Deepwater Black by Ken Catran

Author:Ken Catran [Catran, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781869500696
Goodreads: 6740910
Publisher: HarperCollins New Zealand
Published: 1992-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15 — Into Yoona’s prex

Yoona’s head was tilted so that her sleeping face looked at me. Then her body shuddered and a glowing intense speck of light grew out of the metal disc on her headband.

It stabbed straight up and hit my disc like a bullet. A solid chain of light linked us with a force that felt it had knocked my brains loose. My head did the blender spin and now it felt like all of me was being squeezed into the light, like a bright sucking whirlpool.

Then everything blacked. I couldn’t see or feel anything. Slowly the darkness became light. I was floating for a moment before my feet were on ground that squelched when I took a step forward. The darkness became tall, green shadows that suddenly clicked into focus like a camera lens. I took another step forward and the ground squelched again.

My feet were on a muddy path and on either side were tall, green-blue plants that closed overhead in spiky red and purple bulbs. They grew out of green-blue swamp water on both sides of the path. It was raining and fat, heavy drops splashed all around.

Ahead, a path ended in steps going up and around until they were hidden by the tall plants. I began to climb them slowly, still trying to work out where I was and what I could control. My feet seemed to touch the ground, but there was a funny invisible prickling all over me, like I was covered in see-through cellophane wrap. Even the water seemed to splash off me. Yoona had said a kind of forcefield protected her in the prex. I couldn’t smell anything, and I seemed to breath through the invisible cellophane.

I went higher up the steps. The swamp below looked bottomless. Something splashed among the plant-stalks and I saw a scaly, thick green body. A muddy pointed head looked up and slit, bulging eyes blinked in a flat face. A webbed claw hand splashed muddy bubbles when it ducked from sight. I could see overhead now, and there was no sky. Only low, blue, thick clouds pouring down unending rain. I got to the top and something crashed in front of me.

It was like a thick steel girder from a construction site. In front of me was a wide level area and on it, the most fantastic construction I’d ever seen — a pyramid, about twenty storey high and ending in a sharp point. It was only half-finished and covered with scaffolding. The sides that were complete were covered with a smooth silver-glass plate that looked familiar.

They reflected the blue-green cloud cover. The other open side showed layer on layer of rooms like a honeycombed beehive The green plants stretched like a spiky mat in all directions and over them ran a kind of motorway on stilts. It ended in the far distance at another half-built pyramid. From where I was, only one side of that flashed blue-green.

I began to walk across. The

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