Instantly the racing wind current caught them up, snatched them off their feet. They found themselves being blown madly along the darkness like leaves before a gale.
The air was hot and Robin felt himself almost scorched as he was hurled along, his elbows and legs occasionally scraping the wall, once feeling himself somersaulting upward, twisting and turning in the horrible blast.
For a dreadful moment he felt panicky, out of control, utterly helpless in the grip of the underground tornado. He lighted the flash, saw it wildly flickering. He drew his legs up, ducked his head, and found he could get his equilibrium. Ahead of him the tunnel was ascending. He felt himself rising, felt the slight drag occasionally at his belt as Peter's bouncing body followed his.
Now the air began to cool and seemed to slow down slightly. The passage leveled off, he was whirling down a straight passage, and suddenly, in a split second of awareness, he saw a faint spot of bright light ahead of him. He rushed toward it, like a ball buoyed on a stream from a fire hose. It must be the exit to the surface, he thought, and in a second held out the axe he gripped in his hand.
The handle caught at the opening as he went sailing by, jammed, swung his body against the wall with a smack. Peter's body flashed past, caught up short by the cord, and also hit the body of airless space on the outer side of the channel.
They climbed dazedly to their feet and struggled to the narrow break. They staggered out onto the surface, now bathed in the blindingly brilliant light of the sun rising over the peaks of the farther mountains ringing the crater.
Around them were the first shoots of the stubborn and hardy surface vegetation in this crater, dwarfed cousins of the plants below.
They caught their breath. "Better get moving," said Peter finally. "This sun is dangerous."
They started across the floor of the crater, the several hundred feet to where the nose of the wrecked Russian rocket rested. Both men knew they were bruised from the short, mad trip. There would be scraped shins and knees and elbows. But they had made it, that was the thing.
They were about a hundred feet out, when suddenly Robin stopped, stared into the sky. Peter followed his glance.