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thing curled up on itself and gave up the ghost.
It collapsed, half-in, half-out of the shattered tank, became still. Then -
The blackened, smoking flesh of its head split open like an overripe
pomegranate.
A cobra's head writhed in the mush of boiling, steaming brains .'The vampire!
And it too died even as Harry watched.
Free!
said Kazimir.
Free!!!
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Behind Harry the room's great door sighed open. He conjured a door of his own
and stepped through it ...
17
Intruder
Khuv, Agursky and the others reeled as they entered the room of the thing. In
the swirl and reek of the dead, frying creature in the tank, they failed to
see that man-shaped space where the smoke rushed in to fill a sudden gap.
Harry had made his exit just in time.
Agursky recovered first, leaped across the room and switched off the power.
'Who has done this?' he demanded of no one in particular. 'Who is
responsible?' He clapped a hand to his brow, staggered toward the sputtering,
smoking tank, where even now shards of glass were beginning to melt in the
intense heat. Then, as the smoke began to clear, he saw the creature's
blackened remains hanging out through the shattered glass wall; saw, too,
something else - something which he didn't want anyone else to see.
He ripped off his smock, quickly threw it over the monstrous remains.
Khuv had meanwhile turned to Leo Grenzel, the locator. 'You said he was here,
an intruder. Well, someone has certainly been here - though I'm damned if I
can see how!
The door was locked, and there's a guard outside. Oh, a half-asleep, stupid
guard, that's true, but he's not a complete idiot! So . . .just getting in
here would be hard enough if not impossible - but as for getting out . . .?'
Then Khuv grasped Grenzel by the shoulders, stared hard at him. 'Leo? Is there
something else?'
Grenzel's face was pale again; his grey eyes were deep as deep space; he
swayed where Khuv held him upright. 'Still here,' he finally said. 'He's still
here!'
Khuv stared all about the room, as did the others.
Black smoke boiling from the mess under Agursky's smock, and the crackle of
cooked, alien flesh starting to cool; but no sign of any intruder. 'Here?
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Where, here?'
The girl,' Grenzel swayed. The prisoner . . .'
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Taschenka Kirescu?'
'Yes,' Grenzel's nod.
Khuv whirled on Savinkov and Slepak. 'How can this be?' he asked. But already
his mind was working; memories of reports he'd read flashed before his mind's
eye; it was something from before his time, but weren't the British supposed
to have a man who could do this sort of thing? Harry Keogh was said to have
been one such, and after him Alec Kyle. Keogh was dead but . . . but they
never had found Kyle's body after the mess at the Chateau Bronnitsy.
'How can it be?' Savinkov repeated his KGB master. 'It can't be!' He was
definite. But:
'Oh, it can,' Grenzel's far-away voice contradicted him. 'It is/'
'Quickly!' Khuv rasped. The cells. I want to know what the hell is happening
here!'
They ran out of the room, left Grenzel swaying there, his face slack and
vacant, but his eyes seeing, seeing. And Agursky, bundling up the dead
creature and its dead parasite in his smock, trembling in his eagerness to get
it back to his private quarters and away from any threat of inspection by
others. For he now knew what had controlled this nameless thing, and he wanted
to examine that controller most minutely.
Indeed, to Vasily Agursky there was nothing more important in the entire world
but that he examine the thing's parasite - whose egg had been deposited and
was even now maturing inside Agursky himself!
Tassi's nightmare - of the key grating in the lock on her cell door, and of
Khuv entering, dark-eyed and evil - had kept her awake. It was that sort of
nightmare, the sort you suffer when you're awake. It was doubtful if she would
have slept anyway; she hadn't since . . . since the horror Khuv had shown her
in the room of the thing. She couldn't sleep, for the face of her father kept
smiling at her from the darkness behind her eyelids whenever she closed her
eyes; her father's face - on the body of a beast.
She kept her cell light on, and lay warm on her cot but shivering, drained of
energy, waiting for Khuv. For her time was up, and she knew he would soon be
coming for her. That had been his threat, and Major Chingiz Khuv didn't make
idle threats. If only there was something she could tell him, but she didn't
know anything. Only that she was the most wretched, unhappiest girl in the
world.
When Harry stepped out of the Mobius Continuum, Tassi had just turned on her
side, turned her face away from his re-entry point into this universe. A quick
glance about the cell told Harry they were alone; he took a single pace to the
metal bed, put a hand round Tassi's face and over her mouth, cautioned her in
Russian: 'S
hhh
/ Be quiet.
Don't shout or do anything stupid. I'm going to get you out of here.'
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