Splinter in the Mind's Eye Page 13

"You've still got your saber."

  Luke's hand went to the comforting shaft of the weapon. "All right. Stay there a second." He turned to Leia. She wasn't there. "Leia?" he said aloud. Swelling fears vanished when she reappeared seconds after his call.

  "There's a tunnel back there, just like the old woman thought," she said cheerfully. "I used my own luma." She gestured with the tiny, self-contained light. "It widens out right away."

  "Which direction?"

  "Off to the east, about a thirty-one-degree heading." She indicated her suit tracom.

  "Thirty-one degrees east, Halla," he shouted upward, relaying Leia's information.

  "Okay, boy. We'll move in that direction. How are you two on rations?"

  Both hurried to check their belts. The brief survey was more encouraging than Luke had hoped.

  "We've got enough concentrates between us to keep going for about a week. I expect we'll find plenty of water."

  Halla's cackle rippled down the well walls. "I expect you'll have trouble avoiding it, Luke boy. If what I know about Coway tunnels holds, we should meet up with you in a couple, three days at most. Light, food, water... you two kids hang on, understand? We'll find you." A concurring series of squeaks from Hin and Kee, and then the three faces disappeared.

  "Please be careful, sir," Threepio added. Then he, too, vanished.

  Luke stood a moment longer gazing at the inviting circle of sunlight and mist above. He reached upward. Despite the seeming nearness, he was not surprised to discover that he couldn't touch the sky with a fingertip.

  "They're on their way," he told Leia, turning back to her and switching on his own luma. "We'd better be on ours...."

  IX

  THEY'D been walking for some ten minutes when Luke ventured thoughtfully, "I wonder if we might not've been better off waiting in the alcove until Halla and the Yuzzem could've gone back to a town and come back with some stolen cable. Hin could pull us out of there by himself, with those arms he has."

  Leia stepped over a small pile of rough gravel. "You think she'd consider going back to town without the crystal to face Grammel?"

  "What difference would the crystal make?"

  Leia eyed him fondly. "You don't understand her, do you, Luke? Obviously she's convinced she can turn Grammel into a frog with it."

  Luke made a disparaging sound. "Leia, she's not that irrational about the crystal."

  "You don't think so?" The Princess formed her next words carefully, gently. "Think a moment, Luke, Halla's a very persuasive, knowledgeable old woman, but she's been on this world a long time. Years spent hunting down a myth. It's clear to me that she believes the Kaiburr has supernormal powers. Even you agree it doesn't possess any such thing."

  "I know. Okay, so maybe she's a little fanatical on the subject, but-"

  "Fanatical?" The Princess sighed. "Luke, the poor woman is sick with delusions, can't you see that? Her dreams have overwhelmed her sense of reality. But we need her, ill as she is, to get off this planet."

  "The crystal's no delusion," Luke argued mildly. "It's real. If this Governor Essada and his people get to it before we do..."

  She shuddered visibly. "Essada. I'd almost forgotten about him."

  "Leia, why are you so afraid of an Imperial Governor," he asked gently as they walked on. "What could Moff Tarkin have done to you back on the Death Star before Han Solo and I rescued you?"

  She turned memory-haunted eyes on him. "Maybe I'll tell you someday, Luke. Not now. I'm not... I haven't forgotten enough. If I told you I might remember too much."

  "Don't you think I could take it," he asked tightly.

  She hastened to correct him. "Oh not you, Luke, not you. It's me, my own reactions I'm worried about. Whenever I start trying to remember exactly what they did to me that time, I start to come apart."

  They walked on in silence. "Say, don't you think it's getting brighter in here?" she finally said, with exaggerated cheerfulness.

  Luke blinked, the feelings that had been running searingly through him the past several minutes beginning to fade as he considered the import of her comment.

  Yes, it did seem lighter. Almost bright, in fact.

  "Switch off your luma," he instructed her, even as he was thumbing the switch of his own.

  For a brief instant it grew darker. Then their eyes compensated and it was as bright as before. The light was a fault blue-yellow, somewhat brighter than the hue of his own saber.

  When his gaze returned to the Princess he saw she was standing next to the tunnel wall. "Over here," she called, directing him to an especially luminous section of stone. He leaned close. It seemed as if the rock itself was pouring out the light.

  "No," she corrected when he voiced that thought, "look closer. Here." She dug at the stone with her nails and the light came off in her hands, setting her palm aglow. It burned coldly in her hand. After a while it started to fade out.

  "Some kind of growth," she announced, "Lichen, a fungus... I don't know. I'm no botanist. This is what Halla told us we'd find if we kept on." She brushed living light from her hand, looked on down the gradually descending cave. "It's another world down here, but now I don't find it frightening."

  As they continued downward, the path they were traveling leveled off. The tunnel widened into a true cavern. Multi-colored stalactites began to appear, mineral impurities turning them into painted pendants coated with the phosphorescent growths. Blunt-tipped stalagmites thrust ceilingward. They were accompanied by the ever-present music of dripping water.

  A faint rumble sounded ahead and they slowed cautiously. The noise turned out to be the song of a running underground stream. It ran parallel to their path, a bubbling, unceasingly cheerful guide and companion.

  They passed a hole in the cave's roof. Water poured through it and disappeared into a bottomless pond, looking for all the world like a piece of standard piping with the middle section removed.

  Further on, they encountered a miniature forest of helicites. These twisted, grotesquely contorted crystals of gypsum defied gravity in their swirling projections from floor, walls and ceiling. Luke had the feeling they were walking through a gigantic clump of glass wool. Here the reflections from the glowing plant life reached blinding proportions.

  In addition to the lichen-fungi, they were starting to see larger, more advanced varieties of light-generating vegetation growing from the ground and walls. Some looked like cantilevered mushrooms. They passed a tall stand of something resembling paralyzed bamboo encased in quartz. When the Princess accidentally bumped into one, they discovered another of its properties.

  There was a bong. Startled, Leia jumped aside, then experimentally gave the stem a sharp rap with her knuckles. The ringing was repeated.

  "Hollow, maybe," suggested a delighted Luke.

  "But are they vegetable or mineral?"

  "No telling," he admitted. He rapped another of the growths, was rewarded by a totally different ring. They exchanged smiles, and then the cave was filled with crude but sprightly tunes as the natural chimes sang under their hands. They grinned like a couple of mischievous children.

  Eventually they tired of this amusement, resumed their journey as Luke broke out two concentrate cubes and handed one to the Princess. He talked while examining the path they trod.

  It was unmistakably that, a pathway. "Look at the absence of big rocks along here," he was saying. "This has definitely been cleared for use. I don't see any footprints, though."

  "Ground's too hard," the Princess agreed. "But it's an exquisite place, a fairyland. Much more attractive than the surface. If Mimban is ever settled formally, everyone should live underground, I think." She executed a neat pirouette, evidently out of sheer pleasure. "It's so peaceful and clean down here, I almost-"

  The sentence ended in a startled scream and she started to vanish downward.

  Throwing himself forward and flat, Luke stretched out a desperate arm. She caught it above the wrist. Her hand slid along his forearm until it locked in his
. She hung like that, her hand in his, as she swung in emptiness. Luke felt his feet slipping as he fought to dig them into the hard ground.

  "Can't hold... Luke," she breathed urgently. "Use your other hand," he directed through clenched teeth. She reached up and her left hand went around his forearm. The motion dragged him forward another few precious centimeters.

  A large stalagmite thrust upward close by. If he was wrong and it had formed over the same crust the Princess had broken through, they'd both fall as the worm had. Every muscle and tendon in his body straining, he edged a little toward it. Releasing the precarious grip his left hand had on the ground, he threw it around the stone pillar. That arrested his forward slide, but now he was in danger of losing his hold on the Princess.

  Somehow, he managed to slowly inch backward along the ground, gravel digging into his chest and belly as he used the stalagmite as a brace. Continuing to move backward, he leaned into a sitting position, got his left leg propped against the outcropping. Now he was free to grab the Princess' wrist with his other hand.

  He shoved with his left leg, his thigh muscles quivering under the strain. The Princess emerged from the hole, moving toward him. There was a faint crumbling noise and the stalagmite started to crack at the base. Shifting his right leg behind the pillar along with his left, he pushed frantically with both feet.

  The Princess shot toward him. An instant later the stressed limestone gave way and the force of his shove sent Luke sliding toward the gaping blackness. Rolling away from it, the Princess caught him with a hand, her weight halting his slide. Now Luke rolled clear, came to a panting stop on her chest.

  For a long moment they lay like that, suspended in time. Then their eyes met with a gaze that could have penetrated light-years.

  Sitting back quickly, the Princess began brushing at her suit. Her coveralls were torn from being dragged across the jagged edge of the gap and the rubble coating the cave floor. Luke sat back, trying to knead some feeling back into his right arm.

  "Maybe," she ventured at last, "underground wouldn't be the best place to settle on this world after all."

  Wordlessly, they climbed to their feet. With Luke testing the ground ahead, they skirted the hole that had opened in the seemingly solid floor. A glance into it revealed a pit as bottomless as the Thrella well.

  Luke hesitated when a section of earth seemed to depress under his foot. He looked around, pointed to the stream that continued to swirl on its fluid way.

  "The ground looks firmer over there."

  "It also looked firm where I stepped," the Princess reminded him. Luke turned his gaze on the ceiling. Above the hole and the section of floor immediately ahead, a convex bowl showed in the roof. Above the stream and to its left the roof was filled with stalactites.

  "I think we'll be okay on the other side of the water," he decided. But when they crossed over they advanced slowly, Luke continuing to test the footing before them with a probing boot. The Princess followed behind him, her left hand locked in his right. Before long they had passed beyond the overhead bowl and the pit. Stalactites once more filled the roof from wall to wall.

  Just to be certain, he unlatched his saber. Activating it, he jabbed the lightblade into the ground ahead. There was a hissing and bubbling as stone turned molten around the blue shaft. Luke pulled it free, turned it off. Leaning over, he dropped a small pebble into the smoking hole. It hit bottom with gratifying speed.

  They walked on with more confidence, but their delight in the beauties of the underground wonderland was considerably diminished.

  "Let's hope we find that exit soon," Luke commented.

  But instead of turning sharply upward as they hoped, the path continued level. If anything, they seemed to be descending slightly. The tunnel continued to widen ahead of them. They turned a sharp bend, and emerged on a startling scene.

  A vast underground lake lay ahead of them. Despite the phosphorescent plant light, the lake was so wide that they could not see the far shore. The water was as black as the inside of the Emperor's mind.

  Their cleared path angled off to the left. It continued on to the water's edge before disappearing into it about a meter from the wall.

  "I guess this explains why we haven't encountered any signs of Coways," Luke mused. "This portion of the trail is underwater. It must rise and fall frequently, according to the rainfall on the surface." He followed the trail into the water, waded out until it was up to his chest before returning. "No good. It's too deep."

  "But we have to go on, I suppose," the Princess observed, not liking the look of the glassy black surface. "There's nothing to be gained by going back. "Are we still moving thirty-one east?"

  Luke checked his tracom. "A little south of that. The trail probably curves back on the opposite shore. I hope. But in a way, the lake's a good sign. Maybe it means that the ground on the other side starts to rise, because so much water collects here. I wonder how deep it is?"

  "No telling," the Princess mused. She walked into the water, bent over and felt a bit of the hidden bottom. "It slopes downward pretty steeply."

  Luke was looking past her. On the other side of the stream they'd been following grew a small forest of water plants, apparently stimulated by the steady flow of fresh nutrients here. The huge leafy pads floating on the black surface were a dull, yellow-brown color. They were round and pointed slightly at two ends where the upturned edges met.

  "You can't," Leia commented, "be thinking of traveling on one of those."

  "I'm not swimming," Luke told her, walking toward the forest. He hopped the stream, splashing through the opposite side. Leaning over, he saw signs of broken stems just beneath the surface.

  "Looks like some of the pads have already been snapped off. Probably the Coway use them."

  "Or else they broke free naturally," the Princess grumbled, so softly that Luke didn't hear her. She moved to join him.

  Tentatively, Luke stepped onto one of the flat pads. The one he was testing was two and a half meters in diameter. As he pushed down with his weight the yellow interior gave spongily. But it didn't break and his foot didn't push through.

  Unsteadily he moved onto the pad. His knees sank into the surface, which held. His mouth firming, he jumped into the air and came down as hard as he could with both knees. The pad sank up to his hips in the water, rebounded solidly.

  Convinced that the pad was lake-worthy, Luke rolled to its edge and looked over. There was enough light here for him to see the man-thick stem which secured the pad to the lake bottom.

  "I'm going to cut this one loose," he announced.

  The Princess looked skeptical. "With what? Your saber? I didn't know they operated under water."

  He gazed back at her solemnly. "They'd better."

  He slipped over the side, found himself treading cold water. Then he activated the saber and shoved it under the surface. Bubbles promptly broke the glassy water, but the hard blue light continued to gleam in the blackness, and there was no hint of a malfunction.

  Taking a deep breath, he slid into darkness.

  Fortunately the saber itself provided enough light to show him the stem. It took only a second or two to slice through the tough core. He noted with interest that the pad narrowed to a concave shape, instead of being flat across the bottom. That would give them at least an illusion of stability.

  Then he was breaking the surface, gasping for air and wiping water from his eyes after deactivating the saber. Once it was secured to his belt again, he put out a hand and tugged the freed pad close to shore.

  He employed the saber briefly again to cut a small hole in the rear of the pad. With a thin roll of survival cord he secured their craft to a stalagmite on shore.

  "These might do for propulsion!" the Princess called to him. She was further up the shoreline and slightly uphill. Luke moved to stand beside her.

  A series of transparent selenite crystals flowed from roof to floor here. Each was taller than a man, perhaps a couple of centimeters thick.
Phosphorescent growths on them gave them the look of windows in a church, and the knife-edged mineral was suffused in places with vermilion light.

  "They're almost too beautiful to break," Luke commented in admiration. "But you're right... they'll make good paddles." Using the invaluable saber once more, he cut loose four blades of the right size, shaped them with the blue beam for holding. Then they carried them down to the water and placed them carefully in the leprous lily they hoped would carry them across the lake.

  "Ready to go?" he asked finally. Leia hesitated, checked her wrist chronometer.

  "We've been walking for nearly sixteen hours, Luke." She gestured at the lake. "If we're going to try and cross that, I'd just as soon do it on a full night's sleep."

  "Or day's sleep," Luke agreed. They had no way of telling whether it was day or night in the world above.

  He found a rotting piece of one of the pad-growths marooned on shore and dragged it upslope. It would make an acceptable mattress.

  "You go ahead," he urged her, as they stretched out on the soft matter. "I'm not quite tired yet." She nodded, tried to find a comfortable position on the damp cellulose.

  In two minutes they were both sound asleep....

  Luke awoke with a start, sitting up fast and flicking his eyes in all directions. He thought he'd heard something moving. But there was nothing, only the steady trickle of the stream merging with the lake, and the sound of drops falling into the lake itself from overhead.

  After checking his timer he woke the Princess. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, asked, "How long?"

  "Nearly twelve hours. I guess I was exhausted, too."

  They broke out fresh concentrates, munched them hungrily. Luke brought water from the stream in a collapsible cup. They ate by the transparent brook, watching waterbugs swim anxiously back and forth.

  "I never dreamed concentrates could taste so good," the Princess observed, finishing the last of one cube and downing several swallows of water.

  "My appetite will improve when we see sunlight again," was Luke's comment. Out of excuses, he stared at the lake. "I hope this lake's not as wide as it looks. I don't like traveling on water."