Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio Page A

into a crack wider than a man. His gripping boots stopped him and he looked down into dark blue nothingness as Shatz Abel reached his side.
    The pirate shone a hand lantern down into the crevasse, but still they could see no bottom; to the contrary, the chasm seemed to widen out as it deepened.
    “That would have been the end of you,” the pirate said.
    Dalin backed away, resolving to look at no more pictures in the ice.
    They walked on.
    The plain became as an ocean, as wide and far as the eye could see—save for something in the near distance, a disturbance or frozen roiling in the ice that became more pronounced as they approached it. Beyond, the ice flattened again to the northern horizon, until the jagged peaks of the Plutonian Apennines thrust up like ravenous fangs at the sky.
    Pointing to the disturbance in the ice, Shatz Abel said, “Christy Chasm!”
    And soon enough they reached it.
    Dalin now understood the pirate’s description: it did, indeed, resemble Screen pictures Dalin had seen of Mars’s great canyon, Valles Marinares, which cut that planet nearly in half across a third of its circumference. Take the red tones from Valles Marinares, replace them with gray-blue ice, shrink it in scale for Pluto, and the two would be indistinguishable.
    “How deep is it?” Dalin asked.
    “I reckon nearly a kilometer,” Shatz Abel said. “I wasn’t about to descend by myself, last time I was here.”
    Dalin studied the length of the abyss, as well as its breadth, and said, “I understand what you meant now about no possibility of a bridge.”
    “It’s just too wide, lad. We could spend a month trying to go around it or hoping for it to narrow out. Best just to go down and then go up.”
    Dalin nodded. “I agree. When?”
    “Tomorrow morning, after a good long rest.”
    Again Dalin nodded.
    Shatz Abel grinned. “Unless, of course, you’d like to go back.”
    “Still thinking of goblins?” Dalin asked.
    But seeing the look on the pirate’s face, as well as feeling the knot that formed in his own stomach, Dalin was sorry he’d opened his mouth.
    “Best to get that rest, Sire,” Shatz Abel said, subdued as he pulled their tent from his pack and began to erect it at the chasm’s lip.
    That night Dalin dreamed of something like white shadows in the wind, something that flapped before him before melting in the morning’s daylight.
     
    T hey began their descent at dawn.
    There was an ice shelf fifty meters below their picked spot, and first they lowered their supplies down. Then Dalin prepared to go over the side, secured to a thick rope gripped in Shatz Abel’s beefy hands.
    “Now remember, boy, I’ll let you down easy. Anything out of the ordinary, give a tug. Test the ice shelf before stepping onto it.”
    Dalin nodded, and in a moment Shatz Abel had lowered him into the yawning chasm.
    Dalin looked down; through the glare of ice he saw the ice shelf, and the supplies piled on it, rising toward him. And then a trick of light, a glint or shimmer that floated like a wave between him and the pile of provisions –
    Dalin yanked hard on the rope; immediately his progress stalled and he hung suspended in midair, staring hard at the spot where he had just seen the optical manifestation.
    There was nothing there: the slight wind whistled coldly, pushing him askew; the day was bright with blue ice that hurt his eyes.
    It was nothing.
    “Boy! What’s wrong?” came Shatz Abel’s shout; and now the huge pirate’s form appeared above him, holding the rope in one hand, as if Dalin were a marionette.
    “Nothing!” Dalin shouted up. “Nothing’s wrong—keep going!”
    “Are you sure, Sire?”
    “Yes!”
    “Very well …”
    Shatz Abel stepped back, and in a moment Dalin was lowered once more.
    And almost immediately he saw the shimmer again: like a flapping mist that passed between himself and the ice shelf.
    He almost tugged at the rope again, but refrained.
    His body approached a section of the ice