The July air felt pleasantly hot and humid as they examined the crash site, not nearly as stifling as it had been inside the wrecked shuttle. The craft leaked from a dozen places and a thin, smoky haze poured from the exposed cockpit. Whatever was leaking was volatilizing quickly, and must have been connected not only with the hissing that continued from underneath the wreck but with the deteriorating atmosphere inside the shuttle. The hissing diminished in volume as he moved around to the rear of the wreck, enough so that the buzz of grasshoppers in the sunny clearing could easily be heard.
“Father, you’d better take a look at this,” Eric called from the back of the now-derelict ship.
Javas came around quickly, staring worriedly at what Eric had found. The main hatch had been opened, but because of the way the shuttle had come to rest with its nose on the upward angle of the hill, the opening hung fully two and a half meters over the limestone and scrub at their feet. There was a good deal of debris directly below the hatch, almost all of it thrown or fallen from the opening above. A discarded extinguisher lay several meters away and fire foam dripped steadily from the lip of the opening. There was also a good deal of blood on the ground, and bushes had been flattened as if someone had jumped down from the hatch. More blood had dripped on the rocks several meters up the hill, and the direction the vegetation had been flattened indicated that someone had left the clearing in a hurry, going due north. There still was no movement except the wind, however, and no sound other than the constant buzz of grasshoppers.
“I think I’m the obvious choice,” Eric said, indicating the opening above their heads. “How’s your arm?”
Javas ignored the question and scanned the wreck, frowning. The smoke pouring from the front of the ship was getting thicker, and he clearly was not pleased with Eric’s offer to go inside. “Make it a fast look.”
His father cupped his hands in front of him and Eric stepped carefully into the makeshift stirrup they formed. Javas lifted upward, giving his son the boost he needed to grab onto the edge of the hatch and scramble up before disappearing inside.
Despite the open hatch, the air was even worse in here than it had been in the cabin. He looked around quickly and spent no more than a minute inside, although he wasn’t certain if it was because of the worsening air or the appalling sight that greeted him.
“Eric!” No sooner had his father called to him than a sharp metallic clang resounded from the hull of the shuttle.
He returned to the opening and knelt at the edge, lowering a nylon bag into Javas’ upstretched hands. There was another shot; now at the open hatch, he heard the gunshot itself this time. Rubbing his eyes, he took several deep breaths, then went back in for the remainder of what he’d found, tossing down a smaller, zippered case which his father easily caught. Another shot ricocheted loudly off the hull. He sat hurriedly on the lip of the hatch, his legs dangling, then placed his hands on the edge and swung around in a smooth motion with his arms to hang briefly from the opening before dropping the rest of the way to the ground.
“Come on!” he barked as soon as he was down. “Follow me.” He slung the nylon bag over his shoulder and started immediately for the cover of the trees at the edge of the outcropping.
His father followed without a word. Several more shots were fired, and while one cut through the scrub and dug into the ground mere meters in front of Eric, none of the projec-tiles found their mark. Whoever was firing at them was either an incredibly poor marksman, considering how exposed they were out here in the open, or he was deliberately avoiding hitting them in an effort to pin them down at the wreckage. For that reason, if no other, Eric wanted to get his father away from the shuttle as quickly as possible. The shots seemed to originate from the trees at the top of the clearing in the same direction the trail of blood from the shuttle hatch had led.
Once in the sheltering cover of the woods Eric’s pace didn’t slow, but he looked around him, trying to recognize landmarks and get his bearings. He stomped several hundred meters through the backwoods before finally stopping in an area that, while still angled, had leveled considerably. He looked around again, then pointed to a series of shallow depressions near another outcropping of limestone. The air was much cooler under the canopy of trees, but he refused to allow himself to enjoy it. Not yet. “There. Come on.”
There were three sinkholes set into the side of the hill. Dry leaves and branches filled the first two and Eric ignored them and crossed directly to the third: a deeper, rockier hollow set into the side of the landscape. The uphill side was a rocky, nearly vertical wall about five meters high, but the sides and bottom of the depression were mostly moss and ferns covering the gently sloping earth that had filled in the sides and floor of the depression countless years ago. Leaves had piled up at the bottom of this depression, just as at the other two, but an opening was visible at the base of the rocky wall of this sink, the rock surface around the opening moist and covered with moss and lichens. Even though the air in the constant shade of the backwoods was more comfortable than the relentless summer sunshine out in the open, the steady damp breeze issuing from the opening must have been a full ten or fifteen degrees cooler still and felt deliciously refreshing.
On a sign from Eric, both slid carefully to the bottom of the depression. “Do you recognize this, Father?” Eric asked.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” The Emperor watched nervously as he dug at the piled leaves at the opening, tossing them behind him like a dog after a favorite bone. “You’ve been here before, I take it?”
Eric dropped the bag into the enlarged opening, then fell to his knees, pushing the bundle into the darkness in front of him. “Bend low, and watch your head on the ceiling.” With that he shoved the bag inside and disappeared in after it.
He crawled forward a short distance, then sat cross-legged on the earthen floor of the chamber once the passageway had widened enough to sit upright. Opening the bag in his lap, he rummaged among its contents as his father, on all fours, crawled up to his side and sat next to him in the cramped passageway.
“Here, take this,” he said, handing him a flashlight. He pulled another lamp from the bag and clicked it on, pointing it down the crawlway. “It opens up just around there. Follow me.”
They crawled another four or five meters and the passageway opened into a fair-sized room. From where they sat the floor sloped gradually to a long, flat wall on the opposite side. Eric played the flashlight over their surroundings, the narrow beam showing that the room was quite large, its exact boundaries disappearing into the darkness of an even larger cavern to their left. Along the lowest portion of the far wall a tiny rivulet of water trickled musically along the floor, vanishing into a small opening on the right side of the room. Eric took his flashlight and pressed it into the soft earth floor at his feet, allowing the beam of light to reflect off the gray-brown limestone of the ceiling. He extended his hand for his father’s light and did the same with it, brightening the underground room considerably. Satisfied that they were secure for the moment, he went into the larger room and returned almost immediately with a small molded box.