Engineman - Eric Brown [132]
By this time, the militia were on the defensive. Anti-missile projectiles intercepted Kelly's missiles, detonating them one by one in great bursts of flame. A rocket launcher loosed two long, finned missiles. Ella watched in horrified fascination as they speared towards where they lay - shooting overhead with a deafening roar and exploding in a shower of flame and debris against the mountain half a kilometre beyond.
"Kelly!" she screamed. "Let's get out of here!"
Determined, Kelly fired the remaining six missiles. Five were intercepted, blinding Ella. When her sight returned, she saw a rocket launcher on its side down below, flame licking around its blackened carcass.
"That's it, girl. We're gone."
They jumped aboard the flier and Kelly put the pinnacle between themselves and the convoy. They headed towards Mt Sebastian, a towering grey presence in the distance. Ella turned in her seat, stared at the western sky and the flaming hemisphere of the red giant. Against its brightness, any pursuing vehicles would show as tell-tale silhouettes. All she saw was the tiny, dark disc of an inner planet as it traversed the face of the giant primary.
They passed higher into the mountains, flying up valleys and over peaks. Down below the ground was grey, desolate, with no sign of vegetation. In time they put other mountain peaks between themselves and the red giant, so that only its apex showed above the serried range like shark's teeth. Soon, snow appeared on the flanks of the mountains alongside. The air grew chill, then icy.
Ella had been thinking of her father for some time before she asked, "Kelly, when was the last time you saw my father?"
The Engineman glanced at her. "About three weeks ago. Why?"
"Was he okay? I mean, was he keeping well?"
Kelly considered. "He was under quite a bit of strain. A lot depended on him and he was putting in long hours - but I'd say yes, he was keeping pretty well, considering."
She hugged herself against the cold. "Will he be aboard the smallship?"
Kelly shook his head. "He's co-ordinating things from Earth." He smiled at her. "Don't worry. It won't be long now."
Kelly steered the flier under an overhang and into a lateral crevice hewn from the rock, and Ella experienced relief like the unburdening of a great weight. The crevice was shaded from the light of the sun, and illumination was provided by a flickering brand on the wall beside a rectangular opening let into the rock.
Ella climbed from the flier, and then she saw it.
The Lho-Dharvon appeared in the entrance, and the sight of it brought Ella up short. Years had elapsed since her last meeting with a Lho, and in her memory she had anthropomorphised them, allowed her feelings towards the aliens to colour her objectivity. She was surprised anew at how perilously thin the Lho were, how alien, almost insect-like.
The Lho approached Kelly, touched him on his forehead with its middle finger, then did the same to Ella.
"Hunter..." it breathed. "Welcome."
"Is the 'ship here?" Kelly asked.
"No 'ship..." the Lho said. "Come."
It ushered them through the entrance in the rock and down a steep, tight flight of stairs. The steps were obviously made for longer Lhoan legs, high and narrow so that Ella jarred her spine as she followed Kelly and the alien. The passage was low - at times the Engineman had to stoop. For the most part it was excavated through solid rock, but occasionally it followed the course of fissures and natural crevices, and here the steps were even narrower and more precipitous. The way was lighted by flaming torches at long intervals, with stretches of half-light in between. They descended for more than an hour. As they plummeted and wound their way deeper into the mountain, the temperature increased. Ella sweated, feeling faint with the humidity and exertion.
At last the stairway terminated and they came out