The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [68]
The Doctor's bird-like gaze fastened on Steven. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"He speaks the truth," Marlowe agreed, stepping forward. "I saw it too. The house is owned by a man named Irving Braxiatel."
The expression on the Doctor's face didn't flicker, but the atmosphere of the room suddenly changed. The shadows were deeper all of a sudden, the breeze cooler, the silence more intense. "Braxiatel, you say?" He half-turned towards the window.
"Braxiatel, here?"
"You know this man?" Marlowe said, stepping forward.
"Yes, yes," the Doctor fussed, waving his hand at the man. "Yes, Braxiatel is my... Well, well, well. Things are suddenly becoming a little clearer." He smiled, and it was not an expression that Steven liked. "Perhaps you should tell me everything."
Steven sighed. "That's what we were trying to - oh never mind."
As Braxiatel's skiff rose steadily into the air, Vicki watched the emerald foliage of Laputa fall away on the viewscreen with a shiver of recognition. The last time she had seen a sight like that, her father had been with her. They had been leaving Earth together, hoping to make a new life on one of the Outer Rim colony worlds after her mother died. He had joked about her eagerness as she pressed her nose against the viewing window. She could remember his laugh and the warmth of his hand on her shoulder.
All gone now.
They had taught her in school that matter and energy were neither created nor destroyed, but they were wrong. Mothers died. Fathers died.
Hope died.
Around the edge of Laputa a fringe of golden beach appeared and, around that, a line of pellucid blue water. The skiff rose farther and faster, and she could see layers of structure within the lagoon that sailors never saw: the sandbanks that came within inches of the surface but were invisible if you were floating on it, the blackened ribs of wrecked ships and the small specks of fish swimming between them, the gently waving strands of weed that bent over like a forest in a high wind. And then they were too high to make out the detail, and the sea was as it appeared from a few feet away: opaque and mysterious. Other islands crept in around the edge of the screen, but then they passed through the first layer of cloud and the glorious sight of the unspoiled Earth was hidden.
"How long does the journey take?" she asked Braxiatel.
"A few minutes," he answered without taking his eyes off the controls. "We don't normally travel through the atmosphere very fast because we don't want to cause any sonic booms - might alert the natives, you see. Once we're above the troposphere we can speed up a bit. Are you enjoying the flight?"
"I am. Thanks for offering to take me out."
He smiled. "I was afraid that you might be feeling a little cooped up. I'll show you where the spaceships are all parked, then we'll head back to Earth and tell the Doctor you're all right. I assume that he'll be worried."
"I hope so," Vicki said. "I'll be annoyed if he's not."
Outside the viewscreen the sky had turned the purple of a fresh bruise, and the line of the horizon was visible right at the edge.
"Mind if I reorient the sensors?" Braxiatel asked. "You might want to see where we're going."
"Go ahead."
Braxiatel caressed a control, and the screen blurred and reformed to show the battered surface of the moon ahead of them, sailing quietly through the black void. Vicki jumped as a sudden ping echoed through the cabin and a red light flashed on the control panel.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Not to worry - we're just being scanned," Braxiatel said reassuringly.
"Scanned by what?"
He pointed to a small speck, dark against the brightness of the moon's surface. It looked to Vicki like the fish that had been swimming in and out of the wrecks in the lagoon. "Scanned by that. It's one of my automatic sentry satellites. Everywhere within a light year of Earth has been declared a no-go area by my people for the