Page 16 of Spectral Seas (Spectral Worlds #2)

T HE FIRST OF the wide terraces they descended past were cut smooth and covered with a blue-green patina that suggested they had been mined clean ages past. They were latticed with flood lights, still conveyors, and all other matter of rigging, but were devoid of life. As the lift slid further down, teams of miners came into view. First a scant few, three repairing a conduit, another piloting a small container train, then more as they went deeper.

The sterile white LEDs lining the inner edge of Leta’s visor cast shadows across her sullen face.

“You going to make it?” Abby asked aloud.

“Sure,” she said, gazing past him. “I’m going to be fine. I’m surprised that we’re not affected by the pressure.”

“It’s the suits,” said Abby. “They’re pressure resistant.”

“Our species,” said Uhggwa, “is able to descend easily at will. The pressure has no effect on our anatomy. The synthetics were designed with the same ability.”

“Leta,” said Abby, “do your sensors indicate how far down we are? ”

Leta tapped her forearm, igniting a console on the sleeve of her suit. “Hmm,” she said.

“Hmm, what?”

“The deep earth sensors don’t operate the same way in the planes.” She tapped the console in search of other measurement parameters. “None of the sensors do, really. Except the temperature. It’s rising. Uhggwa, you said you circulate water through the depths to regulate the temperature. That’s the purpose of the pool, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Uhggwa. “The pool dissipates the heat.”

“I can feel it,” said Leta.

As they descended, the glow grew brighter and soon, they were bathed in the light from below, and the pool around them lacked any shadow at all.

From beneath them came a soft rumble and the lift lightly tremored.

“Do not worry,” said Nahl. “It comes fast.”

“It comes fast?” Abby asked as he clutched chain link.

“It’s another lift,” said Leta. She was gesturing toward her feet.

Far down the neighboring diamond fiber cable, another dark cage spewed founts of streaming bubbles in its wake as it pressed upwards. The cage passed the group with a loud whoosh. Their cage shook as the other passed, the turbulence causing each of them to brace themselves, then the ascending cage was gone, racing up to the platform above.

“It comes fast,” Nahl said again, his thin lips forming the hint of a smile.

Abby returned the smile and said, “So it does.”

~*~

It was after they descended through yet another lift bay that the source of the great light below began to take form: a towering, fifty-meter semi-circle opening to the side of the great silo pool—a giant replica of the perfectly carved tunnel at the surface where the Viridian ship had docked—and moving within, hundreds of mustard suited syn workers.

The operator eased the lever back and the lift came to a swift rest.

When the accordion door was pulled to the side, Nahl, Uhggwa, and his guard were quick to exit the cage.

Abby and Leta stopped on the edge of the platform. From there, just as the other platforms they had passed above, a girder pier extended over the abyss to the edge of a wide smooth terrace; and beyond that, the huge, illuminated, half-dome entrance to the mine.

“Do you see that?” asked Leta.

“The spectacle of architecture near the earth’s core?” asked Abby. “It’s hard to miss.”

“I mean the ripple,” she said, “that faint ebbing across the face of the opening.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. I think that’s a wall.”

“It must be a force-field like the one surrounding Ghrauk.”

They followed their guides across the girder pier and over the terrace. As they approached the massive mouth of the mine, it became evident that their assumption was correct. The inside was dry, the distortion ripple at its face a force field similar to the dome covering the Viridian Citadel, and as they broached it the water seamlessly fell behind, no wet on their suits, nor puddles at their feet. The grand light that illuminated the pool outside appeared to be emitting from the perfectly smooth, high, carved cavern that stretched into the distance before them. The floor of the grand hall brimmed with endless, neatly stacked rows of containers, and a multitude more of the busy mustard suit syns .

“Welcome,” said Nahl, “to the Bah-Moo-Da mine.”

~*~