Darker Than You Think Read Online Free PDF Page A

moved unconsciously to draw little Pat to her
side. She didn't find the word.
    "Don't,
Will!" she whispered. "Please!" The engines of the
taxiing transport drowned her voice.

    CHAPTER
TWO

    The
Kitten Killing

    Two
white-uniformed attendants were waiting with a wheeled gangway to
land the incoming passengers. The big transport, however, looming
dark and monstrous in the floodlights on the field, stopped a full
hundred yards from the terminal building. The great motors died in a
silence that seemed breathless.
    "Marck!"
In that sudden stillness the voice of Mondrick's blind wife was a
thin, frantic cry. "Can anybody see Marck?"
    Old
Ben Chittum led the eager rush toward the transport, waving his pipe
wildly and shouting unanswered greetings to his son. Papa and Mama
Spivak ran behind him, calling for Nick, and burst into tears when
their son didn't appear. Nora Quain picked up the toddling child and
held her apprehensively tight.
    Rowena
Mondrick was left behind, with her huge dog and the
bewildered-looking little nurse. The dog had ceased to bristle, with
April Bell's departure. It glanced at Barbee with friendly golden
eyes, and then ignored him.
    "The
plane stopped pretty far out," he told Rowena. "I don't
know why. But Dr. Mondrick and the others should be out to meet us in
a moment."
    "Thank
you, Will." She smiled toward him gratefully, her face turning
smooth and youthful again for an instant under the blank lenses,
before her bleak unease came back. "I'm so afraid for Marck!"
    "I
can understand that," Barbee murmured. "Sam Quain told me
about the Ala-shan—a desert that makes Death Valley look like a
green oasis, so I gather. And I know Dr. Mondrick's health isn't
good—"
    "No,
Will, it's nothing like that." Her thin, straight shoulders
shrugged uneasily. "Marck does have that trick heart, and his
asthma seems worse every year. But he's still vigorous, and he knows
his deserts. It isn't that at all."
    Her
small hands tightened on the shepherd's leash, and Barbee thought
they shuddered. She drew the huge dog to her again. Her light fingers
moved quickly over its fine tawny head, and then dwelt upon the
polished silver studs that knobbed its collar, as if she found a
sensuous pleasure in feeling the cold white metal.
    "I
used to work with Marck, you know," she whispered slowly.
"Before I saw too much." Her thin left hand came quickly
up, as if moved with an unforgotten horror, to cover for an instant
her dark lenses and the empty scars behind them. "I know what
his theory is, and what Sam Quain found for him under that old burial
mound in the Ala-shan on the last expedition before the war. That's
why I tried to persuade him not to go back."
    She
turned abruptly, listening.
    "Now
where are they, Will?" Apprehension breathed in her low voice.
"Why don't they come?"
    "I
don't know," Barbee told her, himself uneasy. "I don't
understand it. The plane's just standing, waiting. They've put the
gangway against it, and now they're opening the door, but nobody
comes out. There's Dr. Bennett, the Foundation man, going aboard."
    "He'll
find out." Holding fast to the dog, Rowena turned back toward
the terminal building, listening again. "Where's that girl?"
Alarm edged her whisper. "The one Turk chased away."
    "Inside,"
Barbee said. "I'm sorry anything unpleasant happened. April's
charming, and I hoped you'd like her. Really, Rowena, I couldn't see
any reason—"
    "But
there is a reason." The blind woman stiffened, her face taut and
pale. "Turk didn't like her." She was patting the huge
dog's head; Barbee saw its intelligent yellow eyes look warily toward
the building, as if alert against April Bell's return. "And Turk
knows."
    "Now,
Rowena," Barbee protested. "Aren't you carrying your trust
in Turk a little too far?"
    Her
blind lenses stared at him, somehow ominous.
    "Marck
trained Turk to guard me," she insisted solemnly. "He
attacked that woman because he knows she's ... bad." Her taut
fingers quivered on the