The Peacock Cloak Read Online Free PDF Page B

at regular intervals. He had picked up that they had detected radiation and, running and scrambling across the ruins, he quickly reached the broken wall at the top of the shaft and looked down at the two of them standing there on the edge of the well, with Shoe’s counter still giving out a continuous plaintive screech.
    “Hey guys,” he called to them softly in what he hoped was a calm, kind voice, “you’re going to need to back off from there.”
    He squatted down so that only his head was above the wall, in order to minimise his own exposure to whatever force of nature was pouring out of the well.
    “Take a couple of steps back,” he called, “mind you don’t trip on the stones, and then come up here and get behind this wall with me.”
    Shoe and Pennyworth looked up at him peeking fearfully down at them. Then they glanced back at each other, and laughed.
    “What is this thing, then?” Shoe asked.
    Graves made a further effort to control his voice.
    “Not sure guys, but it looks as if you may have come across some sort of spatial gateway. We’ve never come across a live one before. But never mind that for the moment, eh? Really, guys, I’m not kidding. It’s a lot of radiation we’re all soaking up right now. I need you to step away from the edge and then we really ought to get away from here.”
    Gateway? They had no real idea what Graves was talking about, but ‘gateway’ sounded like a way out. Shoe looked at Pennyworth. Pennyworth nodded, and, with a defiant yell, both of them jumped into the well. The last thing they heard was Graves yelling “No! Don’t!”

    After the first quarter-second or so, they didn’t experience themselves as falling. In fact they found they were already standing on smooth, solid ground. There had been no jolt or impact at all, but they were aware of a sharp change of temperature and light intensity, and a feeling that they had become slightly heavier. Wherever they were, it was much cooler than the dig at the Place of Wells, and it seemed to be night time, although, once their eyes had adapted, it was certainly not pitch dark.
    “Bloody hell!” said Pennyworth.
    They stood under a starry sky on a wide platform perhaps a hundred metres square, paved in chequerboard style in black and white marble. A colonnade ran round the edge, with an urn containing an olive tree in front of every third arch. Beyond, there was a sandy desert.
    The air was completely still, and the silence was absolute.
    They stood there for a few seconds, looking around themselves with open mouths. Then Shoe gave a low whistle and pointed at the sky.
    Shoe and Pennyworth weren’t big on moons, for the moon back in the city had been at best a pale smudge above the brash electric lights, and there were always brighter and more vivid things clamouring for attention all around. But one thing they did know about moons, and that was that there was only supposed to be one.
    And here… Well it was regrettable, but it couldn’t be avoided. Here there were three of the things shining down.
    Standing there side by side, their mouths gaping foolishly open, they both felt an icy shiver of almost superstitious terror. It was a deep and primitive fear, the animal dread of the inexplicable and the unknown. One moment on Earth, in an island in the middle of the ocean. The next moment: this.
    “Oh crap,” murmurred Pennyworth.
    “Yeah, I know,” said Shoe.
    “We’re on another planet, aren’t we?” Pennyworth whispered.
    Since Shoe didn’t reply, Pennyworth answered his own question, addressing himself to the three cold moons themselves.
    “We must be. Another bloody planet. What are we going to do?”
    The moons, of course, had nothing to say on this point. Their sole contribution to the story of the two thieves was to illuminate the scene and to provide incontrovertible evidence that this was not the planet Earth.
    And Shoe also said nothing. He sniffed, and spat, and then began to walk across the wide