Read Online The Ice Warriors by Brian Hayles - Free Book Online Page B

quick glance at his drawn, pallid face, then deftly completed the task of bandaging the now swollen arm. It was a bad break; the bone-torn muscle was rapidly going septic, and Storr wasn’t far from a coma. But it was his own pigheaded stubbornness that had brought about his present critical state. Penley knotted the make-shift bandage tight, and felt Storr wince.
    ‘What’re you trying to do? Cripple me?’
    ‘Sorry, old chap,’ soothed Penley. He tried to make his surly patient more comfortable. ‘The trouble with you, you know, is that you will insist on being stupid.’
    Storr turned his face away. He hated admitting he was wrong – but he had to be honest. ‘How was I to know it’d get infected?’ he growled, then sank back weakly.
    Penley looked round at Storr’s bizarre den – the abandoned Victorian conservatory in which, years before, Storr had established his plant museum. How much longer would it last, he wondered? How long would it take before the ice – which was again rumbling ominously outside – was in there with them?
    ‘You should’ve listened to me in the first place,’ said Penley, ‘shouldn’t you?’
    ‘And given you the chance to stuff me with anti-this, and anti-that?’ grumbled Storr. ‘I’d’ve been flat on my back for months…!’
    ‘Whereas now,’ observed Penley drily, ‘you’re fighting fit, of course.’
    Storr rose to the bait as usual. ‘Someone’s got to do things!’
    ‘Well that someone isn’t going to be you for a while yet. And it serves you right.’
    ‘It’s nothing!’ snapped Storr. ‘I’ll pull through!’
    He gazed at his precious plants through a haze of pain, desperately trying to concentrate his mind.
    ‘… how it was before they killed off all the plants,’ he gabbled, half-smiling. ‘There would have been
Spring
, then – fruit, on trees, waiting to be picked…’ His ravaged face tightened into bitterness once more. ‘Now… you damned scientists – destructive meddlers!’ His anger subsided again. ‘Killed all the plants… and flowers…’
    Penley could see that he was slipping into a coma. Soon, there would be no wood left from their precious stock, and without that warmth, the deadly cold would start to creep into Storr’s haven. He had to act – and quickly. He stood up, and started to put on the heavy skins for snow travel. His quick and decisive movements woke Storr. ‘What’re you doing, you fool!’ mumbled the half-conscious man.
    ‘The Base,’ replied Penley curtly.
    Storr tried to rise, but he had no strength. He fell back helplessly, but his eyes burned with fever and accusation. ‘You’re going to turn me in… like a dirty coward. I don’t want… rehabilitation… Africa…’ He was nearly out, but still he protested. ‘Never trust… scientists.’
    Penley turned. ‘It’s for your idiotic sake that I’m going! For drugs! And if I don’t get them…’ He looked down at the unconscious body, ‘you’re as good as dead!’
    ‘Think!’ commanded the Ice Warrior in that strange, fierce whisper. ‘Tell me what it was they used to give my body life!’
    Victoria could see that there was no escape. But what could she tell him when she knew so little herself?
    ‘I don’t know what it was called, so how
can
I tell you?’ she explained desperately.
    But Varga wasn’t going to be satisfied that easily. ‘Describe it!’ he hissed sharply.
    Victoria tried hard to remember what the scientist Arden had done to the great ice block – but it was difficult. She hadn’t really been paying attention at the time. The body inside the ice had been the subject of everyone’s fascination – and now here it was, alive and menacing, holding her prisoner!
    ‘It was a sort of… small black box,’ she suggested vaguely.
    ‘Go on!’ demanded Varga with an urgent gesture. ‘Explain how it worked!’
    ‘It had wires,’ recalled Victoria hesitantly, then blurted out ‘and they connected the wires to the ice.