The Tenth Planet (23 page)
Authors: Edmund Cooper
He glanced at the metres on the control console.
“Seven minutes to lift off,” he said professionally.
Mary was silent for a while. Then she said urgently: “Idris, they are coming.”
“Christ, woman, who is coming?”
“They are coming, look.”
He went to the observation panel, over which steel shutters would descend before ignition.
It was true. They were coming. He could see lights out on Talbot Field. Rapidly moving lights. Jet sleds.
But who was coming? A wrecking squad, most likely.
The radio gave him his answer. He heard the voice of Damaris de Gaulle.
“Hello, Jesus Freak. Hello, Jesus Freak. You have your volunteers. When one bloom dies, another is born. Do you read me?”
“I read you,” said Idris. “I liked that legend very much. Assemble your volunteers, please, at the control tower. The lock is open.”
He looked through the observation panel and saw the fairy lights—at least that is what they looked like—converging on the control tower.
He turned to Mary. “Destination, Earth?”
Perhaps, eventually, the other ships that Garfield Talbot in his wisdom had preserved would follow. Perhaps not.
But one, at least, would discover whether Earth, the third planet, would bloom again.
Suddenly, Idris had begun to believe in magic. When one flower dies, another is born.
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Collections
Jupiter Laughs
Voices in the Dark
A World of Difference
Novels
All Fool's Day
(1966)
The Cloud Walker
(1973)
A Far Sunset
(1967)
Five to Twelve
(1968)
Kronk
(1970) (aka
Son of Kronk
)
The Last Continent
(1970)
Merry Christmas Ms Minerva
(1978)
The Overman Culture
(1971)
Prisoner of Fire
(1974)
Seahorse in the Sky
(1969)
Seed of Light
(1959)
The Slaves of Heaven
(1975)
The Tenth Planet
(1973)
Transit
(1964)
Uncertain Midnight
(1958) (aka
Deadly Image
)
Who Needs Men?
(1972)
Ferry Rocket
(1954) (Writing as George Kinley)
The Expendables (Writing as Richard Avery)
1.
The Expendables: The Deathworms of Kratos
(1975)
2.
The Expendables: The Rings of Tantalus
(1975)
3.
The Expendables: The Wargames of Zelos
(1975)
4.
The Expendables: The Venom of Argus
(1976)
This one is for Daryl Cooper,
my scientific adviser
Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)
Edmund Cooper was born in Cheshire in 1926. He served in the Merchant navy towards the end of the Second World War and trained as a teacher after its end. He began to publish SF stories in 1951 and produced a considerable amount of short fiction throughout the ’50s, moving on, by the end of that decade, to the novels for which he is chiefly remembered. His works displayed perhaps a bleaker view of the future than many of his contemporaries’, frequently utilising post-apocalyptic settings. In addition to writing novels, Edmund Cooper reviewed science fiction for the
Sunday Times
from 1967 until his death in 1982.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © The Edmund Cooper Literary Trust. Contact e-mail [email protected] 1973
All rights reserved.
The right of Edmund Cooper to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11657 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.