Destroyer of Worlds Read Online Free Page B

true answer.’
    ‘We may already have it,’ she said, bleakly. ‘We received a warning, remember?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, harshly. ‘To halt. To return. To withdraw. To go back. Now tell me how the hell we can possibly obey it!’
    *
    The bottle was half-empty and Gordon Kent scowled at it remembering a joke he had once been told, a philosophical concept which hadn’t amused him then and didn’t now. A bottle half-empty was just that and calling it one half-full didn’t alter the amount of the contents. Well, to hell with it, when it was all gone maybe he could get more or, at least, would be out of the ward, the bed, the whole damned prison the Medical Section had become.
    Lifting the bottle, he drank, swallowing the neat alcohol it contained; surgical spirit intended to ease the pain of bedsores, to clean surface areas of skin. A product of the yeast vats which helped to provide their food and which he had stolen to use as an anodyne for boredom.
    He glowered at the lowered level and gently moved his injured leg. Days now and still the damned thing hadn’t healed. Alan Guthrie had gone, smiling, eager to get back to work, making a joke as he left to see about getting a crutch. A joke in bad taste — surely it couldn’t come to that, a broken leg, a gash which was slow in healing.
    Quickly he took another drink.
    The nurse, damn her, had closed the door so that he couldn’t see out of the ward and so was left in a form of solitary confinement foreign to his nature. He had always liked company, the boisterous comradeship of his fellow crewmen, the challenge of gymnastic activity. A big man, proud of his body, enjoying the euphoria of fitness, of using the fine engine of flesh and blood which was his own.
    Again he moved his leg, wincing at the stab of pain. Throwing back the cover he examined it, frowning at the ugly red streaks running from the wound, the skin distended and tender. The doctors had seen it, had muttered over it, and had filled him with antibiotics and other assorted junk all with no apparent success. Tomorrow, so he had heard, he was to be given a complete blood-change and after that, if necessary, immersion in an amniotic tank where new tissue would be grown to replace that they would have to cut away.
    He wouldn’t die and he wouldn’t lose his leg but he would lose time and the championship would have been decided and he would still be in this or another ward fitted up with life-support mechanisms of one kind or another. Time which dragged past on leaden feet. Feet — the plural.
    He took another drink.
    And, remembering Guthrie’s parting joke, yet another and then, because it wasn’t worth saving the little which remained, he emptied the bottle and sank back with his head on the pillow staring at the central light the ward contained.
    A bright light which seemed to flicker and swell and pulse as if with a life of its own. To change even as he watched. To alter.
    Bain heard him scream.
    He had been studying a tissue sample from the man’s injured leg, frowning at the distortion of the cellular structure, testing a variety of agents and collating the results. The scream caught him as he was fitting a new slide and he swore as the glass shattered, a sliver cutting a finger so that blood dripped to stain the sterile instrument.
    It came again as he straightened, a shriek which sounded less than human, a thing compounded of naked terror and heart-stopping fear.
    ‘Doctor!’ A nurse came running towards him, her eyes enormous in the pallor of her face. ‘It’s Gordon Kent. I —’
    ‘Get help!’ Bain thrust past her, leaving a smear of blood from his cut hand on her uniform, the scarlet bright against the white sleeve. ‘Bring sedatives. Hurry!’
    He heard the scream again as he reached the ward and flinging open the door he ran inside.
    To see the figure crawling on the floor, face and one hand uplifted, jagged shards of broken glass held like a dagger towards the throat. A dagger