Ten Little Aliens Read online

  Tovel hissed back. ‘It should get lighter too.’

  ‘Polly had placed a pile of stones outside the relevant path,’

  the Doctor added. He paused for breath, and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Ben waited dutifully beside him, and Creben and Joiks both pushed past. Ben looked nervously around - a pointless exercise, since it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand before your face. He was sure it hadn’t been so dark before, and had become convinced that the fleaweed on the ceilings was able somehow to shift itself about. Was there nothing that didn’t move when it shouldn’t in this God-awful place?

  In an attempt to avoid unwelcome attention, they’d decided to have just the one torch on, Roba’s, leading them on. It was like trailing after a lost little sunbeam in the cold, dark tunnels. Twice they had heard the soft, rhythmic flapping of stone wings in the blackness. Roba had flicked off the torch and they’d stood frozen like statues themselves until the noise had faded back into the shadows.

  ‘Wait a minute, then!’ Ben called quietly into the darkness, afraid the others would get too far ahead

  ‘Don’t fuss, my boy,’ the Doctor told him stiffly, and they started off again.

  They caught up with the others in time to see them crouched beside a little slate cairn that marked one of two tunnels. The fleaweed was back, casting its seasick glow.

  ‘Polly must’ve left that,’ said Ben.

  ‘This is the way,’ Tovel said.

  The passage wound on, getting brighter the further they got. The fleas skipped and scuttled over their faces and hands. Ben brushed them away furiously. Then he realised Roba and the others had stopped - and, a moment later, saw why.

  ‘Stone me,’ Ben said, staring out into a star-filled night.

  ‘They put a window in here.’

  ‘Why would they do such a thing?’ Creben wondered.

  ‘I wonder, yes,’ said the Doctor, making a big show of contemplating the mystery. Ben supposed he was grateful for the extra rest. ‘Why one window, and why here?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a bad view, is it?’ Ben said. The stars were solid points of light, glaring out from the most absolute blackness Ben had ever seen.

  ‘Nothing out there,’ Roba remarked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Joiks added.

  Roba led them onwards

  ‘Can’t get no further,’ said Roba. ‘Rockfall. Time to get busy.’

  ‘All right. Polly said she ran straight down this tunnel from the blue area.’ The heavy crack of boulders impacting against floor and wall punctuated Tovel’s speech as Roba got his hands dirty. ‘If we can clear that lot, we’ll be on the way to getting clear ourselves.’

  Ben wished he could believe it.

  As Tovel helped Roba dislodge the really big stones, Joiks and Creben both began work themselves. While Creben sized up different rocks, looking for those that might bring a number more tumbling down without further effort, Joiks tore at the landslide. He was probably imagining each one was Frog’s head. She’d given the berk a right bloody nose; if it hadn’t been flattened a dozen times before she’d probably have broken it. Still, it had knocked some of the cockiness out of him and no mistake. He was good as gold and keeping his lip buttoned. Ben almost liked him that way.

  Poor old Frog. If there was even a chance they could stop what was happening to her...

  ‘Come on, Ben,’ Roba called, as he heaved at a huge boulder. ‘You can maybe shift the pebbles, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Ben was glad to see the big man back on side, but a little wary of him too since his acting up back in the control room. He grappled with a chunk of slate too big for him to tackle easily alone, just to show willing. But the thought of Frog had suggested something to him. ‘‘Ere, Roba.

  That cut of yours. How come your suit’s not digging in, staunching the blood or whatever?’

  ‘It ain’t working,’ Roba grumbled, not looking up from the rockpile. ‘Cheap crap they give us.’

  They worked on. Just as he was beginning to think that any second now the noise of crashing rock would bring the stone angels flapping back in sympathy, Ben saw a wisp of wraith-like blue light ahead.

  ‘Look!’ he called. ‘We’re almost through!’

  V

  Haunt stirred, her eyes opened almost involuntarily. The control room snapped back into sharp focus. The fever had broken, and her thoughts had suddenly an awful, fragile clarity. She felt not just the dreadful empty pain in her side and the warm throb of the shot in her arm, but the full weight of her responsibility for the safety and success of the mission. All those lives that depended on her.

  She was so tired. Too tired. Didn’t they realise that?

  Her eyes closed. Just for a moment Haunt thought of Ashman again and wished she could go back there, back then, to that time on Toronto.

  VI

  Shade had been sleeping silently for some time now; or so Polly had thought. She stopped as she approached him. He was lying facing away from her, curled up.

  Lindey’s palm-sized computer was gone from his pocket.

  Polly stealthily advanced. Now she was close enough to see he was actually using the computer, holding it up to his eyes, entirely caught up in whatever it was showing him.

  Polly reached in and grabbed the computer from him.

  Shade spun round in surprise. Polly stifled a gasp, felt her stomach churn, and the flesh at the back of her thighs go tight at the sight of him.

  His face was a mess of half-formed scabs, and streaked with bright red blood. Guilt was written gorily all over him.

  ‘Guess I’m always going to have the same effect on people, aren’t I,’ he said. ‘One look and they scream.’

  ‘This isn’t about your face,’ Polly snapped. ‘Except in as much as you seem to have two of them. Oh, yes, you were so sad to have lost poor old Lindey one minute... didn’t stop you stealing her computer thing and keeping whatever it might tell you to yourself!’

  She wanted him to deny it. He didn’t. She looked at the screen, focussed on the green capitals clustered there.

  PRESS OK TO KILL FILES ++

  ‘What’s going on, Shade?’ she breathed.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, his hoarse voice sounding more choked than usual. ‘Give me that palmscreen.’

  ‘I’ll get Haunt to show me how it works,’ she said defiantly.

  Shade stared helplessly at her, his face twisted in pain. For an awful moment she thought he was going to start crying too.

  ‘But if you tell me, I won’t tell anyone else,’ she added.

  Shade laid his head back down on the firm mattress. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much, since we’re going to die anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean, we’re going to die?’ Polly demanded.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Shade whispered. His brilliant green eyes seemed to look straight through her. ‘Don’t you see? It’s me, Polly. The reason we’re going to die. It’s all me.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Shade?’ Polly croaked, backing away.

  ‘I’m from Earth. You know what that means?’

  Polly sort of half-shook her head, not wanting to get sidetracked by unnecessary explanations.

  ‘Privilege. Power. Reward.’ He gazed up at her. ‘My family could buy the planet that Frog grew up on, and barely notice the expense.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I didn’t want to be like that. Just about money, and privilege. I wanted to give something back.’ He smiled at her, a strained sort of smile.

  Give something back. Polly thought back to the New Year’s resolution she’d made in 1963, to work in the charity shop for cancer research. Giving something back. But she’d hated the squalor of the grey little store in Notting Hill, standing all day amid the remnants of drab little lives on shelves and hangers. She’d walked out after a week - making her mum ecstatic in the process - and donated a pricey pile of last year’s fashions instead to assuage her guilt.

  ‘Go on,’ s
he nodded.

  ‘I joined up. Thought I’d fight for the Empire. Coming from Earth, they made me a lieutenant straight off.’ The smile was still on his face, though now it looked like someone had carved it in with a pen knife. ‘On New Jersey...’

  ‘You hurt yourself there,’ Polly remembered. ‘The mine...’

  His face crumpled. ‘I was squad leader. Schirr everywhere.

  Walked straight into an ambush.’ He contorted his lips over his clenched teeth, trying to keep the words coming.

  ‘That wasn’t your fault,’ Polly said gently. ‘You were helping the children...’

  ‘No. There were no kids. Except the kids in my squad.’ He swallowed. ‘Didn’t fight. Didn’t lead. Just left my men to it.

  They were screaming... I didn’t care. So scared I ran straight into a mine.’

  Polly looked down at the screen again, at the word ‘OK’, as Shade kept on talking, so quietly she could barely hear him.

  ‘It took half my face off and stopped my career dead.

  Without my connections - those same stupid connections I was running from - I’d have been court-martialled and either executed or else given ceremonial duties on some craphole world mid-empire.’

  ‘And instead?’

  ‘Instead I was given an honourable discharge, and allowed to rejoin the following year with a doctored record.’ He started to cry, a soft mewling noise coming from somewhere deep inside. ‘Every day I look at myself. And I remember.’

  I never forget the scum that did this to me, Shade had told her back at the rockfall. Polly looked up from the palmscreen.

  It was hurting her eyes. ‘Lindey found out, didn’t she?’

  ‘Someone she knew died thanks to me. Thanks to me believing I could be something I’m not.’ He clicked his tongue.

  ‘You’ve got the files there. I think she was going to blackmail me once I’d made AT Elite.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Show me one person who’s happy where they are. I’ve always kidded myself I could rough it out in Empire. She wanted Earth contacts, I suppose.’

  ‘And now she’s dead?’

  Shade stared dreamily into space. ‘All I need do is hit the button, kill the files, and my secret is safe.’

  Polly pushed the palmscreen inside her spacesuit. ‘I know your secret.’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What about me?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispered. ‘Thanks to me, we’re all going to die anyway.’

  ‘No. That’s silly, stop it.’

  Shade shook his head, shut his eyes. He seemed suddenly exhausted. ‘I can’t stop it. No one can. I’m a jinx, see. And the ambush, it’s happening all over again.’

  * * *

  VII

  The patch of blue light had got everyone excited. Ben noticed that even Creben had abandoned his methodical knocking out of the key rocks in favour of scrabbling at the pile like the rest of them until the hole was big enough to scramble through.

  There was a pressure in Ben’s ears, like a sea was roaring and rolling in his head. A glittering indigo filled the wide passage, blissfully welcome after the murk of the tunnels or the sick green glow of the fleaweed. His feet felt like they were barely touching the ground, like he was floating through the night sky in summer. How many warm evenings had Ben looked out at that dark expanse and imagined he could splash out into it as easily as he could the warm, dark sea.

  ‘Ben.’ The Doctor’s voice was sharp in his ear, and a hand pressed down on his shoulder. ‘Ben, listen to me.’

  ‘What?’ Ben shrugged off the Doctor’s hand. He didn’t want to listen. He only wanted to look. They’d reached an outcrop of rock overlooking a dark chasm. Waves of Caribbean blue rolled across roof and floor, translucent sheets of sparkling light that splashed against the rocky walls and out into the air. It was beautiful.

  The Doctor raised his voice. Now it sounded like he was addressing a whole crowd.

  ‘Ben, all of you, listen to me.’

  Who else was here then?

  ‘We are near a source of great power. A power great enough to distort your perceptions.’

  ‘Quiet down,’ Ben complained.

  ‘It wants you to approach with your defences down,’ the old man insisted. ‘I am sure of it, this place is some kind of trap.’

  ‘Well shut yours then, for starters.’ Ben couldn’t stay angry for long with a view as gorgeous as this. Just across the sea there was some kind of island, dark filtered through the moonlight. Grainy sand, spiky palms, the perfect desert island. He’d always kidded with the boys on the Teazer he’d go AWOL the moment it came along. Now all he had to do was float over and see it for himself. Decide if he wanted to stay.

  Ben imagined it was paradise there.

  ‘It is using your memories, your imagination, to reel you in close enough to strike!’ Ben felt himself spun round. A craggy old face leaned into his own. ‘Think of Lindey, and Denni.

  Pulled away into the darkness. Pulled apart by winged statues.’

  Ben pushed the old man away. ‘Leave me alone!’ His arms felt dead. The rest of him felt dead drunk. The sky was spinning above him, streaked with stars.

  ‘Think of Polly, alone, back in that room with the sick and the dying!’ The old man was back again, back in his face.

  ‘There is evil, here, Ben. Evil that we must defeat if we are to survive. Do you understand me now, hmm?’ Ben felt bony fingers digging into his shoulders. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes!’ screamed Ben.

  He stood shaking, trembling, at the edge of the precipice.

  The spell was broken, the rushing static noise in his head reduced to a whisper. As he turned, he saw that the shadowy island was some kind of machinery housed across the divide.

  And while Creben stood just a few feet away with his hands pressed against his ears, face twisted in pain as if he was trying to shut out some terrible sound, Joiks, Roba and Tovel had actually walked off the lip of rock into the chasm. Ben stared, woozily, half-expecting the lot of them to look down at any second and, actually realising they were walking in mid-air, plummet to the ground like the coyote did in the cartoons. But they didn’t.

  ‘Some kind of force bridge, I suppose. Now quickly, Ben, while I deal with Creben, go after them. They must be stopped! None of us know what’s waiting for them!’

  While the Doctor started shouting at Creben - an easier conversion it seemed, since he was already trying to fight off the influence in the first place - Ben sprinted to the edge of the precipice. With a deep breath, he stepped out into thin blue air. It gave slightly beneath him, but held. He took another cautious step, then broke into a run. Tovel, Roba and Joiks had almost reached the shadowy cylindrical mass Ben had seen as an island. It looked now more like a couple of giant glass cotton reels stacked on top of each other in a rocky alcove. A dark liquid seemed to swirl inside, carried he supposed by the confused junction of pipes coiled all around the structure, disappearing into floor and ceiling.

  ‘Oi, you lot!’ he yelled, wondering what each of them was seeing now. ‘It ain’t safe! It ain’t what you think it is!’ They ignored him. Soon they would’ve crossed to the other side.

  Then inspiration struck.

  ‘Blimey, here comes Haunt!’ Ben shouted. ‘She don’t look too happy at the state of you lot!’

  The three men paused on the slate grey shore of the weird machine’s peninsula. They turned, almost as one person.

  Tovel and Roba looked like someone had thrown a bucket of water over them, stared round in surprise.

  But Joiks’s face clouded over again. He turned back to the glass cylinder.

  ‘Terrific,’ Ben muttered. He sprinted past Roba and Tovel, and brought Joiks crashing down in a rugby tackle. The big man made no attempt to break his fall, and landed like a brick. The shock seemed to bring him round. He rolled on to his back, and looked about him in a daze.

  ‘Hope that didn’t hurt too much, Joiks,’ Ben said, hiding a smile.
That one had been for Frog.

  He turned to find the others, the Doctor and Creben included, were standing round him in a semi-circle. Roba hoisted Joiks to his feet.

  The Doctor was puffing for breath. ‘Well done, Ben, my boy.’

  Ben nodded vaguely. He was looking back at the glass tank, and the inky liquid vortex inside. There were occasional flashes of energy from within. Even the air seemed to carry some sort of charge.

  ‘Well, Doctor?’ asked Tovel. ‘Is that thing part of the drive systems?’

  ‘Part of them? Yes, I believe so.’ He drew himself up to his full height. ‘We must be very careful.’

  Cautiously they advanced. The glass crackled and spat light at them, as if warning them away.

  ‘How is it powering this thing?’ Creben wondered. ‘The fuel required for a chunk of rock this size…’

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ Roba gestured to a scrap of dirty fabric caught on the rough slate of the wall beside coils of piping.

  Ben skirted the glass cylinder to see. The material had been white once, but now it was filthy with grime and rusty stains.

  ‘Could be blood, I suppose.’

  Creben took the scrap from him. ‘It is blood.’ He turned to the others. ‘It’s from one of the Schirr.’

  ‘‘Ere, wait a minute.’ In one of the glass cylinder’s more vivid sparks Ben caught sight of something gleaming, pressed into a crack in the rock. ‘There’s something else down here.’

  Creben drew a short-bladed knife and prised out a metal band. ‘Webset,’ he muttered. He worked more urgently with the blade, forcing the headband out. ‘I’ve found a webset!’ he yelled. ‘And another beneath it.’

  ‘Right little treasure trove, ain’t it?’ Ben commented.

  ‘Lindey’s and Denni’s, they must be!’ Creben shouted to the others.

  ‘Why would anyone hide their websets down here?’ asked Tovel.

  ‘I say dump them,’ Joiks said quickly.

  Creben frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, who needs them?’