Planet Hell Read online

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” said the girl. “Are all trolls like you? You don’t seem as scary as in my dreams. All my life I’ve been terrified of trolls. I’ve been such a stupid cry baby!”

  “Shh! What was that?” cried Sam. He thought he’d heard something outside the cave, but Anna shook her head.

  “There’s nobody here but me.”

  They did not see Jen peeping into the cave. They did not hear her run away again.

  “I’m Sam,” he said. “I don’t know why you keep talking about trolls. I don’t even know what trolls are! I’m human.”

  Anna stared. “I’m Anna. And I’m human. My people come from another planet. Planet Earth.”

  “No, that can’t be right,” said Sam. “That’s where the Miners came from. My people.”

  “What miners?” said Anna. “We’ve been here for a really long time and I never heard anything about miners.”

  Sam’s mouth went dry. “How long?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Anna. “We learned all about it in school but, well, I didn’t really listen. The War is over. Earth is dead. So who cares?”

  “What did you say about Earth?” gasped Sam.

  Anna looked surprised. “I said Earth is dead. Because of the Final War killing everything. That’s why we left. You must know that.”

  “That can’t be true,” cried Sam. “Earth can’t be dead. It can’t be! The Mine is here to make power for Earth. We work for the Mining Company. We’re very important. We dig the Ore that makes the power and then we send the power back to Earth. We’ve been sending power home for hundreds of years …”

  Anna looked at him in horror.

  “Oh Sam,” she whispered. “We didn’t know.”

  Chapter 8

  The End of Earth

  Sam’s heart hurt.

  “What didn’t you know?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

  Anna swallowed hard. She tried to remember her school lessons. “There was a Mining Company. The robots told us about that. That was before the Final War. The Mining Company sent out ships to explore. They were looking for new power. That was when they thought the Earth could be saved. But it couldn’t. It was too late. Everyone had to leave.”

  “But the ships?” asked Sam. “The ones looking for new power?”

  “Nobody ever heard from them again,” said Anna. “I think the Mining Company ended at the same time Earth did. Everything was a mess at the end.”

  Sam looked at her. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  Anna said, “My people were the last to get away from Earth. And then they travelled for such a long time before they found Hell. They only stopped here because the ship was damaged. They thought they were going to die here. Then they found the power supply coming from the ground. They took the ship apart and built the robots out of it, to take care of us.”

  Sam was shaking his head. “No. No! You’re not making any sense. We’ve been here, sending power back to Earth for more years than anybody can remember. Earth needs us. We keep it going!”

  “The power didn’t get to Earth, Sam. We found it, when we got here. So we used it. We thought it was free.”

  “Free? FREE?” shouted Sam.

  He had picked up the bottle again and was holding it like a weapon.

  Anna stepped back. He was scaring her.

  “There it is! There’s the troll! Kill it!” cried a voice.

  It was Jen, standing at the opening of the cave. And behind her was a silver robot holding a laser gun.

  “You have been crying,” the robot said to Anna. “Are you unhappy?”

  “Yes. I mean, no!” said Anna and at the same moment Sam shouted, “I’m not a troll! I’m a human!”

  The robot was confused. “You say you are a human? But she says you are a troll? You are making these humans unhappy? I must speak to the other robots. Trolls do not exist. Trolls are just stories, told by the humans to make themselves happy. Humans like scary stories.”

  “I’m not a story,” yelled Sam. “And I’m not a troll. I’m me. A human. A Miner.”

  “What are you waiting for?” Jen shouted at the robot. “Kill it! Before it kills us!”

  But the robot just stood there. It had frozen up. Robots went like that when they needed to talk with all the other robots.

  Jen dragged the gun from its hand and aimed it at Sam. Without thinking, Anna stepped in front of Sam.

  “Get out of my way!” hissed Jen. “I’m going to kill it before it kills us!”

  But Anna shook her head.

  “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” screamed Jen and she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  There was a flash of bright light from the gun.

  “What have you done?” cried the robot, coming back to life. “Have you killed them?”

  But Jen couldn’t answer.

  Because there was no one there. Sam and Anna had disappeared.

  Chapter 9

  Going Underground

  Down, down. Sam and Anna were sliding down the air shaft, out of control. Anna didn’t know what was happening.

  Sam had grabbed her and jumped back and suddenly the floor disappeared and she was falling through the dark.

  But Sam knew what was happening. We’re going to die … we’re going to die … we’re going to die! The words were screaming in his head, as they crashed down the air shaft, faster and faster, until …

  Something caught them.

  Someone had put a net across the shaft.

  Anna and Sam were bruised, and out of breath, hurting and scared. But they weren’t dead.

  Yet.

  “Looks like we’ve caught something,” a voice called out.

  “Gotcha!” said someone else.

  Sam groaned. He knew those voices. Someone lit an electric candle and Sam saw the Gang staring down at him.

  “Did you really think you could get away from us?” one of them hissed.

  “We knew you’d have to come back this way, once you found out what the Surface was really like,” said another. “No one can live up there.”

  The Gang tipped up the net but they had caught more than they expected.

  As soon as they saw Anna, the Gang stepped back and stared at her in shock.

  “Who is that?”

  “This is Anna,” said Sam. “She lives on the Surface.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said one of the Gang. “No one can live on the Surface!”

  “She does,” said Sam. “Tell them, Anna.”

  But Anna was shaking with fear. Sam remembered what she’d said about being afraid of trolls.

  “Take off your breathing masks,” he said to the Gang. “Let her see that you’re humans too.”

  The men in the Gang looked at each other. They didn’t know what to do. Slowly, they took off their masks.

  Anna gulped hard and then she did a brave thing.

  She said, “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  The men in the Gang took Sam and Anna down, deeper under the ground to the main hall at the heart of the Mine.

  As they followed the tunnels down, Sam looked over at Anna. She was starting to panic. He remembered how he’d felt on the Surface.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “We must be going to the centre of the world!” she cried. “All that rock over my head! I feel like it’s going to fall on me!”

  “It’s OK,” he said to her quietly. “Miners like my dad built these tunnels. They’ll stand forever. Don’t be scared.”

  Anna gave a little smile.

  When they got to the main hall a crowd of Miners was waiting for them.

  Sam got up on a table so they could all see him.

  “I’ve been to the Surface,” said Sam. “I’ve found out that lots of the things we thought we knew are wrong. There’s another world up there, on the Surface. There are humans living up there. Humans like us.” He reached out his hand to Anna and she climbed up on the table beside
him. “This is Anna.”

  Everyone gasped. Voices rose out of the crowd.

  “She’s not from the Mine!”

  “Look at her hair! Look at her clothes!”

  “No one can live on the Surface. Except monsters!”

  There was a sudden silence.

  Sam leaned over and whispered to Anna, “Tell them about the Surface.”

  Anna’s heart was pounding, but she made herself speak. She told them about the people on the Surface. She told them about the Final War. The end of Earth. About how the Surface dwellers thought they were going to die when they landed on Hell, and how the power supply they found saved them. She told them about the robots and the force fields. She told them that nobody knew the Miners were there.

  With every word the anger in the hall grew. Sam could feel it.

  “Wait till the Mining Company hears about this!” one of the Miners called out.

  “The Mining Company doesn’t exist!” yelled Sam. “Don’t you understand? EARTH IS DEAD!”

  The Miners were all shouting at once.

  “We’ll never get back to Earth?”

  “Earth is dead?”

  “It’s all their fault …”

  “What do we do?”

  “Let’s stop sending power up to the Surface! Let’s see how long they last up there when their force fields come down!”

  Suddenly a new voice spoke from the back of the hall.

  “Do you know what they are saying on the Surface? They are saying, ‘We’ll block off the air shafts! Let’s see how long they last down there with no air!’”

  Chapter 10

  New Earth

  Everyone turned.

  “What’s THAT?” cried a young Miner. “Is it a monster?”

  A strange silver figure was standing there, looking at them all.

  “That’s Jen’s robot!” gasped Anna.

  The Miners stared in silence.

  “You can stop the power,” the robot said. “They can stop the air. You can have another Final War. That is the way things ended on Earth. You and the humans on the Surface are the only humans left in the universe.”

  Suddenly, the hall began to fill with silver robots.

  “Sam, look! There’s my robot!” said Anna. “And the teacher robots … and look, all the robots!”

  “We have talked it over,” said Anna’s robot quietly. “And there is only one way to make all the humans happy. The robots will take over the Mine.”

  “What?” shouted the Miners.

  “You don’t know anything about mining!” said Sam.

  “Who will look after us?” cried Anna.

  “We will learn how to mine,” said Anna’s robot. “And the Surface dwellers and the Miners will work together to learn how to look after each other. That is the only way to make all the humans happy.”

  “I don’t understand,” moaned an old Miner. “All I ever wanted was to go home!”

  “Don’t you see?” said the robot. “This is home.”

  * * *

  It took a long time. Not all the Miners wanted to stop mining. They were scared of the Surface, of the burning sun, and the sky so far away. And not all the Surface dwellers wanted to start farming and cooking and cleaning and teaching and all the other things the robots had been doing for so long.

  But slowly, slowly, it happened.

  The day finally came when Sam made the long climb up out of the Mine again. This time he didn’t have to crawl through darkness or the slicing blades of the fans. This time he wasn’t running away. This time he walked up the new stairs knowing that Anna would be at the top.

  I wish you were here, Dad, thought Sam. I wish you were here to see this.

  Sam smiled. He was about to start a new life. And Planet Hell was about to get a new name. New Earth.

  First published 2012 by A & C Black

  This electronic edition published September 2012

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square

  London WC1B 3DP

  Text copyright © 2012 Joan Lennon

  Illustration copyright © 2012 Sean Longcroft

  The rights of Joan Lennon and Sean Longcroft to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively, have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 978-1-4081-8082-2 (e-book)

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

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