The Angry Planet Read Online Free Page A

beside him and I bent down and looked
through the hole. Unfortunately, it was a very little hole, but I was able to
see enough through it to thoroughly whet my curiosity. (Jacky has just stopped
me to say I’ve used a split infinitive and that that is bad grammar. I should
have written “thoroughly to whet my curiosity,” or “to whet my curiosity
thoroughly.” Well, it doesn’t much matter—you’ll know what I mean, and that’s
the main thing.)
    Now, where was I?—oh yes, the thing inside the
enclosure. It was, as far as I could see, an immense sort of shell, like the
fuselage of a huge aeroplane, and it was made of some sort of metal, very
highly polished, so that it shone in the sunshine. Every now and again, in the
wall of it, there were small round windows, like port-holes in a ship, only
they seemed of enormously thick glass, and bulged a great deal, like Mrs.
Duthie’s spectacles. It was lying, as far as I could judge, on a big wooden
platform that was inclined at an angle of about forty degrees. I could not see
far enough to my left or right through the knot-hole to be able to get any sort
of glimpse of the ends of the thing.
    “It looks like a boat, almost,” I said, looking round
at Mike, while Jacky had a turn at the knot-hole.
    “That’s exactly what I thought,” nodded Mike. “And it’s
on a sort of big slipway, like a kind of launching ramp. But where’s the water?
There isn’t any water for miles.”
    “If only we could see properly,” grumbled Jacky. “This
knot-hole is no good. Can’t you find a bigger one, Mike?”
    Mike stood looking thoughtful for a moment. He has a
way of standing with his arms akimbo, seeking what he calls “inspiration.”
Then, when it arrives, he hits his brow a great smack. This is what he did now.
    “I’ve got it,” he cried. “Paul, I’m going up one of
these trees. Then I’ll be able to see in over the top of the wall. Give me a
hoist up, will you?”
    We chose one of the highest of the trees, and Mike was
up it in an instant, like the young ape we have always said he was. We could
see him from below clinging on to one of the slender top branches of the fir,
and craning his neck to peer into the enclosure. He gave a long low whistle of
excitement.
    I was just getting ready to swarm up one of the other
trees myself, when Jacky, who was standing a little distance away, came running
over to me to say that she could see through the trees that Doctor Mac and
Uncle Steve had come out of the laboratory and were strolling back towards the
study across the lawn, very deep in conversation.
    “And it just struck me,” she added, “that this thing,
whatever it is, must be pretty secret, or they wouldn’t have shoved the wall
round it. I think we’d better not be found looking in at it—I vote we go and
join the two of them, and we can come back some other time and explore this
whole place properly.”
    I agreed that this was a good idea and we whistled to
Mike to come down. Uncle Steve and the Doctor had gone into the study through
the French windows by the time we emerged from the wood. On our way across the
lawn, Mike explained to us in an excited low voice what he had seen from the
tree-top.
    “It’s immense,” he said. “You never saw anything like
it—honest you didn’t. It goes very tapery and pointed to one end—the end low
down on the ramp—and it bulges up to a big round sort of head at the other
end—it’s exactly like an enormous pear. And there are all sorts of little
nozzles, like guns, sticking out all over it—a great mass of them at the
pointed end, one or two along the sides, and then some more at the blunt end,
though not so many as at the pointed end. There’s a ladder goes up to a big
doorway in the side near the bulgy end—if you two hadn’t called me down I’d
have thought out some way of getting over the wall to find out what it’s like
inside.”
    By this time we had reached the study. Uncle Steve and
Doctor Mac were