said, indicating a valley. “The marked line is the route which Quineau and the others took. It twists and turns for over three hundred kilometres from a point ten kays north of here. This’—he brought a thick forefinger down on a point at the very western extreme of the map—‘is where the entrance is located, at the very top of this valley, below an overhang.”
“Will I be able to land the Cobra?”
Hupcka stabbed the map. “A matter of a hundred metres away, in the valley. We can land there and move on foot to the entrance. I’ve arranged supplies of food and water.”
“When do you want to set off?” Bennett asked.
“We’ve been ready for months,” Hupcka said. “It really depends on how you’re feeling. Are you up to an immediate start?”
“I can’t think of any reason to wait.”
Hupcka folded the map and passed it to Bennett. “Very well. I’ll get the ship loaded with the provisions. We’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Bennett returned to the A-frame. Rana was sitting beside her father on the bed, holding his hand. She stopped talking when she heard Bennett, looked up and smiled.
“Sorry to interrupt—we’re almost ready to go. There’s a valley near the entrance, Mack. I can land the Cobra and we’ll go on foot from there.”
Mackendrick looked at his daughter, and then at Bennett. “Can Sita come too? I’d like her to be with me.”
Bennett nodded. “Of course.”
Mackendrick closed his eyes. “This is it, Sita,” he murmured.
Bennett and Ten Lee returned to the ship, followed a little later by Rana and Mackendrick. He walked slowly, like the old man he was, assisted by his daughter.
Hupcka and his men were carrying backpacks and thermal wear up the ramp. A crowd had assembled around the ship, watching in silence. As Bennett strapped himself into the command couch, he looked through the viewscreen at the faces of the gathered rebels. In their hardened expressions he saw the dawning light of hope, after so many years fighting a hopeless battle.
Ten Lee read the co-ordinates from the map and Bennett programmed them into the onboard computer. Five minutes later they were ready for lift-off.
Hupcka stepped on to the flight-deck. “The provisions are aboard, Josh. Mack and Rana are in one of the sleeping chambers. We’re ready when you are.”
Bennett sealed the hatch and looked at Ten Lee. Her eyes regarded him from beneath her bulky flight-helmet. “Ready, Joshua.”
“Hold on, Hans,” Bennett said.
He touched the controls. The vertical thrusters fired, filling the ship with a concentrated roar. The crowd gathered on the purple plain quickly backed off. Bennett turned the Cobra on its axis, until they were facing west, and eased the ship forward, felt it surge with restrained power. They climbed slowly and banked around the enclosing mountains. Bennett relinquished control and set the Cobra on the pre-programmed flight-path, slabs of cold grey rock passing slowly by a matter of metres from the sidescreens.
He glanced across at Ten Lee, absorbed in the figures scrolling down the screen of her visor. On the engineer’s couch, Hupcka was gripping the harness, staring through the viewscreen with an expression at once awed and alarmed.
Thirty minutes later the Cobra decelerated, and down below they saw the valley between two high summits of snow-covered rock. The valley, likewise, was covered with an undisturbed mantle of snow, blinding in the glow of the gas giant.
Hupcka pointed. “There, the entrance is beneath the overhang to the right.”
“I’ll bring the ship down as close as possible,” Bennett said.
He engaged manual override, decelerated and edged the Cobra towards the rock face. Perhaps twenty metres from it he switched to vertical thrust, lowering the ship gradually to the valley floor.
“There’s a bit of a slope down there,” he warned. “Hans, go warn Rana and Mack that we’re coming down on a right-to-left incline. Tell them to brace themselves.”
Slabs of iron-grey rock rose around them as the Cobra descended and hit the ground. The ship tilted suddenly, and settled at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal. Bennett cut the thrusters and the engines whined into silence. He peered through the sidescreen at the overhang, two hundred metres away through a deep drift of snow.
For the next thirty minutes they prepared themselves for the trek. Hupcka handed out thermal trousers and jackets, then distributed the backpacks containing food and water and flashlights. Bennett suited up, began to sweat immediately, and opened the hatch to admit cold air. Mackendrick and Rana emerged from their cabin, muffled beyond recognition in their thermals.
Hupcka looked at Bennett, then around at the others. “So, if we are ready, my friends…”
Hupcka led the way down the ramp and into the snow, Bennett and Ten Lee following Mackendrick and Rana. The snow was a metre deep and concealed uneven terrain. They picked their way through the drift with difficulty, losing their footing and frequently falling. Bennett helped Rana with her father, and ten long minutes later they made it to the overhang. They rested, regaining their breath, while Hupcka scanned the wall of rock for the entrance.
Mackendrick held on to his daughter’s arm, breathing heavily.
“You okay?” Bennett asked.
“Don’t patronise me, Josh. I’ll be fine.”
Bennett smiled and joined Hupcka in looking for the entrance. The rock at the back of the overhang was a seamless dark grey slab, with no sign of a break or inlet. He considered the awful possibility of coming so far and being unable to find the entrance.
Hupcka had moved up the incline, to where the overhang narrowed so that he had to stoop. At last he gave a cry and waved. “Up here!” He indicated a narrow, dark shadow in the face of the rock.
They joined him and he stepped through first, soon disappearing from sight down the steep drop. Rana and Mackendrick went next, illuminating the way with their flashlights. Bennett stepped after Ten Lee, having to turn and force himself with effort through the crevice.
They were walking down a tight, sloping corridor cut into the rock. Within minutes Bennett was sweating, despite the cold. He unfastened his thermal jacket and cooled rapidly. He stopped and looked back up the way they had come. The entrance was a glimmering sliver of opalescent light high above. He continued walking, soon catching up with Ten Lee.
The corridor sloped through the mountain at an angle of thirty degrees, for the most part chiselled from solid rock, but occasionally following the contorted twists and turns of natural chambers.
Only when they had been descending for over an hour did Bennett notice the carvings. In square panels of rock to either side were chiselled hieroglyphs similar to the ones they had discovered on the plain, so many months ago: stars and circles and crosses, all enclosed within squares, triangles and ovals. He recalled the statues of the Ancients they had discovered in the temple ruins. So far he had never really considered the possibility that they might still exist—it seemed too incredible a leap of faith to believe in the word of a single man, Quineau, deranged by too many months locked in a suspension unit. He wondered at Mackendrick’s desire to believe in the remote possibility that, even if the aliens were still alive, they might just possess some form of remarkable healing power. As they descended, Bennett considered Mackendrick, and the desperate desire only the dying must know to go on living.
They had been walking for perhaps three hours, and Bennett was tiring, the muscles of his legs becoming tight with unaccustomed use. Even the appearance of the circular patterns on the walls, which Ten Lee said were mandalas—representations of the various stages on the path to nirvana—failed to divert his attention. He wondered how Mackendrick, ahead, was coping with the descent.
At last Hupcka called a rest halt. They sat down and passed a canteen of refreshing ice-cold water between them. Bennett played his flashlight up the natural walls, catching flashes of blue and turquoise veins rising in the rock like the ribs in a cathedral ceiling.
Rana sat cross-legged beside her father, holding his hand.
