The Caverns of Kronos

The Moon Trogs - Part 3

     As they went, they chatted to the moon trogs, who now seemed quite friendly and conversational, and the humanoids told them something about themselves and their reason for being there, in the corridor, where they’d found the dehydrated Tharians.

     They were a repair party who regularly patrolled the tunnels and caverns around their homelands, maintaining and repairing the airlocks that safeguarded the entire moon against catastrophic decompression. All airlocks were connected to a central monitoring room by lengths of optical fibre that ran up to the surface. Normally, sunlight entering the optical fibre on the surface was prevented from reaching its other end in the monitoring room by a break in the fibre in the airlock door, but if a section of corridor became decompressed, the raising of the red flag in the airlock’s window brought the two ends of the broken fibre together, allowing sunlight to travel along its entire length. A moon trog in the monitoring room would then see one of the thousands of ends of optical fibre light up and would know that a section of corridor had become decompressed, whereupon a repair crew would be sent to investigate.

     “That worm creature that attacked us!” said Diana in delight. “I knew it had to be serving a higher purpose. You see how well the Gods are looking after us?”

     “You must mean the bore worm,” said Ban-Chin. “Those creatures are the greatest threat to our existence here. We hunt them mercilessly, but there are always more. It is impossible to count the number of people who have been killed when they decompress one of our living areas.”

     “How come the city hasn’t been affected by them?” asked Thomas. “They’ve destroyed most of their airlocks. A single one of those creatures could decompress the whole city.”

     “The Lifegiver, the magical artifact that provides the city’s food, air and gravity, also generates a field of energy that the worms cannot stand,” explained the moon trog. “A sort of worm repellent, if you like. No worm will approach the city of its own free will.”

     “Handy,” mused Thomas thoughtfully. “Pity your living areas don’t have the same kind of protection.”

     “If a senior wizard examined the Lifegiver, he might find a way to duplicate the repelling spells,” suggested Lirenna.

     “You could do that?” asked Ban-Chin hopefully.

     “Not us,” replied the demi shae. “We’re only very junior wizards. Very junior indeed. Those who taught us probably could, though, if they had a chance to study the problem.”

     “You must mention it to the Dallak when you see them,” said the moon trog. “If there’s even a possibility of ending the worm threat we must seize it with all four hands.”

     Great! thought Thomas hopefully. Now they’ve got an interest in getting us safely back home. At long last we’re among friends. They all cheered up considerably after that, and the Tharians began to feel relaxed and reasonably happy for the first time since coming to the smallest moon.

     The moon trogs led them along tunnels and through caverns and back up towards the surface, explaining, when Thomas asked, that all the routes downwards led nowhere in this part of Kronos. Their main population centres were indeed deep underground, about halfway to the centre of Kronos, but to get there they first had to travel several miles close to the surface to where the vertical shafts were. The vertical shafts they’d passed so far led only to the deep mines, where the iron ore was more densely concentrated, and those caverns were dark, empty and lifeless.

     Shaun, who’d been the one keenest on the idea of going down, blushed in embarrassment and apologised to the others, who laughed and told him not to worry about it.