The Devil's Nebula Read Online Free PDF

crew, for reasons other than the retrieval of the precious statuette.
    Now he knelt and lifted her from the bed of thorns and lay her on the ground. Despite her anger, she felt safe in his arms; she hated herself for it, but it was as if she were a child again, cradled in her father’s safe embrace.
    When she’d marshalled all her strength and had control of her limbs, she dashed the bottle from her lips and glared at him.
    Patiently he picked up the bottle, snapped the lid shut and said, “I can understand how you feel, but I saw no reason to inform you and Jed about the starship.”
    She struggled upright, wincing as pain lanced through the muscles of her back. “You lied!” she said. “You lied to us!”
    He shook his head. “I was merely economical with the truth. I said we were coming here for the statuette, which was true.”
    “You said nothing about the starship, or that the bastard Vetch would be here too!”
    He stared at her. “I didn’t know that the Vetch would be investigating the ship. Do you think I would have brought us here if that were so?”
    “But why didn’t you tell us about the starship? Why didn’t you want us to know?”
    He gestured with an upturned palm, one of his unflappable gestures which infuriated Lania. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know. I would have told you when we had the statuette. It was merely that I didn’t want you and Jed – Jed, principally – objecting to spending any more time here than was absolutely necessary.” He smiled at her. “You don’t know what a pain you two can be when you decide to gang up on me.”
    She could not help but smile, but resented the impulse. She struggled to her feet, batting away Ed’s attempt to assist her. She grabbed the water bottle from him and hobbled into the centre of the clearing, as much to give herself time to think as to get away from him.
    The city of Valderido was in a basin, enclosed to the north, east and west by the mountains known as the Three Sisters. She thought it must have been a wonderful place to live, before the enforced evacuation.
    She took a long drink of water and said, “You two seemed pretty pally.”
    Ed stared at her across the clearing. He was a tall, slim man, unnaturally pale, his lean face thin and hawk-like. He disdained any kind of uniform, wearing instead a casual two-piece outfit comprising straight-cut trousers and bodice, the kind of attire worn by millions across the Expansion.
    Lania had known Ed Carew for ten years, ever since he had recruited her at a time of her life she would rather forget about: and yet, she thought, she had never got to know him. He was guarded about his past and just as reticent about his feelings.
    The odd thing was that she trusted this man, this lone starship captain who was, to all intents and purposes, still a stranger.
    Lania had tried to talk about her past to him, yet whenever she began, he found some way to divert the conversation to other, inconsequential things. It was as if he didn’t want to know her, and at first that had hurt.
    Over the years she had come to realise that this was just who Ed Carew was, a loner. He had no emotional attachments of any kind, and no wish to form them.
    He said, “I saved its life.”
    “Do you think it might have killed us, otherwise?”
    He hesitated. “I honestly don’t know. It would have been within its rights. After all, we are trespassers on Vetch territory.”
    “But it didn’t kill me,” she pointed out.
    “As it said, it and its kind are not barbarians – despite what we’ve been led to believe.”
    She stared at him. She detected conflict in his voice: it was as if he, too, found it hard to believe the alien’s... humanity.
    “Why the interest in the crashed starship, anyway?” she asked.
    His reply was interrupted by a roar of jet engines. Instinctively she ducked and ran towards Ed on the edge of the clearing. They took cover in the undergrowth, Ed’s arm protectively around her