So light was he that by the time they had done so, they had barely broken a sweat. Even so, it was the longest journey Thomas Blackwood had ever made, for the heaviness of his heart more than made up for the lightness of his physical burden. Countless times he cursed himself for having allowed Sophia to accompany them: he should never have brought her into Leason’s Wood; he should have made her wait on the edge of the Cosmodrome while he and the others faced the danger. Sophia had saved his life, but when she stood in dire need of his protection, he had been unable to save her. Now, she was in the clutches of the Venusian fiend, who was taking her God knew where, to do to her God knew what. And now, Petrox Voronezh was dead, the second Martian to be murdered on Earth in less than a week. Blackwood could imagine the look on Grandfather’s face when he told him, and as for the Queen… As he and de Chardin spied the carriage amongst the trees, some intuition told Blackwood that there was another tragedy yet to be revealed.
