Chapter 15: Storm Barrier
Stella awoke with a start. It was cold and gloomy, and she didn’t know where she was. She certainly wasn’t lying on the soft moss in the landscaped gardens. The ground was hard, and a sharp rock was digging itself into her back.
“Helix?” Stella called out tentatively. “Wendell? Are you there?” Her eyes were gradually getting used to the dim light. She searched along the ground with her hand. It felt dusty and rough, until her fingers touched something rubbery. It moved, and Stella snatched her hand back.
“Doom,” a voice moaned in the dark and then another, “Doom. Doom. Doom.”
Stella sprang to her feet and could feel, rather than see, a number of objects scattering around her. Peering at the small crawling creatures, she recognised them as Telallamorphs. Whereas every other Telallamorph Stella had seen was a bright colour, these were pale and sickly. They also seemed to have lost all co-ordination. Stella watched as they tried to clamber on their feet, often stumbling into each other. One of them had attached itself to her shoe and wouldn’t let go.
“Get off of me!” Stella whispered, shaking her foot in an effort to disentangle the Telallamorph.
She realised that she now wasn’t in the royal gardens and tried to be as quiet as possible.
“What are you doing?” she hissed at the Telallamorph, peeling it off her shoe. It just looked vacantly up at her.
“Doom!” it replied.
As she held the Telallamorph in her hand, Stella could feel that it was pockmarked. She examined it and recognised the unmistakeable teeth marks. “You’ve been chewed,” Stella murmured.
The poor Telallamorph showed signs of Helix’s rough handling. ‘Surely Helix wouldn’t have started that again,’ she thought. Stella wondered why the sickly looking rubber man hadn’t smoothed himself back into shape, as she had seen others do before.
It smelt damp and musty, a lot like her grandmother’s cellar, so Stella concluded she was somewhere underground. The walls had been roughly hewn out of rock. What light there was came from a glow further ahead, and Stella warily made her way towards it.
As she got closer to the source of the light, she could hear the sounds of digging. A shaft of light shone down from a hole in the roof of the tunnel, and there were metal handholds knocked into the side of the tunnel beneath it. Stella climbed them and peered over the lip of the entrance, ready to duck down again at the first sign of trouble. She could see that she was in a vast pit, and all around her figures were digging into the floor with picks and shovels. Most of them were the strange, pale Telallamorphs, but there were also much larger figures toiling away. None of these figures looked dressed for heavy work; they were wearing tattered shorts and T-shirts.
Stella couldn’t see anyone forcing them to be carrying out this backbreaking labour. There did seem to be something unnatural to the methodical clang of the picks, as they burrowed through the rock floor. It took Stella a moment to realise what it was. ‘Nobody’s saying anything!’ she thought. The only sound she could hear was the digging and an insistent whistling. It was like a heavy gale of wind blowing through a narrow passageway. It seemed to come from grey billowing clouds that covered the sky. Stella traced the swirling mass to the horizon that covered the whole digging site in a vast dome.
Stella pondered her decision: either stay in the dank tunnel, or risk crossing the pit. ‘Wherever I am. That digging doesn’t look too much fun,’ Stella thought to herself. ‘I don’t know how I got here, but I think I’d better find a way of getting back,’ she resolved and climbed out of the tunnel. She tried to keep out of sight by dashing between the piles of rubble that formed mounds on the pit floor, although she needn’t have worried about any of the diggers giving her away, they didn’t even glance in her direction.
As she crept past one of the tall diggers who was clattering at the rock, something tugged at Stella’s memory. She was sure she had seen him before, and Stella inched closer. The digger had the same look as someone who came from the Pilades Cluster; Stella recognised the tusks and large nose that she had seen on Vanga-Tron and Jerbil-Din. The memory came back to her in a flash; she had seen him in the skull cave when the Greddylick had put the mind-squeezer on her. He was one of the ghostly figures in the crowd. Although he had looked a lot less ragged then, he still had on the sandals and baseball cap that he had been wearing when his mind had been taken.
With a sense of horror trickling through her, Stella realised where she was. Prince Fawcus said that the Greddylick had enslaved those of his people who had lived by the Doom Gate. The other figures must have been part of Vanga-Tron’s tour party that had disappeared in the Phantom Quadrant. She didn’t know how, or why, but she found herself exactly where she was so desperate to get to last night, at the site of this Doom Gate.
Peering around her, Stella tried to get a glimpse of anything that looked vaguely like a door. At first glance, all she could see was the thick grey of the strange cloud. However, in the midst of the smoke, she spotted a large dark smudge that looked like a building of some sort. Stella stumbled her way towards it. The ground was very uneven in places, and Stella found herself crawling most of the way, trying to keep out of sight. The distance wasn’t as far as she had first thought, but by the time she had reached it, her elbows were grazed and she had a number of new bruises on her knees.
Although she could see that some great structure loomed over her, she couldn’t make out any details. A grey wall of cloud seethed in front of her, blocking her way. The whistling noise had become louder too and was now a deafening howl. Stella saw one of the pale Telallamorphs wander a little too close to the threshold of the barrier. It got sucked into the swirling mass and was tossed into the air. A streak of static lightning jagged through the storm and struck the unfortunate Telallamorph. Stella was sure that the wind gave a screeching jeer at the melted puddle of goo that was now the Telallamorph.
Careful not to get too close, she followed the cloud along until she reached a corner of the barrier. It was there that she could see where the spiteful substance was coming from. Jutting out from the floor were two metallic spouts, moulded into the form of gigantic heads. The heads faced in opposite directions, and each had a gaping mouth that spewed out gusts of the grey smoke. On the side of each of the jaws there was a huge wheel, and one of them had a piece of rag attached to it. The wind from the mouths caused the scrap of cloth to writhe frenetically in the air.
‘Well, these wheels must do something,’ Stella thought. She knelt down and tried to turn the wheel with the rag attached to it. It wouldn’t budge. Then she tried to turn it the other way. It moved slightly, causing the jaws to edge together. She tugged at the wheel with all her strength and managed to close the mouth on one of the heads a bit more. A sliver of a gap appeared between the floor and the cloud. The wind seemed to whine in outrage, but Stella ignored it and turned the wheel again. She kept on turning until there was a gap in the barrier large enough for her to crawl under. She wriggled through the gap, careful not to touch any of the cloud. Tendrils of mist tried to reach out for her, and sparks of static spat in frustration.
The smudge Stella had seen on the other side of the barrier was a gigantic pyramid built in layers of perfectly formed marble cubes. These formed steps that led up to a flat platform. A cylindrical shape was outlined at the top of the pyramid, and there were two figures moving beside it. One tall gangling silhouette was unmistakably the Greddylick.
Stella desperately hoped that it wasn’t looking down. She crept to the base of the stones, but froze at a clattering sound. It sounded like something was falling down the pyramid. She shrank back against the marble, expecting the Greddylick to pounce on her at any moment.
A metallic globe bounced off the step above her and rebounded over Stella’s head. Stella gasped. It was the mind-squeezer, glinting in front of her on the floor. The Greddylick must have been careless and dropped it down the pyramid.
Stella didn’t ask too many questions about how it had g
ot there, just thanked the luck that had given her this opportunity. Stella made a dive for the globe and desperately tried to spy out the nearest mouth funnel. Lying on the floor, clutching the mind-squeezer, Stella spotted one of the strange heads piping out mist. It didn’t look that far away, if she could just get outside, she might have a chance. Rolling to her feet, she sprinted to the storm barrier mouth.
Stella heard a shriek of rage behind her, but dared not look back. She ran as fast as she ever had done and could hear her heart thumping and the ragged sound of her breath. She reached one of the mouth funnels and began to turn the wheel on its jaw. The wind wailed loudly at her as the mouth slowly shut.
A gap opened in the barrier, just large enough for her to get through. The peach tinge of Telallamorph sunlight stretched underneath the mist, and Stella lurched towards it. Just as she felt as if she had made it, she felt herself being wrenched backwards. She was spun around to face the eyeless visage of the Greddylick. It had grabbed her ankle and was holding it in a vice-like grip.
“No!” she yelled at him.
She could see the Telallamorph sky behind her and began to frantically kick at the Greddylick’s bony hands. The Greddylick was too strong, though, and dragged her up by her ankle so she was dangling upside down. She still hugged the mind-squeezer, but the Greddylick plucked it out of Stella’s grip.
“I’d better take that,” it hissed. “I wouldn’t want to see it broken. Besides, didn’t Doctor Dodds tell you not to take things that weren’t yours?”
“Then give me back my pendant, then, you thief!” she choked back at the Greddylick defiantly.
“Not very nice,” the creature cackled. “Not very nice to call me bad names. Especially when I’d hoped to introduce you to some old friends of mine.”
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