Free Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two by Peter Knyte

alligators, finally putting an end to the popular urban legend about ‘gators in the sewers’.
    And finally, one crew working beneath Delancey Street near the Williamsburg bridge reported seeing the ghost of a young woman in the sewers.
     
    ‘A ghost?’ I asked incredulously.
    ‘Yes,’ replied Fraser, with a smile on his face. ‘When I interviewed the sewer workers further, they both confirmed they’d seen what looked like a pale young woman who was almost see-through. Though they could only see half of her because one side of her face and body was just a mass of what they thought looked like the bubbling black tar they use on roads.’
    That stopped me in my tracks with a fork of food half-way to my mouth.
    ‘Of course!’ I said as the penny dropped. ‘You must’ve landed a good hit with the Arc Cannon, and the creature is trying to heal the damage by feeding off the sewer creatures, but while it’s hurt it can’t fully turn itself invisible, so it appears only partially transparent . . . like a ghost.
    ‘We should get after it, while it’s still hurt and vulnerable,’ I suggested, feeling that smouldering ember of rage inside me flicker again into flame.
    ‘We thought you’d say that,’ commented Hughes. ‘Which is why I thought we’d best get a decent meal inside you tonight!’
    ‘We’re going to have to do it the hard way,’ explained Fraser. ‘The tracking dogs can’t be used in the sewers for obvious reasons, so we’re planning to enter the sewers along the length of the Bowery, down the middle of the Island, and then drive Eastwards until we reach the river. If this creature is injured and hiding anywhere in that bit of the city we’ll either corner it or drive it into the river.’
    It sounded good. With luck the thing wouldn’t have moved too far, and while it was healing it wouldn’t be able to move very fast or turn invisible. But it was a big city and if the sewer workers had disturbed it while it was feeling vulnerable I didn’t know what it would do.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 25 - TRACKS
     
    I slept a deep and dreamless sleep that night back in my own bunk, and awoke early the following morning refreshed and ready for the day.
    Even with the sighting from the sewers, the plan was still to fly out to the railyard at the western end of Long Island, just to make sure the creature wasn’t somehow still using it as a base or fall back point.
    If it was still using that site, it would mean the creature was a lot more mobile than we’d anticipated, and had probably also found a fairly safe route through the underground sewer and rail tunnels between the railyard and the river. A route it could follow without feeling threatened even its injured state.
    On the plus side, having woken up early I had the time to have a good look around the ship to see how the repairs were coming along before we set off.
     
    With the frame of the ship now almost whole again and the gas cells on the damaged side of the ship once more in place, if not fully filled, the ship was obviously well on the road to be being fully operational again, but with all the late night or early morning coming and going I hadn’t realised just how many areas of the ship Bradbury and his men must’ve been working on simultaneously.
    I’d noticed the glass in the bridge had been replaced and a couple of the malfunctioning engines had been brought back on line, but now as I walked around the ship I also noticed that many of the heavily damaged weapons arms which had either been seriously buckled or completely torn from their moorings had now been re-attached or re-constructed.
    To say that some of these freshly constructed weapon arms were crudely constructed would have been unfair, as when I walked over to inspect one of them it was clearly manufactured in a precise and robust way. It just wasn’t as elegantly done as the originals with their tapering and curved support girders, as opposed to