They Never Come Back

by Leo Brett, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

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

Synopsis

There are some parts of the world where change comes slowly. There are other placed where it scarcely comes at all. In really remote areas time stands still. The passing of the centuries means no more than the passing of clouds across a leaden sky.

In the wilder regions of eastern Europe and the dark forests of Transylvania ancient derelict castles moulder away in medieval gloom. There are deadly secrets behind the decaying walls.

Karina was running away from the Secret Police. She accidentally stumbled upon the hidden headquarters of a coven of witches, warlocks and necromancers and as a result she found herself pursued by a thing that was not of this world. Karina had three desperate problems; to rescue her lover from the Secret Police; to save her brother from the coven; and to escape from the inescapable.

Release date: August 28, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE town of Abrud is not easy to find on a map. Leaving south east England and moving pretty well as the crow flies across Belgium, Luxemburg, West Germany, Austria, Hungary and the western border of Rumania travellers will see the sharp contours of Mount Bihor and Mount Vulcan rising ahead of them. Between these two peaks runs the valley of a small river which ultimately contributes its waters to the Tisa, which then delivers them to the mighty Danube. The town of Abrud lies practically midway between the great mountain peaks. Bihor stands to the northwest of it and Vulcan to the south east. Bihor scrapes, at the clouds 6,000 feet above sea level. Vulcan, some 1,800 feet lower, looks out across the valley to the Transylvanian Alps beyond. The city of Alba-Lulia, lies nestling deeply in the valley, spanning river and railway line together.

To the north of Alba Lulia, the town of Aiud sits upon the lower slopes of Mount Vulcan. Aiud is one of Abrud’s nearest neighbours, so is Turda, to the north of Aiud, and so is the city of Cluj, to the north of Turda. The next nearest neighbour to Abrud is the town of Brad, which sits near the mouth of the white Crisul, a tributary of the Caros, which also flows into the Tisa. It is strange, wild countryside, for Abrud, Aiud, Turda and Brad are part of ancient Transylvania. The Carpathians lie across the Hungarian plain to the north and the east, while the Transylvanian Alps themselves lie to the immediate south. To the south-west are the mountains of Yugoslavia, the ancient Heights of Serbia, and Govina. But for all its isolation there is a great deal more to the town of Brad than could possibly have been revealed by a casual glance at the map.

Because of its apparent insignificance, Abrud was an ideal spot as far, as the government were concerned, for the pursuit of certain researches in nuclear physics. They were more of a theoretical than practical nature and involved very complicated mathematical abstractions. The young genius in charge of this work was a Rumanian by the name of Lorri Durak. Lorri Durak was tall, slim and dark, like many of his fellow countrymen. He was not dark in the way that an Englishman uses the word ‘dark’. His hair was almost pure black and it shone as only the advertisers of haircream claim that their particular product could equal. But Lorri Durak’s hair did not shine with its intense blackness because he used anybody’s hair cream, but with a natural, glossy jet which is the birthright of so many central and eastern Europeans. His black eyes registered and reflected the enormous intelligence of the brain behind. It was the kind of brain which plays with numbers very much in the same way that a poet could play with words. Lorri Durak was a number-poet. He was a Wordsworth of the mathematical symbol, he was a slide-rule Tennyson; he was a Keats with the calculus, and a Hausman with algebra. He was a geometrical Burns, and a Shakespeare with quadratic equations. Either because of, or perhaps in spite of, his very high degree of intelligence and specific mathematical ability, Lorri Durak seemed singularly unfamiliar with the ways and the wiles of an imperfect world.

Poets live in their poems; artists live with their palettes; musicians are absorbed in, and enraptured by, the music they create and enjoy. Their genius in one field seems to lead to a kind of ingenuous innocence in the rather sordid business of what is rather glibly referred to as a ‘practical world’, a world blemished by that panoply of the ethical second best upon which the tarnished legend ‘Expediency’ is emblazoned.

Lorri Durak had no particular interest in politics, he believed what he had been brought up to believe. He was pleased to bring his gifts to what he happily believed would be the general service of humanity. His mathematical genius had already succeeded in unlocking the key formula which would lead to production of several important isotopes. Many of these would have considerable medical significance. Others would be of paramount importance in industrial processes, leading to an increase in general prosperity and wealth and a larger number of consumer goods than had been previously available. Because his nuclear-physical-mathematics were able to provide the solutions to practical problems of this nature, and because Durak was above all things else a humanitarian, he resolved to work all the hours that Providence provided for him. He was absorbed in his work completely—well almost completely.

He paused in the middle of a calculation, and when he paused his mind was not on his work—his mind was on Karina Scarla. Karina Scarla was his computer operator and she was a great deal more than that. The shy, unsophisticated innocence of the overgrown schoolboy that he was in many respects, had caused Lorri Durak to fall helplessly and irreversibly in love with Karina Scarla. His mind, although a brilliantly balanced organ, was also a delicately balanced one, and the normally unobtrusive, but nevertheless present, ‘administrators’ and security agents who surrounded his life rather like an invisible wall, had been glad to find that Karina Scarla had naturally and unaffectedly reciprocated the young nuclear mathematician’s sentiments. The computer girl was as enamoured of Lorri Durak as he was of her. If this happy state of affairs—from the point of view of the administrators and security forces—had not come into being, apparently of its own volition, it would have presented them with something of a problem. Unrequited love can have serious enough consequences ordinarily from the point of view of the individual whose love is unrequited, but when that individual happens to be among the top three experts in a field of indescribable importance, then unrequited love could have been something of a major political crisis. The object of Lorri Durak’s affections opened the door and came in with a sheaf of papers….

HER hair was almost as dark as his and it had that same natural gloss that made it shine and vibrate like a living thing. Her eyes, too, were black as jet and flashed with that same light as his own. Karina smiled warmly as she came in. Her lips were full, red, moist and inviting.

He took the papers from her hand gently but firmly, his arm stole round her waist and their lips met in a moment of ecstasy.

“Darling, we’re supposed to be working,” she said.

“Yes, indeed, but how can a man work with such an enchantress?”

“You must not talk like that, or you will have me transferred….”

“I would not work if you were transferred!”

“You must not do anything to anger them, Lorri,” she said choosing her words carefully.

His brows darkened.

“Anger them? Why should I anger them? Look what I’ve done for them!”

“Sometimes,” she said, and her voice held just a trace of sadness, “the more that you do for them the less grateful they are, and the more they expect you to do. What you think of as a gift they take for granted; then if the gift is no longer given there is anger and danger.”

“You’re worried about something!”

“Yes—yes, I am, but it is nothing that you could help me with.”

“If I cannot solve it, who can?”

“It isn’t a matter of solving it like a mathematical equation,” said Karina. There was a suspicion of a tear in her beautiful eyes.

Lorri looked at her closely.

“What is wrong?” he demanded.

“If you were a politician instead of a scientist then perhaps you could help me. If you were a general perhaps you could help me. If you were a commissar, perhaps you could help me.”

“I do not understand, you are speaking in riddles, my dear; what is it?”

“We can’t talk here, but I will tell you to-night,” she said. “Come to my flat and we will talk.”

“Very well—to-night. You must tell me everything. I cannot bear to see you worried like this. If you are worried I am worried. If I am worried I cannot do my work.”

“But you must, you must,” said Karina. “You must not let them know that I have said anything.”

“Them?” echoed Lorri.

“Security, the Administration! You do not know how closely they watch. Oh, Lorri, you are so sweet, but sometimes you’re like a little boy, you live in a world of your own!”

“A world of my own,” said Durak, “How do you mean, my darling?”

“You’re so completely guileless; your own heart is so pure and innocent, and you believe that the rest of the world is pure and innocent.”

“I know that there are enemies in the world,” said Lorri vaguely.

Karina laughed, “Enemies, yes—but where?”

“There are Imperialist aggressors, there are capitalist exploiters in backward countries,” said Lorri.

“You do not know these things,” said Karina, “it is only what you have been told, it is only what you have been allowed to read; it is what you have heard.”

“There is no other way of acquiring information, except through the organs of the senses. I read with my eyes, I hear with my ears, I think with my mind; I can only form conclusions based upon what I am able to hear, and what I am able to see—surely that is straightforward?”

“It is your pure, scientific attitude that is at fault,” argued Karina. Lorri Durak was not listening so much to what she was saying as to the sound of the voice itself.

It was soft, enchanting; yet it was filled with promise and passion.

He looked at her caressingly with his eyes, even the white nylon uniform could not conceal the magnificence of her femininity, the gracefulness of her every movement, the superb loveliness of her exciting figure.

“Ah, Karina,” said Durak, “it is so difficult to concentrate on what you are saying, when your voice is like a silver thread binding my heart. I feel like a butterfly that has flown into the web of a beautiful spider. It is an enchanted web.”

She shrugged her lovely feminine shoulders:

“To-night,” she whispered.

He picked up the sheaf of papers which he had taken from her and began looking through them. A door on the other side of the work room opened noiselessly.

“Good morning,” said a soft cultured voice, and yet for all its softness and culture there was a deadly sinister undertone.

“Morning Colonel,” said Durak without looking up, for Colonel Silkorski was not a man for whom he held any brief at all.

THE young nuclear mathematician put the sheaf of papers down and turned to face the newcomer.

Silkorski was in charge of the security arrangements; he was also the chief force in the administration. He was tall and broad, but he was fat with it; the fatness always made Lorri Durak think of the velvet glove encasing a steel hand—it smoothed out the angular contours of the steel. It made him think of a thick rubber hose pipe encasing an angular rod of lead or steel. It was a camouflage, a padding, a façade, a mask. The young mathematician had a kind of instinct about characters. He had a kind of feeling for people in the same way that he had a feeling for numbers. He wasn’t logical about his number work, it was an instinctive feeling, and he was enough of a trained scientist not to place too much reliance upon feelings as such, but at the same time, he was enough of a human being not to neglect his feelings altogether. He was not enough of a politician to be able to hide his feelings. The fat man could read him like a book.

“How is the work going?” asked the sinister Silkorski.

“Much as usual,” said Durak with a shrug, as he handed across a bundle of papers, “here, these are the latest results. They have just come through on the line printer. Karina just brought them in.”

“I see,” replied Silkorski, “of course, this means very little to me in terms of ordinary, everyday, layman’s language. Would you be kind enough to explain it to me?”

“Well the new isotope is a success,” said Durak, “I mean it is a mathematic possibility. As soon as these formulae are passed on to the practical resea. . .