The Eidolon Read Online Free

and disappeared through revolving doors into a building made of glass. And inside there would be an escalator to take them to the main foyer. Here, you had to grapple with the cage door just to get it to open. No lift attendant to tip his hat at you. Why did I choose this job again?
    I clanged the door shut and pushed the green button on the control box that dangled from a thick wire in the corner. I swear, one of these days it would drop off and I’d be stuck a kilometre under the planet in a bloody lift shaft. The cage shuddered and began its descent, and the earth exhaled its hot breath on me, its morning salute. I adjusted my helmet, fumbling with the headlamp, and a pool of tepid light spilled onto my palm. I tapped the torch, and the light stuttered and went out. Bollocks.
    The descent took several minutes, and the air grew stuffier with each of them. Lights set into the rock face swept from my feet to my head in slow, regular pulses.
    I ran my hand over my stubbled jaw, and yawned again. Glancing at my watch, I winced . Zimmer was going to be pissed off . He wanted an early start – today of all days. Given all the hours I’d put in, he couldn’t really pull me up on it, especially since they didn’t pay overtime. Ever since we got the scent that we were on to something, about a year ago, I’d spent most of my time at the mine, probably more than Zimmer himself. Not when things were really bad for Cora, though. Then I would take some time off to be with her, even though it didn’t seem to help. I think she found it easier when I wasn’t around. She needed her own space, she’d said. I didn’t want to think too much then about what that meant, so I threw myself back into work. Before long, if I got home before nine on a week night I was doing well. And the weekends were almost as bad. It was like a drug, like gambling: the thought that it’s there, that we almost have it, and if we put one more coin into the slot, the next run might be the one that pays off. We were close. We knew that from the preliminary results, all we needed was to verify them. And if we found the nature of dark matter? If we solved the mystery of what’s all around us? That’s what kept me going. Zimmer and I had already been invited to speak at the Annual Conference on Astroparticle and Underground Physics the following week to present our findings and I’d had provisional acceptance of a paper I’d submitted to the Journal of Physics . I had a call last month from the physics lead at the University of Manchester, offering me a temporary lecturer’s post covering for a computer scientist on long term sick. “Between you and me,” he’d said, “we need some fresh input, someone who’s on the cutting edge. It could lead to a full time post.” There was growing interest in the scientific community. Ears were pricking up, and it fuelled the drive to reach the finish line. It would change everything.
     
     
    T HE CAGE BUMPED to a halt and I dragged the whining doors open, this time in the bowels of the salt mine where the air smelled of scorched rock. I pushed the doors closed behind me and walked down the corridor, my boots echoing on the concrete floor. A man shuffled towards me from the other end of the corridor, pulling a large trolley. He wore a safety suit and helmet like everyone down here, but his were blue and I didn’t recognise him.
    The man glanced up then lowered his eyes without smiling as he passed. I glanced back. Piles of cardboard boxes overburdened the trolley, full of books and paper files and bits of electrical kit. Maybe Zimmer had decided to clear out some of his mess, I thought. About time.
    Ahead of me, a door. Someone had amended the sign reading:
     
    RESEARCH LABORATORY CONTROL ROOM
    ACCESS RESTRICTED
     
    with the word ‘MOTHERSHIP’.
    I suppose that the bottom of a pit is an odd place to study anything.
    I pushed open the door and froze. It was all wrong. Five men I didn’t know were dismantling