Read Online Maelstrom by Anne McCaffrey - Free Book Online Page B

darting around as he tried to make out his surroundings.
    “Didn’t these people have an entrance to the lower regions, like yourselves? How about lava tubes?” Murel asked Ke-ola.
    “I don’t think there were tubes near enough to their settlement to give them cover. But they had canals, and an escape route, according to our people who had relatives here. But the meteors changed the landscape so much, it’s hard to find the old entrance point. Digging down until we strike a channel seems like our best bet.”
    When one of the shovels came back to the surface dripping water, Ronan and Murel carried Sky over to the hole and slipped down into it. Literally. The soil was first too warm for comfort, then very muddy, and the twins slipped, lost their footing, and slid down into the water, still clad in their space suits. Ronan hit a rock. Sky’s helmet tumbled away from him, landing in the stream of rapidly flowing water, no doubt from an artesian well of some sort.
    Before he could find it, he heard a splash.
    Hah! Free!
Sky’s thought reached him. He caught a sense of the otter swimming away, scouting ahead of them.
    When they found their footing, Ke-ola carefully handed the small Honu down to Ronan, then slid down himself.
    Murel patted the Honu’s shell. She couldn’t work up a lot of reverence for a sea turtle the way Ke-ola and his people and even Ronan seemed to, but she liked him. And he was very young as Honus went, and she sensed he was worried about them as well as about the other possible survivors they sought. Knowing the things Honus knew seemed to carry a lot of responsibility with it.
    Sky, water-slicked and excited, darted back again, shaking himself a bit.
Good water. Deep water. Deep enough for river seals. No salt, but deep.
    The twins undressed in the dark, strapped on their suits, and submerged themselves. Ke-ola and the Honu followed.
    The first passage was deceptively easy. Its end was marked by a snarl of live roots that formed an almost impenetrable wall. Even Sky got stuck trying to pass through its openings.
    Hah!
he said.
No swimming here.
    Honu conveyed the problem to his fellow turtles.
Go back,
he said to the twins and Ke-ola. They backed off a little ways and soon heard the hum, thump, grind, crash of the digger above them. They scrambled out of the new hole. The digger’s operator and Johnny conferred, then the driver got back into the machine, drove forward a short distance, and lowered the shovel again.
    “It’s going to take forever if we have to keep doing this,” Ronan complained.
    “We could cut through the roots with a laser, I suppose,” Marmie replied, “but it seems a shame to destroy the roots of some of the few organisms living on the surface of this desolate place. Besides, the laser might cut through to the far side and injure people who took refuge there.”
    Caution won out over speed. The twins would swim until they inevitably hit another barrier and once more had to haul out. Again they suited up, and waited inside a flitter with Sky, Ke-ola, and the Honu until the digger opened a new entrance beyond another impediment. Usually the blockage was caused by roots. Once, the water disappeared, hissing, beneath a huge chunk of meteor. Then all of them had to turn around and splash back to the previous hole before they emerged.
    It took endless hours. Although their night vision was good, the tunnels were usually cramped and there was little to see.
    Murel could feel Ke-ola’s spirits sinking a little more during each dark trip, though the Honu thought only,
Noooo, not here. Not yet.
    Often they had to wait quite a while for the digger to make its way over the cratered ground to reach the point above them.
    But each time they emerged, some of Ke-ola’s family were waiting at the hole’s opening, peering expectantly down at them.
    Marmie was among them when they climbed out of what seemed like the hundredth hole, muddy and discouraged. “I think that much as we hate