Tunnels 06 - Terminal

with some curiosity.
    After a moment, Parry turned to Will, his face ashen. ‘The latest positional information from NASA is that the Earth has begun to deviate from its orbit. NASA says it’s unprecedented. They believe we’ve started to move away from the sun.’
    ‘Told you,’ Will said, as he struggled to sit up. ‘Mum, can you find out what they did with my clothes? And can you also find a doctor to do something about these tubes, because I can’t get very far with them still inside me.’
    ‘Why? Where are you going?’ Mrs Burrows asked.
    Will glanced at the view through the window again. ‘You need to get all those Colonists underground again, and I’m coming back there with you. Because I don’t think any of us should stick around here on the surface any longer than we have to.’
    ‘Bob – sorry to keep you hanging on like that,’ Parry said. ‘Yes, you’re right. Seems we’ve got ourselves another situation here. And it’s damned serious.’

 
     
     
    Chapter Twenty-three

    O ne week went by, then a second, and the tower didn’t allow Elliott to go outside. Although there was a risk that Limiters might still be alive and lying in wait for her, Elliott would try the door each day, but so far it had been to no avail.
    And not much in the tower would allow her to operate it, with the exception of the lift. Elliott had even tried the transporter on the penultimate floor, thinking that she might return Topsoil. She was incredibly concerned for Will, and had no way of finding out whether he’d survived the impregnation by Hermione. But again, try as she might, the surfaces of the console had remained grey and lifeless, with not the smallest sign of the blue lights. And the remote viewing device was completely unresponsive to her.
    Out of desperation, she also tried everything she could to extract the sceptre again, but the plinth wasn’t giving it up.
    Elliott assumed that the tower, and whatever it was part of, was running some sort of program that restricted what could be done inside it, but for how long she had no way of knowing. It was as if the program, once activated, had to run its course.
    And as she whiled away the hours in the tower, she wondered what had become of the New Germanians and the bushman. Perhaps, as the Styx had begun to materialise out of thin air, they had all fled. She couldn’t imagine Woody going very far from the tower in her absence, so she assumed that the Limiters must have caught him early on.
    And the three New Germanians might not even have been anywhere near the tower when the mass influx of Styx began. Perhaps they’d been safely out of the way in their city. However, it would have been the Limiters’ first port of call, so she didn’t give much for their chances unless they’d hopped on a boat and fled to one of the remote outposts she’d heard them talk about.
    And she began to think of the tower as a living thing, some sixth sense telling her that processes were going on within it. But if it did possess some form of sentience, then she asked herself if it had any consideration for her, because she could quite easily have died of starvation or thirst if it hadn’t been for the supplies left behind by the New Germanians in the entrance chamber. Elliott would make her way down there during the day, light a fire and prepare herself meals, although it had to be said she never felt very hungry. Perhaps, she wondered, that was why the tower felt it could lock her in. Because perhaps she didn’t actually need any sustenance while she was inside its walls?
    And then one day when she pressed her hand to the wall by the doorway, the tower suddenly freed her.
    The panel slipped open, and she stepped out into the now knee-high fields of green grass and saplings. She hadn’t wandered very far when she came across a Limiter’s body, almost stepping on it where it was stretched out in the newvegetation. Although the Limiter had already been ravaged by birds, he was lying with his rifle at his side, as if he had been waiting to ambush her.
    Elliott kept walking through the fields, aware that she might stumble across her father’s body.
    And there, in all those lush fields, she felt so very much alone, imprisoned in the middle of the world, with just the flocks of birds to keep her company.
    As her only travelling companions.
    Because Elliott was only too aware that the planet was returning home. She had used the word ‘Recall’, and that’s what it