Sci-Fi Stories Shade Shorts 2.0 Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  The Changeling

  by Gillian Philip

  Space Junk

  by David Orme

  Strangers

  by Mary Chapman

  The Neronian Box

  by Alan Durant

  More Shades 2.0 Shorts titles

  Copyright

  The Changeling

  by Gillian Philip

  The Changeling

  by Gillian Philip

  ‘It’s a very primitive life-form.’ Dr Balthazar tugged his glasses down his nose and eyed it. ‘Barely evolved.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ muttered Kit out of the side of his mouth.

  I nudged Kit to shut him up.

  The thing in the tank. How would I describe it? If you can imagine a lump of animated lard, you’d be nearly there. Or an opaque, white jellyfish, but with no personality at all. Not even jellyfish personality.

  The tanks were set into the wall so that only one side of them was exposed. The glass was the very expensive, non-reflective kind, so you could see the exhibits clearly, but it was a bit unnerving. Some of the exhibits had big DANGER DO NOT TOUCH stickers, but you wouldn’t think the glass was there till you tapped it.

  Which Kit did.

  The thing inside didn’t seem to react. Maybe the lardy blob pulsed a bit faster, like its heartbeat had speeded up, but as it didn’t have a heart that didn’t seem likely. Gently, Kit rapped the glass again.

  ‘MISTER Castleman!’

  Kit yelped and snatched at his finger, but that was only a reflex. It wasn’t like he could get the clamp off. I glanced nervously at my own left forefinger, and the little metal clamp fused onto it and screwed into the bone.

  Yikes, poor Kit. Despite all his curiosity, he never learned. Balthazar did not like indiscipline, and he was a lot more ready to use his own Corporal Correction system than the other teachers. They used it when they absolutely had to, and they didn’t like it. Balthazar loved it. He got a kick out of it. You could tell.

  Kit whimpered through his teeth, and I squeezed his arm sympathetically.

  ‘I won’t have inattention,’ said Balthazar coldly. ‘See me after class.’

  Kit shivered. ‘See me after class’ meant ten more shocks with the Corporal Corrector. I knew that because I’d got it myself once, for arguing with Balthazar about string theory. For the last time, boy, I don’t want debate. I want PERCENTAGES.

  Which he got, of course. Balthazar’s results were always top of the league. Parents clamoured to send their brightest children to him. If only they knew.

  Actually, maybe they did. The school system was very competitive.

  ‘DiMarco, pay attention!’

  I stiffened with terror. Balthazar’s pale eyes were fixed on me, and my forefinger itched with fearful anticipation, but no shock came. Kit always got the worst of it. He was too inquisitive and too argumentative.

  ‘It’s what, DiMarco?’ Balthazar rapped his stick on the tank glass.

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Idiot boy. A chimaera, DiMarco, or in the common parlance, a changeling. And never let me hear you use the common parlance.’

  His eyes glittered. ‘What is it, DiMarco?’

  ‘A chimaera, sir – ow!’

  ‘Don’t try to be clever, DiMarco. What is a chimaera? What does it do?’

  I couldn’t answer. I was still trying to get my breath back. The pain in my hand had subsided, but it still throbbed. It was just a small charge. A warning.

  ‘The chimaera.’ Balthazar drew out his little probe. ‘Highly dangerous. Yet it has no intelligence. No memory. A very basic nervous system. Step back, please.’

  Hastily we shuffled back. I’d swear the blob flinched away, wobbling into the far corner of the tank.

  Balthazar pressed his face to the glass and banged it with the palm of his hand.

  ‘No response, you see? But it does have sensory awareness of a primitive kind.’ He slid his probe into the little hole at the top left of the tank and touched the blob with it.

  The blob didn’t make a sound, but it shrivelled. Beside me, Kit stiffened. The probe worked along the same lines as the Corporal Correctors, we knew that. Kit’s fists clenched, but Balthazar pressed the probe harder. The chimaera trembled and jolted and writhed. I thought if it could squeal, it would really be squealing now.

  Balthazar’s chilly-scientist look had been replaced by a big grin. He was enjoying himself. And from the way the chimaera had reacted, I realised he’d done this before. A few times, probably. He twisted the probe.

  ‘Sir, stop it!’ Kit couldn’t contain himself any more.

  Balthazar stood up slowly, withdrawing the probe.

  ‘Castleman, your impudence has just doubled your penalty.’ He smirked.

  ‘Tonight you are all to research the chimaera. I want a thousand words by nine o’clock: its native planet, the name of the explorer who discovered it, its properties.’

  We scribbled furiously, then headed silently for the library. All but Kit, who slouched after Balthazar. He looked scared, and so he should. But there was something else in the stare he was aiming at the headmaster’s shoulder blades.

  It looked to me like naked hate.

  I knew Kit wasn’t asleep. I’d heard him snuffling and gulping when he thought everyone else in the dorm was asleep, but although he was silent now, he hadn’t cried himself to sleep. I could make out his shape in the next bunk and he was rigid with tension and fury.

  ‘Kit,’ I whispered. ‘Did you get to the library? You need the essay in by –’

  ‘Yeah,’ came his muffled reply. After a moment, he threw off the covers, sat up and glared at me. ‘Didn’t know you were awake.’

  ‘Just woke up,’ I lied. ‘What’re you doing?’

  He was fumbling under his mattress.

  ‘Need to put something back,’ he whispered. ‘Shut up. Don’t let on.’ He stood up. He held something in his hand. A scalpel, or a knife.

  I rose too.

  ‘Kit, what are you doing?’

  ‘Told you.’

  I was scared for him, really scared.

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  He stared at me for long moments.

  ‘OK.’

  It wasn’t as dangerous as you might think, skulking the school corridors at night. Balthazar thought there’d be no mischief, ever, because we were all so terrified. As a rule, he was right.

  I frowned as Kit eased open the art-room door and tiptoed to the cupboard. Now I knew what he was replacing. It wasn’t a knife, it was a glass cutter.

  ‘Kit,’ I hissed. ‘What’s this about?’

  He raised a finger to his lips, then beckoned me on. The corridor was in pitch darkness but for tiny lights at floor level. At the swing doors marked Biology Laboratory – Authorised Persons Only, I stopped.

  ‘Kit,’ I hissed. ‘We can’t go in here.’

  ‘Come on. I’ve been already. There’s no one around.’

  He was wrong.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Dr Balthazar, but I managed to swallow my yelp of terror. His back was turned and he was leaning against the wall of tanks, so he hadn’t seen us yet. I started to back away, but Kit seized my arm.

  ‘Wait.’

  He crept forward, but Balthazar didn’t move.

  Tensing, ready to break into a run (whatever good that would do me), I followed. Now I could see Balthazar properly. His probe was in his right hand and his hand was inside the tank. He must have reached out to tease the chimaera.

  That non-reflective glass. It was so deceptive and creepy. The tank didn’t look any different now that there
was no glass on the front of it at all. Remembering how carefully and lovingly Kit had laid the glass cutter in its drawer, a shiver went down my spine.

  Kit blew out a sigh.

  ‘What a jerk,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s a disappointment. I thought it would happen in class, but the old brute must have come down every night to torment it. Poor little thing. Did you see how scared it was?’

  I was trembling. I could hardly get the words out.

  ‘Is he … dead?’

  ‘’Course he isn’t dead,’ said Kit scornfully. ‘He’s in there. Didn’t you do your homework?’

  He pointed at the tank.

  I crept forward, as Kit gently manoeuvred the senseless Balthazar out of the way. In the tank, the white lump thrashed and throbbed. It looked furious. It looked as if it was trying to say something.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ snapped Kit. ‘You want to swap places with the old brute?’

  He brought the neatly-cut pane of glass from behind a cabinet, eased it back into place, then squeezed a thin line of glass glue round the cut. Pretty amazing work. You wouldn’t know it had ever been removed.

  Balthazar was blinking and wobbling, coming back to himself. My breath caught in my throat, but he smiled at me and Kit.

  ‘Hank oo,’ he said. His lips were a bit floppy and he couldn’t speak too clearly.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Kit. ‘Poor you. No intelligence indeed. Huh.’

  Between us, we supported the changeling as it stumbled woozily back to Balthazar’s study. Its legs were still very wobbly.

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ said Kit.

  ‘’Es,’ nodded the changeling. ‘Wha ’m I?’

  ‘You’re a super headteacher,’ said Kit, patting its wobbling back, ‘and you’ve decided to make some serious changes to your school …’

  Space Junk

  by David Orme

  Space Junk

  by David Orme

  ‘I’ve got it, Jake. Locking on.’

  Slowly, the battered spaceship Rock On changed course and moved towards the object floating in space. It would be impossible to see against the huge blue-white-green ball of the Earth below them. But the Rock On’s scanners could pick up any object, even if it were just a few millimetres across.

  ‘I think we’re close enough,’ Jake said. ‘Moving the arm out now.’

  An arm of steel started to stretch out from the spaceship, guided by Jake on board the Rock On. This job needed real concentration.

  ‘Got it. Bringing it in now.’

  Jake and Ross were busy guys. They were space garbage men, clearing up the space junk that orbited the Earth. Some of it had been there since space flight started, over a hundred and fifty years ago. Some of it fell to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere. Some of it didn’t. This was the stuff that was a menace to spaceships.

  There had been accidents, bad ones. Spaceships went fast, and hitting even a tiny object was serious. That was why Earth needed space garbage men like Jake and Ross.

  Jake headed down to the garbage hold to see what the arm had brought in. Sometimes it was valuable stuff, lost from a satellite or space station. Most of the time it was just junk.

  ‘It’s a spanner, Ross. Some spaceman must have dropped it, working outside a space station.’

  Ross grunted. Not much money to be made out of a spanner. He switched on the scanner again, sat back, and turned up the music.

  Two hours later, the scanner pinged again. Ross waited while the computer checked the position of the object. The computer kept a record of everything that was meant to be in Earth orbit, from the biggest space station down to the smallest satellite. There was no match. It had to be space junk.

  Half an hour later, and they were up close. Ross checked the readings again.

  ‘Quite a biggy, this one, Jake.’

  ‘Probably a broken-off solar panel.’

  Once more, the Rock On’s arm reached out to grab. It was a brilliant piece of kit – the end was fitted with strong magnets and tiny ‘fingers’ that could hold on to anything.

  ‘Bringing it in.’

  The big hatch in the side of the ship opened, and the arm slid neatly inside. The crew heard a thud as the object – whatever it was – was dumped inside. Then the hatch closed. Sensors checked the object for anything dangerous. A light clicked on. Green. All clear. Air was pumped into the hold, and Jake went to see what they had found this time.

  ‘Ross, come and look at this! It’s not a solar panel, that’s for sure!’

  They could work out what it was, no problem. Airlock door, small windows with light shining out of them, solar panels on the outside. It was a spaceship. Not the same design as they were used to, but a spaceship none the less.

  But they had never seen a spaceship that was only a metre long before.

  Ross got down on his knees and peered in through the window.

  A tiny face peered back at him.

  Ross jumped up so fast he banged his head on the roof of the garbage hold, and for a moment he could see stars inside as well as outside the ship.

  ‘There’s something in there! Alive!’

  Jake didn’t believe him, so he had a look. He didn’t believe what he saw, so he looked again. This time he saw two faces.

  Then a voice, small and squeaky but speaking English, spoke over the ship’s radio.

  ‘When you two idiots have quite finished gawking, how about putting us back where you got us?’

  Of course, there were always space legends about aliens, and many crazy spaceman had claimed to have seen them. Now Jake and Ross had found some real ones.

  ‘I always thought aliens would be – well, bigger,’ said Jake.

  ‘No point in having great lumbering bodies like you lot on Earth. Uses up too much energy, especially if you’re going faster than light,’ the squeaky voice said.

  ‘You can go faster than light? Wow! Knowing how to do that really would be worth money!’ Ross said. ‘Can you give us a few clues how you do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t want you lot rushing around the galaxy! You’re much too dangerous!’

  Jake suddenly thought of something.

  ‘If you are aliens, how come you speak English so well?’

  ‘We’ve been surveying your planet. We picked it up from your radio and TV. Great TV programmes, by the way.’

  Ross was astonished.

  ‘You came all the way across the galaxy just to watch TV?’

  ‘Not just to watch TV. We are looking for knowledge. Fantastic science discoveries, amazing inventions, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Have you found any on Earth?’

  ‘No. But we just love your pop music. Are you into the Martian Maniacs? Great group! Now, will you let us go, please?’

  Jake thought about it.

  ‘Say we don’t let you go?’ he said craftily. ‘Say we take you down to Earth? People would pay big money to see you two!’

  A small hatch opened in the back of the alien space ship and a metal tube poked out.

  ‘Say we burn a great, big hole in your spaceship with our laser cannon?’

  ‘OK, OK, I was just kidding! Let us get back to the bridge and I’ll open the hatch.’

  ‘On the other hand, it might just be quicker to burn a hole in your spaceship,’ the alien voice said. ‘I’m afraid you would get sucked out into space and your bodies would swell up and explode in the vacuum, but I’m sure another garbage ship would come along and clean up.’

  The little metal tube started to move up and down, and a humming noise came from inside the spaceship. Ross and Jake went pale.

  ‘Hold on! We’ll let you go as soon as we can get out of the garbage hold!’

  But the humming noise got louder.

  ‘I like the Martian Maniacs too!’ Ross said desperately. ‘I’ve got all their tracks. I’ll let you have them, if you like!’

  The humming stopped. The metal t
ube disappeared inside the space ship and the hatch clicked shut.

  ‘Have you got I’m in love with the slimy gal from Pluto? We’re missing that one.’

  ‘Yes! I’ve got it! As soon as I’m back on the bridge, I’ll let you download it!’

  Ross and Jake rushed out of the garbage hold and sealed the door.

  ‘Quick, find that track before they change their minds!’

  ‘Got it. Are you guys ready?’

  ‘Downloading now,’ said the squeaky voice.

  Jake opened the garbage-hold hatch.

  They watched as the tiny spaceship gently nosed its way out and disappeared towards the Sun.

  ‘No one will ever believe us,’ Jake said gloomily.

  I’m not so sure. They’ve left us something. While they were downloading that Martian Maniacs track, they uploaded a whole lot of stuff. Look! It says here that it’s all the best pop music from their own culture.’

  ‘Brilliant! That’s bound to be worth money! Play it!’

  Ross played the first track.

  The two space garbage men looked at each other.

  ‘We’ve spent the whole of our life looking for garbage …’ Ross said.

  ‘Yep. And now we’ve found it,’ said Jake. ‘Well, what do you expect from Martian Maniacs fans?’

  Strangers

  by Mary Chapman

  Strangers

  by Mary Chapman

  Summer holidays. Boring; all my friends away, not even my brother Ed for company. He’d gone camping with his mates. Mum was at work, as usual.

  It was really hot. I was on my way home from the shop, carrying two bags, full of tins of cat food. I trudged along, looking down at the dusty pavement and avoiding the cracks – just in case. Life was dreary enough without inviting bad luck.

  ‘Hi!’

  The voice came from the house I was just passing. A girl came down the path. She grinned at me.

  ‘You look fed up.’

  I put down my bags.

  ‘Yeah. It’s so hot.’

  ‘Would you like a cold drink?’

  I hesitated.