Part 12 (1/2)

Blood.

'Her suit integrity is breached, Ace. A slow leak, but the pressure, it drops. She could lose the rest of her arm.'

'I told her to check that seal.' Ace sounded furious.

'You also told her to help Yukio, if I recall.'

Ace nodded guiltily. 'Kosi, you're right. It's my fault. I should have checked her suit again. d.a.m.n!' She thought for a moment. 'See if you can patch it, Lars.' Ace turned to Jesus. 'Got anything for me yet?'

'I've got one idea, but you're not going to like it.'

Inside her helmet, Ace's head tilted curiously.

'We go down the inside of the Bridge,' he continued.

'You're right, I don't like it. How do we get in?'

'The Bridge is woven from a monofilament thread. All we have to do is force the weave apart.'

'And how do we get out when we reach Moloch?'

Jesus shrugged. 'I've no idea.'

Ace considered. 'It's got to be better than trying to abseil down the outside. Okay. We'll go for it. Let's see if we can widen the hole enough to get Christine through.'

It took thirty minutes for them to locate a frayed section of the Bridge; force its weave apart with clamps and keep the gap open with plastic crates. The Lift continued to oscillate as it rotated, swaying with the movement of the Bridge. Jesus stared around the chamber. Building up to the big one, he thought. He was developing a peculiar feeling in the pit of his stomach; a feeling beyond sickness, beyond shock. Ace would have known the feeling. It was called determination.

When the hole was big enough, Jesus stepped through and switched on his s.p.a.cesuit lights. The interior s.p.a.ce was about three metres across, a pastel yellow in colour, tubular and bulked out with strange*looking machinery which was attached to the crosshatched 'walls'. Jesus shone his light 'down' the shaft, thankful, for once, for the lack of gravity.

His light glinted on a surface that swayed and twisted sickeningly into the distance. It was like looking down the eye of a hurricane.

'How's it look?'

'Like something out of The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz.'

'What?'

'I said '

There was a particularly violent jolt. More pieces of the machinery began to break away to join the expanding cloud of trash already in evidence inside the Bridge. A chunk of blood drifted in front of his visor. He batted it away impatiently, not even pausing to consider how quickly he'd adjusted to Yukio's death.

'I said it's looking better every minute.'

'I hope you're right.'

Lars and Kosi carefully manoeuvred Christine through the gap.

Ace followed them in. 'Don't suppose you ever heard a story called Jack and the Beanstalk Jack and the Beanstalk?'

'This would be soyabeans, yes?'

Ace sighed. 'Forget it.'

In complete silence, the interior of the Bridge began to rock again. He gripped the side of a curved triangular plate which was fitted to the wall, and began to manoeuvre himself further into the shaft. One corner came loose in his hands.

'Don't rush me. I think I can see electrical equipment in here, bigger than anything I've ever seen before. We're going to have to be careful.'

'We haven't got time to be careful.' Ace squeezed past Kosi and Lars. 'Give Christine to me and follow me down.' Ace took the psychologist from her two bearers and clamped her suit arms to the unconscious woman's shoulders. Then she took a quick sighting down the shaft and launched herself into s.p.a.ce. Her lights dwindled rapidly in the distance.

'Ace, be careful!' he said.

Was there a measure of excitement in her reply? 'Careful or dead, at least it's my choice!'

Kosi and Lars exchanged brief looks and then launched themselves after the girl.

Jesus shrugged. It was one way of getting down, he supposed. He was about to push off when the Bridge rocked again; a much stronger oscillation this time. He thrust his helmet back through the gap one last time. The Lift was finally coming apart in curlicues of alien material and clouds of human*made debris. There would be a brief but spectacular meteor shower in Lucifer's upper atmosphere tonight, he thought, wondering if those on Belial would watch and think of them, as he had thought of Paula Engado when she'd become a shooting star.

As the walls of the Bridge rippled, he pulled himself back inside. 'Instruction,' he said to the suitbrain, 'forward thrust full.'

The head*up display died.

'Instruction ' he said again, but it was too late.

The walls closed on him like a vice.

Jesus screamed with pain and surprise. His limbs bent and snapped, his helmet cracked open and there was a stinging pain in his eyes. He tried to close them but the eyelids were frozen in place, unable to move.

They were still open when he died.

Chapter Eight.

Alex Bannen was crying.

Piper had never seen him look so vulnerable. His cheeks glistened with tears and his hand hovered over the head of the thing he had called his son.

Behind him the Mushroom Farm was ablaze. Great arcs of energy flashed from cap to cap whilst thunderclaps pumped air through the forest of glittering stems. A haze of water vapour hung overhead and dripped from the underside of the mushrooms, making the ground slippery and treacherous to walk on. Piper had to fight to maintain her balance as the chamber shook.

The Doctor and Bernice were stumbling between the mushrooms of twisted metal, with the Doctor talking nineteen to the dozen and gesturing wildly with his still furled umbrella. Piper managed to catch Bernice's eye, but the archaeologist only shrugged helplessly. Piper turned to where Bannen was clutching the slender trunk of a tall mushroom to keep his balance. The wind whipped droplets of condensation into his face, where they mingled with his tears.

b.l.o.o.d.y idiot, she thought savagely. What the h.e.l.l did he think he was doing?

'Come on, Alex. Stop messing with things you don't understand. Leave that to the Doctor before you screw things up even...' Her voice trailed off as she noticed the boy watching her with grey, expressionless eyes. Bannen's son? Perhaps, but it hadn't taken her long to work out what the boy really was.

'It wasn't meant to be like this.' Bannen's face was slack.

'Yeah, well, that's as may be,' she said, unsure how to treat this new, defenceless Bannen. 'Come on, let's go.'