Bio-Muton

by Lee Elliott, Denis Hughes

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

The aim of Laurie Paton and his colleagues was a goal which no other scientists had ever attained - the creation of a living entity by means of synthetic biological structure. But, working on their isolated island base, they unleashed a force for which they had never bargained, and against which they found themselves powerless. They created, not the entity they aimed at, but a window in Time, and, unexpectedly, a channel through which the Forces of Darkness assailed them.

Release date: October 27, 2016

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 98

Sample

No one ever went there anymore, never ventured closer than just within sight of the island’s rugged coast. In the past there had been men brave enough to face the perils of the Unknown; ready and willing to seek an answer to the mystery of the Milvan’s disappearance. But experience is a hard master and harder tutor. People didn’t take the risk nowadays; the island was left to itself. It was not left to peace, however, for there was something about it which forbade the existence of peace on its rugged mass.

Washed by the long broad rollers of the Atlantic, the island rose sheer from the depths, isolated, barren, a place of rock and dingy grey lichen, screaming seabirds and eternal winds and that queer dark smoky fog.

The Milvan had been sighted outward bound on her last cruise, a trim white ketch with tanned sails. And when she was sighted she had been bearing on a course which later had been computed as taking her to the island. On board at the time there were known to be at least three people. That information checked with her port of departure, but the ship which reported sighting her definitely stated during the enquiry into her disappearance that more than three persons had been seen on board. Certainly five had been counted by the ship’s company when they watched the Milvan beating hard to windward.

Five and three did not tally. Authority showed an interest in the problem and investigations were made. These consisted, briefly, of trying to ascertain where the Milvan had been bound for; and the answer appeared to be the island. It was an answer which was not arrived at until almost a year after the Milvan sailed on her last fateful voyage. Soon the wheels of officialdom turned again, creakingly and with some reluctance. A water guard vessel was detailed to visit the island.

Even before she dropped her anchor in the lee of the wooden piered jetty her master knew what had happened to the ill-fated Milvan. The ketch lay broadside on to the rocks and shoals within the shelter of the jetty, torn from her moorings by some past gale and driven ashore, to be battered and soon reduced to a ragged skeleton of bleached ribs and timbers, broken spars and shredded canvas.

“That’s her all right,” grunted the Master. “Well, Number One, we found her; but I reckon we should step ashore and see if there’s any sign of the crew.”

The First Officer was staring through binoculars at the slime-covered jetty, at the strangely deserted looking white walled cottage higher up the slope, at the misty whorls of smoky fog that seemed to grow as he watched. Nothing moved in the entire scene. Nothing except the restless wind and the breaking crests of waves and the wheeling seabirds. He turned his gaze back to the broken hulk of the Milvan; there was something infinitely sad in its derelict state.

The First Officer and two ratings went ashore by boat.

And when the First Officer clambered up the short flight of stone steps to the top of the jetty a vicious spiral of wind whipped his cap from his head and tossed it playfully into the water. He swore and turned. Angry whorls of misty fog swept down from higher up. To the eyes of the men in the boat there was something frightening about them, almost as if they lived and resented this intrusion. The First Officer swore again. Before he knew what was happening he was literally thrown off the jetty and landed in the boat with a thud that cracked four of his ribs.

Three more attempts were made to set foot on the island. None were successful. On each occasion the violent wind devils launched themselves in almost tangible shape. Even the hard-bitten water guard men were dismayed and puzzled. After the fourth attempt the vessel returned to its home port, the First Officer being in need of medical attention. The island was left to itself.

Several years afterwards a fishing vessel, running before an Atlantic storm, sought refuge in the tiny harbour. She was a French ship, and perhaps because of that the story told by her crew was discounted by the British authorities. In any case the authorities had other more important things in hand. The Frenchmen swore that mysterious shapes and leaping demons in the form of mist and fog made their brief stay in the anchorage so terrifying that rather than remain they sailed out to ride the storm at sea.

No one tries to land there now; it has become an accepted fact that something, some evil influence perhaps, is determined to keep the island free of human life. The last report of its state is depressing. The jetty has been swept away, leaving only a few baulks of timber like rotten teeth in the turgid water; the white walled cottage, once so attractive, is a ruin, its roof fallen in, its doors and windows broken by the weather. And over all hangs a gloom, a living fog of unreality and sinister vitality so at variance with the past wild beauty of the rugged little place. For it was once beautiful. It was beautiful sixty odd years ago, back in 1952 when the ketch Milvan sailed from London Port with as odd a crew as it would be possible to find on the high seas.

How then did this nameless little island in the wide Atlantic change its nature and character? Theories, some of them absurd, some fantastic, some coldly scientific, have been put forward. But perhaps the true story behind this terrifying metamorphosis is the strangest of them all.…

London in August. London sweltering under a heat-wave, the streets and buildings sending up simmering waves of stifling air, fumes, the reek of crowds, the jostling movement of irritable people. London with its thin-wearing laughter, its half-hidden vice, its deep pools of stagnation and shallow rapids of turgid life. London with its vast store of wealth and untapped energy, its sordid backwaters, its peaks of dazzling intellect, its quiet lanes of learning. August.… Heat, poverty, wealth, frayed nerves, headaches; love and hate, desire and frustration. And in the midst of it all a girl, one among millions, yet marked down by the finger of fate to play a leading role in one of the strangest affairs in history.

Janny was eighteen, a slimly built girl, brown eyed and brown haired. Her clothes were cheap and smart; her shoes absurdly high heeled. Nicotine stains discoloured her fingers, and already tell-tale creases were appearing at the corners of her mouth and eyes. The pallor of night was on her skin; at close quarters her hair smelt of tobacco smoke and stale gin fumes. The men on whom she depended for a living never noticed such faults; they were cloaked and concealed by an unexpectedly pleasant laugh, by her knack of making them feel, at least for the time being, that they were important.

But there were times when she recognised herself for what she was, and despised what she saw. And those times were becoming more and more frequent. The Past became an empty promise; the Future a mockery. Ill-equipped to combat what she knew to be an evil, this girl, not yet out of her teens, saw only darkness before her.

Perhaps the broiling heat had some effect on her mind; perhaps it was what she saw in the mirror when she woke that afternoon in August. She woke tired, flat, depressed; the old feeling she knew so well, but different today; heavy with a prompting to finish it for good. Her mind shied from a future the course of which she had seen others follow. But not Janny; she had other ideas. No one would miss her; she had no one but herself.

She looked round the shoddy little bedroom with a marked sense of revulsion. A clanking alarm clock pointed to half-past two. She slid out of bed and stood for a moment on the thin, stained mat, naked as she slept, a slight, rather tired figure. And the spotted mirror that backed her stock of cosmetics told her she was looking awful. That glimpse, she told them afterwards, was what really decided her.

Instead of making up her face at once, she washed. It was not her usual routine, but today was not going to be the same as any other day; she’d already made up her mind, and in her own somewhat muddled way Janny could be stubborn. So she washed off the ravages of yesterday and started from scratch.

Because it was so stifling hot she dressed in as little as possible, and instead of high heels she wore sandals, no stockings, no hat. When it came to make-up she thought about it for some considerable time, deciding in the end that if this was to be the final moment she ought not to make-up at all, certainly not in her normal warpaint. So, for once, she was discreet in her use of cosmetics.

When she was ready she left her room, closing the door without a backward glance, shutting off the life it had stood for and which she was now discarding in so definite a manner.

Westminster Pier was as good a jumping off point as any. As if it was an everyday occurrence in her life she bought a pleasure boat ticket to Greenwich. A one way ticket; there would be no return.

Most of the seats on the main deck were already taken. Janny didn’t mind that. She made her way right to the stern, cut off from view down there, isolated by the drone of the guide’s voice on the loudspeaker and the thrum of the engines as the boat swung round and began its trip. She could not hear what the guide was saying because of the engine noise and the bubble of churned up water as the screw thrust the vessel along. The water was brown and muddy, full of sucking eddies and flat under-currents. She watched it with a queer sense of detachment, not looking at the riverside at all, concentrating wholly on the surging water. It would be wonderfully cool in there, she thought. Sweat stood out in a million tiny beads all over her body. Soon, they’d be washed off, to mix with the river. She wondered how long it would take; whether she’d cry out or sink at once. She did not know for sure, and she couldn’t swim. She must wait for a stretch where there were no other craft close by; it was not in her plan to be fished out and made a fool of.

Passing the wharf where Brunel’s Great Eastern was built and launched, she looked round. The river was momentarily almost empty of moving craft. This was her chance—if she could summon the nerve to take it.

She stood up and knelt on the stern seat, right over the threshing wake, the bubble of the exhaust. A hot waft of oily breeze clove her dress to the clammy skin beneath it.

She was actually getting up on the seat now. Her heart was perfectly steady; this was no foolish thing she meant to do. So she told herself. She was not afraid, curious perhaps, but not afraid, longing only for release and freedom. “The body of a young, unidentified women was recovered from the Thames during the early hours of the morning.…”

She neither saw nor heard the man until his fingers closed on her arm. Furious, she turned her head, an angry spate of words ready forming on her lips.

“Don’t say it,” he said ver. . .