I returned to watching as shadows marched across the cavern walls.
“Will they see the light, through the ice?” I wondered aloud.
“They’d better.” He said grimly. “If I’m right, the same process that guides the sunlight in, will guide our light out. Turning the whole cavern into a lantern. That should get someone’s attention.”
It was getting noticeably darker. I could hear clanking noises as he worked, and the occasional profanity. The sparkle dimmed beyond the scoured windscreen. I got bored.
“Shall I put some music on?” I asked.
“The drive unit is shot.” He replied tersely.
He shooed me away from the cockpit shortly after carrying what looked like a glass and metal birdcage. I lay down on the couch at the back of the shuttle, and watched as he fumbled away in the thickening gloom, attaching wires and nozzles until his bizarre contraption looked like an octopus.
“Wouldn’t the lantern be better on the outside of the shuttle?” I asked.
“Yes, it would.” He admitted. “But I’m not going out there again – not even once, never mind nine times. Dot-dot-dot. Dash –dash – dash. Dot-dot-dot. Too cold.”
I shivered. “It’s getting pretty cold in here as well. Can we turn up the heat?”
He sighed, though with less exasperation than before. “The drive unit is shot. And night is falling.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “How much colder will it get?”
“Plenty. It can get down to 80 below at night. Better wrap up tight in that useless, unlined fur coat. Any other clothes in that bag of yours?”
I shook my head. Perfume, make-up and a pair of comfortable slip-ons for the ride home. And a little vial of something just in case I ever ran into my bastard of a soon-to-be ex-husband and his wanton hussy, whoever she was.
The pilot gently took my hands away from my face. “You won’t survive like that.” He said tenderly. “Here. Take my coat.”
It’s about time, I thought to myself, and drifted off to sleep under its heavy weight.
When I awoke, my limbs cold and stiff, it was into the blackest black I had ever seen. I waited for my eyes to adjust, but there was nothing to adjust to. Night had fallen. I heard the pilot breathing close by, and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep as well. Then he spoke.
“Might as well get started. You’ll want to cover your eyes.”
I wondered how he could see what he was doing, but I guess he couldn’t. I heard a creak, and the twist of some screw, gas hissing, and then a sharp clack! clack! clack! as a switch was repeatedly thrown. There was a dim glow, reflected in the now iced glass of the cockpit, and I was about to say something facile about needing sunglasses when suddenly the whole shuttle lit up like the brightest of days. The pilot stood in sharp silhouette, goggles on his head, another rough diamond in his hand. I noticed that he’d fashioned a reflector, so that the light streamed forward up out of the cockpit, and hopefully up and out of the cavern beyond, but even so enough spilled backwards to make me to wince.
The light dimmed, and he bent and twisted a few valves on the dangling hoses. And then I couldn’t see anything except for broad splotches of red in front of my eyes. I heard a quiet mutter. “One-one thousand. Two- one thousand...”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Counting. Shush! Five-one thousand...”
When he got to one hundred-one thousand, I heard the same creak, the same hiss of gas, and the same sharp clacks. And then once again, the world burst forth into light, though this time I peeked through the gap between my fingers.
I got used to the routine. A pang of heartfelt pain as each rock, uncut though it was, was inserted into the chamber. A brilliant light, lasting 20 or 30 seconds, then a pause, timed, 100 seconds for a dot, 200 seconds for a dash.
And then everything went crazy. I could hear the pilot scrabbling across the floor of the shuttle, a clunk as he collided into something in the pitch black, then a violent curse.
“What is it? What’s up?” I cried, infected by his fear and panic.
As if guided by my voice I suddenly felt his rough hands seize my shoulders, and then maul my body through the coat. I smelt the closeness of him, the sweat, musky and virile and I prepared to abandon myself to him. His hands stopped moving for a moment, and then they flew to the collar of my fur coat, ripping it open.
“Your diamond! Give it to me!” He thundered.
“Wh... what?” I flustered. “The Star?”
“I must have dropped one of them! It’s not in my coat pocket – I need one more to complete the sequence! Give it to me!” He demanded.
“No!” I cried “It’s a family heirloom!”
“There won’t be any heirs if you don’t give it to me!” He shouted. “If they think the signal was mere noise, just random flashing, they won’t investigate until the morning, and by then we’ll be frozen solid!”
I thought about everything the Star meant to me, how it made me the centre of attention, how without it I felt no different from the cocktail waitress I’d been that fateful day the Count had swanned into Maxine’s. I gritted my teeth. “No.”
He paused. Then his hand grasped the chain that held the Star around my neck. “It’s just a pretty arrangement of carbon atoms.” He said calmly as he wrenched, and the clasp gave.
*
It’s funny, the way things turn out. I thought the Star would burn brighter and longer than those rough, unpolished rocks he’d gathered from the cavern floor. But it didn’t. It didn’t burn at all. Of all those nine diamonds, mine was the fake. Pure cubic zirconium.
And you might think that knowing that would have diminished the furious, unbridled hatred I had felt for the pilot as he smashed the necklace against the deck to free the supposed diamond.
continues overleaf...
continues overleaf...
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