Xiantha (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 3)

Chapter 18

GRACE WAS LOOKING forlornly at the small globe of the video camera when Arcan materialized in front of her. Her thin face lit up with pure joy at the sight of him.

"The visitor?" she demanded.

"In orbit. It is too soon to tell whether he will recover completely, though. He was very, very sick."

Grace nodded. "I knew he must be. Arcan, we have to save him. He risked everything to save me!"

"So I understand. I am very sorry that I was not there. You have been injured."

She nodded. "They say I will lose several fingers, but at least I am still alive. And you – what happened to you?"

"The orange compound they released on Valhai left me unconscious. They used a different version to the first one, and my antidote didn't work completely. It was just enough to save my life, but not enough to stop the compound from paralyzing my brain and leaving me in some kind of stasis. I don't know what would have happened if the black canth hadn't got through. That was the catalyst which made me wake up, come to myself."

Grace found her eyes brimming over with tears. "It worked then. It was a bit of a last-minute patch, but nobody could think of anything else to do!"

"Atheron threw you out of a cage 20 miles high?"

She nodded. "Xenon helped him. But they were the ones who died, and I was the one who lived. Funny, isn't it?"

Arcan nodded. "They were faulty individuals. Yet the way they died confuses me. Atheron was a most intelligent specimen. How could he not have thought of the possibility of a lightning strike once the metal cage were breached? It is elemental physics."

"I don't know. I think he was so carried away with the whole plan that all his expertise went out of his mind. Or perhaps he thought that throwing me out of the cage would be faster, that there wouldn't be time for anything to happen."

"You must have broken the sound barrier on your way down."

"I suppose I might. But I was unconscious for the first miles, so I can't tell you what it felt like if I did!"

"If Atheron and Xenon are dead, we have nothing further to worry about."

"Oh – about that. Atheron told me that he was manufacturing an improved version of the orange compound here . . . on Xiantha. So even though he is dead, we still have to find out where his installation is, and remove all traces of the orange compound."

"Yes, and I need a more complete antidote to this product. I don't want to be vulnerable if somebody re-invents it in a few hundred years' time!"

"He didn't tell me where it was, but I gathered that it was somewhere way off the beaten track, on the southern continent. If the visitor gets well soon, this—" she indicated the broken video camera with her head, "—could find it for you."

"Let us hope that he will."

"The thing is, Arcan, that even if the visitor does get over this, it will still be in danger. As soon as the Dessites know that it risked the ship for a 3b entity, it says that they will terminate its contract immediately, without waiting for this mission to end."

"Then we shall stop them," said Arcan grandiloquently.

"That might be easier said than done."

"True. I will put my mind to it now. Grace . . . I have to tell you. I have found some relations!"

"Arcan! That is terrific! You are no longer on your own then. Where are they?"

"The canths. I think that they are somehow descended from Pictoria too." He paused for a moment, and then examined Grace carefully. "I have something to tell you about that." He paused again, and then decided that she was well enough to hear about it. "When the black canth contacted me, I sensed something else too. It was very far away – almost an echo of a sigh – but I am absolutely certain that it came from the amorphs, on Pictoria."