidnappers’ ship on Ascension.”

“Excellent!” cried Wak. The mystery of how Ravana had opened the airlock and then closed it again seemed to have gone clean from his mind. “Bring them down!”

Bellona looked down into the airlock, then at Ravana’s spacesuit. “Is it safe?”

Ravana hesitated. “I’d be lying if I said it was,” she admitted.

Endymion had already collected a suit from the rack. “I’ll come with you!”

“With me?” remarked Ravana.

She had not intended going back into the airlock after what just happened, not least because the now-fading rush of adrenaline had left behind a very painful ache in her arm. She looked at the nervous expressions of Miss Clymene, Philyra and Bellona, then sighed. She was the only one already dressed for the occasion. Ostara crept behind the safety fence and peered down into the airlock.

“What made that big hole?” she asked woozily, still holding her head. She pointed to the kidnappers’ tunnel. “Burrowing wallabies? A mass migration of earthworms?”

“She’s your investigator?” asked Endymion wonderingly.

“Shut up and suit up,” Ravana told him. “Don’t forget your helmet.”

Clambering down the ladder in the clumsy orange emergency suit was not made any easier with Endymion following her and threatening to tread on her gloves with every step. Professor Wak, once again wearing his helmet, was waiting at the bottom of the ladder. As soon as they were down he bustled them across to the large hole hacked into the side of the airlock chamber.

Ravana peered into the kidnappers’ lair. Beyond the initial wider section, the tunnel sloped down for a short distance before curving back up towards the inner surface of the hollow moon. The roughly-cut passage was not in total darkness, for now the elephant had toppled from its perch a faint glimmer of light filtered through the hole in the palace courtyard, illuminating the jammed wreckage of the wooden cart.

“Look,” came Wak’s voice into their helmets. He pointed to a large circular burn mark upon the lower airlock doors. “The kidnappers brought their ship up the shaft from outside, closed the airlock door behind them and parked the ship on top of the doors. See those food cans?” he continued, pointing to a cluster of tins nestling behind the net fixed to the tunnel wall. “They must have been here a while.”

Endymion was gesturing wildly and mouthing something, but neither Ravana nor Wak could hear a word he was saying until Ravana signalled to him to turn on his helmet intercom.

“The Astromole!” Endymion’s voice crackled excitedly. “That’s how the tunnel was dug. An Astromole can burrow through anything.”

“I know that!” retorted Ravana. “I saw the whole thing.”

The professor regarded Endymion curiously. “Who are you, boy?”

“Endymion,” he replied meekly. “I saw the Nellie Chapman in the Ravines.”

“Ah! The Eden Ravines!” exclaimed Wak. “The only place on Ascension where a ship-to-ship transfer can be done without spacesuits!”

Endymion considered this. “I never thought of that,” he admitted.

“What type of ship?” asked the professor. “Lunar class? With a winch?”

Endymion nodded. “It was an asteroid miner.”

“Was?” asked Ravana. “What happened to it?”

Endymion looked sheepish. “It err… sort of exploded.”

“Tricky manoeuvre, flying into a vertical shaft in the side of a spinning asteroid,” mused Wak. “Firing an anchor and tether into the rock next to the shaft entrance would do the trick, though. The winch could haul the ship down to a point where a quick blast of thrusters could be used to counteract the centrifugal forces and power it up the shaft.”

“How did they open the airlock?” asked Ravana.

“Bypassed the circuits,” Wak replied. “The grey box you saw attached to the control panel is no doubt some sort of remote trigger. When it was time to leave, they simply opened the airlock door beneath the ship and the spin of the Dandridge Cole sent them flying out of the shaft and into space like a bullet from a gun.”

“Leaving the door open in the process,” murmured Ravana.

“Your quick thinking saved us there,” noted Wak. It was the first time he had acknowledged what she had done in the palace garden and about as close to a compliment as she could expect from him. “The kidnappers were reckless in the extreme.”

Endymion stepped into the tunnel and looked at the mess the kidnappers had left behind. The tent had done well to survive the mini tornado that had swept through the tunnel, as had the extremely-smelly portable latrine wedged inside a nearby alcove. Ravana wondered where all the excavated rock had gone, then saw the ring of spoil around the edge of the airlock and guessed it had been piled around the parked Nellie Chapman and then sucked into space when the ship went on its way.

Endymion was drawn to the sturdy net fixed to the tunnel wall. Amongst the empty food containers, a biochemical lighting rig and other items, Ravana saw his attention go to a small box-shaped device with a short aerial protruding from the top. The instrument panel on the side of the device had been deliberately smashed, presumably with the heavy hammer wedged in the webbing nearby. She watched as Endymion reached beneath the net and pulled it free.

“Get everything on the truck,” Wak told him. “Ostara wants her evidence and I do not want to be in this airlock any longer than we have to. I’m sure Ravana would agree.”

“All of it?” asked Ravana. Stepping past Endymion, she found the tent’s switch panel and pressed the button to activate the closing action. The canvas abruptly twisted and snapped shut, leaving a neat triangular package staked upon the tunnel floor.

“Every last thing,” the professor confirmed. He looked up and waved his good hand to attract Ostara’s attention.

“Yes?” she called, speaking into her wristpad.

“Call Quirinus,” said Wak. “It’s time we paid Maharani Uma a visit.”

The monorail car trundled sedately along its rail above the lake shore, heading towards Petit Havre. Within the Dandridge Cole there was little call for high-speed travel; the monorail could barely achieve twenty kilometres per hour but even then a journey from one end of the hollow moon to the other took no more than fifteen minutes. The asteroid’s three monorail systems were each as old as the colony ship itself and the carbon-fibre panelling and fake chrome fittings looked positively archaic compared to the vat-grown bioplastics and exotic alloys of the Platypus . The monorail did not run to a schedule like the skybus service on Ascension, but instead the driverless eight-seat carriage acted like a horizontal elevator service, controlled by selecting from a row of buttons, one for each station.