Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [4]
One of the Vilmurians tugged at Emile’s trouser leg, and he looked down at the rows of sharp yellow teeth on display.
‘Hey mate, you got a room?’ the Vilmurian hissed, and then gestured at the crate of cans with the point of his thickly scaled tail. He offered Emile a share in them if he let them have a party in his room. They’d sold their cabin tickets to buy the bubblejack. Emile had seen Vilmurians only on the small screen and found them disconcerting. No, that was another lie. They were terrifying.
This one’s eyes were completely dilated from the bubblejack. A half-remembered documentary popped into his head. Didn’t they eat their enemies alive? Or was that the Vendurians?
He muttered something about his cabin being full and tried to slip past. The nearest one made a lunge for him, its mouth snapping loudly. It shouted a string of curses as he dodged its long jaws and shot down the corridor, spilling his yassi down his overcoat in the process.
‘Lightweight!’ the Vilmurian called after him. An empty pink can whistled past Emile’s ear and bounced on the pastel-coloured walls of the passenger liner.
Emile collapsed into the tiny windowless cabin, thumbed the lock control, chucked his holdall on to one of the two bunks and then sank down on to the floor, leaning heavily against the door.
There was a strawberry-coloured smear down the front of his coat. He mopped it up with the edge of his hand and licked his sticky fingers. Maybe if he rationed his masala dosa he could spend the whole trip in his cabin. He wished that he hadn’t spilt his yassi. Was he going to be like one of those crash survivors, forced to drink his own pee in order to survive?
Maybe not.
You’re getting hysterical, Emile, he told himself. But he still felt reassured when he had checked that the cabin had an en-suite.
He put what remained of the yassi on a small moulded-plastic shelf which formed part of the headboard of the bed and wiped his mouth on the cuff of his heavy coat.
He was sweating, so he tugged himself out of his overcoat and climbed into the bathroom, which was a tiny white plastic cell three feet square. He washed his hands and face and then examined his reflection in the mirror. The fluorescent light turned his pale skin a sick green and transformed his carefully bleached flat-top pus-yellow. He frowned at the two spots he had picked that morning, which were now standing out angrily on his chin.
Sexy.
He stared into his large brown eyes and wondered what he was doing here. College life wasn’t turning out quite like he’d imagined. The trip to St Oscar’s from the relay station had been horrendous enough, but he’d been at the university only a week before he’d been told that he was to meet his tutor at a dig site two systems away. Two systems! How many light years was that?
Shit, at least ten million, I’ll bet, he guessed. Ten million! That was more zeros than he’d got in his last maths test.
When he asked the department secretary which member of staff was going to accompany him on the trip, the matronly woman had only smiled apologetically and muttered something about a timetable mix-up and handed him his ticket. ‘Well, you made it here in one piece didn’t you, my dear? You’re a grown man – I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
He pulled a face at his fifteen-year-old reflection and it pulled it right back. Emile Mars-Smith, you are a dirty stinking liar, he told himself. When he had begun this lie about his age he’d only ever worried that he wouldn’t be able to pass it off. It hadn’t occurred to him that people would actually treat him as if he really were eighteen. And that wasn’t the only lie he’d been spinning to the universe. He turned away from the mirror, suddenly unwilling or unable to look at himself.
Some things were harder to come clean about. Even to himself.
Especially himself.
He felt a gentle rumbling as the passenger ship began to lift itself away from the ground. No going back now. Then he gasped in horror as someone started rattling the door handle in the other room.
Oh my God, the Vilmurians were coming for him!