Free The Best of Penny Dread Tales by Kevin J. Anderson, Quincy J. Allen, Cayleigh Hickey, Aaron Michael Ritchey Ritchey, J. M. Franklin, Gerry Huntman, Laura Givens, Keith Good, David Boop, Peter J. Wacks

actually leads to the surface but had long ago frozen over. Thus he designed the gun turret on Pandora with a super-sized drill.
    Just as Rose declares that food is ready, Davie wakes up, which makes perfect sense if you know Davie. His burns aren’t as bad as we initially feared, and the burn cream worked wonders. He hardly has any pain. When we tell him all that has happened, he insists on being part of the expedition. “It won’t hurt to have an extra hand,” he argues, and he’s right. Luckily, the Professor has another suit.
    ***
    Less than twenty-four hours after the earthquake hit, Davie and I find ourselves sitting in the cockpit of Professor Higgs’ contraption as he “ fires her up.” The cockpit is a conglomeration of dials, buttons, and levers, and I’m not certain that the Professor knows what they all do.
    “She runs mostly on steam power,” the Professor announces, “but the instrument panel is powered by solar-generated electricity just like all tablets. Hydraulics work the track, but it’s the constantly expanding and contracting of water vapor that generates the power.” With that he throws a lever, and Pandora surges to life, jerkily pulling herself forward along her tracks. The city disappears behind us slowly, and the Professor guides Pandora through a large tunnel in the rock. I have never been outside the city before. I have never seen the rock walls of the cave that sequester humankind deep within the earth. I know that we are underground, but it is quite another thing to come face to face with the boundaries of human existence and then surpass them.
    It isn’t long before we encounter an enormous door that looks very much like the door to a safe. I recognize Mayor Campwell standing with several others at a control panel to the side of the door. He waves to us and then punches a code on the door. The vault door opens slowly, with the groan of hinges that have not moved in at least a lifetime. Behind the door the tunnel continues, and we pass through out into the unknown. The tunnel begins to slope upwards, and then, after nearly a kilometer, we encounter a wall of ice.
    “Here we go!” Professor Higgs throws the switch that starts the drill, and I can see the bit begin to spin. It makes an awful wail when it connects with the ice, but it works. Slowly we push through the ice. “Another kilometer or so of this and we will reach the surface.”
    With a splintering crash the ice ahead cracks and shatters as Pandora breaks through to the surface. It doesn’t look at all like I had imagined. In the pictures the Professor had shown me the sky was blue and light. Yet, all that I can see in every direction is gray and dim. White flakes drift in the air, tossed about on gusts of wind. There is nothing appealing at all to me. The look of disappointment in Davie’s eyes mirrors my own.
    Checking the readouts on the screen, Professor Higgs adjusts our course and takes off across the vast plane. I hope he knows where he is going. More importantly I hope he knows how to get back.
    “There …” he points as a looming structure emerges out of the gray fog. “Each tower is nearly a hundred square meters, and on the top of each tower are five solar panels, each twenty square meters in size. It appears that this tower is partially retracted.”
    “How can you tell?” Davie asks.
    “I can see the top of it. When it is extended, it stands nearly two kilometers high. We have to find the entrance point, get you two inside to fix the pipes and then move on to the next tower. There are four towers. Suit up.”
    I never thought we would even make it this far. The thought of going out into that frozen wasteland scares the crap out of me. I can tell Davie isn’t so keen on it either. We shrug at each other. What else can we do? Without the solar towers we will all die anyway.
    Professor Higgs pulls Pandora to within three meters of the tower. Pressing a button, he shoots a harpoon out of Pandora’s