Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [28]
He grimaced. ‘I said,’ he managed, wincing with the effort, ‘uncouple the cabin and try to make a landfall. The fuel’s going to go up. I’m surprised it hasn’t already.’
‘Right.’ Bernice glanced at the controls and then swung back around at him. ‘Er, how do I do that – uncouple the cabin from the rest of the ship, I mean?’
‘I’ll talk you through the whole thing. All the way down.’
Bernice rolled her eyes. ‘I think I’ve seen this movie. Look, I can get us safely through the atmosphere. I just need to know how to uncouple the cabin from the cargo hold and the engines.’
A rumbling shudder gripped the ship, followed by a booming explosion. Their eyes met, wide with fear.
The image of the cabin of the haulage ship hitting the atmosphere was fuzzy and distant. In monochrome, the bottom edge of the cabin burnt a grainy white for a few seconds as it cut through the top layers of the atmosphere and then disappeared. On board the first of the three ships, neat lines of pale figures watched the fate of the tiny vessel with lifeless metallic grey eyes.
6
THE DRAGON BOY
Scott woke shivering and wet with sweat. He was breathing hard and lay on the mattress for a few minutes to catch his breath. He felt his heartbeat slow and tried to shake the dream out of his mind.
It was still dark outside the large room. Everyone else was asleep. He could hear one of his sisters snoring loudly a few beds down. The person lying in bed with him responded to his movement, twitching, grunting and finally turning over. He peeled back the sheets to discover the identity of the person he was sharing with. Beneath a mass of long hair, twisted by sleep, was a young woman who often maintained farm equipment in this village and the next. Her face was smudged with streaks of oil and her fingernails were ingrained with the greasy dirt of old engines.
Scott watched her sleeping for a moment, trying without success to remember her name. She must have entered the dorm late; he had seen a group trying to kick-start a reluctant harvester which had slid into a ditch earlier in the evening.
No one paid much attention to the curfew this far from the cities.
Scott slipped out of the bed and padded naked to the washroom at the end of the dorm. He splashed himself with cold water and leant against the cold stone wall. Its coolness was a pleasure after the distressful dream.
When he closed his eyes he could still see the huge expanse of red sun rising to meet him. He was falling between the stars, falling towards the fire. He felt the first flames lick at his skin and then a blinding agony for a tiny moment as he hit the red giant’s aura and his body flared like a match. His hand burnt to the bone in front of his eyes and then he was nothing but dust.
He felt a deep ache in his stomach, like a longing or regret. He opened his eyes to discover that he was hugging himself tightly. Fresh sweat had broken out on his brow and upper lip.
The dreams were coming more frequently now. The rest of his family were also plagued by them. Some more than others. When the dreams had first started they had talked of little else, but when no answer or meaning became readily apparent they had tired of the endless specula-tion and drifted back to their separate lives.
He was distracted by something in the night sky visible through the open door to the washroom. A scarlet light had streaked across the blackness for a second – a tiny red tear in the night.
At first, Scott wondered if it was an after-effect of the dream, but the accompanying faint high-pitched whistle assured him that it was real.
He ran out into the darkness, searching for any sign of it. It must have been some kind of plane or ship. A muffled sound echoed through the plain. He thought he felt a tiny tremor through his bare feet although he might have imagined it. The sound reminded him of thunder heard from indoors.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t like an Ursu airship at all, which meant that it probably belonged to them, to the Sunless. Scott stood in the dust outside the dorm, straining