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that when he lay down he felt both
sheltered and cushioned. Although it was open to the sky it was in every other
way a perfect camping spot. The lake glowed in the last light from the day, and
reflected the studding of thousands of stars with the vortex of the Skagorack
just beginning to rise in the east.
    He
looked into his pack and found the lamp. Placing it on the ground in front of
him he set it for both heat and light, and then he took out his pan. Finding
that he wasn’t really hungry he decided to leave dinner for a short while and
just to lie contemplating the stars for a while. If he dozed off, well that was
all right too. He stretched out his long form and allowed his eyelids to droop.
He wondered idly if there would be a thunderstorm later. Occasionally they
occurred, were bound to, he supposed, in a planet where there was so much
moisture. There had been a flicker of light in the sky behind him earlier on
which had seemed like it might be lightning. Oh well, if there was a storm he
would just have to turn the heater up and tough it out.
    He
awoke, startled. Something had bitten or stung him on the hand. That was
impossible; there were no aggressive insects on Saunder’s World. Yet down on
the ground lay a tiny spasming worm. He looked at his hand from which came an
excruciating pain. A blotch of grey discoloration was spreading unbelievably
fast. Now the entire back of his hand was covered and the blotches were
spreading up his wrist. He clutched his right arm with his left hand, and the
pain started in that too. Both hands infected, he stood up and began to run.
Now his arms were covered in pussing black and white boils from hand to armpit
and still the infection raged on unchecked, down across his chest, up the veins
of his neck. It raced across his face, bursting his eyeballs and drawing back
his lips in a vile rictus of a scream. In his last second of consciousness
before the organism, spreading up his spinal cord, burst into his brain, Gunnar
was aware only of exploding lights and crashing noise. Then he fell.
    The
organism completed its conquest. There had been no resistance, none at all. The
ancient parasite had complete possession of its new host but it needed to
spread further; it needed new hosts to survive.
    Gradually
it located each of the nerves needed for locomotion. The corpse of Gunnar
Olafson began to twitch. Stiffly it levered itself to its feet and stood, the
pus which had been its brain drooling from the twisted lips. The wrecked and
ruined internal organs were allowed to slough out through the corpse’s anus.
The organism directed the dead muscles to move, and the corpse staggered away
from the light of the lamp and towards the distant beacons of life.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    Athena
bit her finger ends with worry. Worry not only for the missing men and the
colony’s only shuttle, but also for the long-term prospects of the colony
itself. The loss of the quarry was a blow from which they might not be able to
recover. Not only had the equipment been vaporised with literally no trace of
it left, but the very shaft they had bored into the ground had collapsed in on
itself. All that was left at the site was a smouldering crater the bottom of
which was still glowing with residual heat. The only mercy had been the small
number of casualties. Of the quarrymen only three had been unaccounted for,
with witnesses pretty clear what had happened to them. The last of the
survivors had just been brought into Cassini’s mess, now converted into a
makeshift hospital. They all showed signs of shock, and extreme fatigue from
the fifteen kilometre evacuation from the site of the disaster under Sgt
Raoul’s care.
    When
she had been a young girl, Athena had taken part in a class end of term project
in which they were all supposed to contribute to a tableau vivant. The theme
had been “Moments in History” and they had debated long and hard before
deciding to portray the death of Julius Caesar. Each