The Brass Dragon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Usernet, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781938185090
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1978-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

I think I must have been paralysed for a few minutes. I have no idea what I did next. I don’t think I said anything. It went too deep for that. I guess I simply didn’t believe the thing was real.

It didn’t look like the ones on the TV programmes, of course. It was about fourteen feet across, I guess, and instead of being metallic, it was painted an almost fluorescent blue. It had the standard outer ring and dome in the centre. I was dumbstruck for a few minutes; then Varzil shoved me very gently towards some sort of steps that went up into the thing. I realised I was expected to go up in there.

When something like that happens you don’t believe it. At least, I didn’t. But when I set my foot on the first step, something snapped inside me. This wasn’t a gag or a crazy nightmare. I felt a thickness surging up inside my throat, and wanted to scream. I was awake, and this was happening!. Furthermore, Karsten was climbing into it as if it were a Number 7 bus! His calmness made the wheels of my brain start going around again; from feeling as if I were trapped in a nightmare I began feeling as if this were simply some very strange, but quite explicable situation. Evidently they were spies, possibly Russian. Heaven only knew what the Russians were doing these days behind the Iron Curtain. In any case, I couldn’t do anything, so I had better go along, keeping my eyes wide open and my mind alert. I felt calm again, a funny iced-over calm. I stepped into the saucer. It was fixed up inside like a carnival ride, with the seats and belts and braces, padded so that people wouldn’t slide around in the seats. There was machinery at a panel inside, vaguely like the control panel of an aeroplane. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Varzil settled me into a seat. I finally found my voice.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I demanded. ‘Russia?’

Varzil sat down in his seat, moving the padded braces around him, sliding his knees into the rests, with easy competence. He said, ‘No, not Russia. We have no interest in your country’s secrets nor any other country’s; we are not like the - ‘ It sounded like deekri. ‘I am a scientist. We are forbidden to interfere in the internal affairs of this world. That is how you may know you are safe; even if you wished, it would be quite forbidden for us to take you out of your own solar system. You will be returned on a shuttle ship within a few hours.’

Once again I had that you’ve-got-to-be-kidding, empty sensation in the pit of my stomach. The solar system!

I said rudely, fighting the surge of panic and disbelief, ‘Don’t try to tell me you’re a man from Mars!’

‘No,’ Varzil said, quietly and matter-of-factly. ‘Mars is only marginally fit for human habitation, although the deekri’ - that word again! - ‘survive there quite well.

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