Harry Cavendish Read Free Page B

side and spilling a vast pool of blood all around Cormack and the cow, making it hard for the Zargons to get close.
    ‘Don’t you worry,’ said the cow to Cormack. ‘See there!’ She was pointing to a point on the horizon where Cormack could make out nothing except small twiggy trees that formed a spiky halo around a pool of water. ‘Pantheistic Syllogists!’
    Cormack looked closely and thought he could make out a single cow.
    ‘Get back from the cow!’ said the leader of the Zargonic Guard.
    ‘Have no truck with the cow!’ said Cormack angrily.
    ‘We have orders to take you to our Emperor.’
    ‘I will come quietly. With my friend the cow.’
    ‘I say,’ said the cow. ‘You does be so kind to me. I really does appreciate it.’
    The Guard approached the pair of them, but backed away a little when he caught a whiff of the stench that surrounded them.
    ‘Guards!’ he shouted to a group of men around him. ‘Arrest the prisoners!’
    The Guards made to go forward, but as they did there came an almighty trembling and a rushing of wind, and it was as though the horizon had blurred and shattered and become a wave, rolling out across the splintered ice.
    ‘The final flatulation of the Prison Whale!’ shouted Cormack to the cow. ‘It’s now or never! Come on, cow!’
    Cormack jumped on the cow’s back and pumped her thighs with his ankles.
    ‘Well, well I never!’ said the cow. ‘Never in all my years!’
    ‘Move cow!’ said Cormack.
    ‘Well, I never…’ repeated the cow, still not moving.
    ‘Let us get out of here!’ shouted Cormack
    ‘Not so hard with the ankles,’ said the cow.
    The Captain of the Zargonic Guard sucked in icy breaths and watched the performance for a while: the boy on the cow; the cow standing still and transfixed in a kind of ecstasy; the boy kicking the cow; the cow cooing soft moos; the boy beating the cow in frustration; the cow panting hard. And when he could bear it no longer, he reached for Cormack, handcuffed him, and led him into the small spacecraft that was prepared for them.

Chapter Six
    They didn’t bother restraining Cormack in the spaceship, there being little he could do by way of escape, but the cow they were more wary of. The Guards had identified her as something malevolent, and, much to her protestations, they confined her in a section of the hold right at the back, near the escape hatch.
    Cormack had been given special treatment and was dressed in a grey jumpsuit and given boots to wear.
    He sat towards the front of the main bridge, in a huge commander-style chair, tempted to bark orders and play with the consoles.
    The Captain of the Guard sat opposite on a similar chair.
    His name was Proton, and, shed of his enormous rubberized armour, he was surprisingly affable. He sat with his legs lifted on the console, a glass in his hand, wiggling it so that the ice made a merry chink.
    He was a Zargon, which is to say a human, perhaps forty years old, with close-cropped brown hair, flecked with grey, and a small military-style moustache. His eyes were distant and glazed, focused on something far behind Cormack’s head.
    ‘Care for a drink?’ he said. ‘Cormack, isn’t it? Mind if I call you, Cormack?’
    Cormack said he didn’t, and he wouldn’t mind a water, which Proton ordered from the galley.
    ‘Only water? Nothing stronger? Shouldn’t really myself, of course, especially not on duty.’ He had a pleasant tone to his voice, Cormack thought. Confidential. A bedside manner.
    ‘Hell of a day though,’ he continued. ‘Needed a little snifter. You know, sometimes you’ve got to bend the rules to suit the occasion. Are you sure you’re OK, though? Expect you really want one too. It’s quite all right. Would appreciate the company.’
    ‘No, no. I’m fine,’ said Cormack.
    ‘Glenrushen. Save it for the special occasions,’ said Proton.
    Cormack was not much acquainted with Glenrushen but he could see it had a raw, lubricant quality, like engine