The Dark Flight Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

so. Of course there was no one there. There had been no one there since the early hours of the new year, when Kepler had come back for him and Willow.
    He made his way upstairs to the third-floor landing. From there he could have gone along to where the ladder led up to his little room, but he didn’t want to see it.
    Only six days, but it felt like an eternity had passed. He couldn’t believe the house was so still, so empty, so big. Had it always been like this? Maybe he just hadn’t noticed, when Valerian had been there issuing orders and threats in equal measure.
    He turned his back on the corridor and headed for the foot of the spiral staircase that led to the Tower. As he made his way up he could already see the remains of the shattered door where Kepler and Willow had burst in to save him from Valerian. Just the sight of the fractured wood made Boy panic, as a rush of memories rose unbidden in his mind.
    He tried to concentrate on what he had come to do, but as he stepped over the threshold into the room itself, the events of New Year’s Eve overwhelmed him and he sank to the floor, weak and shaking.
    He shook his head, trying to clear it.
    “The lens,” he said aloud, as if the sound of his voice could dispel the demons lurking in the room. “Just get the lens and go.”
    He looked up.
    The room was a mess. They had left it exactly as it was after the awful cataclysm, the wind, the apparition. The hundreds upon hundreds of Valerian’s books lay in chaotic heaps across the floor, various papers and parchments strewn over them. Even the trapdoor in the middle of the room was covered in books and papers. Valerian’s great leather armchair lay on its side. Broken glass and tangled metal from his experimental equipment lay in confusion across the tabletops. The only thing that seemed unharmed was the camera obscura itself. The shutters were drawn, and in the half darkness of the room, Boy saw that the camera was still working. Kepler had warned Valerian that it would be of no use in saving his skin, but he had built a good machine, and it worked still, projecting a curved but clear image of the streets outside onto the circular white tabletop beneath it.
    Boy scrambled over to it, passing the upturned armchair as he did. He paused, and then pulled Valerian’s favorite chair back onto its feet.
    “That’s better,” he said, and smiled as he remembered Valerian sitting in it.
    He turned to the camera. At the base that overhung the table was a wide brass cylinder. From this the image poured onto the table. He supposed this was what Kepler had been talking about, so he climbed onto the tabletop and lay looking up at the apparatus.
    He pushed and pulled the thing, and could see no way of loosening it, but then remembered what Kepler had said about unscrewing it, and he began to twist. Immediately it turned, opening a join that was so finely wrought it had been invisible before the thread began to unwind.
    Boy twisted some more, and the bottom half of the cylinder came away from the top. As it did, he suddenly recalled what Kepler had warned about breaking the glass lens, and slid underneath the projection device. The image of the City outside was now played out on Boy’s face and chest, and had there been anyone there to see, and had they looked closely, they would have seen snow falling across him. It fell across his eyes and face, but unlike the snow falling outside, which gathered in piles, the flake after flake after flake that crossed Boy’s face kept on falling, but hid no horror.
    He nearly had it apart now, and chewed his lip as he lowered the bottom half of brass away from the top.
    “Hold hard there, you brat!” said a voice from the door, and Boy jerked upright, hitting his head on the camera. He clutched the lens as he swung down to the floor.
    “I said hold!”

2
    At first Boy thought he faced men of the City Watch. Three figures stood in the doorway, but now he noticed their uniforms were not the