Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [103]
Once we had two deflated skins, we set about cutting away the limbs and protruding members and refilling the remaining bladders. We carefully held the rents beneath the surface of the stream until some liquid got in. Whilst I held them closed again, Ace filled two oddly shaped canteens with liquid as well, and hooked one onto my belt.
'Additional supplies,' she said, then climbed inside one of the skins. I did likewise with the other. We knotted the rents from the inside. As we had hoped, the warmth from our bodies vaporized the liquid and inflated the skin.
Urgency had lent skill to our endeavours: the scheme had worked, and we were left standing within two tough, translucent, taut spheres that used to be living creatures but now functioned as crude reservoirs of breathable air.
Ace waved at me. I waved back, and followed her as she carefully climbed up towards the dark opening. The skin of the life-preserving integument deformed beneath our fingers and feet, enabling us to climb, but was tough enough to resist tearing against the rock.
We entered the dark channel. A tunnel led upwards through the ice at a shallow enough angle that we could walk along it in comfort. Ace turned and bestowed a triumphant smile upon me. I pretended not to see it.
We walked for what seemed like hours. There were no side tunnels, no choices of path. Although the walls were rough ice, I gained the impression that they had been carved, rather than formed naturally. They glowed with what I first took to be an inner effulgence, but later realized was the light from the planet's sun, refracted through the ice. It got brighter as we walked, and more directional. Upon Ry'leh's interior surface I had not been able to tell where the sun was, merely that it was up. Now I could have pointed to it with some accuracy. I stumbled numerous times, but each time I managed to pick myself up and carry on. My friends were depending on me. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I kept on putting one foot before the other, slogging away like a trooper. The air within the balloon became stuffier and stuffier, and the skin grew tauter and tauter as the pressure outside reduced, but the trapped warmth of my body combated the cold which stung my fingers whenever I inadvertently touched the skin. I was on the verge of passing out when I remembered the canteen that Ace had provided me with. With clumsy fingers I untied the knot and tried to bleed some of the stale air away. The reduced pressure outside snatched at the rent, but I managed to hang on. I retied the skin when the balloon was half empty and carefully poured some liquid from Ace's canteen. Within seconds the balloon had reflated, and I felt refreshed.
I glanced over to where Ace had stopped. She was engaged in the same activity. From the haggard look upon her face, she had almost left it too late.
We started walking again along the monotonous tunnel. I had completely lost track of time, and was dreaming about roast turkey and plum pudding, when Ace stopped. I bumped into her, and rebounded. She pointed ahead.
There was an irregular black opening some ten feet away. Cautiously, we crept closer and peered out.
We had emerged at the base of a sheer cliff. The landscape that surrounded us was like illustrations I have seen of the surface of the moon.
Tremendous spires of rock -the tops of the mountains - soared into the jet-black, starspeckled sky. Broken escarpments and jumbled, irregular cliffs vied with large expanses of fiat ice. A bloated red sphere, spotted with black, hung above our heads, casting a maleficent light across the terrain.
I have reconstructed the view at my leisure, to set the scene for the adventures that were to come. At the time, it was not the alienness of the landscape that captured and held our attention but rather the group of wooden caravans that sat not twenty feet away from us. Their seams were sealed with some black, sticky substance and they sat upon huge metal runners that cut deeply into the ice. The central caravan was