I realized then what ought to have been obvious from the time I first set eyes on that artificial shell around Paddy’s Fortune. If the planetoid could have an atmosphere, it could have anything. It was not a natural world. Something controlled conditions on the surface, and a shower of rain was probably no more difficult to arrange than breathable air.
My next thought was that the rain itself had awakened me. Then a bright light shone in my eyes, only a few feet off to one side, and I heard the rustling of leaves in the darkness.
I did not wait to see who it was. In one movement I was on my feet, running doubled-over through the clutching plant life. It was a dangerous thing to do, because I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face. If a wall of rock had been in my path I would have run headlong into it.
It wasn’t quite that bad, but what happened next was even more unnerving. The ground vanished from beneath my feet and left me running in midair. I had encountered one of the deep fissures that Walter Hamilton had talked about. In the low gravity of Paddy’s Fortune, the long fall down the crack in the surface should have been more frightening than dangerous. Actually it was both. While I was still falling and moving rapidly forward, my hands hit a hard surface in front of me, skinning my knuckles. My body turned and dropped. In three more seconds I landed, rolling over on one hip and elbow.
Every bit of breath was knocked out of me. I lay flat on my back, struggling to bring air into my lungs and staring straight up at a light that was steadily approaching.
Sean Wilgus? Patrick O’Rourke? Or even Danny Shaker himself?
It made no difference. I couldn’t stand up and run to save my life.
The white light brightened, moved down to within a foot of my face, then lifted higher. It was being held in someone’s hand. As the arm was raised I had a first look at the person himself.
It was not Sean Wilgus, or anyone else of the Cuchulain’s crew. Nor was it Doctor Eileen, or a member of our party. It was a stranger, a thin, short-haired boy maybe two years younger than me, with ragged pants and jacket of light grey and a face and limbs smudged all over with mud and earth. He was holding a little backpack made of brown leather in one hand, and a bizarre-looking pink ring that threw off a bright beam from its center in the other.
Sean Wilgus had been right. The learned Walter Hamilton, with all his degrees, had been wrong.
There were people on Paddy’s Fortune.
Chapter 18
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The kid had helped me to sit up, but he didn’t wait for me to get my wind back.
“I’m—I’m—” I started, but then I was too breathless to do more than parrot his question. “Who are you?” I croaked. “And what are you doing here?”
He sniffed and picked up the pink flashlight from where he had placed it on the ground.
“I live here, that’s what I’m doing.” His voice was high-pitched and a little bit foreign, like somebody from over on the other side of Erin. “And I know what I’m doing. That’s more than you can say, dashing around in the dark. You could have killed yourself. But I’ll answer you. My name is Mel Fury.”
“I’m Jay Hara.”
I thought, You sound like a smart ass.
We stared at each other.
“Why did you run away from me?” he said.
“I thought you were somebody else. I was being chased.”
Then I had to explain everything, about coming from Erin and our arrival on Paddy’s Fortune and Walter Hamilton’s murder, but before I was fairly begun on that I started to worry about the light that Mel Fury was holding. Sean Wilgus and the others could use it to home in on me. “Turn that off.” I said.
“If you insist.” He sounded cool and superior.
The light vanished. After a few seconds I realized that I could still see a little. Although we were close to the pole this was a tiny world, and some sunlight was being scattered in by the translucent shield of Paddy’s Fortune. There would never be around-the-clock total darkness, even at the bottom of a narrow crevice. So much for my idea that I could be free from pursuit.
“They may still be after me,” I said. “We have to find somewhere safer than this.”
“No problem.” He stood up and hitched his backpack into position. “Let’s go. I’m getting hungry anyway.”
The crack in the surface that I had fallen into was only the width of my outstretched arms. I followed Mel Fury along the uneven floor of it, testing a sore ankle and rubbing my skinned knuckles as we slanted upward. As we went I thought about his last comment. He might be hungry, but I was starving.
We emerged onto the surface, and I stared all around me.
“I haven’t seen anything you can eat anywhere.” I kept my voice to a whisper—there was no knowing where the crew members of the Cuchulain might be. “Do you catch the animals and eat them?”
Fury gave a condescending snigger. “What a disgusting idea! Of course I don’t. I eat regular food. You’ll see, if you’ll just be patient. And walk quietly, for heaven’s sake. No wonder you worry about being followed.”
It was a mystery. He seemed to glide through the vegetation without disturbing it at all. I tried to imitate his way of walking, and at the same time explained to him in a tense whisper where we had come from, and what we were doing on Paddy’s Fortune.
“Where?” he said. And, when I told him how we came to call the worldlet that, “Paddy’s Fortune? That’s ridiculous. This place doesn’t need a name. It already has one.”
“What is it called?”
“Home.”
Home? Well, that struck me as one of the dumbest names I had heard in a long time. But I didn’t have a chance to say so, because we were emerging into full daylight and Mel Fury had turned to face me. His thin, dirty face wore a superior, skeptical expression.
“If there are people chasing you,” he said, “which I’m inclined to doubt, and if they are really as dangerous as you say—which I’m inclined to doubt even more—then we’d better be careful. We’re going to be in sunlight for the next few minutes. So no more talking until we get there.”
“Get where?”
“To the access point. And I said, no more talking—until we’re inside.”
It was obvious that Mel Fury didn’t believe we were in danger. He was just using that as an excuse to boss me around. His attitude would change a few minutes later, though not in a way that could give me any pleasure.
We had been heading steadily toward the equator, with Maveen higher and higher in the sky. I was itching to talk, full of a thousand questions, but I managed to hold my tongue. Until suddenly Mel Fury stopped and inclined his head to the left. “Someone. Voices. Over that way.”
I couldn’t hear a thing. And if I had, the last thing I would have done is head toward trouble. But that’s what he did, snaking silently through a dense ferny growth with spiky leaves and blue flowers at the top. I had no choice but to follow.
Soon I could hear voices, too. Or at least one voice. It was Sean Wilgus, loud and high-pitched. I wanted to back away, but Mel Fury went on moving forward on his hands and knees. I slowly crawled after him, until at last he halted.