Cycle of Nemesis by Kenneth Bulmer Read Free Book Online Page B

ideas taken in and digested and regarded as possible by us without comment. Now, I saw, this was our way of comment on that old story of Khamushkei the Undying.
    Heavily, Brennan said, “I told you my heli was damaged. I told you my two associates were dead. I’ve indicated something of the power still remaining to Khamushkei the Undying. Now you’re pushing me—”
    “I think we’re entitled to that,” I pointed out. “Confound it, Hall, you’ve spun a pretty ferocious sort of yam. That I, for one, believe you, doesn’t make the story true.”
    “Granted. I’ll say this. I’ve been on the trail of Khamushkei the Undying for some time now. Little bits here, little bits there, traces of folklore that have been regarded with contempt by researchers falling into place and taking on meaning because of what I already knew. Things like that.” He smiled across at George Pomfret. “You talked of having to shut the Time Beast back into his Time Vault, George. A praiseworthy, if dangerous, idea. But—but just where do you expect to find this Vault?”
    And there it was, of course.
    That was the problem my globe was supposed to solve.
    Phoebe stood up and walked across to the globe. She spun it deliberately beneath her fingers so that the continents and seas blurred into a racing chromosphere.
    "I’ve been sitting doing nothing for too long,” she told us. “Now I want to do something exciting. Good grief!” She sounded comical in her vehemence. “If this isn’t the greatest chance for some fun!”
    “If getting killed is fun,” Pomfret said guardedly.
    I had to make the decision. I didn’t know the others particularly well; George Pomfret with his money and his fine villa, his vague business associates from whom the money came, and his bluff hearty sportsman pose, well, I suppose I knew him better than the others. But Hall Brennan was a mystery, and Phoebe Desmond even more of a mystery. And yet, I knew, quite without equivocation, that if we opened up that globe we would be committing ourselves to a course of action from which we would not be able to draw back.
    The decision had already been made, but, being by nature irritable, I like to sort things out first before telling those decisions. “All right,” I told Brennan. “Open it up—but treat it gently.”
    “But,” said Phoebe, annoyed, “you said there couldn’t be anything in it.”
    “I was still working it out, Phoebe. Just let Hall do his surgical stint, and then we’ll see.”
    Brennan bent over the globe. The knife blade caught a glint from the sun and spattered red reflections. “Here,” said Brennan, sharply. “The plastic has been heat-sliced and resealed. Polystyrene cement, melting the edges and melding them—a neat job ... but...”
    The knife blade disappeared in plastic. With a distinct and musical pop the globe sprang into two hemispheres.
    A nylon-wrapped bundle fell out, trailing wires and retaining strips of plaster.
    “It’s there ! ”
    “Let me-”
    Who spoke, who grabbed, I didn’t know. But it was my globe. I put out a quick hand, knocking away another grasping hand, said, “Wait! Hold it. That wire is connected to the interior of the globe—”
    “A booby-trapped time-bomb?” asked Pomfret.
    “If it was that,” I told him sourly, “it would have gone off already.”
    “Thank you!” said Phoebe, sweetly venomous.
    “What Bert is thinking, I imagine, is the wire must be connected to a place on tire sphere that corresponds with a geographical site on the outside of the globe.” Brennan glanced at me and I realized it was his hand I had knocked away. “I’d figured that, too, Bert.”
    “All right.” I decided not to feel foolish. “But you might not have.”
    Phoebe with her delicate woman’s fingers felt around inside and then ran her other hand over the outside of the globe. “Here,” she said. “Roughly, anyway.”
    She pointed a manicured fingernail at a spot on the globe. Iraq. Well, what