The egg lazily spun in the air, falling into the outstretched hand of Liz.
Lorimore was climbing rapidly across the workbench towards her. A glass tank filled with murky liquid slid away from him and crashed to the floor. Something flopped out as the viscous liquid spilled from the shattered glassware. George stepped forward quickly, aware of the hiss of gears and pistons as Wilkes followed him.
Just as Lorimore reached for her, Liz quickly tossed the egg to George. He caught it easily. Lorimore was already scrambling towards him as George pushed the metal plate on the top of the ship back into place. He put the egg on it, and stepped back.
With a cry of relief, Lorimore leapt down from the workbench and reached for the ship.
At that moment, the internal mechanism clicked. The metal plate again flew upwards. The fossil was hurled up into the air. With an anguished cry, Lorimore watched it fly high above him.
He only had a moment, but George was already diving to the floor, sliding through the broken glass and reaching for the gun. Eddie was there ahead of him, his hands cut and bleeding from the razor-sharp shards, his hair plastered to his head with rain.
The egg was falling again. George grabbed the gun from Eddie and spun round to see. Lorimore was standing under the egg, waiting. But another figure thrust him aside, and caught the stone as it fell.
Albert Wilkes.
George raised the gun.
The thunder sounded as if it was there inside the laboratory with them. And it was. The huge dinosaur-like creature stamped in through the broken wall, ripping apart what was left of the fabric, sending more glass and masonry flying. Its claws lashed out, uncontrolled. Its head was swinging desperately back and forth as steam poured out of its joints.
A massive foot crashed down heavily next to George. Steam exploded from it, burning George’s hand. He dropped the gun with a cry, and it rolled away under the belly of the creature.
Lorimore stared up at his creation, smiling thinly. He reached out towards the grotesque automaton that had been Albert Wilkes.
‘Give me the egg, my friend.’ He sounded calm, almost soothing.
Wilkes held up the fossilised egg in a trembling metal fist.
When he spoke, Albert’s voice was a husky, tortured rasp. ‘I know who I am,’ the fragile voice said. ‘And what you are.’ A jet of steam blew out from between the metal fingers as they gripped the egg more tightly. Gears and pistons whirred and strained. Lorimore’s face was etched stone as he watched, realising what was happening. His mouth was a silent ‘no’.
The egg shattered under the pressure. Fragments of stone exploded outwards. One of them whipped by George’s cheek. Liz and Sir William reeled back, away from the blasting shards. Eddie dived under the workbench.
Lorimore caught several pieces of sharp stone in his face. He dropped to his knees, looking up at Wilkes’s dead face, shaking his head in numbed disbelief. Then he seemed to notice the huge metallicised leg of the dinosaur creature beside him.
‘Kill them!’ Lorimore screamed in fury. ‘Kill them all!’
The monstrous creature towering above George hissed and wheezed into uncertain life. In an effort to obey its master one last time, hydraulics strained and steam pressure built up. But George had rerouted the pipes, he had stripped the gears and moved the cables, so it was barely able to control itself. George and Eddie had planned to send the creature into the laboratory when the powder keg exploded — to let it run riot and out of control while they rescued Liz and Sir William. But the pressure had not built up again sufficiently after George vented it.
Now it had.
Unable to control itself, but knowing that its master — its creator — needed it, the enormous creature tried to move. Claws flailed, feet stamped, steam spat through the air. The creature’s desperate roars echoed off the broken glass.
George hauled himself to his feet, trying to avoid the creature as it spun and thrashed. A scaly arm lashed out towards him — about to connect, to knock him lifeless across the room.
But with a frantic hiss of steaming motion, Albert Wilkes moved to intercept the blow. The metallic dinosaur’s claws raked across the metal exoframe, sending Wilkes crashing across the room. He slammed into the workbench. Metal struts detached, fell away, clattered to the floor. Liz screamed. George dived out of the way as the dinosaur continued its stampede.
Equipment and cables were shattered and ripped apart. Slivers of glass were stamped to dust. George ran to Wilkes, but a glance was enough to tell him the man was completely dead. Again. Perhaps there was a faint smile on his face, or perhaps it was the way the morning light cut across him. Perhaps his lips moved and he tried to say farewell one last time to his friend, or perhaps it was just an illusion caused by the moisture George blinked from his eyes.
Behind him Lorimore was shouting and screaming at his creation — begging it to stop as it ripped apart his life’s work. He stood before it, arms outstretched in supplication, paying homage to the life he had created, worshipping his own achievement. As the creature’s heavy claws slashed uncontrollably through the steaming air. As the feet slammed down. As Lorimore screamed for the last time and his bones joined the powdered glass strewn across the floor.
The metal brute stared down at the broken figure through mechanical eyes. Steam poured from its face, its neck, its every joint. An irregular clanking came from somewhere deep inside. Then with a final eruption of steam and a grinding of the broken mechanisms, the creature’s head fell heavily forwards on its neck. It stood there dejected and defeated for a moment, wreathed with the fading steam. Then its legs buckled under its own weight and the creature crashed down on top of its creator. A broken lifeless mass of metal and bone.
There was a trace of mist in the chilly air. The cold of first light was refreshing after the oily steam of the laboratory. Eddie shuddered as they walked slowly down the driveway, shuddered at the memory of the cold dead eyes watching him from the display cases in the hallway. What sort of person, he wondered, collected dead things? What sort of person wanted to create life where there was none?
He frowned, wondering where the fascination he had himself felt in helping bring a clock to mechanical life strayed into the unacceptable dream that Lorimore had pursued.
In front of him, George was walking with Liz, carrying the intricate ship that they had spent so long adapting to rescue them.
‘Well,’ Sir William said to Eddie as they followed their friends, ‘it’s been quite a night.’
‘I’ll say.’ Eddie turned to look back at the house behind them. It looked so normal in the morning light — a large house set in its own grounds. The only unusual thing was that it was hidden away in the heart of London, cordoned off from the city by a high wall. The smoke rising from the back of the house might be the last of the morning mist burning off as the sun gained strength.
When he turned back, he saw that Liz was helping a man to his feet, relieving him of the shotgun that had been slung over his shoulder. ‘I don’t think you’ll be needing that,’ she told him.
‘I should go for the police, if I were you,’ Sir William told the startled guard. ‘And you’ll probably need to find alternative employment.’
The man stared at them, but said nothing. Then, abruptly, he turned and ran ahead of them to the gates.
‘I dunno what the peelers will do when they find that lot,’ Eddie said.
‘Oh, I imagine they’ll do what they always do when they find something so strange and bizarre that it defies explanation,’ Sir William replied. His eyes were twinkling in the cold light.
‘And what’s that?’ Eddie stuck his tongue out at the lizard watching from the top of the gatepost as he stepped out into the street. George and Liz were waiting for them a few paces ahead. They were holding hands again.