He wonders… He gazes over the lava plain to the glimmering dome of the base, a few kilometres and a world away. Something glints in the feeble sunlight, the roof of a truck, he guesses, since the dome authority has been working on a paved road to the shore of the lava lake. A new inmate told him a few months ago that tourists love the place, and that locals go for relaxing strolls along the lake’s shore and even lie on the hot ground as some sort of remedial treatment.
If that is true, much has changed indeed. Ed remembers only a claustrophobic research base where every breath was monitored and every move recorded.
If those rumours are right, then the smoking expanse of lava is the only thing standing between him and freedom. He looks at the unrolling wire. He wonders... As he has just e
