Terra's World Read Online Free PDF Page B

Karen would remark to her friends, but then, she would remind them (and herself), that was one of the reasons she’d married him.
    So when, on their way home from their favourite Indian restaurant, they heard the sound of a man screaming in pain and/or terror, and David immediately ran across the street to investigate, Karen felt neither alarmed nor abandoned, just proud. That’s my Dave, she thought as she watched him go.
    The man who emerged wild-eyed and babbling from the alley behind the cinema cannoned into David and yelled something which sounded like ‘It’s not human’ before pushing past him and running away into the night. David Crew let him go; he wasn’t making much sense and he smelled terrible. Besides, David now heard the screams of a young girl coming from the darkness. He ran, undaunted, towards the sound.
    David’s keen eyes adjusted to the gloom; there was a teenage girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, long blonde hair, standing next to a pile of bin bags. Her face was set with terror. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
    The girl pointed upwards. ‘Up there,’ she said in a quavering voice. ‘It climbed up there. It was like . . . Like a huge . . . I don’t know what it was.’
    David looked in the direction the girl was pointing. A blank wall; no signs of anyone or anything alive. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to the girl, ‘come with me and I’ll get you some help.’
    He turned. The girl was gone.
    * * *
     
    Throx of the Morbis Guild, once again wearing his human girl disguise, slipped quietly through the alley. The helpful human male hadn’t seen him leave. His optical camouflage system had taken a second to reinitialise. The fool who’d glimpsed him undisguised had been intoxicated; he wouldn’t be believed.
    None of this altered the fact that this had NOT been a good evening.
    Throx of the Morbis Guild had allowed his mark to escape. She’d incapacitated him and left him helpless on a potentially hostile world. And as he activated his gravity bubble and ascended to the roof of the building, Throx realised that his evening had just got worse.
    She’d taken the ship.
    Throx made a mental note to convey his displeasure to his clients with regard to the extent to which they’d underestimated the Terra girl’s intelligence and resourcefulness. Just a dumb Ymn, he’d been told. A simple job for a member of the esteemed Guild. He should have charged double what he had.
    He’d had to purchase the extremely advanced optical camouflage system at his own expense, and spend many uncomfortable sessions with his cranium jammed into an ill-fitting interface in order to absorb enough of the Ymns’ puerile culture to pass himself off as one of them. He’d thought of everything and yet somehow the Ymn girl had seen him coming.
    Throx was the first Tastak – the first insectoid of any species – to gain entry to the Morbis Guild, the most feared and respected society of assassins, thieves and mercenaries in the galaxy. His own reputation – and that of the Guild – was at stake. He wasn’t about to let it be tarnished by some nasty little pink mammal. This job was far from over.
    His ship was gone and there was no way to procure a replacement on this primitive rock. Very well; if he couldn’t go after her he’d have to persuade her to come back. What he needed was leverage.
    Throx activated his mini-slate and accessed ‘Lydia’s’ home address. ‘Tracey’ was going to call on her classmate’s parents tomorrow.
     

 
     
     
    1.8
     
     
     
    ‘Where are we going?’ asked Billy. ‘And don’t say “space”. Way too vague.’
    ‘The ship’s navs were already set. We’re going back to wherever its last stop was before it came to Earth,’ said Terra, waving at a readout which looked to Billy like a crazed screed of pictograms. Billy had no idea if it meant anything; occasionally Terra would peer at it through that (extremely cool) translucent computer tablet-thing of hers, but