The Midnight Country

Chapter 3

We all waited, shivering in the dark, and as we did so I zoomed up on Sean’s face to capture his concern.

“It looked like a wing,” Karen blurted suddenly.

He froze for a moment and didn’t say anything. At last he looked from her to Eddy and then to me. “Ah. I see.” He smiled suddenly and waved a finger. “You got me. Who’s idea was it? Hmmm, let me guess ...” He looked back to Karen and was about to say something when there was a sound like a slab of meat hitting the concrete and he jolted abruptly and we all just froze, in part, I suppose, because we couldn’t figure out what the massive, arrow-shaped thing that had suddenly materialized amongst us was. But then the blood dribbled from his mouth and Karen began screaming and I realized with horror that he’d in fact been impaled—impaled by some kind of spaded appendage, which uncurled in the mists even as I watched and was suddenly stretched taught—so that he was jerked from the basket with a sickening crunch and swung arms and legs akimbo into space.

That was the worst of it, I think, seeing him swung about like a ragdoll like that, and in such an empty void, his body rising and falling as though in slow-motion and his arms and legs flapping almost gracefully—even as the owner of that appendage passed through the beam of the spotlight and revealed itself in full.

In retrospect, I wish I’d continued recording, for what I saw in that instant is difficult to describe, even now. Suffice it to say that it had a body like that of a manta ray—upon who’s tail the balloonist had been impaled—or a manta ray combined with a bat, albeit huge, and that it was covered with a kind of camouflage which reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Jupiter—just a roil of purples and pinks and browns. I suppose that was when it first hit me: the possibility that there might be a connection between this thing and the Jupiter 6 probe. That the probe might have brought something back, even if it had just been a sprinkling of microbes on its surface.

And then there was an explosion somewhere above us, the concussion of which rocked our balloon, and we all looked up to see Gas Monkey—my God, it was like the sun!—on fire; and yet that wasn’t all we saw, for as it dropped it became evident that there were more of the bat/manta ray things attached, suckling it as it fell, crawling upon it like flies. Then it passed us like some kind of great meteor—its occupants shrieking and calling out—and was gone below, the heat of it still painting our faces, its awful smell, which was the smell of rotten eggs, filling our nostrils.

And then we were just drifting, all of us crouched low in the basket ... and the only sounds were those of Karen sobbing and my own pounding heart.

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