Ravana suddenly screamed and fell to the floor, holding her head in her hands. At the same instant, her cat let loose an unholy electronic shriek and leapt away down the hatch as if its tail was on fire. Startled, Quirinus dropped the cutters. Zotz knelt beside her, a look of panic etched across his young features. Ravana felt sick and ready to faint, as if all the blood had suddenly rushed from her head.
“Ravana!” cried Quirinus. “Are you okay?”
“What happened?” asked Zotz, looking quite pale himself.
Ravana slowly lowered her hands. “I’m… I’m not sure,” she murmured. She stared wide-eyed at the fallen cutters, beside which lay the piece of severed tendril. “I felt the pain. It was as if the cutters were biting into my own flesh!”
“What?” exclaimed Quirinus. “I don’t understand.”
“How could you feel it?” asked Zotz.
“The pain,” Ravana protested weakly. “I felt the pain of the ship.”
“Amazing,” murmured Miss Clymene, quite taken aback at the view. The ornamental pagoda in the palace garden in which they stood was on a slight rise, offering an unique vista of the whole of the hollow moon. “Totally amazing.”
“Freaky,” remarked Philyra, looking up from her wristpad.
Bellona had to agree. The long cavern was on a scale somewhat reminiscent of the huge canyons of the Eden Ravines, but seeing the ground on either side curve up and above them like it did was extremely disconcerting, especially when the landscape and its people high above somehow gave the impression they were looking both up and down at the same time. Of everything they had seen of the hollow moon so far, the only thing that seemed normal was the pseudo-gravity, which they learned deliberately mimicked that of Ascension in order to acclimatise the original colonists of the Dandridge Cole.
Only Endymion seemed underwhelmed by the experience. He had expected to find the asteroid crammed full of inbred and radiation-mutated recluses, kept alive by antiquated technology and eager to welcome the travellers from Newbrum as their saviours. Instead, the few residents they had met were perfectly normal people who were if anything slightly annoyed that strangers had been invited into their close-knit community.
“It’s different,” he conceded. “A lot of space. The new bio-dome at Bradbury Heights has parks and trees but it’s nowhere near as big as this.”
“But there’s no sky,” murmured Bellona. “Nowhere to look up and see the stars.”
A silence descended upon the pagoda as each contemplated the view before them.
“These people are living in a cave,” remarked Philyra.
“One flying through space,” Endymion pointed out.
“But a cave nonetheless,” mused Miss Clymene. “It is a little weird.”
“The freighter that brought us here was odd too,” said Endymion. “A real mongrel. Everywhere I looked there were bits from other ships that had been modified to fit. I’ve never known a spacecraft that small to have a centrifugal passenger cabin.”
“The girl with the scar on her face was flying it part of the way,” said Bellona with a tinge of jealousy. “She can’t be much older than me.”
“It’s a shame the pilot is so dead against going to Epsilon Eridani,” said Miss Clymene and sighed. Somewhat optimistically she and her students had come prepared for a week-long trip to Daode, even going so far as to say their farewells to friends and family on Ascension, but after broaching the subject to Quirinus during their flight to the Dandridge Cole she was not hopeful. “For a moment I thought we’d found us a ship. The man Fenris was very interested in the peace conference and wished us all the best in the competition.”
“If we ever get there,” murmured Philyra gloomily.
“Don’t give up hope!” exclaimed Miss Clymene. “I have a feeling the people of this strange world brought us here for a reason.”
“They did mention an invite to dinner,” Bellona reminded her.
“Perhaps we’re the main course,” said Endymion. “They may all be cannibals.”
He grinned. Philyra and Bellona had gone wide-eyed in fright.
Maharani Uma settled into the velvet cushions of her chair and regarded the object upon the table before her with suspicion. Fenris stood at her side, momentarily distracted by the faint sound of voices coming from the palace gardens outside the window. Professor Wak was close to finding the other end of the tunnel the Raja’s kidnappers had used in their escape and had brought a couple of maintenance robots to the courtyard, though as yet they had only succeeded in breaking the trunk off the stone elephant plugging the hole.
Their visitors from Newbrum had been encouraged to walk the grounds ahead of dinner. The Maharani had an important call to make and was not in the mood for exchanging social pleasantries.
Upon the table was a small flat case, the lid of which was open so that the Maharani could directly face the holovid screen concealed within. The Dandridge Cole boasted its own low-power extra-dimensional transceiver array, liberated from the disused emergency communications centre at Lan-Tlanto, which provided the hollow moon with a link to the Ascension servermoon and thus the interstellar network. The screen relayed the image of a neatly-dressed bureaucrat with pale skin, dark thinning hair and clean-shaven features. The man’s sumptuous surroundings reflected that despite his innocuous appearance, he was one of the most powerful people in the Epsilon Eridani system. The Maharani was rather annoyed to see that the man was in fact sitting at the desk that used to be hers in her old home, the Palace of Sumitra in Ayodhya.
“How dare he use my office!” she hissed to Fenris. “The cheek of the man!”
Fenris leant forward and addressed her in a low voice. “He can hear you, Maharani.”
“Indeed I can,” said the man on the screen, his Eastern European tones not unlike Fenris’ own. He allowed himself a small triumphant smile. “To what do I owe this honour, my exiled queen? It is good to see that you have not entirely abandoned the modern world.”
“I have no time for pleasantries, Jaggarneth,” snapped the Maharani. “What have you done with my son? What sort of game are you and your Que Qiao minions playing this time?”
Jaggarneth’s smile faded. “Are you accusing me, the governor of Yuanshi, of kidnap? This relationship is a three-way orbit and I do not take kindly to slander.”
“I was told you had news,” retorted the Maharani. “If not about my son, then what?”
“I have made enquiries on your behalf,” Jaggarneth told her. His manner had softened in recognition of the Maharani’s genuine concern. “My sources suggest the young Raja has been taken by terrorist agents working for Kartikeya and is being held in Lanka, possibly in an attempt to derail the peace conference. You may rest assured that Que Qiao in Ayodhya are giving it one hundred and ten per cent to bring your son to safety.”
“I am sorry I accused you so,” said the Maharani, a little subdued. “My son means everything to me. It was fated that he would one day return to Yuanshi, but not like this.”
“Your desire to see an end to your exile is well known,” Jaggarneth acknowledged. “Though should I choose to turn my telescope to new worlds, my superiors remain far from convinced that my successor should be the deposed prince and his regent.”
The Maharani glanced at Fenris. “This man is starting to annoy me.”
“I heard that!” retorted Jaggarneth. Fenris smirked.
“Whatever,” snapped the Maharani. “As for your ‘telescope’, my sources tell me you’ve had your eye on the governorship of Daode for some time.”