Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Read Online Free

would have been an ocean if only it hadn’t been so thick. And he was telling her to sink into this stuff! He had to have been lying to her about keeping them all alive. This was some sort of macabre experiment. “I … I won’t!”
    “Jump!” The earlier order was repeated, the man again indicating the loop of metal which lay on the surface of the substance. “Take a deep breath and jump!”
    “Will not.” Diva sat down as firmly as she could on the jetty and grabbed one of the slats it was made of with all her might. “Will. Not.”
    But he plucked her up off the jetty with no very great effort and suspended her over the loop of metal.
    “Take a deep breath!” And when she didn’t, couldn’t, he gave her a little shake. “Do it, I tell you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you!”
    She refused, kicking out with her legs and sobbing. “I won’t let you!”
    It made no difference. He simply waited, holding the kicking and squirming girl coolly until she was forced to take in a gulp of air. Then, with one slick movement he dropped her into the asphyxiating goo.
    She sank through it like a stone. To try and keep her panic at bay, she began to count the time as she fell. She had been able to hold her breath for fifty seconds at home, but here … she probably wouldn’t survive more than thirty. Already her lungs felt full to bursting.
    She reached thirty-two and began to scream silently inside her head. She wouldn’t last much longer. Her body was desperate for air, her heart beating a frantic tom-tom of flutters. I can’t hold my breath any more, she thought sadly. Damn! I should have done better. Dizziness entered her head and left her light with acceptance. I mustn’t breathe, mustn’t breathe, mustn’t breathe, mus—
    A sudden acceleration told her that she had exited the gel. She fell freely for a second and then hit a soft, rather rubbery floor that gave with her weight and then settled gently back into place. She lay panting, taking in air in huge rasping gasps. Her heart took its time in deciding it was still alive, finally settling down into some semblance of normality. All it cared about was if the air was breathable. It must be so, because her heart was calming down slowly.
    Diva stared at her surroundings. She was in a room, enveloped in the dark substance. It looked a different colour now, more translucent. It was, just as the Sellite had said, a bubble. She felt behind her with her hands, pressing into the wall. It ceded slightly, and then seemed to press back. There were several tubes visible on one side, and a smaller bubble in an alcove off the main one. She made her way over to the doorway, which she noticed was not regular. Instead it was just like the joins of linked soap bubbles, an irregular and slightly curved quadrilateral. She peered inside. There was a bed, made of the same material. What had he called it? Orthogel? And there were toilet facilities to the right. The bigger bubble must have been about ten metres in diameter, the smaller one about five.
    Air, she was relieved to see, was being pumped in through one of the tubes, and out through another. But there was no way out. The ceiling that she had fallen through had closed behind her, and now presented a perfectly smooth aspect. In any case, gravity would ensure that she couldn’t get out the way she came in.
    In the bigger bubble she saw a chair and a central table, which surrounded a column of orthogel suspended above it. She sat down, and immediately a screen lit up. To her amazement a complex picture formed, until she was looking at a three dimensional face.
    “Welcome to Valhai.” The man’s face – Sellite – smiled at her.
    Diva turned her head to one side, suspicious of the thing in front of her. Could it hear her? Did it really exist? The face continued to smile, but insisted, “Identify yourself please, for the records.” It was speaking to her in Coriolan, so it must know who she was, mustn’t