Where there’s water there’s plants too, and in some of the deeper caverns a kind of blind cave rat, so I haven’t starved. I’m getting ahead of myself. I knew that the fall into the pit was long enough to put an end to me instantly and I closed my eyes and prepared for the inevitable…
Month: Apr 2022
Message Intercept: Chapter Three
The wailing noise went on, and then pounding at the entrance of the building.
“We have to open it!” Sita said, darting towards the barred door. But the PhD student and I caught her.
“If you open that door we’ll never be able to close it. We’ll all go through that same horrible process. You’ve seen the pictures,” they said.
“Sita… I’m sorry,” I murmured, letting her go. She fell into the seat of one of the nearby benches and sobbed, her head in her hands.
We all stood still and silent, listening to the wailing until it stopped…
Message Intercept: Chapter Two
There was much shuffling of feet in the large group by the side of the pit. Nobody wanted to be the closest to the edge, even though that was still more than a meter away.
Because of the way the ground dropped away, and the fact that scans had established that the hole led down into a much larger chamber than had been thought, the only way to let the exploration team down was on a single long safety rope. They stood by the edge, a human daisy-chain, loaded up with handlamps, picto-cams and survey gear. The last one was a scrawny apprentice I had seen shadowing the filmmaker, and he carried strapped across his body a bulky film camera similar to the ones that were capturing the occasion from intervals around the edge of the pit.
The winch rumbled into life, and it was time. Both the survey team and the rest of us began waving for the cameras. First the five of them were hoisted into the air, as prelude to their long descent. I watched them swing back and forth, watched the pulley at the top of the rope shake. It was rated for this- hell, it was designed for this- but still I felt a gnawing horror that it would just snap and send the five spinning into the void…
Message Intercept: Chapter One
“If you are receiving this message, I am already dead.”
How I wish that I could begin this recording with that old cliche! But in all likelihood I am very much alive by the time you hear this. Though it would doubtless be better for all if it weren’t the case.You remember, don’t you, how this all started? Ah, maybe not. Maybe many years have passed. No matter. I remember it as clearly as if it were painted on the wall before me as I record this message, instead of these obscure and crude images. It began, for me, with the journey to Malocus on the Carter. It was an old ship, full of its own kind of creaks and groans that no other ship had…
They Worship It: Chapter Four
The water was freezing cold when I smashed into it. I tasted salt and realised that this was more than just a tank. With my eyes closed tight I reached into the pocket of my overcoat and removed the object Apollo had planted there. I felt a mouthpiece, a mask. With every fibre of my being I had to fight the instinct to keep my mouth shut tight and forced the breather in there. I fumbled blindly, trying to find the vent to get the water out of my mouth. I depressed the little button and an explosion of bubbles came flooding out of the front of the mask. Now breathing normally, I steeled myself and opened my eyes…
They Worship It: Chapter Three
“Don’t just stand there, woman!” said the captain. “Get his suit off! I intend to do some reconnoitoirey before they notice he’s missing.”
“I don’t think so,” said Apollo, squeezing the trigger on the prod experimentally. It seemed to crackle louder the harder she squeezed. “For one thing, that suit is sealed tight. If I had to guess you’d need an acetylene torch to even make a start. For a second, with that faceplate they’d sniff you out in an instant.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“Don’t insult me. Suit sealed that tight, I doubt they can survive in an oxygen atmosphere. Look,” she said, pointing with the tip of the prod…
They Worship It: Chapter Two
The ship lurched as he wrenched the great wood-spoked wheel of the ship to the right. All of us on deck, for our part, wrapped ourselves securely to the rigging. Men and women swung out over naught but ocean on the ends of loose ropes as Hardman brought us round side-by-side with the great whale, facing the opposite way. With any luck we could now escape while the thing was still turning around. The maneuver had given us all quite an appreciation for the size of the thing. It was bigger than any living thing should be, plainly the result of some dire mutation indeed.
The collective sigh of relief that was breathed by all aboard was short-lived, however. Mere moments after we left the whale to ponderously wheel around – by which time we would be long gone – another cry pierced the air.
They Worship It: Chapter One
“Ship to starboard!” the cry pierced through the general noise. The lookout, who was a small man with a beakish sort of face, leaned over the edge of his perch up the mast, and added: “Aye, it looks like a rich one!”
The ship lurched, and the old bird near fell over the side onto the deck ten foot below him, but he held his purchase and repeated the cry from first principles, in case any of the crew had not yet heard him.
A Twisted Game of Cat and Cat: Chapter Four
Geist didn’t have a plan of his own to take down Hardin. He had the germ of an idea, maybe. The guy didn’t like to get his own hands dirty, clearly. It was a bad job to let some pack of amateurs do the hard part and just reap the rewards. Not against the rules, mind. Just frowned upon, unless you did it with exceptional style or hypnotism or something like that, although gimmicks were also generally considered gauche at best and a major risk of exposure at worst. He had once known an assassin who used as the basis of his contracts a series of stage magic old standards. All well and good, until you run out of the good ones. There’s only so many “saw-a-lady-in-half”s you can pull before you have to start resorting to embarrassing gags like “pulling a Black Mamba out of a hat,” which bring the whole tone of the profession down. The Astounding Malvolio hadn’t lasted long after that…
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