The Skull (18 page)

Finally, summoning the last of his energy, he sent it tumbling into the oily blackness with one immense, final push. The instant the skull disappeared into the bubble, the wormhole collapsed into itself and there was silence.

‘Shut the doors,' cried John, as he stared into the empty blackness. He felt a strange sense of loss. Somehow, it was as though neither the skull nor the wormhole had ever existed. At the same time, he felt as if he were somehow the creature's killer.

As the computer guided the shuttle through the Earth's atmosphere, John looked out of the window
on to a slowly unfolding blue map. Oceans spread out in front of him, green and yellow landscapes dotted with the pale grey sprawl of mankind's habitation.

His parents were being revived and soon he would step out of the hatch and enter this brand new world. And then he would eat meat.

He looked back to the empty space at the back of the cargo hold.

‘Where did it end up – the skull?' he asked the computer.

‘I don't know,' the machine replied. ‘Wormholes don't just traverse space, they travel across time too. A better question would be: “when did it arrive?”'

‘When did it arrive, then?'

‘I don't know,' said the computer.

High above Earth, a swirling black bubble grew suddenly out of the darkness of space. A battered crate span out of it and was instantly caught in the planet's gravitational field.

As the wormhole closed, the box tipped over and over, down towards the green and verdant world below.

The stone skull's jaws gaped wide and its empty eyes glowed red with the heat of re-entry. As the crate burned and fused around its contents, protecting it as it was designed to do, it slowly began to disintegrate, searing into a shower of bright, tiny rocks that trailed behind the skull like a fiery tail.

Glowing and terrible, the monster screamed towards the Earth, a burning, roaring predator from the sky.

Somewhere below, beside a lake in a warm Jurassic forest, a female megalosaurus broke off from her hunt and turned her eyes up to face her killer.

First published 2013 by A & C Black
Copyright © 2013 A & C Black
Text copyright © 2013 Christian Darkin

This electronic edition published in August 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing

First published 2013 by A & C Black
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square,
London, WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com

The right of Christian Darkin to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copy, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978-1-4081-9298-6

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