EIGHT: PLANET SUITE

      Virgil put the map back into his pocket and shone the torch ahead. 'Okay, this should be it now. That last right should've brought us straight to the cistern where the X is marked, and it looks like the tunnel's widening out here.' He stepped forward and Antioni and Il Dottore moved to follow him, but Alfredo turned to stare back into the darkness, tense.
      'Listen, I hear the steps again.'
      The four men stood stock still, but an oppressive silence built until even the tiny sounds of breathing were smothered by its weight. Antioni broke it irritably. 'There is nothing. If you hear steps the great feet they are your own; it is the echo.'
      'Could be water dripping,' Virgil suggested, 'and it could be pretty far off. Sound seems to carry a long way in these tunnels.' As he started forward again the receding walls on either side of them abruptly vanished, and the torchbeam stabbed out into emptiness. Rising, it found a new wall of close-fitting concave blocks that arched up into impenetrable darkness, and swinging back it picked out a line of stone pillars, evidently supporting an unseen roof. The close, deadened atmosphere of the tunnels was gone, and the blackness suddenly held a cathedral-scale silence. He stopped, and the echoes scattered like a flight of bats into unguessable depths as he spoke. 'This is it. But it's enormous. That ceiling must be over fifty feet above us.' He turned the torch down to survey the ground ahead, and the beam was mirrored by a motionless expanse of black water. 'And there's the lake, just like I remembered it!'
      Antioni stooped for a stone and threw it, and after a second there was a splash and a dull thud. He moved forward and tested the water's depth with the toe of his shoe; his laces remained dry. 'It is not the lake, it is the puddle. It is like the water in the tunnels, perhaps five centimetres deep, no more.'
      'Okay, but I wish I could figure out why it's here,' Virgil answered, running the torchbeam across the apparently limitless surface. 'When I was putting my theory together I called the weather bureau in Firenze because I thought rain might've seeped in from outlying districts, but they say the only place it's rained in the last two weeks is the northern hills. And it sure couldn't make it from there.'
      Antioni shrugged. 'We have no springs, the geologists assure me; even our fountain they say it is the freak. It must be as you say, evaporation is slower here. But we waste time. Our candles they will not burn forever.'
      'Right.' Virgil took a last look at the enigmatic lake. 'The quicker we find that hole the quicker we'll be back with help for Alan and Tin-Tin. Come on, but let's keep together. If I didn't imagine the lake maybe I didn't imagine a few other things.'
      With the guttering light of the candelabrum at the rear they followed the wall of the cistern, picking their way along a curve of muddy shore. Alfredo and Il Dottore walked between the candles and the searching torchbeam, Alfredo hesitating occasionally to turn his gaze back into the dark. Taken unawares he stumbled as Virgil stopped dead in front of him, and the little group cannoned to a halt.
      'Mamma mia.' Antioni said it this time. 'What is the matter?'
      In answer Virgil shone the torch ahead. Just within the limits of the beam's reach, barely adhering to a keel that rose up out of the mud at a drunken angle, was the grey and rotten planking of a wooden dinghy. He drew a deep breath. 'This is what I was afraid of. I said we might find something unpleasant down here, and it's beginning to look like I could be right. You'd better wait here while I check it out.'
      'I will come too.' Il Dottore followed him. 'You tell the story of bones in a boat many times while I treat you. If they exist is my concern; if they do not, is my concern also.'
      Antioni and Alfredo hovered at a distance while Virgil and Il Dottore bent over the boat. In the steady beam of the torch and the calm light of rationality the skeleton was no longer a spectre, just a pathetic tumble of bones and a pair of rugged leather boots in a crumbling colander of wood. Beside the boots were the remains of a haversack, and coiled in the dinghy's bow was what had once been a good length of stout rope.
      'So I didn't imagine him either,' Virgil said with a slow shake of his head. 'The poor guy; looks like he came equipped for some sort of caving expedition. Wonder how he got in?' He turned to Il Dottore on a sudden thought. 'Guess it was a guy?'
      'A young man,' Il Dottore confirmed with a nod and professional detachment, 'not more than thirty, I think. He dies recently, less than twenty years, and there are no signs of the accident. I think it is likely he starve.'
      'It's pretty likely,' Virgil agreed, looking at a familiar-shaped tin lodged in the bones of one dead hand. It was badly dented, as if it had been pounded against some hard surface, and on its label the S, the P and the A were still readable, though the M was a conjecture under a stain of rust. 'Provisions,' he went on quietly, 'and there's more in the bag here. Looks like he couldn't get those openers to work.' He eased the tin gently from under the bony claws, then dropped it with a start as Il Dottore gave a shout.
      'Carlo! The left hand he has no little finger. Is Carlo Vincini!'
      'Carlo?' Antioni came forward under the light of the candelabrum to look down on the skeleton with a shudder. 'It cannot be! But you are sure?'
      'Yes, yes!' Il Dottore examined the bones excitedly. 'You think I do not know my own work, Giuseppe Antioni? The third finger he misses his top joint also; you remember I have to amputate both when his hand it is caught in the till of Luigi Montefiori.'
      'Carlo was not the good man,' Antioni explained in answer to Virgil's puzzled frown. 'His parents they work for me when he was a boy: he steal from the shopkeepers, he cheat, he follow the women and he insult them. When he is no longer a boy he follow the women and he insult their husbands. We send him to the army, but there is the accident and his officer he is killed by his own field-gun. They make no charges, but Carlo he is out of the army and back to trouble us once more. Then his brother Pietro disappear, and everyone say Carlo he has murdered him for his few honest savings.' He shook his head. 'It was very bad. They find no clues, although they ask many questions at Lake Reno.'
      Virgil stared at Antioni across the rotten hulk. 'What did you say?'
      'Lake Reno Institute, in the north. Pietro he was the good boy, the quiet boy, he study there to be the archeologist. I see him when they come to make the excavations in my gardens. Then he disappear, and his little apartment they find it has been - how you say? - turned over. Everyone suspect Carlo because he visit his brother for the first time in many years, then when he also vanish they say he runs from the police.'
      'Gee, then there could be a real connection between these two sets of relics, after all,' Virgil said, gazing down at the remains while the others watched him uncomprehendingly. 'That could explain a lot, maybe including what he was doing down here. When did all this happen?'
      Antioni made a face in the flickering light. 'Ten, perhaps fifteen years. It is a long time, I cannot remember.' He bent down and held the candelabrum low over the bones. 'And all that long time he has been here, while we have forgotten him. Whatever he has done, I think now we can only forgive him.'
      Virgil nodded gravely. 'Guess you're right. But I've got a feeling that the Reno police'll want to know all about him, especially if it turns out he kept his army pistol, and that they just might be able to fill you in on what happened to Pietro.' He turned away from the boat and probed the darkness with the torchbeam. 'But first we have to get out of here. That dinghy worries me; I can't figure out why he needed it when the water's just a few inches deep.'
      'Mamma mia, mamma mia,' Alfredo began again in a high, nervous voice. 'Doors, water: trouble, trouble. We never get out, we starve, like him. Mamma m..'
      Out of the blackness all around them came a low vibration, quickly mounting to an appalling hollow groan that set the fabric of the cistern resonating in an oscillating, all-encompassing assault of sound. Antioni paled under his candles and Il Dottore covered his ears, but Alfredo opened his mouth in a howl of despair and turned and bolted into the dark.
      'He's panicked,' Virgil shouted urgently over the slowly settling echoes. 'Quick! Better grab him before he gets lost or does himself some damage.'
      A blood-freezing cry from somewhere ahead suggested that pursuit might already be too late. Virgil, outpacing Antioni on the slippery mud, reached the approximate location of the yell then fell headlong, tripping over something stretched unmoving in the slime. Retrieving the torch he sat up and turned the beam back, fearful of what it might find, but Alfredo sat apparently unscathed a few feet away, his face rigid and his eyes upraised. On the mud two stone paws on giant forelegs were thrust forward out of the gloom, and above them, at the height of a standing man, three dog-faces sprouting from a single muscular neck snarled down three eternal snarls through cages of never-yellowing calcite teeth. At the upper limit of the torch's pool of light a massive human figure sat enthroned, one hand on its pet's stone leash, one carved into a lifelike grip around its sculpted staff.
      'Cerberus!' Virgil stared up, his eyes as wide as Alfredo's. 'So I didn't imagine any of it.'
      'Plutone!' Antioni pulled up, breathless, gazing up at the helmeted figure in awe as the torch picked out its contours. 'The Nameless One, lord of the underworld. But such a statue! And to find it in such a place!'
      Virgil scrambled up and helped Alfredo to his feet. 'Take it easy. And don't worry, you've nothing to be ashamed of. He sure spooked me too, when I first saw him.' He turned the torchbeam back up at the god, still trying to shake off disbelief. 'It's fantastic. He must be thirty feet high at least.'
      Abruptly the air began to tremble and the great groan rose round them for a second time, now louder and accompanied by a strengthening breeze that signalled the end for half of Antioni's failing candles. In the deeper dark Alfredo raised his head to gape at the statue as if half-expecting to see the giant lips parted, but the torchbeam had moved on to the lake. The water that had once been mirror-still was now in rippling motion, its edge creeping slowly towards them across the mud. The groan rose and fell again.
      'Water!' Virgil shouted in the excitement of sudden revelation. 'Air and water, that's it! It must've been water moving through these tunnels I heard the night before last, and that's what we're hearing now.'
      'Water? Water makes this noise?' Il Dottore asked, incredulous.
      'Yes. Don't you see? When we were at Luigi's we got soaked by your lucky fountain, but that only happens to the tourists. Because you know to keep clear, and you also know that before it performs there's always a warning whistle. That's the water pressure forcing the air up some hidden pipe. This place is a network of sound-boxes and pipes, but they're bigger pipes, so you get a moan, not a whistle. It's just like a church organ: the wider the pipe the lower the pitch. That's what's been scaring your travellers on the woodland roads all these years.'
      'But the water?' Antioni demanded, his voice's own pitch rising with each lap of the lake's approaching edge. 'There is no fountain here. Without rain how can there be the water to flow through the tunnels, to make the church organ? From where does it come?'
      'I don't know.' Virgil took out the map and uncreased it in the torchlight, then pointed to the top of the sketch. 'This whole system's closed, except for these two tunnels leading north. Maybe they're dead ends. Or maybe they lead right off the plan.'
      Antioni leaned over to look, then spoke, his voice suddenly no more than a husky whisper. 'Of course. For years Monte Thesauri has prayed for the water, and for years it has been here. The aqueduct.'
      'Aqueduct? But Roman aqueducts were surface constructions.'
      In the flickering half-light of his few sputtering candles Antioni shook his head vigorously. 'From ancient times the underground channels have been used. The Julians they were most important men; if there was no rain for their cisterns water may have been brought from any distance. Perhaps even from the hills in the north.'
      'The northern hills?' Virgil's eyebrows drew down in a deep frown of concern. 'But the weather bureau said there were showers in the north the morning we were soaked by your fountain, and again that evening when Alan nearly drowned, and they forecast a downpour for tonight. If the fountain's fed by those tunnels too that'd explain why the geologists couldn't trace any spring.' He swung the torchbeam back to the shrinking strip of shore. 'And it means we could be in danger. If those slime marks on the walls are anything to go by the water level in here could get pretty high, and we've no idea how quickly it'll rise. Come on! If we want to stay alive we'd better get moving, and fast.'
      As he finished speaking, the new and totally unexpected sound of a bullet ricocheting from Pluto's stone throne sent Alfredo diving back for the mud and put the echoes to flight yet again. 'Freeze!' an unknown voice yelled, and three alien torchbeams stabbed dazzlingly through the dark. 'And throw down those lights. If you want to stay alive you'd better stand right where you are.'

      The barn's sliding roof closed up beneath him, drawing over its camouflage of simulated tiles, and Alan transferred his attention from the control panel to the radio. 'Okay, I'm in the air. Should only take a couple of minutes to reach Antioni's villa, then I'm going to give those crooks the biggest..'
      'You'll do nothing of the sort.' Jeff Tracy's voice was stretched taut between the opposing forces of worry and anger. 'This is a police matter, and they should've been called in right at the start. Gordon's seeing to that now, but in the meantime you'll confine yourself to observation. Walking into that tunnel and starting a gun battle can only have one outcome.'
      'But maybe they've brought Virgil and the others out by now. I could..'
      'No! You won't use Thunderbird One's armaments to endanger innocent lives, especially your own brother's. You haven't the weapons experience to start taking pot shots, and even if you hit the right target you can't blow someone to pieces just because you saw them carrying a gun. We have to establish exactly what's going on, and don't forget that Tin-Tin's in the danger area too. Whatever made you leave her back there I simply can't imagine.'
      Scowling, Alan pushed forward on the horizontal flight control with more than necessary force, and the rocket-plane bucked, its attitude indicator screeching a warning as its tail swung up, pivoting about its central axis to finish higher than its snout. The boosters flamed on in a fiery cross behind it, and Alan, smacked in the back by the differentially accelerating control seat, managed just in time to pull into a skyward loop as the moonlit woods below streaked backwards, melting into a blur. The safety bolts released, freeing the wings from the fuselage, and he frowned at the gyro, making up his mind on a course.
      'Alan?' Scott's voice came from the radio. 'Dad's getting John to scan for the locater signal from Virgil's telecom; it may not do any immediate good, but at least it'll tell us exactly where he is. Now remember, I'll be standing by the mike in case you need any help.'
      'Help?' Alan echoed. 'With what? Doesn't sound like I'm going to get the chance to do anything but sit around and watch.'
      'Yeah, well don't worry too much about that at the moment. If the worst comes to the worst not too many thugs'll stand up to a dose of low buzzing, and there are a few other things we can try. But right now you just concentrate on your flying, and remember to give yourself plenty of time to stop. Leave it ten seconds too late and you'll be touching down in Sicily.'
      On the control seat's integral display two green lights clicked on, and outside at the end of their tracks the unfolding wings locked into position with a clang. Stabilised, Thunderbird One passed high over the single stone that sat silent in the clearing in the woods and disappeared into the night, on a heading for the Villa Antioni.

      'Someone's probably on their way here to rescue us right now.' Virgil scowled, standing his ground as the man in the pinstriped suit dug the muzzle of the revolver into the front of his muddied white shirt. 'We told you, we don't know any more about this place than you do, and if you don't put these weapons away you're going to be in real trouble with the police. Who are you, anyway, and why have you been following us around? We saw you last night, and your truck in the square yesterday. That suit of yours isn't difficult to identify.'
      'Mebbe 'es tellin' the troof, Max.' The rat-faced man guarding Antioni, Il Dottore and Alfredo and hanging on to the pilfered candelabrum with a bulldog tenacity laughed. 'They aint exactly togged up for no treasure 'unt themselves. P'rhaps they got lorst on their way to the local opera house. Oh, solo meo.'
      'Silence, Jimmy.' Max increased the pressure of the gun. Both men held Carlsson Cobra double-action revolvers, rugged weapons but inaccurate, although at point-blank range the slight misaim was unlikely to be of more than academic significance. A third man, small and expressionless, stood behind his confederates meticulously wiping the damp from a high-powered automatic pistol with his precisely folded pink pocket handkerchief. The Carlsson's muzzle prodded again, and Max held out the crumpled map. 'If you know nothing perhaps you'd explain why you're wandering round with this in your pocket.' He glanced up at Pluto, staring down impassively from the darkness. 'And why your wanderings should have brought you just here. We didn't book three expensive plane seats from London just to play games, and we aren't put off by bluffs. No-one's coming to rescue you, we saw that car leave: the only people who know you're here are tucking themselves snugly up in bed by now, and if any of you want to be doing the same ever again I suggest you try being sensible, and just tell us where they are.'
      'They?' Virgil repeated, increasingly angry and perplexed. 'I don't know what you mean. Now for Pete's sake will you at least let the others go? That water's probably too deep to get back through the tunnels already; we should all be trying to find the escape route.'
      The third man came forward, the pistol balanced in his hand with a comfortable familiarity, and Max and Jimmy fell back to let him pass. In the torchlight the black mouth of the silencer tracked across Virgil's short, broad ribcage.
      'Alright, we've wasted enough time on you. Try one last question: we're looking for a double-crossing snake called Carlo Vincini. I think you know where he is.'
      'Sure, I know where he is,' Virgil answered truthfully, 'he's right over there. If you let the others go I'll take you to him.'
      The small man's face hardened in suspicion and he opened his mouth to speak, but Alfredo suddenly let out a moan and pointed into the dark. 'Ah, mamma mia! I hear the steps again. Carlo Vincini he is there, he is coming!'
      Into the ensuing silence of surprise intruded the lap of rising water, then another more distant and surreptitious sound: an intermittent grating scratch, like the careful placement of iron-shod boots on rock. There was a tinkling fall of tiny stones.
      'He's right, McCoy.' Max turned to the third man. 'Someone's there. Vincini's clearing out the merchandise while we're kept occupied with them!'
      'Ow?' Jimmy's torchbeam probed the pitch dark. 'Where's 'is light? He'd 'ave to be a flippin' owl. Any'ow, noises carries down 'ere, that's 'ow we follered them in. Might be miles away.' He swung the torch apprehensively on another thought. 'Might be rats.'
      'Shut up.' McCoy indicated Virgil and Alfredo with a jab of the pistol. 'You, in front where I can see you; the two pensioners can walk with me. We're going to see what's happening over there, and if there's any trouble on the way signore candlestick here'll go down so fast you won't even hear the splash, understand? Now get moving.'
      With the pistol's silencer nuzzling Antioni's spine the four prisoners found themselves herded into water that was thigh-deep and cold, wading away from the shore in a direction that Virgil estimated to be directly opposite to the entrance tunnel, and which led away at a tangent from any hope of the escape shaft. 'Vincini!' McCoy yelled at the top of his voice, but only the echoes replied, and as they fluttered back to roost the distant sounds began again, moving in a slow but confident progress like the footfalls of something with no need of light to find its way.
      'This way.' McCoy turned the column with a wave of his torch. The mud underfoot dipped suddenly, the water rose waist-high, and Virgil saw a blacker patch in the darkness and recognised the gaping mouth of another tunnel. As they passed there was the distinct tug of an outflow: presumably the inflow was at the other side of the cistern, from the tunnels through which they had come in. He compressed his lips, thinking of Alan and Tin-Tin. Past the eroded channel the ground continued to rise, and some slimy steps led up from the water to a dais of massive stone blocks. As they climbed onto the dry platform there was another stealthy sound, and the beams from the torches swung forward in unison then froze, illuminating the silent reception committee that awaited its uninvited visitors in the dark.
      Enthroned at the rear of the dais, against the curve of the cistern's wall, a Jupiter of Olympian proportions gazed down with stern dignity from a marble head at least forty feet above the ground. Beside the king of the gods a standing Neptune raised his trident perhaps a few feet higher, and at the end of the platform a Mars approximately Pluto's size pointed a warning sword. A Venus to satisfy the dreams of a mountaineer stood admiring the winged headgear of a gigantic Mercury, and at the feet of these supplanters of the titans a chaotic scrum of smaller figures, many only half-assembled, stared back at the torches through lapis or oyster-shell eyes: a bewildering sculptor's body shop of faces, limbs and torsos ranging from exquisitely minute to unnervingly life-size, with here the white or warm veined pink of marble, there the verdigrised burnish of bronze or the dull sheen of copper, and in many, many places, too many to take in at the first disbelieving stare, the cold pale gleam of gold.

On to NINE: FINALE.