from the window. A few agonizing seconds later I heard the welcome sound of a latch being released and the hatch being raised. She had done it!
“Careful!” I said. “We don’t want to flood it.”
We maneuvered the dygo so the open hatch was directly on top. Alder came up from the back side and pulled the hatch fully open. It instantly hit the rocky ceiling. We only had a few feet to maneuver.
“Saangi first,” Loor said.
Saangi didn’t hesitate. She pulled herself up and slipped inside the dygo, head first. Loor slid in next. I was about to enter when Loor said, “Wait!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
I was holding on to the edge of the open doorway. My answer came in the form of a cold hand that was laid across mine. It was the hand of the dead Ghee warrior. Loor and Saangi were pushing him up and out of the dygo.
“There isn’t enough room,” Loor said.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I wanted to be respectful.
“He was a Ghee,” Loor said. “He died in battle. This is how it must be.”
I pulled the body of the fallen warrior up and out of the craft, while Loor and Saangi pushed. It wasn’t easy, for all sorts of reasons. He was heavy, and he was dead. I tried not to be too grossed out by the whole thing. I think I was too far gone for that. We finally got the body clear of the hatch. I pushed him away and the fallen warrior floated off into the darkness, never knowing that his sacrifice may have saved our lives.
“Hurry, Pendragon,” Alder said. “We are nearly out of room.”
Alder was holding the hatch, but he couldn’t open it all the way, because we were getting closer to the ceiling as the water rose relentlessly. There was only about a foot-wide opening now. In a few seconds the hatch would be forced practically closed and the opening wouldn’t be wide enough for us to get through. I dove for it and went in headfirst, falling into Saangi’s lap.
“C’mon!” I shouted back to Alder.
Alder snaked around the hatch, dropped his feet and legs inside, then fell the rest of the way in. No sooner did he fall inside than the hatch was forced closed by the ceiling overhead. Saangi reached up and sealed it tight.
“Done!” she shouted.
Loor reached for the console and flipped a switch that lit up the interior. We could see! We were a jumble of arms and legs and bodies on top of one another, trying to figure out where to go. I was happy to see that this dygo was larger than the one Loor and I had driven before. It wasn’t exactly spacious, but there were four seats, two in front and two behind. At that moment, however, it was on its side.
Loor took charge. “Saangi, next to me,” she ordered. “Pendragon, Alder, to the rear.” She was already moving herself around to get into the driver’s seat, which is not easy to do sideways. After an awkward minute of maneuvering, we were all in our seats but still lying on our sides. Loor worked busily to power up the dygo.
“Does this work like a submarine?” I asked.
“No,” Loor said. “We must sink to the bottom.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but Loor seemed to know what she was doing. She toggled a few switches, and I heard what sounded like a burst of air bubbles being released. I could feel that we were sinking. Loor must have been taking on water so that we would drop down. Gulp. As we sank, the sphere gradually righted itself. We were heads up!
“I’m turning off the inside lights,” Loor said.
A moment later we were back in black. It didn’t last long. Loor hit the switch that turned on the outside lights. I felt like I was back in the hauler submarine on Cloral, with Spader. There wasn’t much to see through the windshield, though. The water was too murky. No sooner had I gotten used to the sensation of floating in this big sphere than we gently landed on the bottom.
“We’re treads down, right?” I asked.
Loor gave me a quick look, as if to say, “Give me a break.”
She hit the throttle and the dygo crawled forward. It didn’t feel much different from when we were on dry land. We had an unobstructed view through the windshield in front, which meant that the drill was behind us.
“Ido not know which way to go,” Loor said.
“We’ve got to find the stairs,” I replied. “Keep going until we hit a wall, then we’ll follow it like we were trying to do on the surface.”
Loor pushed the sphere forward. We crawled along slowly. It wouldn’t be smart to crash into a wall. A minute later the headlights reflected off a rocky surface directly in front. We had found the wall.
“Excellent,” I said. “Let’s go right. Keep the wall in sight. Eventually we have to hit the stairs.”
Loor carefully moved the dygo along. She turned the whole sphere so that the window faced the wall, but the treads were ninety degrees the other way. We were actually moving sideways. For the first time I began to think we actually had a chance of getting out of this. We had been moving along slowly for a few minutes when suddenly the wall disappeared, and we were faced with nothing but water. “This is it!” Saangi exclaimed.
Loor spun the dygo so the window faced the direction of the treads. She was about to turn the whole vehicle so we could move forward into the opening, when I realized something.
“Stop!” I shouted.
“What is the matter?” Loor asked.
“Can we look down from here?” I asked.
Loor spun the sphere back so the window faced the open water. She then tilted the whole sphere so the window gave us a view down. What we saw made each of our hearts beat a little faster.
“That was almost a very big mistake,” Alder said.
What we saw was…nothing. The stone floor did not continue. It ended. We were not in front of the stairs. We were on the exact opposite side. It was the edge of the platform where we had launched the boat for Kidik Island. If we had gone forward, we would have toppled off the edge and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We all let out nervous, relieved breaths.
“At least we know where we are,” I said. “We need to go in the opposite direction.”
Loor spun the dygo sphere a hundred and eighty degrees, lined up the treads, and followed the compass thing on the instrument panel to send us in the opposite direction. We still had to move slowly because visibility wasn’t great
“What kind of air supply does this thing have?” I asked.
“There is no air supply,” Loor said. “The vents are closed to keep out the water. When we use up the air, we suffocate.”
“Oh. Just checking.” I suddenly felt more urgency to find the stairs.
While Loor drove, Saangi worked the headlights. She could direct them to scan in several directions. After driving for a few more moments, Saangi announced, “There!”
Up ahead and above us, we saw what looked like the top edge of an opening. We were passing out of the launch area, hopefully into the cavern at the base of the grand stairway. Loor pressed on. Alder and I leaned forward, desperate to see something that would tell us where we were.
“Look to the left,” I said to Saangi. “That’s the direction the stairs would be if-there!”
Through the floating particles, we could make out the bottom of the giant staircase. We had made it! We didn’t celebrate. We were still far from safe. Loor turned the dygo. Saangi scanned the stairs with the light until she found one of the ramps that cut through the steps. Loor directed the vehicle toward the ramp and in no time we were climbing up. The treads were on a steep angle, but Loor kept the sphere upright so it felt kind of like rising in an escalator.
I want to say that I was relieved, and I was. But all we had done was get to the next hurdle. There was plenty more to worry about, not the least of which was the time bomb that was ticking beneath us. Had the floodgates collapsed? Were we going to find that Kidik was flooded? I didn’t know how much air we had left in the dygo, but I didn’t think it would be enough to get us to the surface. I was already feeling the effects of the air running out. It was harder to get a breath. All we could do was keep moving, and hope.
We climbed the stairs, higher and higher. I was trying to calculate how deep we had been underwater, which would be a good indication of when we should break the surface. That is, if there was a surface to break.
