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.The passage was low—at times the Engineman had to stoop.For the most part it was excavated through solid rock, but occasionally it followed the course of fissures and natural crevices, and here the steps were even narrower and more precipitous.The way was lighted by flaming torches at long intervals, with stretches of half-light in between.They descended for more than an hour.As they plummeted and wound their way deeper into the mountain, the temperature increased.Ella sweated, feeling faint with the humidity and exertion.At last the stairway terminated and they came out in a wide corridor, clearly an original part of the ancient temple.The corridor too was illuminated by torches, but set at closer intervals to reveal panels carved into the stone depicting stick figures and symmetrical circle-within-circle symbols like mandalas.Ella had no time to give the panels anything but a passing glance.The alien hurried them along and she found herself jogging to keep up.The wonder she felt at being in the temple of the Lho, the sense of experiencing something alien and other, was tempered by exhaustion and the thought of the trip back to Earth.They turned left and climbed down another steep flight of stairs, this one corkscrewing through the rock until it gave onto a vast cathedral-like chamber.The far regions of the circular chamber were in darkness, but nearby was all light and activity.A generator droned, providing power for fluorescent lights and banks of computer terminals and screens.A dozen Enginemen and Enginewomen monitored the screens and pored over read-outs.Perhaps fifty Lho waited—with all the forlorn apprehension of the refugees they were—to one side, crouching or sitting cross-legged on the floor.With them, Ella made out half a dozen aliens on stretchers.Kelly led Ella across to a rest area—a crude arrangement of old settees and foam-forms set out in a square.Enginemen slept or rested; others drank coffee or chatted among themselves.Kelly embraced a short, wiry Enginewoman in her fifties.“This is it, Kelly,” the woman said.“This is what we’ve been working towards.”For the next hour, Ella stretched out and rested on a foam-form, unable to sleep for the noise of the generator, the tense conversation of the assembled Disciples and the sense of anticipation bursting within her.From among the banks of computers and monitors, someone shouted.The Enginemen in the rest area stood and rushed out.Ella joined them.They stood around the edge of the chamber, staring into the darkness.Seconds later, a fierce gust of displaced air almost knocked Ella off her feet.Grit and dust stung her face as the gale raged around her, blasting her in the face as she watched the squat, silver smallship flicker into existence in the centre of the chamber like the image on a defective vid-screen.At last it established itself solidly in this reality, the sight of the ‘ship made all the more poignant by the awed hush of the assembled Disciples.Ella stared at the smallship through her tears.She was suddenly overcome with a terrible anxiety that had nothing to do with the safety of the imminent flight.The arrival of the ‘ship made real the fact that soon she would be returning to Earth, and she experienced a complex mix of emotions—love and hate and everything in between—at the thought of meeting her father again for the first time in ten years.* * * *Chapter Twenty-ThreeMirren stood in the engine-room of the Sublime and stared out through the viewscreen.At first he assumed that the ‘ship had materialised during the planet’s night, as all was darkness outside.Then, as his eyes adjusted, he realised that the ‘ship had phased into a vast chamber.Tall, carved figures, attenuated and alien, demarcated the cavern’s perimeter.Beneath them, dwarfed, were a group of humans—some in radiation silvers—standing around banks of computers and monitors in the dim light of a dozen jerry-rigged fluorescents.The men and women were clapping, cheering, hugging each other and exchanging handshakes.As they made their way across the floor of the chamber, they were joined by a group of tall, elongated aliens.They moved towards the ‘ship with an unhurried circumspection that reminded Mirren of certain insects.They paused in the wash of light from the engine-room and stared up at Mirren and Dan.One of them lifted an arm in an oddly human gesture of greeting, incongruous coming from a figure so alien.Mirren returned the wave and asked Miguelino to open the hatch.He left the engine-room and dropped to the lounge, where already Enginemen and -women were carrying aboard computers and other technical apparatus.They stopped and greeted him with handshakes, formal in their statement of name, the Line for which they’d pushed, and rank.The Lho walked up the ramp and settled themselves around the lounge, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in patient groups of three or four.A big Engineman crushed Mirren’s fingers with a welcoming handshake.“Kelly, Dunnett Line, Alpha.Are we glad to see you, man.We have forty-five Lho here, as well as six Effectuators and around thirty Disciples.”“Mirren, Canterbury Line, Alpha.We should be set to phase-out in just under two hours, according to my pilot.”“Expect a few fireworks, Mirren.The Organisation know we’re down here, and I don’t think they’ll sit around playing with themselves while we phase-out.”Kelly had his arm around a small woman, less from affection than the need to keep her upright.She looked frail, pale and beaten.Mirren and Kelly helped her across to a foam-form.She collapsed onto it, smiling as if in apology for her exhaustion.“Hunter,” the woman said, “no Line, no rank, but I’m a Disciple and damned glad to be here.”Kelly explained, “Ella was captured by the Organisation, given a rough time.”“Hunter?” Mirren asked.“Are you related-?”The woman smiled.“He’s my father.How is he?”“He was well when we left.He’ll be a lot better for seeing us return.”Ella Hunter smiled and closed her eyes.“Earth, here I come.”Mirren glanced across the lounge.A tall, slight alien stood at the top of the ramp, staring at him.As he watched, it raised its long arm, as if in greeting.Mirren said to Kelly, “You’ll find food and drink dispensers by the bulkhead, washrooms along the corridor.Excuse me.”He nodded to Kelly and Hunter and walked across the lounge.With the recollection of the crashlanding and his audience with the Lho so fresh in his memory, it was as if no time at all had elapsed between then and now, as if the past ten years had miraculously ceased to exist.He halted before the Lho; they all, to his eyes, appeared very much the same, but there was something almost familiar about the alien before him.“Rhan?” he ventured.The alien reached out, touched Mirren’s brow with its long forefinger
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