Miko glared about with bewilderment. Who had wielded such tools? He rubbed his temples. He took down the nearest scalpel and hefted it. A more effective weapon than this twisted pipe of his, what with its double-length blade and sharp edges. Certainly it was lighter, but could it hold up against an onslaught of the warks?
A new movement brought him wheeling about. His heart leapt in his throat. A rat skulking in the dark? Some predator? He could hear the yipping sounds of the warks echoing dully from the corridor. His skin crawled. Their rage had reached an all time high. For this, he accelerated his inspection. He could see no exits in this chamber. Triangular doors stood barred on either side of the laboratory. To hack through them would require considerable effort, and proper tools.
Moving deeper into the chamber, he felt his way along the far wall where two parallel triangular plates hung suspended at right angles to the wall. Each glowed a weird amber colour, hence the other source of light.
The ground was littered with more miniature skeletons. His boots crunched on their crusty remains. In some, he recognized pincers versus hands. Flat-topped skulls and apish, elongated limbs. The victims seemed to be clustered around the mysterious apparatus before being cut down by some dire peril.
Miko reached over with care and was about to let his fingers trace slow circles over the plates, but he paused. The proximity to the metal, which wasn’t really metal from what he could tell, made his fingers tingle, even though they were two inches away. It was as if a small electric current ran through them.
He pulled his hand back sharply. Cryptic squiggles, stars and dashes were engraved in the plate’s bronze-black face, though some of the forms tended toward the geometric. Whatever these things were, they pulsed with a weird energy.
Something had gone horribly wrong here. He glanced down at the triangular-shaped skulls with eye sockets lower in the face than what they should have been.
Whether this place was the product of the Zikri, from whom he was fleeing, or an indigenous group that had originated on this planet, was not clear.
Nor did the technology match anything he remembered of the Zikri mothership when they had captured him and Sitty II. It seemed so long ago that he had been paired with the detestable Audra, the day they both had set out on that fateful test run aboard his own craft.
Could the Zikri have manufactured the freakish creatures on Rogos?
His mind brushed upon another mystery: was he in the future or the past? Ever since the light-drive on Sitty II had failed under gunfire from the pursuing Zikri craft, the constellations had looked different. Something was oddly displaced. Also, the debris from the explosion of the NAVO and Zikri craft had mysteriously vanished when he had come out of time-light slip. If he were in the future, this technology was perhaps ahead of its time, but barbarically primitive. His eyes pinched shut in exhaustion and he rubbed his temples. Either way, he was doomed.
He pushed his head closer to the apparatus. The plates gave off a suspicious hum that grew louder in a beat frequency every ten seconds. A simple heater? Alien decor? He wiped the mirthless grin off his face. Odd that there appeared no battery or wires carrying any current of any kind to grant the plates life or luminosity.
Miko pulled at his dirty beard. He looked about the litter of ancient bones and dusty skulls and wondered what had happened.
He backed away from the plates. Returning to his examination of the lab, on impulse he tapped the scalpel’s blade against the glass that encased a particularly loathsome-looking creature—the narwhal.
An oval eye flicked open.
Miko jumped back in panic.
The creature was alive in its pale liquid! Another eye winked open, glowing in nefarious challenge in the sombre light. Miko stared. The thing was three feet long, but oozed elemental evil. It had a black-green scaly tail and its snout was tapered, fitted with gills and a razor-sharp horn and disfigured nostrils. Most of its tusk had been shorn off and lay at the bottom of the tube.
The cold, merciless eyes peered right through him, piercing like a blade—green eyes which spoke of intelligence and violent acts.
Miko swallowed, hypnotized by the creature. The thing thrust its broken tusk against the glass, attempting to break free. The tube rocked back and forth and Miko stepped away, flinching. Perhaps this was why the masters of the laboratory kept skewering hooks on hand. If one of the more dangerous creatures were to break loose—
Miko sensed a chilling presence suddenly at his back. He whirled around. A ghostly shape glided into the chamber. Loathing gripped him.
Audra.
The alien’s body was dripping and covered with yellow slime, evidently blood from the warks she had mutilated and assimilated. No doubt she was proud of her conquests.
Miko backed away, bile creeping up his throat. He raised his scalpel, squelching the hideous disgust that rose up in him. One moment of inattentiveness would make him prisoner of the creature again, a fate which he would not allow.
He snatched at the pipe tucked at his waist. He kept it raised at shoulder height. The scalpel he held at the ready in his other hand.
Audra advanced.
Miko licked his lips. He snatched glances left and right, contemplating his next move. He’d have to make a run for it, but where? She’d catch up with him. The yipping and excitement of the forest warks grew more intense from the open doorway.
