Rummaging through the papers on the desk, she found a few scans inside a brown paper envelope. Removing them, she slipped the tiny drive in and shut the envelope before sliding it into her pocket just as Patterson returned. He was carrying a tray full of cakes, with two mugs of steaming hot coffee. To her relief, he pushed the door open with his rear as he backed into the room, and therefore didn’t see the guilty look on her face as she quickly returned both her hands to the laptop.

“Get anywhere?” he asked, casually.

“No,” she cleared her throat. “Still a couple of stumbling blocks. Coffee will help though, thanks.”

“No problem. I asked the guy in the canteen for coffee ‘Julie Andrews’ and he knew exactly what I was talking about. Seems you’re not so crazy after all!”

“Ha! I think any of you guys calling me crazy when I’ve seen what you’re up to here is a bit out of order.”

He looked at her and took his mug from the tray, sipping it cautiously after a short cooling blow. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this,” he said sympathetically.

“You should be!” she retorted.

“No, I mean it,” he said, obviously hurt.

It suddenly occurred to her that there was something more than just sympathy in his eyes. She still had a big problem to solve: there weren’t exactly that many mailboxes around the corridors of the facility, and sending a letter to England was not going to be straightforward. She’d need help. And while she wasn’t the kind of person to use someone, Patterson’s inability to be an authority on the Book of Xynutians was the main reason for her being kidnapped.

Here was a weak man, who had clearly taken a shine to her. Why, she had no idea; although only forty-one, she felt old and slightly podgy after too many quiet nights in and too little exercise. And she had been anything but nice to Patterson since she’d first laid eyes on him.

I have to get this message to George, she though as she pushed back the feelings of hate towards herself for what she was about to do and painted what she hoped looked like a completely natural, slightly flirty smile on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, ignoring her morals screaming from deep down inside. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. You have been kind to me since I got here.” She reached out and brushed her hand against his forearm briefly, before taking her coffee. She hadn’t been on the dating scene for over fifteen years now, but she knew that just with that gesture, she was already halfway there.

Chapter 59

Jane ran her gloved hands frantically along the edge of the wall, desperately trying to find an opening, a finger-hold, to drag the stone back and get to Danny.

“Shit!” she exclaimed. “I can’t get it open!”

“Keep trying, Jane.” Yves’ voice sounded like he was inside her head, coming through the speakers in her helmet. “I’m going through the footage from his cam immediately before the power surge, to see what happened.”

She grunted a reply, moving her attention from the join in the floor to the sides of the walls. There didn’t seem to be a gap wider than a fraction of a millimetre around the entire wall. If she hadn’t seen it slide down with her own eyes, she would have sworn that it wouldn’t be able to, or at least never had.

A few moments later, Yves’ voice boomed in her ears again.

“OK, Jane. Turn to your left and down a bit. You see the carving of that lizard thing, going along the floor?”

She looked down and saw the strange creature with its bottom jaw curled into a grotesque smile. Fine, pointy teeth covered the inside of the mouth, and a long thin tongue rasped tentatively against the top lip. She shuddered involuntarily. “Yes.”

“The last thing that I got from Danny’s cam was when he reached out and ran his fingers along the head of that thing.”

She was about to do the same when she froze. “So I’d better not touch it, don’t you think?”

There was a pause. “Take the power cell and make your way back here. It’ll take me longer to walk there than it will for you to come and get me in Herbie.”

An hour later, they both stood in front of the alien engravings. At their feet were three power cells and some reserve oxygen, as well as an emergency decompression bubble, which could be inflated in less than ten seconds, and would provide a temporary reprieve from the thin Martian atmosphere if one of their suits failed. It would be damn cold, but it would keep them alive for a while. Yves had a small backpack filled with emergency rations that could be used inside the bubble. He had no idea what state Danny would be in if they found him, so he had catered for as many emergency scenarios as he could think of.

They went through the plan one final time.

“OK, so I touch the wall, and you stand behind me. If what happened to Danny happens to me, use the power cells to recharge, and if that doesn’t work get me into the bubble. OK?”

She nodded and stood back.

Slowly, cautiously, he reached out and brushed his fingers against the stone wall of the corridor.

Nothing happened.

Emboldened, he let them run along the smooth contours of the lizard’s head, taking in every detail, making sure that none of the teeth or veins on its skin were left untouched.

Still, nothing happened.

Using both hands, he poured over the engraving. From head to tail he pushed and rubbed against every line, before moving beyond the lizard and on to the strange alien symbols that he assumed had to be writing. He was standing now, looking up and down for any area he could have missed.

“Well, that obviously wasn’t it,” he said disappointedly. “What do you think?”

There was no reply.

Spinning round, he saw that Jane was laid out on the stone floor, immobile. He rushed to her side and checked her vital signs; she was breathing, and her suit seemed intact. No matter why she had fallen, she must have done so gracefully, without hitting her helmet against the walls. He dragged a power cell towards them and plugged the extension lead into the socket behind her left shoulder.

Very quickly, the lights in her suit returned and he felt the gentle hum as the ventilation system started to move warm air inside. Minutes later, her eyes flickered, then came back to life.

“Can you hear me?” Yves asked.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“How do you feel?”

“Groggy. So it was me, eh?” she looked up at him sheepishly. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

He helped her sit up. “No, me neither. I didn’t even see you fall.”

“I don’t understand, though; surely a loss of power, no matter how it happened, wouldn’t make me or Danny blackout?”

“I think we have to assume, given the circumstances, that whatever took the power from your suit may not be something we can understand just yet,” he said.

“I guess the door didn’t open?”

He shook his head.

She was about to suggest they try again when she noticed the door shift upwards ever so slightly. “Look!” she pointed.

As they watched, the entire wall slipped into the ceiling noiselessly. Where it had once been, a deep groove ran along the floor and the walls, revealing how neatly the door slotted in.

Beyond, the corridor continued for about ten yards before meeting another wall, identical in appearance to the one that had just opened. Along the walls the alien engravings continued, showing people in various poses, all heading towards the far end of the corridor. One of them, a man, was different; he was sitting in a chair which floated above the others, with a long sceptre in his left hand. On the end of the sceptre was the symbol they had seen engraved on the Jetty: the Amarna Stickman.

Yves and Jane crept forwards to take all of this in, and were just about to pass under the door when Jane shouted out. “Wait!”

She ran back to the equipment and dragged the power cells, bubble and spare oxygen pack. He helped her the last few feet, until everything was beyond the doorway. They now stood one on either side of the groove in the corridor.