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“Is everyone okay?” the Earthborn engineer shouts. “Someone get the medics!”
I quickly assess the damage. Three of the Feeders were injured in the fall—one’s
shoulder was sliced by a shovel blade, one is limping, and another has a knot on his head. We’re streaked in mud, but the air down here is blessedly cooler and the drop was less than seven meters.
The others all turn to me, the whites of their eyes starkly visible in the dim light. “We’re all going to be okay,” I say. I glance up, and they follow my gaze. Already, the people above us are securing a rope and organizing a rescue.
My eyes turn to the tunnel. “Where the frex are we?” I mutter.
Tiernan touches the wall of the tunnel. He turns to me, eyes wide in the darkness. “I don’t think this is supposed to be here,” he says.
I run my hands over the hard-packed earth along the wall. It’s smooth and cool to the touch. Above me, everyone is yelling and shouting—for ropes, for doctors, for the military. But the tunnel goes on and on, into the darkness and the unknown. “What made this?” I whisper.
I step forward. It’s so dark—as if the inky blackness is eating the light. The tunnel’s ceiling arches, but the floor is flat, with thick grooves cut along the bottom. Because the tunnel is almost three meters wide, all I can think about is that whatever creature made it must have been huge. My mind fills with images of worms twice as tall as me or long-nosed, sharp-clawed, overgrown moles that could eat me with a snap of their pointy jaws.
“Elder!” The voice cuts through the darkness and chaos, and I squint up at Colonel Martin, peering over the edge of the collapsed hole. “Any injuries?” he barks.
“Some!” I call.
“We’re coming down!”
Before I have a chance to do more than step back out of the way, a dozen ropes are thrown into the tunnel and camouflaged military men rappel down. They go first to the three injured men, but there’s no doubt about it—they’re hustling to get us out of the tunnel as quickly as possible. For the very first time, I see real fear in the military men’s faces. Their eyes dart nervously as they wrap the ropes around my people and start hauling them up.
I ignore the soldier trying to get me to come closer so I can be dragged back up to the surface of the planet and instead squat down, looking at the grooves along the ground. They are cut deep and straight, almost as if wheels made the marks, but when I touch the dirt, I feel something abnormally smooth. I dig my fingers into the dirt and remove . . . something.
It’s about the size of my palm, thin, and clear as glass. I hold it up to the light and see a golden sheen to the surface.
A scale? I think. At least that’s what it looks like. My mental image of a massive worm burrowing into the tunnel is replaced by a monstrous snake with crystalline scales.
The scale is plucked from my open hand. I’m about to protest when one of the soldiers yanks me up—Chris. “It’s not safe down here!” he shouts. He loops the rope under my arms and tugs on it to signal the people on the ground to start pulling me back up.
As I reach the surface, I blink in the bright light of the suns. I’m shuffled from Earthborn doctors to Kit, who scans me quickly for injuries. I ignore her worried fretting and keep my eyes on the collapsed tunnel. As soon as Chris is pulled back up, he goes to Colonel Martin. They talk briefly, but I notice the flash of light as the scale I found passes from Chris’s hands to Colonel Martin’s.
“I’m very happy to report that there are no serious injuries!” Colonel Martin booms, and the crowd around me cheers. “We’re closing the dig site for the rest of the day, however, to give the military a chance to inspect this . . . unusual . . . land formation. I don’t believe it’s dangerous, but your safety is our top concern, and we’ll make sure that there is no threat before we continue. ”
My people are all to happy to disperse at this—digging the latrines was hard work, and it’s unbearably hot—but I keep watching Colonel Martin. The scale-like thing is gone, hidden in one of his pockets, and he’s making no attempt to hide the military involvement as he orders groups of men back down into the tunnels to inspect what’s there.
“What kind of animal would make a tunnel that large?” I ask him. We haven’t seen that many animals—mostly small forest creatures that scurried away before we could get a good look—and the pteros wouldn’t make tunnels underground. Besides, the scale was nothing like their bumpy reptilian skin.
My mind flashes to the strange animal tracks we found near the shuttle after we first landed. There is much to this world we have yet to discover.
Colonel Martin keeps his eyes on the men descending down the hole.
“This tunnel is very close to the colony,” I continue. “Perhaps the ruins aren’t safe. Maybe we should go somewhere else. ”
Colonel Martin’s mouth tightens. “It’s a military matter, Elder,” he says finally. “We’ll determine if there’s a threat. ”
“Really?” I ask. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
His eyes flick over to me, but he doesn’t maintain eye contact. “I need you to focus on your people,” he tells me. “And I’ll focus on the land. ”
That’s no answer, and we both know it.
With the latrine site closed, the only other thing I can do to help is work with the group laying water pipe. They’ve already set up a simple pump at the colony, and now it’s just a matter of connecting pipe from it to the lake, our source of fresh water. It’s much easier work, and there’s something cathartic about the monotony of it. My body focuses on dragging the pipe and connecting the pieces while my mind races, trying to solve the mysteries of Centauri-Earth, Colonel Martin’s strange silence among them.
Before I know it, we run out of pipe. “We’ll go down and help the men laying pipe from the lake,” I tell the Earthborn engineer who’s managing the project.
He frowns. “Colonel Martin said no one was allowed down there. ”
