[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

terrestrial looks like?'
'Well...'
'Try thinking of a scorpion, two metres high, coming
at you out of the shadows..."
Bazin's eyes were wide with disbelief and fear. McLuhan picked the
hand-gun out of his hands. 'So do me a favour and leave the water
pistol at home.' She dropped the hand-gun on one side, and turned to
the armoury racks. The Cosmolite .65 gigawatt bolt-beam Heavy
Combat Gun weighed ten kilos. Most of that was accounted for by a
bolt-beam generator which, at full power, could blow a fifty-centimetre
hole in one-metre thick armour plating from two hundred metres
distance. 'If I'm relying on you to watch my back, I want to know that
you're carrying enough artillery to blow this ANT clean across the Space
Lanes.'
She tossed a Cosmolite to Bazin as though it were no heavier than a
child's toy. It almost flattened him when he caught it.
In the chamber of the Singing Trees, no one had spoken since the
Doctor and the Creature had left. The distant voices sang softly in the
breeze, and Glitz, Mel and Ace, each sitting on boulders of ice, drifted
along on their own thoughts. Eventually, Glitz sighed, 'This is the life,
eh? A whole universe out there, with all the myriad mysteries of the
cosmos, and we're sat twiddling our digits in some benighted wodge of
permafrost!'
Mel looked up. 'We could always pass the time playing a game, I
suppose. / Spy or something.'
Ace and Glitz both turned to stare at her.
'Just a suggestion,' offered Mel, lamely.
'Bilgebag's right,' admitted Ace grudgingly. 'I wanted some adventure. I
wanted to do something exciting, see something beautiful, just once in
my life...'
Glitz smiled. 'You know, believe it or not, I was young once.'
'So was I...' sighed Ace.
'I was a right tearaway,' continued Glitz. 'Thought I knew it all.'
'Some things never change, do they?' taunted Ace.
'Ah-ah,' admonished Glitz, 'allow an old man his moment of pregnant
introspection. Where was I?'
'Pregnant introspection,' reminded Mel. 'A right tearaway. Some things
never change.'
Glitz recovered the line back through his memories. 'Ah, yes - the things
I've seen... The places I've been... Me and the Good Ship Nosferatu -
been everywhere together. Riding on the Space Winds... Diving through
the Rainbow Clouds... Nowhere to go but onwards... The Asteroid
Breaks. The Nebula Ridges. Out beyond the edge of the Twelve
Galaxies.'
Ace had been listening to this with growing enchantment and was now
staring at him wide-eyed. 'You've been outside the Twelve Galaxies?'
'Me and the Nosferatu. Been everywhere together.' He sighed. 'The
most exquisite delights the universe has to offer. If only I could have
bottled them, I'd have myself a nice little earner.'
In the Duty Guards' Room, McLuhan and Bazin stripped down the
mechanisms of their Cosmolites, to check one final time that the
vibration absorbers were loose and the electrical contacts secure.
McLuhan was relieved to see that Bazin's familiarity with the weapon
was faultless. She was beginning to feel the effects of the adrenalin in
her bloodstream - a sharp fear that tightened her muscles and made
her heart race. She looked at Bazin briefly, and wondered how much
fear he was hiding and trying not to let her see. He was only a boy
really. What was he doing, wasting his life as a soldier?
He snapped the locking bolt into position on his weapon, and looked
up. McLuhan snapped her bolt into position, and looked back at him.
'Ready?' she asked.
'Two metres tall, you say?'
'Minimum.' McLuhan's gaze was steady. 'Let's go.'
She saw the fear in the boy's eyes.
If the Doctor had known that the map he was carrying contained a
radio tracking device, he would not have been peering at it and
muttering, "They always mark North and South on these things, but
never Forwards and Backwards,' as he and the Creature made their way
through the dark Ice Passages.
If he had known that the tracking device would lead McLuhan and Bazin
to the Creature, he would never have looked up and said, 'Tell you
what, you seem to know the way, why don't I leave it to you?'
If he had known that the map would eventually cause the death of the
Creature, he would never have tucked it into a fold of the Creature's
membranous skin.
If he had known. But he didn't.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kane looked down across the Cryogenics Chamber in triumph. From his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]