Read Destroyer of Worlds for Free Online

them appear to shift and form new patterns. A house, a ship, a horse, the lineaments of a woman’s face.
    A smooth, firmly contoured visage with enigmatic eyes and a mouth which betrayed sensuality. Hollow cheeks and strong jaw. The hint of Slavic ancestry. The ears and blonde helmet of the hair.
    Doctor Claire Allard!
    Smiling at him from the empty depths of space. Beckoning.
    ‘No!’ Douglas West reared in his chair, snarling at the jerk of forgotten restraints, freeing them with a blow as he lunged towards his co-pilot. ‘Don’t, you fool! Don’t!’
    Ivan Gogol was already on his feet and reaching for the door of the module. His helmet was open and his eyes were glazed. One hand was resting on the control which would open the port — and beyond lay nothing but the airless void.
    ‘Ivan!’ West grabbed at his shoulder, turned the man, threw him back towards his chair. ‘Seal up and strap down. That’s an order!’
    ‘I — no! I must go! I must!’
    Madness. It showed in his face, his eyes, the tormented knotting of skin and muscles and, with the mania came a maniacal strength.
    West was thrown back to crash against the hull head ringing from the impact, details blurring as he sank to his knees. Dazed, almost unconscious, he saw the other man tear at the portal, the sudden flood of ruby from the alarms, a red flush which accompanied the strident clangour of the warnings.
    ‘Ivan! The controls!
    ‘Too late!’ The man turned, foam at his lips, blood running from bitten flesh. ‘Wait for me! Please wait for me!’
    Then there was nothing but a roar of confusion and an overwhelming darkness.
    *
    ‘Eighty-nine hours, seventeen minutes and thirty seconds as from — now!’ Manton threw the time-control on the chronometer then looked up from where he sat at his desk. ‘That’s how long it will take us to reach the same point as Douglas did when he ran into trouble assuming, of course, that the area remains stationary relative to this region of space.’
    ‘The Forbidden Area,’ murmured Maddox. ‘What caused the trouble, Eric? A barrier of some kind?’
    ‘It could be that,’ agreed the professor. ‘And, coupled with the warnings, I think that it is. A final deterrent, the last warning before whatever lies behind the barrier is reached.’
    And what that could be was anyone’s guess. Restlessly Maddox paced the room. Normally he liked to spend time in Manton’s laboratory, enjoying the touch of familiar things, seeing the rows of old books, the scrolls of proven accomplishment, the models and small items which Manton had brought with him on their voyage.
    Now there was no time to pause and linger, to step metaphorically back in time to when life was a matter of following routine instead of the continual challenge it had now become.
    Pausing he stood before a chart hanging on the wall. It bore a mass of curves, symbols representing stars, a yellow swathe their progress. His finger rested on the point where the Ad Astra was at the moment, moved on to halt at a red smear. Knowing their velocity any schoolboy could have computed the time remaining before they reached it, but no child born of woman could know what lay beyond.
    ‘Did you manage to plot the extent of the area?’
    ‘No.’ Manton shook his head as he came to stand beside Maddox. ‘The only way would be to send out a series of Pinnaces and wait for something to happen. It would have taken too long.’
    And have been too expensive on men. Maddox glared at the chart, feeling the anger of frustration. A known enemy he could have faced — but how to fight emptiness?
    ‘Douglas reported nothing visible as he approached the area,’ he said. ‘The monitoring verified his observations yet, as we know, something must lie in that region. What, Eric? A field of energy of some kind? A destructive vortex? A trans-dimensional warp?’ His left hand made a fist. ‘What the hell are we up against?’
    Manton said, thoughtfully, ‘I’m not sure, Carl,