Tunnels 06 - Terminal Read Free Page A

snarled, then unceremoniously heaved her away into the darkness.
    Jiggs was checking Drake’s pulse again when he heard him trying to say something, although it was little more than a murmur. ‘Take it easy there, old man. Just you hang on,’ Jiggs tried to comfort him, forced to shout over the din of the Crystal Belt. He unhitched his medical pack from his belt, fishing out a syrette of morphine. ‘Something for the pain,’ he said to Drake, as he jammed the syrette against the injured man’s thigh.
    It was only then that Jiggs felt the moisture on his face and looked up sharply. He had become so accustomed to bowlingalong at speed through this low-gravity environment that he’d completely forgotten he and Drake were still very much on the move.
    ‘No!’ Jiggs just had enough time to yell as they ploughed straight into a huge globule of water. Although Jiggs didn’t have much of an opportunity to gauge its size, it was around twenty feet in diameter. At least, it was until they hit it.
    Their momentum was such that it disintegrated into thousands of smaller droplets. And then there were more of these suspended mega-droplets of all sizes in Jiggs’ path. Coughing from the water he’d inhaled, he simultaneously tried to shield Drake’s face, dodge the larger droplets and fire up his booster, which had taken such a dousing that it had gone out.
    As he attempted to protect Drake from another soaking, Jiggs’ feet skimmed the circumference of a droplet the size of a house – this one didn’t break apart but wobbled like a giant jelly. ‘Space surfing!’ Jiggs exclaimed, as he managed to restart the booster, then frantically sought some unoccupied air space. He needed a safe place to stop and administer some urgent first aid to Drake.
    In a clearing of smaller droplets, he made out an angular and familiar shape.
    ‘What the …?’ he yelled. He really couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. He tried to use the booster to reach it, but overshot and had to backtrack. As he jetted them both closer, he was able to confirm his first impression.
    It was a Short Sunderland – a seaplane that had been out of regular service for nearly fifty years and was these days more likely to be found in an aviation museum. It was a sizeable aircraft, capable of carrying a good twenty-four passengers. One wing had been torn off and the cockpit was badly damaged,but the rest of the fuselage seemed to be intact apart from a few holes in the tail section.
    Still not believing what he was seeing, Jiggs manoeuvred towards it as he remembered the Russian submarine in Smoking Jean, and what Drake himself had said about pores opening up on the surface from time to time. So could some twist of fate be the reason that this seaplane had been sucked down too? Caught in a whirlpool that had brought it all the way down to this inner space?
    Much of the white paint remained on the fuselage, although it was stained by patches of rust, particularly around the rivets. And long tendrils of some kind of black algae had anchored itself in clumps all over the exterior, waving in the air currents like fine black hairs.
    Reaching the large float under the surviving wing, Jiggs braced himself against it, then with a push of his legs directed himself at a door on which Emergency Exit had been stencilled. He tugged on the handle. It refused to open, so he used his handgun to shoot out the lock and hinges. With another tug, the door came away with a burst of rust. Jiggs allowed it to float off, then entered the aircraft with Drake.
    Although the windows amazingly weren’t broken in this section of the seaplane, everything was damp inside – the fabric of the seats and the carpet almost rotted completely away and covered with a grey slime. In one of the rows Jiggs spied two skeletons. Their bony arms were clasped around each other and from the way their skulls were touching, there was no question they’d been in a final embrace at the moment of