The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [92]
Noticing the direction of his stare, the Guv felt compelled to remind the big man of his own words. “One speed. That’s what you said. That’s what we agreed to.” Riddick didn’t reply. His gaze traveled from the cable coil to the crest of the mountain. But he was thinking.
Meanwhile, the third member of the little band who had managed to make it to the top finally gave in to burning curiosity and peered guardedly around the edge of his protective outcropping. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes went wide and his jaws parted. It wasn’t necessary to give words to what he was seeing. There were no words, anyway.
Generated by the abrupt change and huge rise in temperature as the sun ascended above this part of the world, a visible thermal front had appeared. Caught between the lingering cold of the night side and the soaring temperature of Crematoria’s morning, the resultant pressure differential spawned a solid line of superheated wind which, when combined with the thermal front, came thundering across the landscape from north to south, riding the front line of the terminator. The ground quaked as the wind and heat front passed over it, shattering loose scree and sending ash and gravel flying. Safe in their subterranean prison tiers, the Guv and the convicts had heard it, could time chronometers by it, every fifty-two hours. But in those depths it was muffled by solid rock and hushed by distance. Out here, on the surface, the tsunami of wind and heat had nothing to mute the roar of its relentless advance.
And it was driving pitilessly straight toward the mountain.
Kyra heard it first. Then, peering out from the depths of her protective crevice, she saw it. All thoughts of stoicism fled, all pretext at toughness and indifference falling away like so much desiccated, disintegrating tissue, she screamed.
“RIDDICK!”
Peering out from his own shelter, the Guv stared at the approaching wave in fascination. Over the years he’d heard it hundreds of times and had tried to visualize it, with little success.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured to no one in particular. “So that’s what it looks like.” Nearby, the other convict who had managed to make it to the top was also staring, mesmerized and mumbling to himself.
“Temperature differential, pressure differential; wind and heat from the north pole to the south. Meeting the advancing terminator every new day. Round and round she goes, and where she hits, everything blows. . . .”
He looked around sharply. Riddick was close by, still hugging the shade. The big man was even more commanding than usual, and there was unusual intensity in his voice.
“Gimme cable, shirt, your water—all of it. Then get the hell gone. Go. Move.”
They didn’t argue with him. First, because it would not have done any good. Second, because they owed him for having brought them this far. And lastly, because they could tell from his tone and see from his expression that if they did not give him what he needed, he would take it anyway. Neither man tried to argue. There was no time here, now, in this place, to piss away on internal dissention. They turned over the goods, not knowing what he wanted them for and not asking. Not asking, because he might decide to ask them to join him in whatever crazy move he was contemplating.
As soon as the last of the gear had been handed over, both men started down the backside of the mountain. The temperature continued to rise, but they still had plenty of shade. For how much longer, it was impossible to predict. The stone tower, with its promise of man-made shelter and a ship beneath, was all the incentive they needed to send them all but bounding over the treacherous rocks.
Behind and above them now, Riddick moved fast but methodically. First he donned the Guv’s commodious overshirt, tugging the ends of the sleeves as far down as he could, covering as much exposed skin as possible. Then he fashioned