Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

Trask said, 'But so were those Russian nuclear submarines, and you haven't been wrong about those. And I remember the time when a certain Jianni Lazarides had just such a ship, The Lazarus, out on the Mediterranean. Yes, but his real name was Janos Ferenczy! He was Wamphyri, too, one of the very worst. And remember: just because there's a lot of sunlight, it doesn't mean our man has to go out in it.'

He turned to Liz. 'David says it might be nothing. But he also says you don't think so. So what do you think?'

Liz looked anxiously from face to face, bit her lip, and said,

'Ben, are we right to place this much faith in my talent right now? I mean, at that kind of range, riding David's probe… I could easily be mistaken. I'm not really sure that—'

'No, no, no!' Trask cut in, waving his hand dismissively, impatiently. 'Just tell us what you got and let us try to figure it out. It isn't the first time we've done this, Liz. And it isn't as if we're vying with one another to see who will be first to find these damned things! But while no shame attaches to being in error, still we do have to find them. Which means anything is better then nothing. So whatever it was you sensed out there, let's have it.'

Liz, Trask and Chung were on their feet; the rest of the team were seated. And now Liz sat down, too, and thought about it for a moment. Casting her mind back, she asked herself exactly what it was that she had experienced when the locator took his second reading from the helicopter as it circled high over Sandy Cape.

Chung sjace — Us slightly damp skin gleaming a pale yellow, his nostrils pinched, eyes slanted more than usual in deep concentration — gazing out of his window, north-west at the distant curve of the world, the horizon, the sea's wide expanse.

Then his gaze becoming a vacant stare, and his eyes almost glazing over as his mind… as his mind went out!

No, not his mind but a probe. And Liz Merrick a part of it — riding it like a carrier wave — sharing telepathically in the emptiness of the locator's search, his far-flung probing of the psychic void… or what should be a void!

But there was something there — faint, so very faint, but definitely there — and she felt it like… like an emotion as opposed to a conversation. Like something spiritual, or lacking in spirit. For it was shivery cold, this thing, where it walked on her spine with icy feet. And now she knew its name.

'Well?' Trask was leaning over her. And:

'Fear!' Liz blurted it out. 'I felt fear!'

The look on her face; her great green eyes wide in sudden knowledge where they stared into his… and Trask took a pace back from her. 'You were afraid?'

'Not me, no,' Liz shook her head. 'He, they — whoever they were — were afraid. That's what it was, Ben: terror, gnawing at them, eating their hearts out.' 'Them?'

'More than one, I'm sure.'

'Uncertain a moment ago, and now you're sure?' She shook her head. 'I just wasn't willing to believe that there could ever be such hopelessness, such utterly black despair. I suppose I thought it was the emptiness, the psychic void before David's probe found — well, whoever they are — and that the fear was in fact mine. But now…' 'Yes?'

Again she shook her head, searched for words. 'I know that I, personally, have never been that afraid — that I couldn't be that afraid — unless something happened to cause me to lose all hope, all faith/

Trask nodded grimly. 'In short, unless you'd been vampirizedf 'I… I don't know. I imagine so.'

But now Trask took a different tack. 'Or could it possibly have been fear of discovery? Had someone detected David's probe and reacted to it?'

Liz shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. It was simply — or not so simply — an aura of overwhelming doom.'

'Good!' Trask grunted. 'And on both counts. One, that you weren't detected. And two, that therefore whoever it was couldn't have been afraid of you. But they were afraid, and I think we can all imagine of what.'

He looked up from Liz, from face to face around the room, and paused at Lardis Lidesci.

And Lardis said, "Thralls. These were thralls, and fairly recent. Thralls who don't have much contact with their master, but who know he's there nevertheless. Aye, and they have every right to fear him!'

'Another nest,' Trask nodded. 'Why not? It's entirely possible. Then he frowned. 'But out at sea?' 'My point exactly/ said Chung…

'Maps/ Trask said, turning to Jimmy Harvey where he sat at a keyboard. 'Jimmy, see if the computer has an even smaller-scale map of that area, and blow it up on the wall there/

'I've been working on it/ said the other, tapping a key. 'Consider it done/

The wall screen turned blue, if not entirely blue. For in the specified area there were the dotted outlines of reefs and other irregular shapes: islands or islets, and a legend identifying them as Heron Island and the Bunker and Capricorn groups, the latter because they lay on or close to the Tropic of Capricorn. Other lettering at the top of the map said that this was The Capricornia Section of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

And very quietly, Trask said, 'So, not necessarily a ship after all/

But, looking sick, the locator David Chung could only shake his head and remark, 'What a fool he is who has no faith in his own God-given skills!'

Trask might have denied it, but lan Goodly beat him to it. 'Not at all/ the precog said. 'When we use talents like these, it's against nature. I mean, even we appreciate that what we're doing isn't, well, mundane. Is it any wonder we're sceptical of our results? Or that we occasionally fail to see their significance?'

And then Trask said, 'You're right, lan, and I was on the point of making much the same remark. But as I've already said, this isn't a skills contest. How we get there doesn't matter a damn, only that we get there. Where these monsters are concerned, the end always justifies the means. Any means/

'Huh!' said Lardis. 'And in Starside, whenever a man ascends to a vampire Lord and becomes Wamphyri, they have much the same saying — it's not the route but the getting there. In that respect, and except that their evil has been made ten times as great, these monsters are much like men, you know/

'Because they were men/ said Trask. 'And God knows we're none of us pure. Very well, now let's get on — but as soon as we're done here I want the Duty Officer to contact our aide in Prime Minister Blackmore's office. We need authority for liaison with someone high in the administration of the reef marine park. We need to know who or what is out there on those islets in the Bunker and Capricorn groups…' A moment's pause and he turned to Goodly:

lan, you and Lardis were in the other chopper party. And just like David here I know you, too, have a problem. Time now to have it out in the open, get it cleared up.'

The precog stood up, tossed a pamphlet attached to a tourist map onto the table. 'I picked this up at the Skytours helipad,' he said. It's a freebie: a give-away route map into the Macpherson Mountains, and a colour brochure describing the wonders and benefits of the Xanadu health and pleasure resort. But that's not all I picked up. There was — or I should say there may have been — something else, when we flew over the place.'

Sitting at the table (feeling more than a little useless, and wondering what he was doing here), Jake remembered the odd, strained look on the precog's face — the way his hands gripped his seat's armrests — after they'd descended to have a closer look at the resort. And now his interest focussed more definitely on Goodly as he saw once again the same nervous tension in the man's face and attitude.

'The thing is,' Goodly went on, 'I have precisely the same problem as David. The location: all that unhampered sunlight. I just can't see how the kind of creature we're looking for could exist up there… if that's what it was about.' Seeing Trask's face, he held up a hand placatingly. 'Yes, all right, I promise I will get on with it. But there are complications…