hat are you doing here?'
'I came to see you - I had to see you, Xarr.'
'Why?' hissed the creature from beneath its heavy helmet, 'Is the work complete?'
'Nearly...but...'
'You need some
more, do you?' the creature read the human's mind. 'Buut the work is not
yet complete.' Under its helmet, it smiled, getting sadistic pleasure
from the sight of the human on its knees, begging. Yet it knew that the
human was of no use dead.
The creature
walked slowly over to a large metallic cabinet in the corner of the room
from which it produced a small plastic syringe, which the creature
filled slowly with a colourless liquid, then turned to face the human:
'The work on the drive must be finished. I must return.'
'Yes my Lord, but...' the human began dribbling, his eyes fixed on the colourless fluid.
'Very well, Sarna...'
Sarna eventually
woke up in the corner of a small workshop, his hair was matted with
sweat, saliva dribbling from his mouth, hanging open, inert.
Maybe it was all
a nightmare, he thought, but then he felt the tingling of the injection
in his arm and he knew that the 'feeling' would return, and if he
didn't finish his work for Xarr, it would stay.
He slowly crawled to a table littered with many electronic components and he sat down on a hard wooden bench to work.
That evening as
he worked on the final component of the space hyper-drive, the 'feeling'
began to return. He was dedicated to his cause and to the clear
'pleasant' liquid, the technician, his life ruined by his meeting with
the armoured alien creature, continued to work feverously on completing
his task.
Sarna saw that the door of the alien's laboratory was slightly ajar.
Peering in, he saw the familiar sight of the spherical space capsule in
one corner and the precious metal cabinet in the other. But where was
Xarr?
Suddenly, from
the shinning sphere came a creature in shinning armour very much like
Xarr's - but his face...his face was cruel and distorted, squashed into a
hairless mound, betraying no signs of compassion or any emotion apart
from its cruel sadistic grin.
Sarna realised that this thing - this humourless parody of human life, this monster, was Xarr, his master.
This was what he
had been working for - this is what his family had left him for, and
this was
