Read Online The Agathon: Book One by Colin Weldon - Free Book Online Page A

him. All she saw was a void behind his eyes and something else. Something dark.
    “You okay, Dice? Did you get hold of the others?”
    “Yes, Father, they’re on their way now.” She turned to Chavel.
    “Hello, Lieutenant,” she said, nodding to Chavel.
    He gave her a warm smile.
    “Hello, Carrie. You doing okay?” he said.
    “I don’t really know what to do, to be honest,” she replied looking back at the viewing chamber.
    “I know what you mean,” he said.
    There was a moment of silence between the two. Carrie felt a warm feeling from Chavel. A comforting attraction from the lieutenant.
    There was a chime behind them and a motion activated door slid open. Doctor Meridian entered with a smile and a slightly dishevelled look. She approached the group near the console that the commander was seated at and placed a hand on Carrie’s shoulder.
    “Morning, boys and girls, what’s all the hubbub about? The world better be coming to an end because I was in the middle of a beautiful dream.”
    Main Observatory
    Gamma Event T plus two hours twelve minutes
    While the others were huddled discussing the evening’s events, Tyrell had returned to his personal lab to the rear of the observatory and had been trying to raise Tosh on comms. The signal was blocking transmissions from the base on Phobos, so he had given up for the time being and was busy looking at the expanding debris field on one of the viewing chamber feed displays. The flotsam of rock, ice and molecular dust formations was beautiful. It had been so fluid, like an expanding cloud of bubbles in a deep ocean. Each handful of the once dense and richly developed planet now drifted outwards in a perfect sphere, bound for the great unknown. There was no discernible outline of any of the once vast cities or technology. The heat of the explosion had seemingly vaporised all evidence of any human existence on the surface.
    I wonder what it felt like , he thought, gently stroking the side of his face. He tried to imagine what the melding of flesh, bone and rock in a nanosecond would have felt like. Finally becoming one with the creator. All energies combined into a cataclysmic fusion of life and matter. You lucky little insects. I wonder what you know !
    The sensors were busy targeting various debris formations and trying to catalogue and count the larger chunks of planetary fragments. Tyrell was tracking several of the larger fragments and had begun a grid search for vessels in the area that may have been disabled, but that could have possibly survived the explosion. He looked over at the large cylindrical holding tank in the corner of his lab. A sample of The Black sat quietly inside. The tank had a variety of tubes and cables spouting out of its top and bottom. Tyrell tended to keep his lab several degrees cooler than the main colonial habitat ring. The Black reacted more positively to it and he had gotten used to the cold, after spending so much time with it. His own analysis of the deadly alien substance had not been particularly fruitful. He knew it liquefied organic material on contact. And that occasionally it would alter its shape in the tank for no reason and then return to a gelatinous state. He had lost count of the amount of small rodents he had placed in the tank for experiments.
    “It is this world’s cockroach,” he had told an unimpressed Barrington. He knew Barrington just wanted it destroyed, but he had held him off to try and learn what he could about it. He turned his attention back to the display.
     
    The orbiting space station had been completely obliterated but there were several Jycorp ships scheduled for cargo and personnel runs to and from the moons of Mars and the colony itself. If their outer shields had been able to protect against the ionising radiation, there could still be survivors. Although less concerned with this area of the event than the reason for the change in the signal, Tyrell thought it would be prudent to at least examine