Free World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) by James Lovegrove

ragged, oozing butchery. Nameless innards and organs clung to the interior of the geode, some dangling in gelatinous dripping ribbons.
    Panting hard, and close to puking, Dev tossed the mangled remnants of the insect aside.
    “What did you have to go and do that for?” demanded an indignant voice behind him.

 
    11
     
     
    T HE MAN WAS dressed in military-surplus protective outerwear, complete with a pair of gauntlets made of artificial spider-silk fibroins, lightweight but virtually impenetrable. His head was encased in mesh helmet not unlike a fencer’s. He flipped up the visor and blinked at Dev owlishly.
    His face was skinny and slight, with a nose a little like a chicken’s beak. His corneas were sheathed in jet-black lenses with an iridescent sheen – image intensification contacts. He had a motion-sensitive tracking device strapped to his forearm.
    “You mean kill that scroach?” Dev said, indicating the mess.
    “Yes I mean kill that scroach. What did it ever do to you?”
    “Er, tried to kill me .”
    “Well, okay. Yes. Well, if it did, that wasn’t its fault. You must’ve alarmed it.”
    “Not as much as it alarmed me,” Dev said. “You should have seen the size of it.”
    “Mature adult male,” said the man, scrutinising the tail. “On his seventh, maybe eighth ecdysis. Which would put his age at about twenty-five. A venerable specimen.”
    “Ecdysis?”
    “The shedding of the cuticula. Moulting. You can’t get that big without going through a few exoskeletons.”
    “You’re a scroach expert?” said Dev.
    “Not yet, but I aspire to be.” The man pulled off a gauntlet and extended a hand. “Ludlow Trundell. Professor of xeno-entomology at the Qatar Institute for Extraterrestrial Sciences.”
    “Dev Harmer. Amateur scroach squasher. No other relevant qualifications. You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake.” His fingers were sticky with a liberal coating of arthropod juices.
    “No, I quite understand,” said Professor Trundell, withdrawing and re-gloving his hand. “And I apologise for sounding off at you just now. I’m not happy about what you did, but I can see the rationale. Clearly you don’t appreciate what a remarkable, wonderful creature Dromopoda alighieriensis is.”
    “I don’t think this one appreciated what a remarkable, wonderful creature Homo sapiens is, either. Otherwise we mightn’t have had a problem.”
    “You’re in his domain. You’re an intruder. What did you expect? He’s going to want to defend himself.”
    “Look, back that-a-way there’s a half-dozen more of the things that I didn’t destroy. I don’t think, on balance, that massacring one is too bad.”
    “Such restraint,” said Trundell dryly.
    “Listen, Trundle...”
    “Trun dell . Stress on the second syllable.”
    “You obviously know your way around these geodes.”
    “Been spelunking down here for over three months now,” said the xeno-entomologist proudly. He showed off his tracking device. “This helps me navigate. It’s got a detailed chart of the tunnels programmed in, on which I’ve marked common scroach migratory routes. But even without it, I doubt I’d get lost. I’ve become a bit of a tunnel rat during my researches.”
    “So can you get me out and back up to civilisation?”
    “I can ,” said Trundell pedantically. “What you’re asking is, would I be willing to.”
    “Would you?”
    “I might. I’ve only just started work this evening, though. Scroaches are more active when they’re on Alighieri’s night side – my theory is it’s something to do with the slight temperature drop – so I’ve had to become somewhat nocturnal myself. I was planning to study them for another two or three hours.”
    “I don’t want to hang around that long.”
    “Then we are at an impasse.”
    Dev restrained an infuriated sigh. “I’ll pay you.”
    “I’m well-funded. My university is generous with its grants. Besides, you can’t put a price on pure science.”
    “How