The floor of the passageway began to slope upwards, and they were soon out of breath as the incline grew even steeper, and then the light pot began to fade again.
‘There really is no more water now,’ cried Jay, ‘what we do now?’ The fear in her voice spread to Moss and Kel, who were not usually frightened so easily.
‘I’ll shake it up a little.’ said Kel, remembering what Mec had told him to do, and the light brightened up a little, but they knew it wouldn’t last for long.
They raced on as best they could, but the light was fading again, and they came to a halt for fear of falling down a hole or what ever else the inky blackness held.
‘I can only think of one thing, and that may not work,’ said Kel, ‘I’ll use my water. Quick Moss, hold out your hands and I’ll put a little of the powder in each, you tip it into the pot when I tell you.’
Fumbling about in the near dark and trying to direct his water into the light pot, could have been humorous if it hadn’t been for the desperate situation they were in.
The light giving chemicals in the little pot swirled around as Kel did his best to fill it, and in doing so gave a gentle violet glow to the scene.
‘I think that’s enough, tip the powders in now Moss, and we’ll see if it works.’
Moss could just about see the outline of the pot in the encroaching darkness, and managed to get most of the powders into the pot, Kel put the bung in and shook it up.
A few seconds later and the whole tunnel was lit up in the bright glow from the transparent insect case.
‘It works even better than ordinary water,’ Kel exclaimed,
‘We must remember to tell Mec about this when we get back home.’
‘Do you really think we’ll ever get back to Mec and the others?’ asked Moss. ‘I somehow doubt it.’
Now able to see their way clearly, the trio set off at top speed up the tunnel, their footsteps echoing strangely as though there were many more of them racing along.
They almost missed the side tunnel, with its flight of steps going up again, and would have done so if Kel hadn’t bumped into Moss as he slowed down for a moment.
‘Now which way do we go?’ asked Moss, usually the one to make the decisions.
‘Up the steps again, I suppose, as we want to get out of these tunnels and into the open.’ replied Kel, turning into the new passage.
The long climb up finally terminated in yet another passage, with a gentle upwards slope. Rounding a bend, they were confronted by a total blockage.
‘What do you think it is? It’s certainly not stone by the look of it.’ Kel ran his hand over the huge steel door, some of the rust flakes coming off on his hand.
‘It’s not stone or wood, so it may be some kind of meetel used by the giants who made this place.’ Moss said, as he pushed forward to inspect the barrier.
Moss too found the rust flakes coming off when he touched the door, and instinctively gave it a jab with his bladed stave. A small shower of brown rust rattled to the floor of the tunnel, and Moss then energetically went to work on the door as if their lives depended on breaking through, which of course they did.
Before long, there was a big pile of rust at the base of the door, and then the stave broke through into open air, and light trickled in through the tiny hole.
With Moss and Kel hacking away at the crumbling remains of what was supposed to have been an impenetrable barrier, an opening was soon made, enabling them to crawl out into the open and the bright light of the Greater Sun, which they had feared they would never see again.
‘Look how thick this barrier is,’ commented Kel, ‘it’s almost as thick as my head is wide, so why didn’t they make it out of something stronger?’
‘I expect it was, but over the long amount of time since it was made, it has rotted into this crumbly stuff, and just as well for us that it has!’ Moss added gratefully.
They were out on an open plain of grassland which ran down to the cliff through which they had just come, and behind them were the shaggy contours of a mountain range, capped with snow and sparkling in the bight light of the sun.
The entrance to the tunnel had been carved into a small cliff which ran back into a larger rock formation of massive jumbled stone blocks.
‘The first thing to do is to find some water, my throat feels as though it has been filled with dry wood scrapings.’ Kel suggested, so they picked up their equipment and headed up the slope towards the rocks.
The grass was lush, and several bushes bearing fruits which looked familiar were dotted about the plain, so Moss reasoned that water couldn’t be far away, and the rock pile proved his point.
As they drew nearer the jumbled cascade of stone, Jay, well out in front, waved her arms wildly and called out excitedly ‘Look, water, coming down from up there.’
Above the rocks, the lip of a higher plateau jutted out, and from its edge a small stream of silver white water poured over and chattered its way down over the broken remains of a once huge water cistern.
Only the remains of the base section had survived the ravages of time, and that had filled up with water from the small stream which trickled down from above, to overflow from a crack high in its outer wall into the ground below, to disappear from view.
They quickly climbed the lower blocks, and sliding down between two massive chunks of broken concrete,
