Chapter Two

Sixteen kilometres from Glastonbury languished the sleepy seaside resort of Weston-Super-Mare, where Kallandra and Derek had booked a spacious guesthouse room for their week’s break from the Johnson Space Centre, Houston. Weston had been a popular resort for the British in Victorian times until the lure of cheap flights to the Mediterranean won the tourist battle. An extensive beach overlaid with trucked-in sand entertained few since the 1970s such that the thinning sand each season supported the unkind epitaph of Weston-Super-Mud. But its lack of crassness and heaving multitudes drew Kallandra and Derek. A perfect respite for over-stretched astronauts.

Kallandra bubble-bathed her wounds. Those wicked blackthorn barbs had drawn blood. But the sandalwood and cinnamon candles helped her to relax while the Tea Tree oil in the water worked its magic on scratches and midge bites.

Through mountainous foam her green eyes inspected her reflection in the mirror tiles. Symmetrical at worst, a beauty at best, she thought as she turned her tanned face one way, then the other. A slightly turned-up nose, large eyes and ruddy cheeks from the day’s excitement. Her hazelnut-brown hair, calmed now wet, didn’t reach her shoulders. She smiled at the blue highlights, then again at the scolding at them from her mother in Phoenix. She enjoyed the electrifying look they presented to surprised friends. Maybe her raspberry nipples were a little too long but with a wave of her hand the foam hid them, so that was fine.

Exhaling she looked around the bathroom. A cobweb in a ceiling corner helped to control the fly population. They’d need a telescopic feather duster to reach that one above the four-metres-tall apple-white walls. Derek came in, saw her and backed out again.

“It’s OK, Derek, come and join me. This bath’s huge enough for us to have a swimming race.”

“Maybe later,” he said, as he returned with his iPaq, tuned to the BBC News.

“Oo, any news of Glastonbury? Funny that only sixteen kilometres away we can’t feel a thing. Perhaps the tremors have stopped.”

“Can I get a word in? The local news mentions it. The village has been evacuated, the hill is cordoned off, and worst of all…”

“What? It’s made the beer flat in Weston?”

“The Festival organisers have been told to send everyone home. There’ll be thousands of annoyed youngsters coming here.” He stared at a lump of earwax he’d unscrewed from his left ear with the nail on his little finger.

“Really? Do they expect the hill to explode? Maybe they think it is a volcano after all. Derek, you are not going to put that into your mouth.”

“I don’t know who your ‘theys’ are. As far as I can tell the army has been summoned, and no doubt scientists are packing bags to get here, but only local police are there so far.”

Kallandra stood, sending waves over the side of the bath and a foam glider gave Derek a face wash. “Sorry, love, but we gotta get back there to see what’s happening.”

“No we don’t, Kal. We’re safer here. Look, it’s seven. It’ll be dark soon.”

“You revolting man. How many times do I tell you not to eat your ear excretions?

Anyway, back to the Tor. At the moment we are the experts. This is awesome stuff.

Don’t you feel it?”

His long face told her he didn’t, at least not as much as she did. Although it could be the face he always presented after tasting the bitter earwax.

She rapidly towelled dry, grateful her hair had been chopped. “You stay here then. Hey, call Claude, our pet geophysicist will love this one. Why didn’t I think of him before? He’ll be at his Winnipeg home with his girlfriend.”

“You call him from the car, while I’m driving. Make sure you bring your NASA I.D.—I’ve brought mine; I believe it’ll get us past any cordon.”

“You are a genius and I love you,” she said, followed by a big hug and a slobbery kiss. “Use the country lanes. Hopefully the Festival goers will use the main road to the motorway.”

* * *

Five kilometres out, they stopped. Not for the exodus, although the lane pulsated with a mix of motorbikes and students’ barely legal vehicles heading at them, but because the sight of the tor made Derek’s foot slam on the brake.

They expected the tower to be rubble, unseen from afar, but they couldn’t have expected the new Glastonbury vision.

“I can’t see it clearly, wash the windscreen, Derek.”

“It’s not the glass.”

“Of course, the hill is quivering, but after all this time? Seven hours? The top is like a fuzz-ball.” She blathered on, but noticed he’d lapsed into silent mode. She continued the commentary for both of them. Verbalising her thoughts helped clarification for her, whereas Derek brewed his deliberations until the fermentation process reached perfection. And if it didn’t, he remained broody. “Keep on driving.

There’s something else different about that hill. Does it seem taller to you?”

“No.”

“That’s because you’re concentrating on collision avoidance. Wise man, but I’m telling you there is more than a crumpled tower and rising clouds from agitated dust.”

“We’ll be there in a minute, Kal. Ah, we need to turn right, but there’s a policeman single-handedly preventing miscreants going to Glastonbury Tor.”

“No problem, we have NASA I.D. cards and if all else fails I’ll whip my jeans off and wow him with my tanned legs.”

“British policemen are immune to sex.”

Kallandra nodded, thinking it applied to some spaceship designers too. The police officer didn’t want to argue, he merely insisted they drive away.

“Officer,” she said in her Texan drawl. “We’re not the press, or hippy groupies, are we?”

“I suppose not. But it is dangerous back there.”

“Look again at my pass.” Not a pass, but he wouldn’t know. “On behalf of NASA, it entitles me to access the phenomenon occurring behind you. It will be too late if we have to go all the way round to the other side. Do you want us to contact your superiors to inform them of your obstructing the course of our enquiries?”

He waved them through, muttering incomprehensibles.Around the last corner leading to the car park, they had to stop again. The avalanche that had spilled onto their Volvo a few hours ago had grown to block the lane completely.

“The policeman was right. Let’s go back,” Derek said.

“I’d rather investigate what we can from this side. We know what the hill looked like.” She opened her door and, armed with her shoulder bag crammed with still and video cameras as well as binoculars and sample boxes, she clambered up the scree of loose rocks before Derek could stop her. Luckily, her astronaut training enabled her to make excellent progress. Nevertheless, she skidded around on the moving rocks, often slipping back a metre.

Concentrating so much on not falling, she reached three-quarters of the height of the hill before she stumbled onto a wall. The rest of the hill in front of her was above a five-foot high, vertical, vibrating wall. She fell on her back, luckily on relatively level ground. The noise resembled a jet engine test, so she couldn’t call to Derek, nor appeal for his presence on her cellphone. Even so, she snapped a shot and sent it to him.

A hand patted her shoulder, making her heart neglect a beat. Derek had climbed up behind her. He drew out a handkerchief to dab at a graze on her forehead, but she waved it away, pointing at the section of hill in front. Through the roar she mouthed: ‘It’s rising.’

‘Volcano?’ he mouthed back.

‘Can’t be. No heat.’

‘Pre-eruption? Plug rising?’

She hadn’t thought of that. But it wouldn’t make sense for Glastonbury Tor.

Made of limestone and clays it was geologically wrong to have been a volcano. But she was at a loss for an alternative hypothesis.

‘I doubt it,’ she mouthed back. Up close to the rising mass she peered into the moving gloom. The sun was setting on the other side of the hill. In the dark, an irregular cascade of rock and turf dissuaded her from reaching in with her outstretched hand. She remembered her bag and brought out a small torch. The beam appeared to be swallowed by the blackness in the wall, which maybe wasn’t a wall, just a vertical something between the lower and upper slope. As if the top of the hill was being pushed up. She needed a brighter light, and turned her digital camera to flash. After selecting the night image and anti-shake setting, she pressed the button.

Although the camera sends a single burst, there seemed to be a double flash. In spite of being shaken by the vibrating ground, she examined the image. Inside the darkness a bright glare obscured the picture. She took more pictures though some were of the sky as the vibration appeared to be worsening. She’d have liked to traverse the hill to see if the wall-like blackness surrounded the top, but knew Derek was keen to have them out of danger. The rain of debris precipitated around them, sometimes hitting them, but not with worrying impact speed.

Once in the car, Derek used the sat-nav road planner to find a route to circumnavigate the tor. The roaring sound of rocks grinding and falling diminished rapidly. She photographed and took video shots, but with little hope of seeing the detail that eluded them close up. From a kilometre away, the tor was a haze of vibrations.

She had no doubt the top of the hill was lifting. After sending the images and mpeg files to Claude in Canada, it seemed too dangerous to stay.

By the time they reached their guesthouse room, Kallandra’s cellphone trilled her with a received message alert from Claude.

‘You are not the only ones…’