“It’s still here,” he said, sitting back down next to his father. He opened the lid and pulled out a sealed plastic bag containing several stubby candles. There was a narrow ledge in the rock wall at their backs, and Eric dug a handful of the candles out of the bag and placed them, one at a time, on the shelflike ledge. The ledge had been used for this purpose before, and long, frozen rivulets of wax in several different colors and consistencies ran down the face of the wall.
“I’m sorry,” he began, his voice echoing hollowly against the rock walls. He removed the pin laser from his coat and lit one of the candles, then replaced the laser in his coat and used the burning candle to light the others. “But I just wanted to get us out of there as quickly as I could.”
Javas nodded in the reflected beam of the flashlight, the vapor of his breath floating visibly through the beam in the chilly dampness of the cave, and pulled a galley sandwich from his jacket pocket for each of them before clicking both flashlights off to conserve their charge. “That’s fine; I trust your judgment. What did you find inside?”
“They were dead.” Eric bit hungrily into the sandwich and washed it down with a long swallow from the flask of water he carried in his jacket, then passed it over. “Both of the guardsmen, and one of the landing techs. The tech must have been unsecured, trying to do something when we were embedded up in the shield, and was probably killed when we hit the ground, like Glenney.” He took another bite of the sandwich, chewing slowly.
“And the guards?”
“Still strapped into their seats,” he said, swallowing hard. “Their throats were cut.”
His father considered the information. “Then the blood on the ground was theirs—”
“No,” Eric interrupted, “I don’t think so. The other landing tech, the tall one with the beard who caught me by the arm when I stumbled on the ramp, he must have been fairly badly hurt in the crash, too. The medical kit was opened, and there was a lot of blood smeared on it and its contents. Or what was left of them anyway—he used what he needed, then pretty much vandalized the rest. I managed to put together a basic first-aid kit with what was left, though.” He indicated the zippered case at his father’s side. “I found a few flashlights, some tie-downs and a couple other things we might be able to use.”
“And the guards’ weapons?”
“Thumb-keyed; useless. Whatever he tried to hit us with back in the clearing must have been hidden on board.”
“Pistol of some kind, then, judging from his accuracy, or lack of it. I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’s a crash kit in that bag?”
Eric shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. Either he took it with him or he heaved it over the edge of the outcropping to keep us from getting it. Come to think of it, if he was as badly hurt as you suspect, then he probably couldn’t have carried it very far.”
Eric reached for the flask of water and said nothing for a moment as he took a long, slow drink. He went to the tiny stream and refilled the flask, then capped it and put it in the bag.
“I’m not so sure he’d have to go that far.” He leaned forward and swept the earthen floor smooth in front of him. There were numerous sticks and bits of natural debris near the stream and, using one as a stylus, he drew a rough map of the area.
“We’re here,” he said, scratching a mark on the floor of the cave. He then drew a straight line, extending it up from the mark. “The grounds are due north about a kilometer—”
“A kilometer!”
Eric nodded soberly, drawing a circle to indicate the main grounds of Woodsgate. “I know. When I recognized the outcropping that stopped the wreck from rolling farther down the hill, I could hardly believe it either. We’re lucky to be alive.” He continued sketching in the dirt. “The House and grounds are situated at the center of this ridge, here. There are hundreds of kilometers of trails crisscrossing this part of the countryside, but a section of the main trail follows the lower portion of the ridge, completely circling the east, south and west sides of Woodsgate. If we hike straight up to the House, we’ll cross it right here.” He drew a rough line halfway between the circle and where they were, extending it as he spoke. “The main trail continues to skirt the ridge the House is located on… then crosses the access road leading to Woodsgate here… and then on into the backwoods on the other side… and finally leads east into Somerville.”
His father bent over the crude map. “I think I understand what you’re getting at. No matter where we would have come down, there was a seventy-five percent chance we’d be within a short distance of the main trail.”
“Exactly,” Eric agreed. “And my guess is that whoever our friend is working for, they watched the whole thing and are probably on their way out here now, picking him up along the way to lead them to us.”
“Then they’re probably the only ones who saw us go down. One of the observation satellites in LEO will spot the wreckage sooner or later, I suppose, but the chances of us having been spotted when we went down are fairly remote.”
Eric nodded in agreement. “And since your integrator is being blocked, the signal from the shuttle’s emergency locator is probably being jammed as well.”
“If it’s even still working,” his father added. “That landing tech was pretty thorough.”
“Then our best bet is to keep moving, stall for time. Eventually someone will try to raise the House on a routine matter and find it’s been cut off and investigate. If we can stay ahead of them until then, we should make it out of this.”
His father sighed heavily, then dropped the sandwich wrappers into the opened bag and rose to his feet, careful to avoid bumping his head on the sloping rock ceiling. He rubbed at the stiffness in his arm and surveyed the cave, the light from the row of candles on the wall ledge casting long, unsteady shadows into the larger cavern. “I used to go exploring caves like these with my brothers. There are several of them up above, actually on the House grounds.”
“I know. I’ve been in them.”
“And in many others, as well, it seems.” He looked down at Eric, smiling. “I never approved of your excursions outside the shielding any more than Master McLaren, but I’m forced to admit I’m grateful for your knowledge of the backwoods.”
Eric got up, brushing the seat of his pants with his hands. “I’m not the only one in our family to know these woods.”
He reached down and retrieved a flashlight from the dirt floor and shined a large circle onto the far wall of the big room to the left. In the center of the circle of light, someone had used a candle flame to smoke several words onto the angled wall. They walked closer to get a better look, and his father stopped cold when he saw what had been written there.
“ ‘Nicholas,’ ” Javas read aloud, “ ‘August 15th, 2409.’ ” He turned back with a wistful look in his eyes that Eric had never seen before. “My father.”
They took no chances as they climbed, making their way slowly and carefully through the woods to avoid being detected. Hours passed and the sun hung low in the sky by the time they reached the edge of the shielding near the top of the hill. The House shielding, hazily visible, ended at the edge of the flat portion of the grounds, but the second shield was considerably wider at its base than the one on the inside and extended several dozen meters over the edge of the hill, making it impossible for them to see what was happening at the House itself.
Gazing upward through the trees, it was easy to see where the edge of the invisible outer shield was. When it had been activated, several trees had been bisected, neatly clipping branches and treetops wherever they had come into contact with it. Looking skyward, he could even see several smaller pieces of the wrecked shuttle still embedded in the upper portion, seemingly suspended in empty air. Eric squinted at the closest portion of the shield in front of him and pressed against it with the palms of both hands. The gas-permeable field felt spongy, yet firm, beneath his fingers. He carefully studied where the shielding met the ground, looking first one direction then the other into the backwoods, and kicked experimentally at the dirt at its base.