Atherton #3: The Dark Planet (No. 3) (10 page)

from under the overturned cot.

"Get up! Out of these beds and moving!" said Red Eye, turning

his gaze on the rest of the room. He was hunched over more

than usual from a poor night's sleep. Glancing back at Aggie he

yelled: "And pick up that filthy cot or you'll be sleeping on the

floor."

Aggie and Teagan turned the rusted shell of the cot back over

and set the rumpled mattress on top. They both groaned quietly.

The drying room was one of the worst jobs in the Silo.

Anything
but the drying room....

CHAPTER 8THE DOCKING

STATION

As his feet left the ground, Edgar felt so impossibly heavy it was

hard to imagine not dropping like a stone into the boiling pool

below. And the heat was virtually unbearable. He was sure the

steam had burned every hair off his head and the eyebrows

from his face. His shirt was almost certainly in flames, his shorts

torn free by fire. It felt as if it was cooking his skin, his brains,

every thing.

By some miracle Edgar felt his toes touch the other side. He

had an immediate and highly distressing sense of falling

backward that took his breath away and gave him the extra

burst of adrenaline he needed to lean forward and out of harm's

way.

He lay on the ground and rolled away from the heat as his limbs

came back to a lower temperature. He felt his arms. The skin

was still there. He slowly reached his hands up and touched his

head. He laughed out loud at the joy of finding his full head of

black hair still there. And his clothes, too--they were all intact.

He stepped farther away from the opening, and then turned to

see something he would never forget.

The object was a full thirty feet across at least and rose twenty

feet into the air. It was, in a word, gargantuan. It was shaped a

lot like an egg, perfectly round for the length of its middle and

tapering off at both ends. And it was solid black. The object

hovered several feet above the floor of the space, suspended

by two wide black pins that stuck into the sides of the room.

What in the world is this thing?
thought Edgar.

The object had one other feature that kept Edgar at bay. All

along the deep black surface were spikes the likes of which

Edgar had never seen. They appeared to have grown out of the

object like razor-sharp roots in every direction. A million needle

points, the tip of each one glistening in the yellow light of the

room--and ever so slowly, randomly in and out, they moved as if

trying to feel the air in the room. They seemed... could it be?

Yes--they were
alive.

Edgar looked down the line of the wall and saw that the deep

grooves in which the wide pins sat ran down the sides of the

room. It looked like the stone walls had been gouged by

something hard and spinning.

"This moves," whispered Edgar. "It moves down the line and

past the opening. And then where?"

Edgar crouched down and peered under the object. The

moving spikes were there as well, leaving only a few feet to

crawl under. On the other side was what appeared to be a door,

but did he dare go under the million black spikes?

I'm standing in the path of this thing,
thought Edgar, wondering

what it would feel like to be rolled over if it started to move. And

if the thing fell down while he was under it... well, he couldn't

imagine. There would be nothing left of him.

Despite his fear, Edgar resolved to lie on his back and creep

ever so slowly along the floor. The spikes moved in and out,

closer to his face as he went, as though they were trying to sniff

Edgar as he passed below. He felt his breath catching in his

throat in little bursts.

"Don't think about it," he said. "Think of something else. The

grove and the lake. Swinging in the trees..." As he recited his

memories of the world above, his breathing slowed and he

continued moving until at last he reached the other side and

stood up with a great sigh of relief.

It was darker on this side, but soft orange and yellow light crept

in through thin veins in the stone walls. He took a few steps

toward the door at the back of the room.

"This must be the way in--from the inside of Atherton," said

Edgar. "The way that's blocked."

And it was exactly as Dr. Kincaid had said it would be. When

Edgar opened the door he saw a few feet of tunnel, followed by

a wall of dirt and stone as if the ceiling had caved in from

above.

Edgar turned around and noticed something important about

the gigantic black object: The back side had an opening that led

inside. It was pitch-dark beyond the opening.

Edgar edged forward cautiously, trying to be perfectly quiet.

What if this thing is alive and doesn't like visitors? What if I

wake it up? It could shoot a thousand arrows at me.

His choices were severely limited. He had no desire to crawl

underneath again; only monsters and firebugs awaited him on

the other side. And the way inside Atherton was blocked. It

seemed then to Edgar very much like he had been made to

come here. His options, like a lit fuse, led only one way and

seemed to vanish behind him....

Stepping inside seemed to ignite something within. Fuzzy light

appeared--and to Edgar's dread, the light was blue.

"This thing is full of firebugs!" cried Edgar. But as he turned to

run he had a feeling he was only partly right. Something

different was going on here, something new.

He took a few more tentative steps, placing him at the center of

the object, truly inside, and all at once he saw from where the

light had come.

Firebugs indeed surrounded him on every side, but they were

every where and nowhere all at once. The ceiling was filled

with dancing blue dots and so was the floor. Edgar reached out

his hand and touched--what was it? It felt like the glass Dr.

Kincaid had shown him that surrounded the lantern in the cave.

As Edgar moved his hand along the smooth and warm surface,

the firebugs grew thick and mimicked the shape of his fingers.

He pulled his hand away and saw that the shape of his hand

remained in the blue light, then slowly disappeared as the

firebugs moved off.

He placed his hand on the glass again and watched the

firebugs gather from the other side, then pulled his hand away.

He leaned in close so his nose was almost touching the glass

and watched with growing interest as the firebugs slowly began

to drift off.

Without warning, there was a tremendous
BANG!
on the

surface as the glistening head of a cave eel smashed into the

glass. Firebugs flew like sparks and Edgar jumped back, fal ing

on the floor with a shout. The body of the cave eel slithered past

and back into darkness, and Edgar marveled as he realized it

was
swimming.

"There's water--or something
like
water--behind the glass."

For the first time, Edgar really looked around and saw the inside

of the vessel. The glowing blue of firebugs softly lit his way as

he walked back and forth. It was a big space--twenty feet in

length or nearly, and big around on every side. He could see

the shadows of swimming cave eels as they swept by here and

there. Soon he had counted seven but was sure there were

more.

Edgar had arrived at one end of the vessel and there he found

rows of black chairs, fifteen chairs in all, plus a separate set of

six chairs facing one another. Between the six chairs was a

wide block of black stone or glass. Edgar sat down and saw

firebugs immediately filling the inside of the chair beneath him.

"Everything is connected," said Edgar. "It's like a living thing."

The chair was now aflame from the inside with a million tiny

dots of hovering blue. The outside of the chair was soft but

clear, like glass that had lost its ability to stay solid. Edgar

looked at the seat next to him and saw that something had been

left there.

"Who was here last?" Edgar asked himself. He knew the

answer to the question. It was Dr. Harding. He would have

come here one last time before closing the way in for good.

At first glance the thing appeared to be a common piece of

wood. It was four or five inches long and about the same width,

and it was maybe an inch deep. When Edgar picked it up he

found that it was heavier than he'd expected, and older, too. It

was marred at the corners as if it had been dropped a great

many times. In his hands it felt like something not of wood or

stone but on the verge of being one or the other. All along the

edges were words that had been burned into the surface, a

large number of which Edgar could not read. And there were

numbers--
lots
of numbers.

"I should have paid more attention to Samuel's teaching," said

Edgar. He was newly embarrassed at his inability to read very

well. He had learned some basics, but it had only been a year

and he hadn't taken to studying as much as he'd hoped.

Edgar leaned forward in the chair and held the block in the blue

light. The words were burned in thin, black lines. Taking up

most of one side was something that looked like a map. On the

side he'd been looking at--the one with the map at the center-there were two words at the top. One word he could easily read,

the other he could not. I-N-S-I-D-E A-T-H-E-R-T-O-N.

"Atherton!" said Edgar. "But what's this other word?"

He tried to sound it out but had a most difficult time of it.

Frustrated, Edgar flipped the wood over and tried to read the

words on the other side. At the top was a word Edgar could

spell but not pronounce or understand.

S-I-L-O.

Beneath the four letters was a code of sorts, etched just as big

as the word S-I-L-O.

L-I-F-T-B-5.

Under the large word and the code there were many hundreds

more, but none of them were nearly as prominent. Numbers,

sentences, whole paragraphs burned in with some kind of thin,

precise instrument. The instrument of a madman, thought

Edgar, because he knew this could only have been done by Dr.

Harding when he was quickly turning into the monster he had

become--Lord Phineus.

"I wish you were here with me, Samuel. You could read this to

me, like you've read to me before." Edgar felt totally alone in the

quiet of a million firebugs. He examined the edges of the block,

turning it in his hands, feeling for a notch. Just as he was

thinking there was nothing there to find, he held the item by its

corners and--more by accident than on purpose--pushed and

played at the opposite ends. The two sides slid apart down the

middle to reveal a hollow inside.

There were two things hidden in that space. The first was the

tool that appeared to have been used to write on the outside of

the wood. The sharp tip of the instrument reminded Edgar of the

spikes that covered the vessel he was sitting in. Inside the

instrument glowed dozens of tiny blue dots.

"Firebugs," remarked Edgar, wondering how they could have

gotten there.

Edgar picked up the pen and touched the tip to a clear spot of

hard wood on the inside. He drew the pen down and it left a thin

black mark and a tiny waft of smoke. Edgar twisted and turned

the pen over the surface. It was as if it was melting the wood

away in the thinnest of perfect lines and swishes. He was

drawing on the wood with a firebug pen.

"I like this thing," said Edgar, holding it up and seeing how it

filled the air with soft blue light.

He placed the pen back in its resting spot and picked up the

other item hidden inside the tablet. The item was small and flat

and smooth, like a perfectly shaped skipping rock. And it was

solid black like so many other things Edgar had come to find in

this place. He pressed it, tapped it, and walked around the

vessel in vain searching for a place to insert it.

Whatever the small object in his hand was it didn't seem to

have any purpose, so Edgar set the disk down on the flat black

table of glass before him and returned to searching the wooden

tablet for clues. The moment the disk hit the table, Edgar's life

was altered forever.

It was the key to every thing, and without realizing it, Edgar had

just used it to make a long-awaited connection with the Dark

Planet.

CHAPTER 9THE RAVEN

A rush of warm wind filled the vessel when Edgar dropped the

disk onto the black surface of the table. This sent Edgar into a

panic, because the moving air was accompanied by a sound

from the general area of the door he'd entered through. Edgar

jumped up, started for the opening, and found it closed to the

outside world.

I'm trapped in here.

Edgar returned to the table. Millions of tiny blue dots were

dancing beneath the glassy surface. And what was more, they

were coming together in ways Edgar had never seen before.

They flew randomly at first, covering every square inch of the