Free Scorpion [Scorpions 01] by Michael R. Linaker

wind. The only sound was the ceaseless smack of the waves against the smooth worn rocks at the foot of the high cliffs that formed this part of the coastline.
        Chris Lane stood at the rail of the launch. Beside her was a lean, sunburned man dressed in a thick fisherman’s sweater and salt-bleached trousers. Bernard Guillerman was sixty years old and he had been sailing this part of the coast for over forty of those years. It had been Guillerman’s name on Les Mason’s manuscript.
        ‘Been trouble along ‘ere ever since they started up that place,’ he said bitterly. ‘They laid that blasted pipe across the top of the cliffs, feedin’ it all the way down and run it into the water. An’ when they set that there atom station goin’, all that hot water they got from keepin’ it cool come down the pipe an’ into the sea. Anyways it started to upset right off. Every fish round ‘ere upped and vanished, swam off up the coast. An’ no wonder. Water in this ‘ere cove was too hot for ‘em.’
        Chris stared round the area. She could see why this place had been ideal for the drainage from the plant. The formation of the cliffs formed a deep half-circle, a lonely cove without a beach. There was no access from either above or below. The cliff was too high and too sheer, offering no attraction, almost deliberately discouraging interest. Raising her eyes she was able to see the silver glint of the steel pipe where it showed at the top of the cliffs. It curved out over the edge, then wormed its way down the sheer rock. It must have presented the construction engineers with quite a task, she thought, as she followed the pipe all the way down to the foot of the cliffs. Here it had been laid across a short concrete wall, the three-foot wide pipe gradually curving down to vanish beneath the restless waves. And down there it disgorged, day and night, its superheated, excess water. Water that had been used to cool the contained, raw energy created in the heart of the nuclear plant.
        ‘Then something else happened about eighteen months ago?’
        Guillerman nodded. He was poking dark tobacco into a worn old pipe. He struck a match and lit the pipe, sucking noisily until he had it burning fiercely.
        ‘I come by one mornin’. Early it was. Calm, just like it is now. An’ there were dead fish floatin’ on the water. Lot of ‘em. I reckoned maybe the water ‘ad got too hot for ‘em. See, they’d started to come back into the cove again. Not as many as used to be ‘ere, but enough. Any’ow, the gulls were ’avin’ a fine old time snatchin’ up them fish. About a week later though there were a lot of dead gulls about. It crossed my mind the two things might be connected, but you know ’ow things get pushed aside. I started havin’ trouble with the boat, ’ad to dry-dock her for a good while. By the time I ‘ad ’er afloat again I’d forgotten about them dead fish. Must have been six month or more ‘fore it happened again. I come by one day an’ there were more dead fish. Only this time they weren’t just dead. They was all… they ‘ad lumps on ‘em… an’ open sores. Flesh all rotted off. Some of ‘em looked like they’d gone blind. Oh, I seen some terrible things that day. Any’ow, couple of days later when I come sailin’ by there was a Royal Navy motorboat anchored just by the cove ‘ere. They got all upset when I appeared. Told me to clear the area. When I asked ‘em why they told me to mind my business and clear off. So I did - but I sneaked a look. They ‘ad another boat in close to the cliffs. There were fellers in big bulky suits clamberin’ round on the rocks there. They was doing all sorts of things round that pipe yonder. Carryin’ all kinds of gadgets. I think they ‘ad them things called geigy-counters. That there Navy boat hung about for about a month. I got used to seein’ it runnin’ up and down the coast. Mainly though it stayed near the