Cateran led Vexyna quickly through a maze of crates in the rear portion of Section Three in an attempt to shake off their followers. Around and through the crates they went until Cateran veered off to jump high onto the ladder on the wall. Vexyna followed and soon the two were high above Section Three.
The men were still running around the crates far below in Section Three as Vexyna and Cateran made their way along the metal path above Section Four.
Once the girls were positioned above the Mocolom, they stopped to catch their breath. The men were nowhere to be seen.
“Now we can sneak aboard the Mocolom through one of the upper hatchways,” Cateran informed Vexyna. “What happened to Meen?”
With her face cast down towards the ship, Vexyna uttered, “Her crystal shattered. She is dead.”
“Dead?” Cateran was shocked. The consequences of the shattered crystal hadn’t really sunk in before. Now both girls had to come to grips with the loss of their friend. “Well,” Cateran said, “is there anything we should do?”
“About?”
“A memorial service or rites or something for Meen?” Cateran asked.
“I don’t know about any special Illusian rites,” Vexyna answered. “But we can both say goodbye to her in our own way. We should return to Illusia eventually.”
“Do you think Meen suffered at all when she…?” Cateran’s voice trailed off.
“How do I think Phanta faced death? I wonder more how Phanta faced life.” Vexyna stared plainly at nothing.
“Are we carrying on to the eastern lab?”
“We should. Phantasmine is gone. There isn’t anything we can do about that, so let’s carry on. Everything for the journey east is just about in place. Now all we need to do is get aboard the Mocolom and find a safe spot to hide through the voyage.”
“I’ve never been inside a freighter before, so I wouldn’t know where to get in or where to hide,” Cateran confessed. “All I know is I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” Vexyna shot back.
Cateran tipped one shoulder toward the ground in order to slip the knapsack off her back. She undid the top flap and rummaged around inside. “What’s this?” she asked curiously as she pulled a rolled up piece of paper from the pack.
A thin satiny purple ribbon lightly bound the scroll of paper. Cateran pulled the ribbon up over the paper so the ribbon remained tied. Unrolling the paper, she discovered, “It’s a sketch of the inside of a freighter. This is Raj’s handiwork.”
Looking over Cateran’s shoulder, Vexyna noted the detail in the sketch. “Raj is quite a good artist.”
“It’s one of his specialties.” Cateran beamed. “The information he retrieves is accurate because of his sketches.”
“He’s even included a couple of exterior pictures,” Vexyna noticed and pointed them out to Cateran.
“Okay.” Cateran rotated the sketch to match it up with their position. “Over there,” she said, pointing down and to the left, “should be a good place to get aboard.”
They both looked from the sketch to the ship and back to be sure the hatch was exactly where Raj had drawn it. It was.
“How are we going to get down there?” Vexyna asked.
Cateran quickly surveyed the area. “We’ll hitch a ride on that crane,” she replied.
The crane in question was over fifty meters in height. Massive metal cables manipulated equally massive jaws on five different arms. “If we jump from that platform over there to the mid-section of the crane’s arms, we should be able to slide down the wires and slip in with the cargo. I don’t see anyone around except for the people operating the crane. All we have to do is stay out of their sights.”
Vexyna had a look down to the floor of Section Four. It was a staggering distance. “Are you sure about this?”
“It’ll be fun,” Cateran said with a daring smile. “Just watch me and do what I do.” She stretched her back and leg muscles before kneeling to put on the knapsack. Squaring the pack on her shoulders, Cateran moved cautiously out along the gangplank. “I’ll meet you at the mid-section between the crane’s arms.” With that, she leaped silently onto the crane. The gap between the platform and the crane was about four meters. She danced lightly around the one arm of the crane and motioned for Vexyna to join her.
As she made her way along the strip of metal that led out into the center of Section Four, Vexyna’s thoughts turned to the support pole in her house in Shojiki. There was, however, a difference between jumping from her balcony to the support pole and jumping from the walkway to the crane. The difference was about two meters across and forty or so meters down. Taking a deep breath, Vexyna backed up a few steps, then ran forward and leaped bravely across the chasm. She landed to the sound of her soft leather boot soles thumping against the metal of the crane. “Where to now?” Vexyna asked.
There were five arms on the crane. Each one was busy picking up crates and loading them in various openings in the freighter. Cateran pointed to one of the arms, at the end of which was a platform containing several large, loosely arranged crates. “We can hide among those crates, but we should be ready to move at any time because we don’t know who we’ll find waiting inside the Mocolom to store the cargo. Let’s get ready for when the arm reaches maximum height for fitting the crates into the cargo hold. That’s when the top of the crates will be above the eye level of the crane workers so we can sneak in among the crates.”
The girls worked their way cautiously, but quickly, to the appropriate arm and prepared to leap to the levitating crates. The moment arrived and they secreted themselves amongst the crates.
Cateran grabbed a bill of lading from one of the crates. “Lot fifteen: steel cases,” she read aloud. “Vangrash Research Laboratory. Let’s see if we get inside.”
They looked around and found a handy crowbar that had probably been left for the crew inside the freighter. Prying open one of the crates away from where anyone could spot them, the girls climbed inside the crate. Lying on its side, the steel case within the crate was six feet long and four feet high. This was enough room for the girls to sit up or lie down and there was extra room thanks to the size of the crate. They did their best to re-secure the lid of the crate and stopped to catch their breath.
It was dark inside the crate. A quick check assured them that air was flowing into the container through several small holes.
“Food,” Cateran said plainly. She rustled about in the knapsack. She pulled out one of the rolls she had picked up from Vexyna’s room in the castle of Illusia. Instead of eating it, she sat bouncing it off her nose. “Meen’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Vexyna answered in a solemn voice. “It was my fault. If I had watched where I was going, I wouldn’t have tripped and Phantasmine’s crystal wouldn’t have hit the floor and shattered. Through my negligence, I have killed a friend.”
“Hmmm,” Cateran pondered before finally biting into the roll. “Don’t you think Meen knew the risk, but wanted to chance it anyway in the hope you could lead her where she wanted to go?”
“Well-”
“Didn’t she say you might be able to lead her some place called Nogard?” Cateran interrupted.
“That is what she hoped.”
“Then Meen put her hopes and her life in your hands and trusted you.”
“And I killed her.”
“No, you didn’t kill her. That was an accident. What I’m trying to get through to you is that Phantasmine knew the risk she was taking. She felt it was worth the risk to leave Illusia. Otherwise, she never would’ve left.” Cateran finished the roll.
“I see your point,” Vexyna conceded. “I still can’t help feeling guilty, though.”
“We’ll go back to Illusia when we’re done with Doctor Dooty-Booty,” Cateran said while considering a piece of fruit. Instead of biting into the fruit, she handed it to Vexyna.
The girls' eyes were adjusting to the dim light provided by the holes in the crate.
Vexyna regarded the f
ruit in her hand, then she looked up at Cateran.
Cateran smiled. She was doing her best to keep Vexyna’s spirits up.
Vexyna's lips curled back in a half-hearted smile before she bit into the fruit. “Have we figured out how long this trip is going to take?”
“It would’ve taken two solid days of traveling by hopper from Illusia,” Cateran stated. “We had to ride west about a day and a half to get to the Mocolom. Now we’ll be heading back east and beyond to the eastern coast. That’s roughly four days by hopper.”
“But we aren’t traveling by hopper,” Vexyna argued. “The real question is: how fast do these freighters move?”
“And are there going to be stops along the way?” Cateran asked. She thought for a moment, then added, “It’ll probably take longer by freighter even at a faster speed than the hoppers.”
“Why’s that?” Vexyna was puzzled.
“The hoppers can fit through Ozoke Pass, but a freighter would be much too large,” Cateran explained. “Ozoke Pass runs through the eastern mountains and provides a gate from the interior of the continent to the eastern shore. The freighter will have to pass south of the mountains since the northern route is impassable.”
“So, how long do you think that will take?”
“The southern route will take us through the strange scrub lands and sand wastes to the extreme south of the Oweesh Desert. There are some pretty bizarre things wandering around that area, or so I’ve been told.”
“Time? How long will the trip last?” Vexyna was growing impatient. She wondered how long it had been since she had slept.
“With no stops along the way, I’d guess five days,” Cateran answered, looking at Vexyna with tired eyes.
“We have to find out if we will be stopping anywhere,” Vexyna said. “Right now, I think we could both use a nap.” She reached over and pulled the knapsack closer, then reached inside and extracted their sleeping rolls. The steel case afforded a cozy amount of room for the two of them.
“A nap sounds like a good idea,” Cateran agreed. “I’ll see about getting that information after a little snooze.” The two girls curled up inside their sleeping rolls and fell asleep.
There was no way of telling how much time passed while the girls slept fitfully.
The ship lurched and moved under them. The Mocolom was underway.
Cateran opened one eye to notice Vexyna looking at her. “Eh?” Cateran sleepily asked.
“I can only catch pieces of sleep,” Vexyna confessed. “It’s hard to unwind and stop thinking about everything that has happened.”
Yawning and stretching, Cateran said, “I suppose I should have a look around the ship.” She stopped to scratch her stomach before pulling Raj’s scroll from where she had left it. “This should help a great deal,” she said, waving the sketches in the air.
“Raj has been quite helpful,” Vexyna commented. She was snacking on a piece of fruit. “Those sketches will allow you to plan your route through the ship.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Cateran said as she unrolled the scroll. The light in the crate was dim. “I need light.”
“I can see.” Vexyna didn’t need to tell Cateran.
“How does that help me?” Cateran asked.
“I can read the plans of the ship to you and help you plot your course.”
“Okay, what do you see?”
“Do we have any idea which cargo bay we’re in?”
“Nope.”
“We need to know exactly where we are on the ship before can figure out where we want to be.”
“Guess I’ll have to go and have a look around without Raj’s help.”
“The cargo bays are all shaped the same and have the same layout. Can you see any of this?”
Cateran held the drawing up to her face and squinted. “No. It’s too fuzzy.”
“Maybe I can make a model of a cargo bay.” Vexyna had an idea. She pulled out eight rolls and a couple of pieces of fruit from the knapsack. Then she extracted several of the doughy snacks Raj had slipped into Cateran’s overalls. Vexyna began arranging the rolls in an octagon. She placed the fruit at opposite sides outside the octagon and, inside it, she placed the dough snacks at several locations. “There,” she said, wiping her hands together, “that should help. Slowly lower your hands and gently feel your way around the model I’ve just created.”
Cateran lowered her hands tentatively. She jerked back when she came in contact with the rolls. “Oh,” she said somewhat startled. “Oh, I get it. Okay. Let me see.” She ran her hands carefully over the diorama. Her hands rested momentarily on the pieces of fruit. “Are these large loading ramps?”
“Yes. Well spotted.”
“Hmmm,” Cateran continued. “Are these snacks, at four of the sides of the big shape, supposed to represent smaller doors?”
“Yes. Each smaller door leads to some sort of chamber between rooms,” explained Vexyna. “According to one of the side notes Raj has left on his sketches, the chambers rise and fall to help shift cargo from the bottom of one room to the top of the next.”
“The rooms are like giant levitators?”
“It would appear that way. The main cargo holds themselves are capable of rotating around their central points a full three hundred and sixty degrees. The mechanics behind all this must be astonishing. There are four main holds: two upper and two lower. Here’s hoping we’re in the upper hold.”
“We should be,” Cateran said, a bit surprised. “We came through the upper hatch.”
“That doesn’t mean we ended up in the upper hold. What if our crate got shifted down for some reason?”
“Okay, now that I know what I’ll be facing just outside this box, is there any direction you can point me in that may prove useful?”
“First thing’s first. We need to know which cargo hold we are in. Find that out and come back.”
Cateran nodded in the darkness. She stretched her body out as far as it would reach before compacting it quickly into a little ball. Uncurling herself, Cateran grabbed one of the rolls that had been part of Vexyna’s model. She scarfed it back swiftly.
Cateran stood up and lifted the crate’s lid.
Peering about the room in all directions, Cateran noticed their crate was surrounded by others. She could not see any of the eight walls of the cargo hold.
Cateran gently did a low flip over the side of the crate and landed on the skid underneath. Crouching beside the crate, Cateran tried to have a better look around, but other crates was all she saw.
Scrambling on top of the crates, Cateran stood up as tall as possible on the balls of her feet and looked around. No personnel could be seen. She was still not high enough to see the walls. Then she realized there might be crates lining the walls.
Cateran decided to pick a direction and move in a straight line until she found a blockage in her path she could not surmount. This, she thought, would have to be one of the walls. She jumped down off the crate and started her trek across the various other crates.
The bay didn’t seem large when it was packed with cargo and Cateran soon came to a spot where she couldn’t go any further. More crates blocked what should’ve been the wall in front of Cateran. Cateran made note of the direction from whence she had come and then picked a new direction along the curve of the wall. She thought she’d follow it around. There couldn’t possibly be crates covering all of the walls of the cargo hold. There had to be doors somewhere.
The crates were only stacked a maximum of four meters high, so Cateran had no compunction about leaping from crate top to crate top. Actually, she enjoyed it. Cateran loved the feeling of freedom gymnastics provided. She made a game out of making her way around the room. She would set targets for her hands or feet to hit when she landed on the next crate. Cateran often kept herself busy with little games like this.
As she flipped around the room, Cateran suddenly took note of the pieces of paper attached to some of the crates. She stopped for a moment to loo
k at one of these sheets. She couldn’t figure out what it said was in the crate, but she could make out that the crate belonged in upper cargo Bay Two, Section Three.
She retraced her path and shifted the lid on the crate Vexyna was in so light could stream in. Soon, she was sitting in the crate with Vexyna. “I found out where we are,” Cateran informed Vexyna. “We’re in Section Three of upper cargo Bay two.” She helped herself to one of the handy rolls. She continued between bites, “I saw it on a piece of paper stuck to one of the crates. I checked a few others to make sure.”
Vexyna unraveled the scroll containing Raj’s freighter sketches. Scanning the document, she spotted the upper cargo bays. “Here we are,” she said, pointing to a spot on the paper. “Upper cargo Bay Two.”
“There’s Section Three,” Cateran pointed out. “Where’s the galley?”
Vexyna gave her friend a sidelong look. “That would be what you’d want to find first, wouldn’t it?”
Grinning sheepishly, Cateran muttered, “It’s always good to know where the food is when you don’t know how long a journey is going to take.”
“The galley appears to be at the rear of the freighter,” Vexyna said while glancing around the sketches. “The front and underside of the freighter are used for cargo. The upper and back sides of the freighter house the crew and engines.”
“Is the galley on the same level we’re on?”
“Yes, it should be.” Vexyna traced an invisible line along a route through the sketch of the freighter. “Both the galley and this cargo hold are on the upper level. The cargo hold is at the front of the ship. The galley is at the back. The galley isn’t far from the bridge. The bridge is where you can find out our route.”
Cateran thought a moment before asking, “Where’s the galley in relation to the engine room?”
“Engine room?”
“Sure,” Cateran explained, “The people in the engine room will know our route as well as anyone on the bridge. It’s easier to sneak around a noisy engine room than it is the bridge of a ship.”
“I get your point. The engine room is at the back of the ship. It’s on the lower level.”
“I should be able to plot a route that will take me from this cargo hold to the galley, then down to the engine room and back.”
“I’ll wait here,” said Vexyna.
“You should come with me,” Cateran advised her. “It’ll do you good to get some circulation going. Besides, this is going to be a long journey and I doubt you’re going to want to spend the whole time cooped up in this box.”
“It wouldn’t bother me,” Vexyna stated.
“Okay, let me do the route once and when I come back we’ll see how you feel.”
“Fine,” replied Vexyna. “I’ll take the time to skim through more of my mother’s diary.”
Cateran stood up and stretched, then headed off toward the galley.
Once again, Vexyna was alone with her thoughts.
Chapter 10: Dr. Deathbrain, I Presume