On the way I passed two stewardesses who didn't seem to have heard me behind them as they stared out a portal talking. I paused and did my best to eavesdrop on their conversation.
………"Have they told you about your mother yet?"
"It's iffy. They say if the base gets up and running before the clock hits zero then all requested family visas for base personnel will be honored, but you know how it is Sally."
"Yeah. I don't have a family, but if I did I'd sure pity them right now up there on the surface."
The other woman nodded affirmatively and I moved on unseen. The old man had been right!
Leaving the train I received quite a number of suspicious looks for being so far behind the others, but smiling in a blasé fashion I simpered about having to get my makeup just right in an effected glitzy manner that was far from who I was. The soldiers rolled their eyes and directed me on to where I was to go in order to catch up.
I hurried on, but I didn't miss the piles of supplies marked as military gear that were being unloaded everywhere from the train. This truly was a military incursion instead of the scientific expedition which I had been led to believe it was. Just who or what was putting up such a fight in the inner regions of the Earth as to warrant this extreme of a military front?
Idly I wondered how things may have changed within the Earth's crust since King Solomon had acquired his underland brides. The mood at present seemed to hint at one of extreme hostility towards those who dwelt upon the surface of the world.
*****
"Okay, listen up everyone, this is no cakewalk you've been enlisted to participate in. We will come under direct enemy fire once we breach the portal opening and that's if we breach the portal. We have to tunnel down through some awfully hot stuff to reach Paradise and folks it is a paradise! I've been there and take it from me I'd rather be down there than up here. Problem is the people down there don't want us there. Yep that's right, there's people already where we're going and they don't like us not one bit! Can't say I blame them much, but we need what they've got and that's that. Democracy in action folks. I don't know what they brainwashed you with in society, but here's where you meet the real world. We are a heavily armed task force with but one mission. To come away with the prize!"