Shadow Creatures Read Online Free PDF Page A

birthday,’ Calum said, seeing Gecko looking at the box. He was still hanging nonchalantly from his strap.
    ‘No, I forget birthdays,’ Gillian replied, ‘but I make up for it at other times with random gifts.’ She glanced across at Gecko. ‘Could you be a dear, Eduardo, and
open it for us. Calum is fixed in place trying to look casual, I don’t want to wreck my nails and Natalie’s favourite word at the moment is “no”. At least, that’s when
she’s not saying “As if!” and “puh
-lease
!”
    ‘Oh, puh
-leased
!’ Natalie said, on cue, and flounced off to the sofa in a huff.
    ‘Of course I can,’ Gecko said. He knelt down and shifted the crate on to the floor. The sticker, he saw, said:
Robledo Mountains Technology, Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Their logo
was a stylized mountain range with a sunset behind it. The tape surrounding the crate was hard and razor-edged, made of lots of fibres all wound together. The join looked as if it had been
heat-sealed. He slipped a folding knife out of his back pocket and sliced through it, and then snapped the plastic catches. He swung the lid upward, revealing the crate’s contents.
    For a long moment they all looked inside.
    ‘Leg braces,’ Calum said in a cold voice. ‘Gee, thanks. Just what I always wanted.’
    ‘I knew that’s what you would say.’ Professor Livingstone crossed over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s not what they are.’
    It was, Gecko thought, what they looked like. There were two objects side by side inside the crate, each one the mirror image of the other. They were made of some black, dull material –
not metal, but maybe carbon fibre or something similar. It looked as though they were meant to strap round Calum’s legs, running from a thick carbon-fibre belt round his waist, down past the
top of his thighs and on down towards his ankles. The hip and knee joints were complicated – not just simple hinges, but arrangements of small pistons and what looked like circular motors.
There were wires everywhere, and a box on the belt area that looked to Gecko as if it housed a battery pack.
    ‘These are
bionic
legs,’ he said quietly. ‘They have power, and they can move your legs for you, Calum.’
    ‘Like I said. Braces.’
    ‘Don’t be negative,’ Gillian Livingstone said. ‘These are a product of the latest research into enabling paraplegics to walk again. It’s a spin-off from military
work into helping soldiers march for longer and carry heavier loads in hot temperatures. The idea is to give them mechanical exo-skeletons that can take the strain and do some of the work for
them.’ She indicated the “legs” in the box. ‘These things are made of carbon fibre – they are lightweight but extremely strong. There’s no chance of them
snapping or breaking unless you happen to crash a truck into them. Don’t do that, by the way. The motor units in the joints are based on the ones used in satellites and the International
Space Station to rotate solar panels. They only draw a low power, but they are exceptionally reliable and they can apply a lot of torque in a hurry. The braking systems are also state of the art
– it’s not much use rotating a joint if you can’t lock it off in the right position.’
    ‘What about the battery?’ Natalie asked. She had left the sofa, and her huff, and come over to stand beside Calum. ‘How long does the charge last? If it’s anything like
my mobile phone, it’ll die after three hours.’
    ‘That’s because you leave your social networking sites on all the time,’ Gecko pointed out.
    ‘How else am I going to know what my friends are doing?’ Natalie protested.
    Gillian interrupted: ‘The battery isn’t a battery at all. It’s a next-generation fuel cell, and it can provide enough power to keep these legs going at a run for a day. At
walking pace it’s more like a week.’
    ‘And how is it controlled?’ Calum asked, his voice not reflecting any