Location: Old delta region, western side of the Dry Sea
Sol: 203
"It can't be!"
Josh and his party were staring utterly dumbstruck at the transponder signal on the Rover's radar screen, marking the landing site of some unidentified spacecraft. After nearly seven months of being stranded on this alien planet, believing he would be living out the rest of his life here, Josh couldn't believe rescue was only a few days away. The thought of seeing more human beings again made the blood race through his veins!
The Rats, on the other hand, didn't know what to make of this new, unexpected development. Although they had all accepted Josh as one of them, the idea that more strange humans were now somewhere on their planet was very unsettling. Were they friendly like Josh? Or had they come to take over their planet for themselves, as per Nimh's original plan? There was only one way to find out.
"We have to try and make contact as soon as possible," said Josh, "They could help us. If they meet up with Jenner and his thugs, that maniac will only use it to his advantage to launch a full-scale war under the pretence of stopping an invasion."
"But that will mean deviating 180 miles away from our search area," Justin pointed out, "Will be still able to make it back to Thorn Valley?"
"It's only a couple of days driving," said Josh, "We have enough supplies left for another 40 days; we only need about two weeks for the return trip, more than sufficient. Besides, if it's an entire mission out there, then we won't be needing them. I doubt we'll be returning to Thorn Valley the same way we came."
"What about the search for the Stone?" asked Mr Ages incredulously, "We've come all this way and now, we're just abandoning our mission? That's outrageous!" Josh however had whole new priorities.
"We can resume the expedition once we've made contact with these newcomers," he said confidently, "That tomb has waited a thousand years; I'm sure it can wait a few more days. Besides, if it's a NIMH ship, they'll have their own brand-new copy of the Rosetta Stone onboard; with that, we can cancel the search altogether." Bernard seemed sad that they were giving up the search so soon, but didn't make a fuss about it; enough was enough. It was time to go back to his family.
Following the signal, Josh set a westward course, into new uncharted territory, way up the river delta they'd been searching. What exactly they would find when they got there, none of them knew.
They drove uneventfully through the day. Following a short overnight camping stop to get some sleep, they continued on in the morning without incident. But then, when they were just over halfway to their destination, trouble finally struck.
The Rovers were crossing through a region of the delta covered in layers of muscovite, formed from concentrated sediments in the soil carried by water over hundreds of millions of years. The crystalline surfaces kept reflecting sunlight back in their faces as they drove along, disorientating them and forcing them to drive mostly by instruments.
Rover 2, carrying Brutus and Ages and Justin at the wheel, and the trailer with the oxygenator and water recycler in the back, was driving a few yards alongside Rover 1. Because of the sunlight reflected back into his eyes, Justin didn't see that he was moving away from the safe path Josh was following until it was too late.
Crack!
Without warning, there was an ominous cracking sound as the bed of muscovite they were driving over suddenly shattered under the weight of the Rover like a sheet of ice. The Rover tilted over on its nose, as it fell head-first into a bottomless abyss underneath the muscovite. The Rover's passengers all screamed in terror, as they suddenly found themselves plummeting towards certain death; but then, a protruding rock snagged the chassis of the trailer, leaving both the Rover and trailer hanging precariously over the abyss.
Justin crawled out of his seat. He, Brutus and Ages huddled together inside the inverted bubble of the windshield, which had now become the floor, paralysed with fear. Even the slightest move, the tiniest shift in balance, could cause the Rover to break loose and they'd fall to their doom in the black abyss far below. Beneath them, they could hear the glass of the bubble slowly start cracking under their weight.
"Nobody move!" hissed Justin, "For the love of the Great Owl, don't move!" They all kept absolutely still, not daring to even breathe. The cracking sound stopped. They looked up at the airlock hatch, normally at the back of the vehicle, which was now high above their heads and out of reach. They were trapped.
"If I give you a foot up, maybe you can reach the handle and open it up," offered Brutus, crossing his hands so Justin could climb up onto his shoulders. Alas, the hatch's release handle was still several inches out of his reach. Justin wanted to try giving a leap to reach the hatch, but had more sense that to try; if he missed, he'd fall back down, shattering the bubble and killing them all. At that moment, they heard Josh's voice over the radio, which was luckily still working.
"...Justin? What the hell's going on? What's happened...?"
"Help!" screamed Ages, who was scared half to death, "Get us out of here! We're trapped!"
Inside Rover 1, Josh and his passengers hadn't noticed Rover 2 fall through the muscovite, but heard the terrified screams and Justin and the others over the radio. Something was wrong. Looking out the window, Josh saw the other Rover had disappeared! All that could be seen was a gaping hole in the sheet of muscovite where the Rover had been. Josh felt his blood run cold, realising what had happened.
"Justin!" he called over the radio, "What the hell's going on? What's happened?"
"Help!" called the distorted voice of Ages, "Get us out of here! We're trapped...!" Then his voice died away as the Rover's damaged radio went dead. Elizabeth clapped her hands over her face in horror.
Quickly turning on his ground-imaging radar, Josh realised the whole terrain they were driving on was riddled with hidden chiasms concealed by the thin sheet of muscovite; an invisible death trap for anything heavy that happened to cross over any one of them, like a Rover.
Turning Rover 1 around, Josh made a beeline for the hole where Rover 2 had fallen through. He knew it was risky going in a straight line, lest they fall through the muscovite too, but Justin and the others were quickly running out of time.
Stopping a short distance from the hole, they hurried over and peered over the edge. What they saw made their blood run cold; Rover 2 was hanging precariously from a protruding rock snagged on the chassis of the trailer, the Rover itself hanging loosely underneath, held up only by the trailer's attachment bracket, which was about to give way at any second. The terrified cries of his friends still trapped inside the cabin could be heard.
"Get us out of here, please!"
"Hold on!" called Josh, "Keep very still and don't move! I'm coming down for you." Racing back to the Rover, he unwound the winch cable. Securing the hook to a safety harness he was wearing, he lowered himself over the edge of the abyss, with Bernard operating the winch motor up top.
Elizabeth watched with her heart in her mouth as Josh lowered himself down to the stricken Rover. Any second now, she expected Josh to lose his footing or for the cable to snap and that would be the end. But it didn't happen.
Bernard lowered him down until Josh's feet were touching down on the back of the inverted Rover, just above the airlock hatch. As he did so, it moved with his weight. For an instant, he thought it was going to break free, but it stayed where it was. But he knew it wouldn't stay like that much longer.
He tried the hatch release switch, but it didn't work; the force of the impact had knocked out the Rover's generator, killing all power. Grabbing the emergency release latch, he turned it over and pulled the hatch open. Looking inside, he saw Justin, Brutus and Ages all huddled together in the driver's bubble, which was now but a web of cracks, about to shatter. Quickly taking a nylon rope from his harness, he threw it down and the Rats caught it.
Mr Ages went first. It wasn't easy; his old, withered hands, combined with his pudgy physique, made it extremely difficult for him to maintain a grip on the rope. They all knew that if he fell now, he'd shatter the already damaged bubble and that would be the end for all three of them. With great effort, he finally managed to climb high enough for Josh to grab him and pull him out of the Rover. Strapping a spare harness around the old mouse's waist and securing the winch's hook to it, he signalled to Bernard to pull him to safety.
Next, it was Brutus' turn; unlike Ages, who wasn't cut out for this sort of thing, Brutus had no trouble climbing ropes despite his massive size, having done it countless of times before during boot camp training. However, he wasn't paying attention to his sword, hanging loosely over his shoulder by its strap.
As he climbed up, the sheath got snagged on a protruding seat. Unable to reach it over his shoulder, Brutus unthinkingly did the worst possible thing one could do in this situation: he tugged as hard as he could to free it. That was a big mistake. The buckle on the strap snapped and the sword fell back down into the Rover, landing handle-first on the already compromised glass bubble.
CRASH!
The bubble shattered into a million pieces, which rained down into the abyss, along with Brutus' sword. It took several seconds before they heard the fragments hit the bottom. In an instant, Justin found himself clinging on for dear life onto the driver's control-stick, which was quickly straining and buckling.
Josh quickly threw him the rope, but Justin couldn't reach it. At that moment, a tearing sound was heard; the control-stick he was holding on to was being torn out of its socket, leaving it connected only by its wires. Seeing his Captain about to fall, Brutus went frantic.
"What in the name of Nicodemus are you standing there for?!" he bellowed, "Do something, Anderson!"
"What the hell do you think I'm doing?!" roared Josh incredulously. He tried throwing the rope again, but it remained just out of reach of Justin's fingertips. Only one thing for it then. Tying the rope around his waist, he passed the other end to Brutus, "All right, I need you to lower me down as far as you can reach."
With Brutus lowering Josh inside the Rover on the rope, the astronaut twisted himself round, so he was hanging upside-down. Just as the wires of the control-stick gave way, he lunged forward and grabbed Justin by the arm in the nick of time. He felt the rope tighten painfully around his waist because of the added weight, and Brutus grunting above in his effort to maintain a grip on the rope. At that moment, the Rover started to move again. The chassis holding it wedged onto the cliff was about to snap.
"We're slipping! Get us out of here!"
Putting every ounce of muscle power he had into it, Brutus heaved with all his might, pulling the two of them out of the Rover. Josh barely had time to secure their harnesses to the winch, before the chassis finally snapped, sending the Rover, trailer and all, into a freefall.
Hanging precariously in the air on the end of the cable, they watched the Rover tumble as it fell deep into the abyss, until it finally hit the bottom, where it exploded. Its hydrogen fuel cells created a blinding white flash, followed by a massive, red-hot ball of flame which soared up from the abyss, coming straight at them!
"Bernard, pull us up! Hurry!"
Bernard and Elizabeth barely managed to pull them back up, before the wave of the explosion reached the top. Chunks of flaming debris from the exploding Rover came up with it, flying everywhere. All around them, the ground shook; more of the muscovite shattered, opening up deep ravines everywhere, in a catastrophic chain-reaction.
The party took cover behind their remaining Rover, praying they wouldn't end up falling down another abyss when the thin sheet of muscovite beneath them gave way. But it didn't; and before they knew it, the worst was over. All around them, the landscape, which only minutes ago had been flat, was now a maze of deep, impassable ravines. The party breathed a sigh of relief. Justin patted Josh on the shoulder.
"Thanks, you saved our lives." Josh nodded. Elizabeth hugged him warmly. Mr Ages was muttering his prayers to the Great Owl, grateful to still be alive. Even Brutus, who had only been accepting towards Josh at best, shook his hand firmly.
"You saved my Captain's life today. And I'll never forget that. Thank you."
Despite having luckily come through this latest mishap unscathed, it didn't take them long to realise they had suffered significant losses to their equipment. Besides having lost one Rover, they'd also lost the water recycler, oxygenator, nearly half of their supplies, and even the satcom unit, all of which had been on Rover 2's trailer. The greatest loss of all was of course the water recycler.
Thanks to Josh's insistence on dividing up the provisions, they still had a working Rover with enough power to get them back to Thorn Valley and enough remaining food for 18 days. But their supply of water which was kept in the reserve tank on Rover 1, and which they could no longer recycle, would only last them 5 days at most. And it was at least 15 days to the nearest water source.
"We'll never make it back to Thorn Valley on only five days of water," said Josh, realising there was no turning back anymore, "We have no choice but to make contact with that other spacecraft. It's our only hope."
The Rats were extremely doubtful, their minds all set on one purpose: get the hell back home before they all died of thirst out here in this wasteland. The search for the tomb and the last piece of the Stone seemed nothing less than a fool's folly now. Even Bernard wasn't keen on continuing with the search any more, thinking this was all his fault by leading them out here in the first place. But with safety only one more day's drive away, or so Josh believed, they finally gave in.
"Well, I guess our lives are once again in your hands, Josh," said Justin, "We're counting on you not to let us down." Josh couldn't help but feel a slight sense of discomfort at those words; although he was grateful for the trust Justin was placing in him, he was still risking all of their lives by taking them deeper into the Dry Sea, when they should be making a run for home before their water ran out. He just hoped his hunch proved correct once again.
They continued on due west. Once they'd cleared the traitorous muscovite region, the landscape became smooth once again. By the next morning, the delta had begun to shrink as they crossed into what was long ago a web of tributaries that joined the main riverbed somewhere on this planet. With the water long gone, these old tributaries now resembled long narrow valleys, separated by tall rocky inclines formed by pilled-up sediments once carried along by the river.
By midday, they had almost reached the source of the signal. With the six of them cramped together inside one stuffy Rover only built to hold a maximum of four, the drive was quickly becoming intolerable and tempers were running high.
What bothered Josh the most was the curious lack of response he was getting over the radio. For the last few hours, he'd been trying to hail this unidentified spacecraft, but without success.
"...I repeat, this is Captain Josh Anderson of the NIMH-One, calling unidentified spacecraft. I'm on your three o'clock and headed your way. Please identify, over." Nothing. The signal was there all right, loud and clear, but no one was answering. The only other time he'd seen that kind of radio silence was when trying to hail his mothership months ago, before the expedition to Thorn Valley, only to discover the awful truth... Could this be another ghost spacecraft? He tried hard not to dwell on that grim prospect.
They drove to the top of a ridge overlooking a large, long dried-up flood-basin at the foot of a large mountain. According to Josh's radar, the signal was coming from dead ahead, right in the centre of the flood shell. But there was no a sign of a looming spacecraft anywhere. Just rocks and sand.
"Nothing!" grumbled Brutus, clearly unimpressed, "You took us off our route for nothing!"
But one of the things life had taught Josh from his experiences on this planet was always to look more carefully before jumping to conclusions. That signal had to be coming from somewhere. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, he surveyed the flood-basin floor in the direction from where the signal was coming from. Then, suddenly, he saw something.
Down in the centre of the flood-basin was something which, from afar, looked like a natural-occurring fault in the terrain. But looking at it more closely, Josh realised it was a trail of tyre tracks left by the landing gear of a spacecraft touching down. The tracks led behind a large rock and out of sight. Putting aside his binoculars, he powered up the Rover.
"Let's go!"
He drove them downhill, towards the tyre tracks. From up close, the expeditionaries could see the tracks were pretty deep in the sand, indicating a rough landing. Following them behind the rock, they came upon the source. Only, it wasn't a looming spacecraft, typical of an interstellar mission.
Josh gasped as he laid eyes on a battered space pod lying on its belly in the shadow of the rock. And not just any pod. It was none other than one of the Scouts from the Nimh-One, Scout Delta, easily identifiable from the tell-tale NIMH logo painted on the side of the fuselage– not another 2,000-year-old relic, like the mothership back in Thorn Valley, but as new and shiny as his own Scout Alpha back at the Hab.
Pulling up alongside the derelict, the expeditionaries hurried over to investigate. The pod had definitely had a rough landing, which had caused the landing gear to collapse, sending it into a sideward spin, before finally coming to a stop, battered up but still in one piece. There was a breach in the hull on the starboard side just above the heat-shield, probably from where the nose clipped the rock as it came by. The large drogue-chute had been deployed and now trailed from its cords out the back of the service module.
"Hallo!" called Josh, "Anybody there?"
The moment he'd laid eyes on the pod, Josh knew his hopes for rescue had been nothing but a pipe-dream. This wasn't a rescue mission at all; instead, it dawned on him that one of his former crew had somehow found his way through the electromagnetic storm and into the future. Having another fellow human being to talk to was the next best thing to being rescued!
Scampering up to the open hatch, Josh saw it was empty; the survival kit was also missing, indicating the pilot, whoever it was, had survived and was now wandering on foot somewhere out there. A fine coat of reddish dust from the desert floor covered the pod, indicating it had been there for quite a while. Josh felt his hopes plummet; no one could survive for long out here without supplies, especially water.
Climbing into the cockpit, he saw someone had done quite a hatchet job, gutting the interior. The rear bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the service module had been cut out, merging the two sections of the ship together as one; all of the excess hardware usually mounted in the back, including all the backup systems, life support, the fuel-plant, and even the communications array had been removed and substituted with several jump-seats, apparently in an attempt to modify the pod to take more passengers. All but the most essential flight instruments were missing too.
Throwing a few switches on the semi-hollowed out console, Josh got some juice from the one remaining battery, which still had power. He did a system diagnostics: all the fuel cells for the ion booster and RCS thrusters were depleted, but the atmospheric jets looked like they might still run. Checking out the flight computer data bank, Josh saw a flight plan involving the pod making a rendezvous with another ship in high Nimh-Beta orbit, before the data stream ended abruptly – close to where, Josh remembered, the electromagnetic storm had been. The time-stamp on the frozen flight chronometer was dated 17 days ago. It all finally made sense.
Apparently his crew had been planning an escape, jury-rigging their remaining pod as a launch vehicle to get them back into orbit in order to rendezvous with the rescue mission when it arrived. Only the attempt had obviously not been successful, since the pod had fallen back to earth after going through the storm. But maybe it would deliver another human companion for Josh. Assuming they could find him alive that is.
He rejoined his companions and told them of the situation. Although intrigued, the Rats were sceptical about the possibility of finding this other human visitor alive. After all, they had enough problems of their own to be traipsing around this Great-Owl-forsaken place looking for someone who by every account was dead.
"Seventeen days ago?!" exclaimed Justin, "There's no way anyone could have survived out here that long without food and water. The nearest water source is weeks away on foot! I'm sorry, Josh."
"We don't know if he's dead," insisted Josh, in spite of himself. He knew the pod's survival kit only had a 3-day supply of food and water, nowhere good enough to sustain someone out here for seventeen days, yet he refused to give up hope, "I survived under very similar conditions, remember? Maybe he's found an uncharted oasis or some water source to sustain him, who knows?"
"What about this flying ship?" asked Ages, who was currently more concerned about them finding a way out of this death trap, and the opportunity had ever so conveniently presented itself, seeing as they now had a pod and a miracle-working engineer who knew how to put it back together, "Maybe we can use it to get back to Thorn Valley. Can you fix it?"
Josh considered hard. He had brought tools with him of course, but they were only for doing general repairs to the Rovers. The ship's pods, on the other hand, needed a small army of engineers and a complete maintenance laboratory in order to be properly serviced. It would take a lot of improvising, patching-up, maybe some tinkering and re-designing as well. He doubted he could make the pod spaceworthy again, even if he had the proper facilities; but it might still be good for a short atmospheric flight back to Thorn Valley.
"I can only try," he finally said, "But it will take me at least a couple of days." The Rats looked at each other; all of them knew they were cutting into their dwindling water supply as they spoke and every day of delay brought them one step closer to dying. If Josh couldn't get the pod fixed before their remaining water ran out, they would all be doomed. Meanwhile, Josh had a special request for Justin.
"While I'm working here, I need you and Brutus to scout the surrounding area for any signs of our missing pilot. If he's really dead, then I want his body found. If he's still alive, but unaware that help has arrived, we can't take his pod and leave him behind! That would be murder! Get moving." The Rats half-heartedly agreed.
Leaving Josh and Ages to work on the repairs, and Elizabeth and Bernard to set up camp for the night, Justin and Brutus set off on their scouting patrol. The latter kept grumbling that Josh wasn't their boss to order them around and that this was all one big waste of time, until Justin ordered him to shut his trap.
They worked hard through the day. Using a hydraulic jack from the Rover, Josh was able to correct the pod's tilt, but frowned when he saw the condition of the undercarriage. Although the wheel and strut were fixable, all of the hydraulic fluid had leaked away, which meant the undercarriage could no longer be lowered or retracted. The only way was to modify it, so that it would be permanently fixed. That would of course mean more drag and less speed during flight, but they could still manage.
With the pod finally upright again, Josh got to work on the breach in the hull. With no precision tools to cut an exact patch or an arc-welder to weld it into place, he had no choice but to improvise. First, he hammered out the dents and trimmed the jagged metal around the breach so it was smooth. Using a sheet of metal from the now empty chute-cowling, he nailed it over the breach with a bolt-gun. Then, he added a nice thick layer of resin from the Rover's breach-kit around the edges to make it airtight, restoring cabin pressurization. Although awfully unsightly, the patch looked like it would hold.
Josh stood admiring his handiwork. The once gleaming pod, one of the many pride and joys of NIMH's space industry, now looked like a second-hand junker out of a scrapyard, with all its ugly patching-ups and modifications. No flyable aircraft in history had ever looked so beaten-up. But at least she would fly.
With Ages taking a break from his work, Elizabeth had volunteered to give Josh a hand, passing him the tools. Every now and then, he would shoot her a loving smile, causing her to blush. He reminded her so much of Jonathan and how she used to keep him company too while he worked.
With the structural integrity taken care of best he could, the next step was the pod's interior, including the propulsion system, flight controls and instruments, what was left of them anyway. The jets checked out okay, just choked with dust from the desert. But the pod's main power source was another story.
The NIMH-One's pods were powered by unobtainium fuel cells, which produced their precious electrical power, plus a battery backup. Inspecting the service module, Josh discovered two of the three fuel cells had been removed, apparently in his crew's attempt to lighten the pod. The remaining fuel cell, which had been mounted in the belly of the pod, had taken the blunt of the impact when the undercarriage collapsed, damaging it and leaving the craft operating only on emergency power.
The atmospheric jets relied entirely on electrical power, rather than conventional fuel, to work, and would suck up all that limited power in minutes. Josh could recharge the batteries from the Rover's generator, but they would only be enough to keep the pod in the air for 5-10 minutes, nowhere sufficient enough to get them back to Thorn Valley. He considered using the Rover's hydrogen fuel cells, but they were way too small to produce the power he needed. Only unobtainium could produce the thousands of kilowatts needed for the system to work. They weren't going anywhere.
Josh was just thinking of how he was going to break the news to his friends, when Justin came running. No sign of Brutus. From the look on his face, they had found something. Had they found their missing pilot? Or had they run into trouble?
"What happened?" asked Mr Ages, passing him a drink of water, "Where is Brutus?" Once he'd gotten his breath back, Justin explained.
"We found something back there," he said, his eyes alight with excitement, "I think you ought to see this, especially you Bernard."
Dropping everything they were doing, they followed Justin through a crevice at the foot of the mountain. As they walked, Justin filled them in on what they had found.
"For most of the day we climbed up to that mountain, hoping to get a better view of our surroundings, but saw nothing. But then, while taking a shortcut back, we stumbled upon something very interesting. My friends, I think we might have found what we came here for..." They were all absolutely gobsmacked at the news.
"You found the tomb?" gasped Bernard, who, in the light of all their mishaps, had practically given up hope of ever finding the lost relic of his ancestors.
"That's impossible," exclaimed Josh, "We're nearly 200 miles off the search area."
Further down the ravine, they came upon Brutus, who was examining something carved in the stone wall. For the first time in weeks, they'd found their first sign that someone had been here before them! Although badly weather-worn after centuries of desert dust storms, the familiar likeness of the Great Mouse of Minsk was unmistakable. And it wasn't the only thing to be found.
"I've got something here," said Josh, holding a metal detector he'd brought along over the earth beneath the carving. The readout on the gauge was jumping as it picked up a clear source of metal beneath their feet, "There's something under there."
Sending Bernard back to camp for some shovels, they got to work digging. Pretty soon, they had uncovered a shallow grave containing the skeletal remains of a mouse wearing a golden suit of armour. An identical likeness of the Great Mouse of Minsk to the one on the crevice wall was engraved on the breast-plate. They'd found the grave of a soldier from Igor Mousekewitz's army, which had passed this way on their way to the First King's tomb. But what were they doing here, when they should have been 200 miles away, following the western horizon of the larger sun? Bernard slapped his forehead, finally realising his mistake.
"It wasn't the largest sun," he exclaimed, "It's the smaller one! We've been looking in the wrong place all this time!" By a complete stroke of luck, at last, they were back on the trail to finding the tomb!
Josh examined the skeleton. The neck was broken and the skull fractured, indicating a fall as the probable cause of death. What struck him as odd was the peculiar position in which the skeleton was lying. Instead of lying aligned and the hands crossed, as the deceased usually are placed when buried, the arms were stretched over the head, almost as if pointing at something... In an instant, Josh understood.
"It's a pointer!" he exclaimed, gesturing in the direction in which the skeleton was pointing, "The tomb must be up there somewhere!" The all turned to look at the pyramid-shaped mountain towering before them. Could there really be a tomb housing a king's lost ransom up there? However, it was nearly nightfall and very soon it would be too dangerous and too dark to be exploring.
"Let's go get some sleep," said Josh, "We'll come back in the morning with proper equipment and survey the mountain side."
They returned to their camp totally exhausted. With most of the repairs on Scout Delta finished and with their latest discovery having gotten their hopes up, they were all looking forward to a good night's sleep. They still had a long way to go before they'd be out of the woods, but things were looking up for a change. So much in fact, that it put the mystery of their missing pilot out of their minds.
They made an early start the next morning, returning to the skeleton and following the direction in which it was pointing them. They soon found themselves walking up a steep trail on the mountainside, which didn't seem to lead anywhere.
"This doesn't seem like the right way to me," grumbled Mr Ages, nursing his sore knees. He was sure getting too old for this sort of thing. The others had to agree wholeheartedly, because only a little further up, they came to a dead end. The mountainside was too steep to climb any higher. They were stuck.
"I've grown sick and tired of this nonsense!" snapped Brutus, who'd had enough, "There is no tomb! Like a said, it's nothing but a fairy tale for children!" He glared at Bernard, "You've probably led us to our deaths with your accursed fantasy!"
"Wait a minute, what's this?" asked Josh, who had noticed a small hole in the wall, partially obscured behind a rock fall. Setting up the ground-imaging radar they had brought with them on a tripod, he did a scan of the mountain side.
"There's some sort of large cavern in there," he said, studying the image on the radar screen, "But what's all that white mass?"
"Look how shiny it is," exclaimed Elizabeth in amazement, staring at the image, "It looks almost like ice..."
The expeditionaries looked at each other; besides finding the tomb, their topmost priority was finding water for the trip home. Even with strict rationing, their reserves were down to less than 3 days. Could they have stumbled across some subsurface geothermal column of water? If they could somehow tap into it, their water problem would be solved.
Using a power jack-hammer, levers and pickaxes, Josh, Justin and Brutus attacked the rock fall. The rocks felt very loose, almost as if they'd been cleared away and then stacked up again by someone wanting to conceal the opening, quite recently too. But the expeditionaries couldn't concern themselves with that right now. At last, they had shifted the last stone aside, revealing the entrance to a cave. Josh passed out flashlights.
"Let's go!"
Cool, damp air rose up from the depths of the tunnel as they made their way down the tunnel, which slopped and twisted in many directions, leading deep into the bowels of the mountain. At last, they came to a vast cavern.
The expeditionaries stared open-mouthed at their surroundings. Although they were underground, a patch of light coming from a small hole in the cavern roof was reflected off the giant crystals that made up the walls of the cave, creating a spectacular lighting effect that lit up the place in rainbow colours. Shaped like the domed interior of a giant cathedral, the crystal grotto towered hundreds of feet high and several hundred across; and stretched out before them was the rippling surface of a massive underground lake, probably a sub-surface ice glacier that had forced its way up through the crust from geothermal activity and melted. Water!
Hurrying down to the water's edge, Josh took a sample of the water and tested it using Lt Stacy's chemo kit. No sign of microbes or contaminants; just pure, iron-rich mineral water. He tasted it. The coolness and freshness of the water was such a wonderful relief for his parched throat! The others quickly joined in, as they all stripped off their dirty clothes and jumped into the lake, letting the water wash away several days' worth of filth from their bodies and gulping down mouthfuls of it, squashing their thirst.
Josh playfully splashed Elizabeth, who splashed him back, giggling. Josh responded by grabbing her by the feet and tickling her. The sounds of her laughter reverberated all around the cavern in an acoustic effect. They all slumped back against some large crystal slabs that served as backrests, admiring the sight of the crystal cave.
"Blimey, this place is like Aladdin's Cave," muttered Josh, staring in amazement out at the lake. Of all the natural wonders he'd seen on Nimh-Beta, this sure took the cake.
"It is so beautiful," exclaimed Elizabeth, who had never seen anything so spectacular before, "It is like being in a crystal palace!"
"Yes, and you are the queen," Josh complimented her, reaching over to kiss her, "The Queen of Nimh-Beta's Crystal Palace!" Elizabeth blushed.
"Does this mean that you're my King?" she asked. Josh smiled, snuggling up beside her, chin held high and proud, like that of a king. But their fun and games were cut short however, because at that moment, Ages, who had been staring out across the lake, uttered a yelp. They all jumped.
"What is it?"
"There's someone over there!" he cried, pointing in a direction of a large crystal formation further down the lakeshore. But looking, none of them could see anything.
"Chill out, you old goat," said Justin, calming his nerves, "It was probably just a reflection playing tricks on you. It happens in places like this." Mr Ages however, didn't seem all that convinced. And neither was Josh.
"Then let's not overstay our welcome," he said, climbing out of the water to dry himself off. They still had a lot of work to do. Now that they had found water, their next objective was to find the tomb. "Holiday leave on the Riviera with pay is up, people! Chop-chop!"
They pressed on, following the lake shore. Not a damn thing; there wasn't the slightest sign that anyone had ever been here before, much less a lost royal tomb. It made no sense.
"I don't get it; is it at the bottom of the lake?" muttered Bernard, mostly to himself, feeling at a total loss. As if struck by sudden intuition, Josh turned to look out at the still water of the lake. What if Bernard was right? Maybe their prize was right under their noses and they didn't even realize? He was snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of Elizabeth screaming.
Running over to her, they found her standing petrified, her hands clamped over her mouth in horror, looking at something on the ground. They all stared at a bulky, spacesuit-clad figure lying face down on the ground. They had finally found their missing pilot it seemed, albeit too late. But as Josh bent down to open the visor, expecting to see the face of a starved corpse, he realised the suit was empty.
"O2 tanks are empty," he said, checking the jetpack. The battery for the electronics was likewise dead, the screen for the environmental analyser smashed. The faceplate was lined with scratches, consistent of an astronaut thrashing about in a state of suffocation, but struggling not to open his visor, knowing the decompression would kill him, "He probably made it this far before his air run out, at which point he was forced to open his suit and realised the atmosphere was breathable."
A little further, they found something else too. Mr Ages picked up a pod's survival kit, identical to Josh's, lying on a rock. The protein-tubes were all empty and lay discarded on the ground nearby. The gun was missing from its holster. It seemed after crash-landing and finding the cave, the pilot had been using this place as a shelter because of its water supply, until he'd run out of food.
Josh was just wandering why would the pilot take off, leaving all of his limited equipment behind, when suddenly he caught sight of something moving across the cave wall next to his head, making his blood curdle: the ominous red dot of a gun's laser sighting, pointed straight in their direction!
"Everybody get down!"
Not a moment too soon, the whirring sound of a plasma burst from an electric pulse gun, ironically the very same model he'd owned until Brutus had smashed it months ago, sailed right over their heads. It hit a large crystal behind them, causing it to explode into a million pieces. Several more blasts followed, hitting the cave wall and causing chunks of shattered crystals and rock to rain down all around them. Looking, Josh saw a figure standing in shadow only a few feet away, pointing his weapon in their direction.
"For God sakes' man, hold your fire!" he shouted, "You'll bring the whole cave down!" But the figure didn't seem to hear him. Whoever it was, he seemed to be completely deranged, as he continued firing wildly.
Grabbing a large chunk of crystal, Josh flung it at the figure. The crystal found its mark in their attacker's abdomen, throwing him off-balance. Not missing the opportunity, Josh lunged at him, wresting the gun from his hands and walloping him hard in the forehead with his own weapon. The figure sunk to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
His heart beating a mile a minute, Josh reengaged the gun's safety-catch and tucked it away in his belt. Shining his flashlight on the figure, he saw a skeletally thin man in frayed NIMH-One fatigues and a golden warrior's helmet, similar to the one they'd found on the Mouse warrior's skeleton the other day. Furiously pulling the helmet back from the face, Josh gave a gasp.
"Cor blimey, Commander Fitzgibbons..."
Lying stiff as a board at his feet was none other than Commander Paul Fitzgibbons, USAF, the former Captain of the NIMH-One and Josh's commanding officer, and whom Josh believed to be thousands of years dead. A blast from the past had just been thrown into their midst.
Author's note: Surprised? I toyed with the idea of having a second human arrival for a while, until I finally decided to have another of the NIMH-One's original crew finding his way through the electromagnetic storm. Enjoy and please review!