Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

checking the light levels on her cameras to make sure they’d got it all. She’d had so many exclusives in one day that she was getting quite giddy and breathless.
    “I can remember when Shub were supposed to be our children,” said Douglas. “Who’s the child now, I wonder?”
    “First Brett and Rose, then Daniel and Shub,” said Lewis. “Thank God I was never the joining type.”
    “Pardon me for butting in,” said Stuart Lennox. “But it’s not all happy endings, just yet. I hate to be the one to bring it up, but, what are we going to do about the Terror?”
    And that was when the final visitor strolled into the court, from a side door that no one had noticed until then.
    The shape-changing alien, wearing a face and body that no one but he remembered: a certain lupine humanoid form called the Wolfling. Big and hairy and very impressive. Everyone drew their weapons.
    “Take it easy, people,” the shape-changer growled. “I bear a message from Owen Deathstalker, and you wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been holding it for you. He wrote it out himself, in his own hand, because he knew he’d never return to say it in person. Here it is.”
    He handed a thick scroll over to Lewis, who slowly unrolled it, and read the first line aloud:
    Last night I dreamed of Owen Deathstalker.

CHAPTER NINE

    JOURNEY’S END
    O wen had never felt so powerful, or so tired. But as long as Hazel’s trail had been, he could sense it was finally nearing its end. The galaxy spun around him like a sparkling toy, slowly winding down, as he stepped effortlessly out of the Pale Horizon and back into space and time. He stood on the airless surface of a moon, all gray dust and pockmarked craters, and looked down on a very young world. There was no trace of Hazel anywhere. Her trail stopped here, in this place and at this time, and then just . . . ceased to be. She hadn’t died here. Owen was sure he would have sensed that. She had just gone . . . somewhere else. Owen considered the blue and green world before him. There was nothing in orbit, not even a single transmitting satellite. No lights shone in the dark, to mark the presence of cities, and civilization. So Owen went down, to take a look around.
    He plunged through the turbulent atmosphere, and flew across the continents, and it was all very quiet and peaceful. He’d lost track of just how far back he’d come, how many centuries or even millennia had danced past beneath his running feet, but he could tell that these were the early days of Humanity’s homeworld. Old enough to settle down, but intelligent life had yet to evolve. There were just animals, wandering grassy plains, and great birds in the sky that had enough sense to give Owen plenty of room. He came down, and it felt good to have solid ground under his feet again. Animals hid themselves in the tall grasses, observing him cautiously from a distance, making warning hooting noises to each other. Owen looked unhurriedly about him, enjoying the feel of the warm humid breeze on his face.
    It was the quiet that struck him most. Apart from the occasional cough or bark from the watching animals, or the far-off cry of an arcing bird, the whole world seemed to be holding its breath, as though waiting for history to begin. At the dawn of life, the world was untouched by human needs or wants, and the complications they caused. Owen tried to feel the significance of this moment, in the cradle of Humanity; the promise of civilization and the great Empires to come . . . but the world was just empty. Like a new house, waiting for its tenants to move in. This was an innocent world, and Owen didn’t belong here. He considered what to do, where to go next. Hazel had been here, for a while. He could sense her presence, standing on this spot, seeing what he saw. But even in her confused and maddened state, she must have realized that she wouldn’t find Owen by going any further back in time. This was the end of the line.
    So where did she go? Where else was there, but space and time?
    Owen concentrated, reaching out with his more than human senses as he rose up into the air, soaring smoothly through the rich blue skies and on up into orbit. He investigated the areas around the planet, and was surprised to detect the presence of other visitors. There was nothing human about them. Alien ships, and aliens that didn’t need ships, and other things so strange and other that even his expanded mind couldn’t make sense of them.