26.
I was too much not fallen in a desert zone away from my objective, but even too nearby; the mine was not in sight, but the exabyte gave her/it for me to course of look.
Then I understood: I was to hundred meters from the edge of the canyon and the mine it was found over, few more than two kilometers in horizontal, but very, very more in low.
I walked with calm up to the ridge and I referred me the eyes: the canyon was boundless, it didn't even seem a canyon; under my feet there was a rocky precipice covered in prevalence by sands color rust that descended gradually, to lines sweet, to lines vertical, for at least eight kilometers to the down.
There under, there was after all a vast flat zone, put in a ditch in comparison to the surrounding lowlands. It was already in shade despite the sun it was not to the horizon yet.
I lifted the eyes horizontally sinking in the panorama; that, beninteso, didn't offer anything: the opposite scarp of the canyon was not in sight, since it was found there four hundred more kilometers in, over the bending of the planet.
The exabyte pointed out where the lowland under of me as the place the mine it rose; from there where I was I didn't see anything else other than sand and rocks. Eight kilometers. An endless descent, to less than not to effect a checked fall. I was not certain to be able of it and if I/you had lost the control I would have found to cross that slope to rout of neck, with the risk to shatter me on some pietrones unexpected.
A sudden shine attracted my attention: on the fund of the canyon, to a pair of kilometers from the lowland, it was risen small but unmistakable the silvery outline of the terrestrial ship. The astronauts had arrived before me.
I didn't have to waste precious minutes, it was time to go down. This meant to walk or to race for a beautiful po.' Questo significava… Anchise.
This time, however, I didn't see badly the thing; if that buffoncellos you/he/she was reappeared, I would have resolved every problem deambulatorio but I would have maintained the necessary lucidity to help the mission to continue him/it. You/he/she was behaved very well, actually to then, even if it rather showed him embarrassing. But I didn't refuse him/it: it was expression of a part of me, perhaps the easiest and creative.
I individualized a favorable run and I started to go down, with my awkward stool walk; I was slow in unacceptable way, so a rhythm dictates me and I increased the walk. I spun better some, but everything I was a punishment. I remembered well the trial in which I had channeled Anchise; I could not recreate him/it, but I encouraged him/it: I created one space of his and I slipped me in a less pretentious trial to do yes that my brain he allowed to go. Nothing. I forced the things, annoyed. I produced me same the bases for an extraneous trial, reserving him resources and motivations. I had of it enough: I continued to corricchiare skidding here and there, going on so I would have reached after all the alert one in two good orettes.
«Anchise, but that devil waits?» I murmured.
Later, as it was of necessity, I noticed that I descended gradually with acclarato sghimbescio.
«Or cotal owner of this body, orsù, is not you distinguished the esitanza of your footstep?» I said me, but not exactly me.
«Eh, thing?» I did.
You/he/she could not be Anchise, it was not his/her style. A trial had departed, but not the his: the voice was courtly and pompous. I perceived the seriosità of base of it. I had put too much there of myself, there inside, inhibiting purity and spontaneity.
«Or insane, it releases the limbs and left cader; if, as it seems, reasons with the seder, are better to lean among the sod. Deh! Without the helmet let's throw of under, to narrow hole as a terno to the lottery.»
It was always my burlesque side some indecent and formal.
«Ehm, already» I said, not knowing whether to encourage him/it. Or if I had to encourage him/it. «Make to see me.»
I abandoned my body, hopeful, closing again me in my contemplative trial. I was about to fall, naturally, but something stuck out a hand that rejected upward me.
«Oplà!» my scholar brother exclaimed.
A big stone that was on the run and we reverted further with a pleasant soft thud jumped. Two hands lifted the body squirting he/she anchors aloft it: I avoided for a hair the protuberances faceted of a rock and rather a third hand you it leaned him to push with more strength toward my destination. I began to is go eradicated and the thing worried me a pochino.
«I now fear: you make resistance, with I frighten him/it; vil flatulence, budellesco wind, you maneuver a great deal your limbs from stupid. Deh! It observes now: we quicken the motion, race of cracked ch'è without scrotum.»
It was not kind but it was damnedly good; perhaps how much Anchise. I started to jump in regular way, with system and rhythm; sometimes it made only him necessary an extra jump to avoid obstacles. I rotated on myself sticking out a hand to complete a leap; when it it was necessary to jump particularly aloft, the hands to capolinare from under the body they were two. I reached the edge of a vertical line, at top speed. I jumped: it was an endless fall of winds meters that you/he/she would have left without breath whoever. When I was about to retouch the ground, my four arts folded up him showing downward the horizontal forearms. Impattai in soft way on the tilted surface and dusty and I taken to skid from perfect skier, until a costone of rocks me he protected from now on. The braccias opened in unison of release, making lever, and they dashed aloft me bringing the thick obstacle to climb over me to continue later immediately the run on a path ciottoloso. I started over jumping reducing at the most the contact with the ground. They were few minutes that I raced, yet I was already fifty-fifty run. I thought that I was indeed an incompetent, but there was luckily a friend that always helped me in the moment of the need.
«Or worthy, be me serene and leave me trust; if you fear less when every thing burns, there where we go we will leave the sign. Deh! Strength and courage, work together; or wise, accresciam the speme» it declaimed the friend.
«Of accord, of accord» I murmured.
The steep one changed structure: it was a great deal always steep, however from now on to me numerous dark and threatening rocks were protected, full of protuberances, prepared in casual but rather homogeneous way; there was a myriad of sandy, narrow and twisted paths, that you/they wound among the rocks crossing himself/herself/itself and melting himself/herself/itself among them, for then to separate he/she anchors him in separate directions. My body took a dusty stradello and followed the tortuosities of it with mastery; I always rolled, but the extemporaneous pushes were in prevalence side. You discard on discards, always to the last moment, they brought me to slanting accelerations that ache bore; not for physical reasons, but because they had the tendency to confuse the few confused ideas that crowded me the mind. I tried to peer at under there for understanding what I would have found, but the vision of the lowland me he/she offered him to lines. I entered the obscurity. The sun was invisible, there, distant as we were from the level of the ground on which I was fallen.
I had the impression of an ample ledge crestata, tall about ten meters, perhaps hundreds, that it coasted along the flat area which I hoped to arrive everything whole. This jagged rocky frame formed an enough wide U that melted him with the portion of ridge that I was going down. It was a stony and sour semicircle that paradoxically surrounded a zone cover of low dunes and sweets; perhaps it was a crater, formed him really at the base of the slopes of the canyon. The exabyte would have given me some information, but I preferred to leave to go me to that daredevil run hoping that it ended soon.
I was perhaps twos bystanders of the run when I, in the occasion of a leap in vertical, the unmistakable forms of the dragonfly under of me; it was distant, leaned on the ground sandy but near to the wall of rock that I crossed. Lights or activity of some kind were not seen; you/he/she was parked there simply.
To flashes I began to notice qualcos'altro: in the ledge, to few meters above the lowland, a dark opening of
irregular form hacked him. It had to be the entry to the mine.
It was a natural cavern, and it was not the alone one: that whole almost vertical hanging was covered with ravines, as if something in past had been made to explode down there and numerous and deadly splinters had penetrated the stone of the slant sinking in depth in the rocky layers.
I was about to reach after all the slope, with the humor that improved of meter in meter, when I saw that the last part of the journey was tremendously steep. To that speed I would have detached an along endless leap and I would be blurted who knows me where, there under.
«Alas!» my galloper exclaimed.
It resembled too much me: Anchise would never be worried.
I had to think about something, and in hurry. The trial that had conducted me until there began to upset him, I had to take in fist the situation. I expanded my process of strength: it was not difficult, there was there too much indeed of me inside; riacquisii immediately the possession of all of my faculties and definite for the only thing that I knew how to do well: I braked.
Done ever try to brake on the sand? I skidded in messy way, lifting from now on to me a beautiful ditch in rapids growth. All and four the hands were stretched out in before, with an ability of equilibrium that I would not be me expected. The ditch magnified and was crushed against the solid back of a rock, I slipped on its surface trying to grab its prominences; my fingers were efficient, but I scratched without success only. The rock ended and I found me for air smanacciando.
I was above the last reasonable slope before the abyss; I climbed over him/it for half, of a leap, and concerned on the solid. I succeeded in amortizing with the hands, but I tumbled in decomposed way bumping all the stones and pietroni of the outskirtses. Ugly hits, but at least my speed it damped him quite a lot. Here, few meters and I would be fallen of under. I inserted more deeply the hands in the sand that I was able reaching to touch the stony fund; I anchor, but it was not enough. I was on the edge, scurrying about, almost firm, but inactivity won and lost every grip. I fell. I don't know of how much meters, perhaps forty; it was a slow and soft jump in acceleration. I touched the ground with a beautiful energy and I made a thud in the sand, lifting a spray of wheats and disappearing below of it.
I was firm.
My legs were extended, submerged by the thin sand, and so the rest of my body; only a small part appeared on the surface, that so much that all it took is for allowing the place to observe me in which I had happened.
The wall I was adjacent to from which was fallen; luckily already to few centimeters from this, whereas it sank in the subsoil, a big lake of sands started.
I had been fortunate again.
I was to the edges of an almost circular lowland entirely covered by the dunes; to the opposed side the cavern, with all the hundred smaller sisters. Looking more aloft, above the mouth of the cavern, the ground saliva, but not so steeply. There were numerous practicable paths that brought out of the lowland alleging to the fund more raised again of the canyon. If Robin, Zeld and Hut had come there since, certain you/they were found again to transit for one of that paths.
I cautiously got up me, I shook off away me the sand as a little dog and I taken to walk for that moor; there was no wind, it had to do a lot of cold and the dark it was enough dense. For me it didn't have great importance: I traveled at the most now with my senses level and the infrared component it was me of great help. When I drew near me to sufficiency to the entry of the cavern, notaries a light light on the ground: they were imprints, I succeeded in noticing the heat surrendered to the ground by the astronauts, despite the boots they were well isolated. This meant two things: my sensors were best of that that I believed and someone had passed of there from little time. Sideways, to around one hundred meters from me, there was the dragonfly.
The mottos a look with the whole ampleness of the ghost: the surfaces were cold as the surrounding environment, but the zone of the motors was still well warm; to the infrared ones it shone of proper light. You/he/she had to have arrived from not too long.
I drew near me to the cavern but without entering you. There were around a lot of imprints everything; they were indiscernible in the field of the visible one, but to the infrared one you/they were defined better. I followed the colder series of imprints: crossing her to bashful, I saw that they directed him toward the dragonfly. They were of two different formats: Benson and Lidya, probably. I returned back; the other series of imprints were warmer and recent; they originated from the rocky slope above the cavern. I succeeded in individualizing three separate ransoms: as I had thought, Robin, Zeld and Hut had come down the ridge, a great deal less binding than mine, making use of the many paths that wove up there him until.
All how much you/they had entered the cavern.
A happy rejoining of the crew? I doubted of it. Too many were the problems needed to their mission and too the questions. Because Lidya and Benson didn't communicate anymore and you/they had happened until there? Because I had found disabled the transmitter of long distance, on the ship? And the damage of the tracked one?
But above all: who had riprogrammato the robots in the old mine so that they blocked the footstep to the astronauts that I had assisted? Because an action of the kind, avowedly murderer?
More I reflected it and the answer was evident anymore.
I entered the mouth of the cavern, while with the exabyte I devoted me to the examination of the data that you/they concerned her/it.