Now Jeff saw it, too. There was a pale shimmer—over in the direction from which they had come.
“Is that…?” Shorty began, but the words dried up in his mouth.
“Yes, it is,” Jeff answered quietly. “It’s standing at the door we came through. I wonder if it’s been following us the whole time.”
“Let’s go,” Joanne said urgently and turned in the direction of the corridor she hoped was there. But after just one step she came to an abrupt halt. “There’s another one.”
Jeff swung around. She was right, there was one standing in the middle of the path they wanted to take.
“And there,” Joanne was screaming now as she pointed in another direction. “We’re surrounded!”
“Are they coming… closer?” Castle was trembling.
It was the first time he had seen more than one of the light aliens. Were there so many of them because they were deeper down in the ship? Or had whatever was following them brought in reinforcement? The light they emitted was getting stronger. “Yup, they’re coming toward us,” Jeff said in a voice so calm he surprised himself. “Everyone on the platform. It’s our only escape route.”
“I don’t want to go down on that thing,” Shorty whined.
“You’re welcome to stay here…” Mac snarled.
Jeff shoved Joanne onto the platform. Green pulled Shorty on by the arm.
The aliens were nearing them at breakneck speed.
“Press the button!” Jeff yelled at Castle, who was standing right next to the control panel.
The WSO obeyed.
Nothing happened.
Oh God, we’ve had it!
“Shit!”
Then, finally, Jeff felt a faint vibration beneath his feet.
Another railing rose out of the ground, enclosing the platform, which began to descend, slowly.
Too slowly.
The first light alien was already there. It came to an abrupt stop in front of the sinking platform. Mac and Castle tore their pistols out of their holsters and fired. Two fine lines traced the path of the bullets through the semi-transparent body of the strange being and then dissolved again.
“Shit!” Shorty yelled and threw himself on the ground. Without thinking, Jeff took a step back and wondered if the creature would jump down onto the platform.
But suddenly two door halves slid out of the wall and closed the shaft above them.
Mac helped Shorty get up. “Damn, I thought they were going to get us that time.”
“Did you see that?” Castle asked, his pistol still in his hand. “The bullets went straight through it.”
“We don’t stand a chance against those creatures,” Joanne said, catching her breath. “Next time I doubt we’ll be so lucky.”
“At least we’ve shaken them off for now.” Green was smiling with relief.
“What’s to grin about?” Castle yelled, and stuck his weapon back in his holster.
Gradually, Jeff felt the adrenalin drain from his body. Around them the walls slid upward and doors closed at regular intervals as they passed. Castle suspected this was to keep the air pressure in the shaft stable. Nevertheless, they progressed at a snail’s pace. If the elevator really did take them to the next cavity, Jeff estimated they would have to spend almost twelve hours on this platform. They would have to set up camp for the night here, strange a location as it was.
After they had been traveling for a few hours, they warmed up some of the remaining cans of food with the immersion heater. Soon all they would have left was the concentrate bars. Then Jeff assigned the watches and lay down in his sleeping bag. Despite the humming and slight vibration, he had no trouble falling straight to sleep.
25.
“Damn it, how much further down is this thing gonna go?” Mac asked.
Nobody answered him. Jeff had slept, completed his watch, and slept again. The platform had been descending for over twelve hours. According to Joanne’s calculations, they’d already covered sixty miles. His shipmate picked up her handheld. “It can’t be much further. We’re approaching the end of the shaft that we thought from the map was a corridor. We should reach the bottom any minute now.”
“And how much further to the cavity?” Castle asked.
“Not far. A few hundred feet.”
“And we have to cross the whole thing?”
Joanne nodded. “Almost. About fifty miles.”
Suddenly the platform screeched to a stop. Shorty, who was bending over the equipment sled, fell to the ground with a curse.
“And now?” Castle asked.
Jeff looked around. They were stuck. They were surrounded only by the metal walls of the elevator shaft.
“Shit and damn,” Mac said. “Didn’t I say that—”
“Shhh!” Joanne put a finger to her lip. Mac fell silent.
Jeff heard a soft hissing noise coming from above. “Sounds like the air pressure is being adjusted again. I’m sure…”
Suddenly one of the walls rose up into the ceiling and turned into a door.
“There we go,” Green looked pleased. “That was much faster and more comfortable than traipsing through miles of corridors.” He stepped out of the elevator and into a long corridor with rock walls.
Jeff followed him. The corridor was just wide enough for two people to walk along side by side. The elevator had been pleasantly cool, but down here the air was hot and humid again. Beads of sweat were already running down Jeff’s face.
“This air is unbearable,” Mac gasped as he maneuvered the sled into the corridor.
“Ninety-four degrees,” Joanne said crisply. “One hundred percent humidity.”
Castle was the last to leave the elevator. “Why the hell isn’t this ship rusting away under our asses. I don’t get it.” The hatch closed behind him. Jeff felt a slight lurch in his stomach as he noticed there was no manual control next to the hatch. There was no going back. But that wasn’t the plan, in any case.
He shrugged and began to stride along after Green down the long corridor. Some distance in front of them, the corridor was illuminated by a pale red light. But it was still too far away for them to know if it came from a lamp or had some other source.
“Joanne?”
“The corridor leads straight to the cavity.”
“And what are we going to find there?” Shorty asked.
“Probably the same as in the last cavity,” Mac said. “Lousy air, rocks, mass graves, and an atmosphere that will drive one of us to commit suicide.”
“Zip it,” Jeff growled. He’d had enough of Mac’s griping.
“You know it’s true,” Mac spat back, but quietly.
They marched on in silence. The light didn’t seem to get any closer. Jeff frowned. “I thought it was just a few hundred feet away.”
Joanne looked down at her handheld. “By now we should be inside the cavity.”
“Maybe that hologram wasn’t up to date,” Green conjectured.
“But it’s been completely accurate up to now,” Joanne was confused.
“There’s something up ahead,” Castle said.
Jeff could see it, too. The corridor seemed to be leading into a room. The structure of the walls was also changing. The craggy rocks gave way to smoother ones, which in turn were replaced by light sandstone. Strange symbols, different from the ones further up in the ship, were carved into the rocks. The writing they had encountered before was cuneiform, these resembled Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Finally, they entered the room. It was light enough that Jeff could turn off his headlamp. The whole chamber was the size of a small hangar, with walls of light sandstone. In the corners, columns adorned with bizarre curlicues rose up to the ceiling. Every square inch was covered with drawings. Opposite them was a large, double-winged gate out of black metal. Reddish light filtered through a crack in the middle of the gate, casting a thin strip of light on the floor. A brownish mist swirled beneath the ceiling.