Brian Stableford by The Gates Of Eden

Author:The Gates Of Eden
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-21T21:51:04+00:00

12

It is, they say, always darkest before the dawn.

This, like most of the things “they” say, is a damn lie. Before dawn, the sky begins to get gradually lighter because of light refracted through the atmosphere. The hours before our first dawn on Naxos were rendered even lighter by the fact that there was a break in the clouds. The rain abated once more, and the stars came out.

The fact that I was awake to see it owes much to the habit of clean living and punctilious routine. I had been so very ready to doze off when night fell because of the marginal desynchronization between the natural event and the artificial day/night cycle aboard the Earth Spirit, which I had kept to even on the Ariadne. Night, on Naxos, was a fraction over ten Earthly hours long. My habit has always been to sleep for seven. (I could have gotten by on five were it not for the loss of benefit on nightmare nights.) Ergo, I woke up about an hour before dawn, and looked up at the bright stars, whose light was filtered through the raindrop-spattered can-opy of the boat’s makeshift “cabin.”

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to un-strip the seam so that I could see properly.

As I moved, the boat rocked, and Angelina woke up. I could tell that she was on edge by the way she 96

shot into an upright sitting position, her hands reflex-ively groping for the rifle. She didn’t find it It was laid across my lap.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. At least, it sounded like a whisper—I could barely hear the words and it was inference rather than delicacy of hearing that conveyed their content.

I didn’t switch on the flashlight, but laid a hand on her barely visible arm to reassure her.

“Nothing wrong,” I said quietly. “Look around. Stay here.” I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that I sounded like Vesenkov. She got the message.

After a moment’s thought, in which I reflected on matters of practicality and mankind’s long-standing but almost-forgotten traditions of gallantry, I passed the rifle back to her, butt first. I picked up the flare pistol instead. It only had two shots in its locker, but rumor has it that really monstrous things aren’t much in-timidated by rifle bullets, whereas a faceful of flaming phosphorus is enough to see off anything up to and including Tyrannosaurus rex.

I was careful not to put my foot in the water as I stepped ashore. There was no sign of my long-necked friend, who would probably have crossed this particular location off his social calendar. I stood in the shadow of the nearest tree, quite still, waiting until I was one hundred percent sure of my poise and alert-ness. The stars were bright—much brighter than the stars seen from Earth—and testified to the benefits of being part of a relatively dense cluster. The network of branches which extended out from the bole of the tree just above my head cast a curious web of star-shadows on the ground, like a halo surrounding a region of darkness.

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