The Shadow and Night Read Free Page A

the doors of the stable, Merral suddenly felt the cold anew. The wind had intensified and was swirling round the building, kicking up little eddies of snow. The last gleam of twilight had gone, leaving the molten fire of the stars and the great belt of the Milky Way splendid in the blackness of the sky above him. Despite the frigid air and his appetite, Merral paused in his stride and looked up in wonder.
    â€œYou know your stars, Thomas?”
    â€œâ€™Course! Well, most of ’em. Dad’s taught me some. He says we should see twenty with people on ’em.”
    â€œTwenty?” Merral thought hard. The naked-eye count for Farholme was supposed to be about fifty occupied systems, but that was from Isterrane; no, the boy was right—this far north you’d see less than half of that.
    â€œOn Ancient Earth,” he remarked, as much to himself as to Thomas, “they say you can see over two hundred. And almost all the remaining thirteen hundred with a small optical telescope.”
    â€œSol ’n’ Terra are over there, just below the Gate.” Thomas’ voice was quiet.
    Merral followed his outstretched hand to the heart of the Milky Way, a few degrees below where six sharp golden points of light marked out a hexagon in the blackness.
    â€œYes. That’s it. Sol and Terra: the Ancient Sun and Earth. Well, time to get in or we’ll freeze.”
    Merral bent down to take the boy’s hand, but as he did, his eye caught a movement of the stars. He straightened, watching the approaching speck of light as it grew in size.
    â€œLook, Thomas, a meteor!”
    As he spoke, the point of yellow light, expanding a thousandfold, tore northward almost directly overhead. Its brilliance was such that, for a few seconds, the light of all the other stars was lost.
    Merral twisted round, seeing the whole snow-clad landscape flashing alight in a brilliant incandescent whiteness. In the brief moments that the light lasted he glimpsed his and Thomas’s shadows form and then race away as fading, elongated smears on the snow.
    Abruptly the night flooded back.
    As Merral blinked, a thunderous, echoing rumble vibrated around them, the sound bouncing off rocks and snow and resounding back round the clearing. The ground seemed to shake gently.
    â€œZow!” yelped Thomas, his fingers flung over his ears. “That was noisy!”
    Stripes howled in terror, and from near the house came the barking of the other dogs. The outer door slid open.
    â€œThomas? Merral? What was that?” Zennia’s voice was anxious.
    Merral shook himself, the afterimage of the light still haunting his vision. “Just a meteor. I think.”
    â€œCome on, Thomas. Suppertime.”

    They crowded into the hallway, which was bare but beautifully paneled in a light, oil-polished pine, as the double doors whispered shut behind them. Barrand’s big red face, framed by his ragged black curly beard, peered out of the kitchen. “A meteor, eh? We felt the house vibrate. ‘Ho!’ I thought. ‘Merral is doing my quarrying for me!’ ”
    â€œWhat, Uncle? Cheat you of your pleasure?”
    There was the sound of something bubbling. A look of apprehension crossed Barrand’s weathered face, and he dashed back into the steam of the kitchen.
    Merral took off his jacket and carefully hung it on a rack, relishing the smell of the food and the warmth of the house. He sat on a bench and pulled his boots off, enjoying the feeling of being back in a place that he had always loved. He stroked the wood of the walls gently, feeling its faint grain. Even in a society that prized the right use of wood, Barrand and Zennia’s home was special. Since his first visit, Merral had always felt that the house, with its sizeable underground extension, was something that had grown rather than been built. Even if the unruliest of winds struck the exposed part of the building so hard that every timber