Journey to the Heart of Luna - Andy Frankham-Allen [54]
The sub-lieutenant now sat with his back inches from the boiler, two pannier tanks either side of him. The more coal the professor shovelled, the hotter the boiler was getting. Yet still the prisoner was being increasingly uncooperative. Folkard really did not wish to resort to violence, but he was running out of both time and patience.
“Skaji mne gde nahodista Doktor Grant.”
The Russian looked Folkard up and down, his lips twisted in disgust. “Idi k chortu, Britanskaya svinya! Slava Rossiykoi Imperii budet bezgranichna.”
Folkard frowned. His Russian was rusty. He had so little need to practice it, and had not dealt directly with Russians for a long while. Now, if it had been a German camp he would have known exactly what his captive had said. Folkard straightened up. Something about hell and glory he felt sure, and the Russian Empire.
“How are we doing, Professor?” he asked, stepping away from his prisoner.
Stone looked up from the heat of the burning coal he had just shovelled into the chamber. Through the black soot on his face, he beamed a smile. “Refreshingly well, Captain,” he said, and stood up straight, resting one arm on the shovel. Folkard noted the bandage on the professor’s left hand was filthy. More grey than white. “I think perhaps I missed my calling. I was never a boy who wanted to drive a locomotive train, but maybe I ought to have been.”
“Something to think on when we return to Earth.”
“Quite so, Captain,” the professor responded with a large grin.
“And how is our erstwhile driver faring?”
Stone looked at K’chuk who was pulling gently on the screw-reverser. “Enjoying himself a little too much. What do you think, K’chuk?”
Without turning his head, the Selenite responded; “We near camp.”
“Splendid.” Folkard looked down at his captive. “You are about my size,” he said, “so a temporary rank reduction is in order.”
3.
NATHANIAL REALLY was not too sure about this. So he said so. Captain Folkard, now dressed in the uniform previously worn by their Russian captive looked up from the lower deck of the Mole Drill.
“Sub-Poruchik now, Professor,” Folkard replied with a grin on his face, and placed his neatly folded uniform on a small shelf along the bulkhead of the vehicle. “Calling me captain out there just might attract a little bit too much attention. Attention we most certainly have no wish of courting.”
“Naturally not. But that is rather my point. K’chuk and I will attract unwanted attention. I for one do not possess even a smattering of Russian and K’chuk…well, he is a little conspicuous just being what he is.”
Folkard considered this, as he walked the length of the interior and stopped at the foot of the ladder. “K’chuk, are there other Selenites like you in the Russian camp?”
K’chuk looked down at Folkard. “Not like K’chuk. Retainers of knowledge dead or soon dead.”
“Soon dead?” Folkard asked.
“I believe I understand,” Nathanial said, and turned to K’chuk. “They are being tortured. But why? To what end?”
For a moment K’chuk did not reply. He looked away, his compound eyes once more focusing on the view through the small slit by which the driver of the Mole Drill navigated. “I not say. Sacred.”
Nathanial continued to stare at the back of K’chuk’s rusty head. This all had something to do with the glow, he felt certain. Tereshkov had discovered something, something that had caught the interest of Doctor Grant, something that was sacred to the Selenites. It just had to be related to the glow in some way. No wonder the drones were so willing to rebel…Just like the ants on Earth, the Selenites would protect that which was important to them.
Folkard was looking thoughtful, but he did not press