“I’ll take ‘slightly’. You sure about this?”
“Perfectly. I am programmed to help preserve human life if possible. Except for the Mayir of course. They can go to hell.”
I laughed.
“Okay, you’re on. And you just gave me another idea. Help me gather some rocks.” I showed TenSix my expedition belt with the individual pockets sewn around its length.
We filled it with enough rocks to increase my weight another fifteen kilograms. With Safadin’s lower gravity, I barely noticed it, but TenSix assured me that it would help.
I removed the straps from both my pack and Kira’s and used them to tether TenSix to my belt.
“This is either going to work or it won’t, so we might as well give it a try,” I said.
“Rather laissez-faire, but accurate.”
I snatched up TenSix, took a running start, and dove into the whirlwind.
7
TenSix was half right. My increased weight bought me time before the whirlwind sucked me skyward. But what really saved us was the fact that the bot’s arm and legs were able to grip onto the edge of the tube.
With the hot wind raging and spinning around my body, I let out a savage yell and threw my arm down towards the hole. My fingers closed around the stone lip of the lava tube and I pulled us down with all my might.
Once I managed to get part of my body down into the shaft, the force ripping at me decreased its hold and I was able to tumble down into the underground cavity—with twenty kilograms of bot crashing into my stomach. Thankfully, I didn’t have far to fall, and there was a thick layer of soft sand at the bottom of the tube.
I caught my breath for a few moments, hoping that the whooshing sound in my ears would go away soon. It was very hot down here as well.
“Are you injured?” TenSix said, as it righted itself and crawled off of me.
“Not sure. Something’s jabbing me in the side, though.”
It turned out to be my hand-lamp, which had broken during the fall. But better the hand-lamp than my ribs.
“I’m good,” I told TenSix.
“It’s a miracle. This really was an ill-conceived plan, Jannigan Beck.”
“Well, we made it, so it couldn’t have been that ill-conceived.” I sat up and looked around.
I could tell that the tube angled down at a gentle slope, but I couldn’t see more than a few meters, since the only light was a beam of filtered sunlight that shone in from the opening of the lava tube above my head. And now all I had was the light stick. I activated it and clipped it to my jacket, but the stick could only dimly illuminate a meter or so in every direction.
Fortunately, TenSix popped a panel open on his head and extended his small, but high-powered directional beam. It lit up the lava tube.
“I see Dr. Lark’s boot prints!” TenSix announced.
“Kira!” I shouted. “Kira, can you hear me?”
There was no response—only the low whistle of hot wind blowing up from somewhere deep underground.
“She did say that the collection unit was near the entrance, didn’t she?”
“Less than twenty meters away is what she said.” TenSix’s light illuminated a dozen meters down the lava tube, or close to it. And there was no sign of either Kira or a collection unit. It was a dead end.
“Let’s follow her boot prints,” I said.
We continued down the tube to the dead end, where we found another hole in the ground. When TenSix shined his light down the hole, I could see a rough shaft that dropped down three or four meters into another passage. A strong blast of hot air issued from the shaft.
“She must have come this way,” I said.
I eased myself down, half climbing and half jumping. It was no problem with the lesser gravity. Then I helped the small bot down, which was a little tougher, but we made it.
I called out Kira’s name again, and again there was no answer.
“Here’s the unit,” TenSix said, flashing his light on a small collection box set behind some lava boulders near a small pool of cave water.
This was very weird. The lava tube stretched out into the darkness ahead of us, but why would Kira go any farther in?
“Look at this!” TenSix directed his lamp’s beam to the sandy floor of the tube. “Dr. Lark didn’t walk out of this area. She was dragged.”
TenSix was right. Two parallel furrows in the sand led down into the darkness. They could have easily been made by Kira’s boots. This was not good.
A few meters away we found Kira’s collection kit. It was covered in sticky strands of ichor. Almost like the slime you might find on a dhalmon or an addle bug. There was more of the ichor in patches on parts of the lava tube.
“Do you know what this stuff is?” I asked TenSix.
“It is organic in nature, but beyond that I have no idea. I’m not really programmed for zoological identification.”
“Zoological? This is from an animal?”
“You think it was a plant that killed Dr. Lark and dragged her away?”
“Stop it. We’re going to find her.”
“Maybe her body. If we’re lucky.”
“Shut up and move it. Keep that light straight ahead so we can see where we are going.”
The only weapon I had was a judder knife. Still, it was better than nothing. I slipped it from its scabbard and flipped off the safety. Then we set off down the lava tube. Before we got five meters, a distinct rattling sound echoed throughout the tunnel, mixing with the low howl of the wind.
“What was that?” I asked.
“If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it was the very predator who snatched Dr. Lark. Perhaps a zangizai millipede or a giant pharache.”
“Good to know.” I continued forward, knife out. TenSix followed close behind and a little offset so his light wouldn’t be blocked by my body. He raked it over the entire surface of the tube as we walked and I could see a
