Read Online Atherton #3: The Dark Planet (No. 3) by Patrick Carman - Free Book Online Page B

liked it or not. He could wait and let the
    room dissolve into lava or run down the passage and face a
    monster waiting to tear him to pieces.
    The center of the back wall began to melt. Edgar expected it to
    flow across the floor and overtake him, but instead the section
    of wall slid down into the ground. It appeared to be hollow
    below the back wall, so that the liquefied stone simply fell away
    and left a wide opening that could be passed through. Under
    the opening lay a wide, bubbling orange cauldron of lava.
    Edgar approached the opening cautiously and felt the heat
    grow with each step. It became so hot he could barely stand it
    and thought his clothes would ignite into flames. The thin hairs
    on his forearms shrank and twisted as if beaten down by the
    destructive power of heat. A charred black rim surrounded the
    opening, and whatever lay on the other side was hidden by a
    layer of hissing steam.
    Edgar stepped back, away from the heat, and tried to think. If he
    jumped through the opening he might well be leaping into an
    open oven on the other side. Or, just as horrible, the weight of
    gravity might pull him down as he tried to cross over. He didn't
    even want to think about what it would feel like to sink into a
    boiling vat of melted Atherton.
    Edgar looked in the direction from which he'd come and knew
    he couldn't get out. He gathered all his courage, took two deep
    breaths of hot air, and ran as fast as his legs would go.
    I can't turn back! I can only jump with every thing that's in me.
    And so he did.

CHAPTER 74200
    Station Seven was a metal and glass building that hovered over
    a lifeless, rock-encrusted cove on the Dark Planet. A web of
    entangled steel beams suspended the station in the air, where it
    was safe from the toxic sludge that drifted in and out each day.
    At the vast window of Station Seven sat a woman looking at the
    shadows of a forsaken wood outside.
    "It's quiet tonight," she concluded. "Too quiet."
    The woman brushed a hand across her brow and returned her
    arm to rest on the rail of her chair. There was a coldness about
    her, as if the Dark Planet had made her heart turn to stone. She
    held a vacant but powerful stare into the night beyond the
    window.
    "What will you do?" she asked. As usual there was no one in
    the wide open room to hear her. She had long ago fallen into
    the habit of speaking to herself. There were few others for her to
    hold a conversation with, and besides, she preferred to be left
    alone.
    The woman was having one of her frequent recollections of a
    conversation with Dr. Luther Kincaid. Eight years ago--had it
    been that long? Eight years of silence, and in those eight years,
    the Dark Planet had grown much darker still. And Station
    Seven? It was but a shell of its former significance. Almost
    everyone had fled with the arrival of the Spikers.
    "You will bring him back," the woman said forcefully, replaying
    the words she'd said in that distant conversation. "You will find
    a way."
    There was a visible change in her face--a cringing of hate and
    regret--as the face of Atherton's maker came into her memory.
    The madman Dr. Harding. She could not think of him for a
    single second without being overcome with anger. For a long
    time she had gone every day down one of the three passages
    to visit his laboratory.
    "He'll come back and finish what he started," she would say.
    After a year of waiting she grew bitter. She had trusted Dr.
    Kincaid. Every resource at her disposal had been freely given,
    all of her formidable powers of persuasion put to the test to
    gather anything and every thing he requested. But a year more
    had passed in devastating silence. Not a sound or a signal.
    Nothing!
    Her anger turned a sharp and treacherous eye toward everyone
    who had been involved in the making of Atherton. Thousands of
    others had once walked the halls of Station Seven. She turned
    on them, hating them for their failure to find a solution.
    And then, all at once it had