Ravana stepped over the fallen door and followed him through to an empty concrete-walled chamber. To their left was a plain metal door, covered in the same mould they had seen in the tunnel, upon which was a sign with the words: ‘TO REACTOR A’. Nearby, the cat pawed at a low-level ventilation grill and hissed madly at the purple fungus that oozed from the rusty aperture.
In front of them was a hefty airtight hatch, operated by a hand wheel, that had a notice above it that read: ‘REACTOR B’. There was a tiny spy hole in the hatch and upon seeing nothing dangerous on the other side, The Flying Fox began to turn the handle. The airtight hatch had withstood the test of time and remained in one piece when the birdman finally pulled it open. The door revealed a short corridor and an identical hatch ahead.
“An airlock?” he asked.
“There’s no pressurisation controls,” Ravana pointed out. “I think it’s just a link between sealed sections, like that between two space station modules.”
The second hatch opened easily. Beyond was a sight that took Ravana’s breath away. Before her was a cathedral to the god of engineering; a vast, brightly-lit cylindrical cavern with walls that curved from beneath a steel grid floor below to an apex twenty metres above their heads. The centre of the hall was dominated by a huge spherical nuclear reactor, behind which was an even larger conical construction extending horizontally through the far wall.
A complex network of pipes and electrical conduits ran in all directions and a strained humming noise hung in the air. The hatch had brought them out onto an open gallery, which was one of several running around the perimeter of the chamber at various levels. These in turn were all linked to one another and to the floor below by a series of metal staircases.
“This is amazing,” she murmured. “They don’t build stuff like this anyone. Do you see the huge cone behind the reactor?” she asked the birdman, pointing across the cavern. “That’s one of the main engines! I’ve never seen anything like it on this scale before!”
“Reactor A and B,” he remarked, switching off the torch. “Two engines.”
The walls of the chamber were made of plates of riveted steel strengthened by a lattice gantry. Ravana was puzzled why this reinforcement was needed when the engine room was surrounded by kilometres of rock. Looking closer, she saw that the circumference of the flat wall at their backs was punctuated at regular intervals by red barrel-shaped devices marked with warning symbols. Near the hatch to their right was an archaic control desk covered in dust and she went over to have a closer look.
“I can’t see anything obvious causing the power drain,” she said eventually. “But someone has been here recently. These controls have been bypassed.”
“The problem must be with Reactor A,” declared The Flying Fox. “We must go!”
“And run into Fenris and the mad priest?”
“There’s no time to lose!”
As quick as a flash, the birdman darted back through the hatch. Ravana heard a strangled cry and the sound of someone crashing to the floor. She found The Flying Fox lying in the dark on the other side of the first hatch, having apparently slipped and fallen whilst pulling open the door marked: ‘TO REACTOR A’. The strange mouldy smell they noticed earlier was stronger than ever.
“Did you trip over your shoe laces?” Ravana asked, teasing him.
“It was blasted Jones!” the birdman exclaimed. “Acting like a lunatic!”
The cat meowed, jumped lightly over the birdman’s prone body and disappeared through the door, its electric nose excitedly sniffing the air. Bemused, Ravana waited until The Flying Fox regained his feet and switched on his torch, then followed.
Her cat had not gone far. Ravana gazed wearily at the spiral staircase beyond the door, then down at her pet, which responded with a casual scratch of an ear. The dark stairwell was three hundred metres high and her cat’s pitiful meow made it clear that it did not intend to use its own legs. The Flying Fox peered up into the distance as if considering the options.
“Jet pack?” he suggested.
Ravana smiled weakly. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The centrifugal pull of the spinning asteroid grew weaker as they ascended the stairwell. Upon reaching the halfway point, gravity faded completely. Here, the staircase broke off to leave just a couple of handrails running through a hole in a rotten safety net, beyond which was the one thing Ravana never expected to find on the Dandridge Cole. It was a window, buried deep in an alcove barely a metre across, with triple-glazed glass scarred by countless micrometeoroids, but a proper window nonetheless. It looked out of the asteroid from between the two huge engine nozzles, upon a slowly-rotating vista of the star-spangled void. As they floated before the window, gazing out at the spread of infinity beyond, Ravana thought it poignant that the only natural view the original settlers may have had was not of what they were heading towards, but of what they were leaving behind.
The Flying Fox remained eager to make progress. It was not easy for him to fly with Ravana hanging from his shoulders and a wriggling cat under his arm, but soon they were descending the second half of the darkened staircase and feeling the spin of the hollow moon once more. At one point, the birdman wobbled violently and shone the torch towards the staircase, but Ravana could not see what he was looking at.
When they finally landed at the other end of the staircase, they found a door leading to a room that was the mirror image of the one where the birdman had tripped over the cat. The torchlight revealed walls encrusted with thick purple mould and other strange fungal growths that the cat, upon being let loose once more, appeared to find both frightening and fascinating in equal measure. They were now on the opposite side of the hollow moon and presumably somewhere far behind the palace.
“Did you see her?” asked the birdman excitedly. “On the stairs?”
“See who?” asked Ravana. “Ostara?”
“I don’t think so.”
They both returned to the staircase and peered up, but saw nothing. It was then they heard distant voices drifting from the room behind and paused to listen. Apart from the doorway through which they had come, there was a corroded metal door to their left and a stout hatch to their right with a spy hole and a sign marked: ‘REACTOR A’. Thinking that the voices were coming from behind the hatch, Ravana peered through the spy hole and saw nothing. She realised the sound came from beyond the rusty door.
“There’s someone in the other access tunnel,” Ravana whispered.
“With any luck they’ll trip over Jones and break their necks.”
A sudden loud banging on the door made them both jump. In a panic, Ravana scuttled to hide behind the entrance to the spiral staircase, then peered out again when she realised The Flying Fox and her cat had stayed to face the intruders.
Slowly, the door opened. To her relief, it revealed a friendly and familiar face.
“Ostara!” cried Ravana, coming out of hiding.
“My word!” exclaimed Ostara, clearly startled at finding the masked birdman on the other side of the door. “Here to rescue cats?”
Chapter Fourteen
The secret of the hollow moon
OSTARA LED RAVANA and The Flying Fox through the door to a concrete-lined passage remarkably similar to the one the birdman had propelled them both down earlier. This tunnel was brightly lit and the railcar at the end of the tracks showed signs of recent repairs to bring it back into good running order.