Soon the whole dome was shaking. There was a horrendous screeching noise as the struts holding it up began to twist and buckle, and then a large equipment locker toppled over with a CRASH! ‘Quick, everybody outside!’ yelled Chung.
She hustled Luke, Yasmin and Yuri towards the door, Asimov and his team following. Chung didn’t let any of them stop until she thought they were all a safe distance from the dome. Luke saw Quint, Leon and Biff nearby, and Clarke leading the rest of Primary One out of another dome, the children looking scared. The ground was shaking even more, and the rumbling noise was getting louder.
‘I’m beginning to think I don’t like this planet after all,’ said Yasmin.
‘Me too,’ said Luke. ‘This tremor is definitely worse than last time.’
‘It’s interesting, though,’ said Yuri. ‘The movement seems localised…’
‘Hold on a second, brain-box,’ said Yasmin. ‘What in space is that?’
Yasmin was pointing at the frozen, snow-covered ground next to the research team’s dome. A new bulge had appeared there, one that grew and grew, the icy ground breaking and cracking, the rumbling almost ear-splitting now. At last something enormous burst into sight, a giant worm, like an immense living train, its long body dark grey and ridged, its eyes bigger than footballs.
The creature rose into the air, opening its mouth to reveal enormous, pointed teeth, and swooped down on the dome, biting a great chunk out of it, chewing and crunching the metal outer shell and spitting bits out. After a moment it turned its gaze on the humans, whose own mouths were wide open with shock. And then it dropped to the ground and headed towards them at incredible speed.
‘RUN!’ yelled Chung, and they all fled, most of them screaming in panic.
Luke ran with the rest, Milly in his arms, but he hadn’t got very far when he tripped over a rock and fell headlong into the snow. He rolled onto his back, still holding Milly tightly against his chest – and found himself looking up at the most terrifying sight he had ever seen, the giant worm looming above him.
Hot, foul-smelling breath wafted from the creature’s mouth, and green slime dripped onto him from the worm’s nostrils. The beast slowly lowered its face until it was almost close enough for Luke to touch, and for a moment he was utterly convinced it was about to gobble him up. Then he saw its eyes were fixed on Milly, and he began to worry that it was her the worm was after.
Milly, however, didn’t seem worried. In fact she was looking straight back at the worm and making lots of those yip-yip noises. The worm moved its head from side to side – then turned and plunged into the snow, its whole incredible grey length disappearing like a whale diving deep in the sea, a trail of cracks in the icy ground marking its passage as it rumbled off towards the mountains.
Luke let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and looked down at Milly, who was purring now. There had been something strange about what had just happened. It had almost seemed as if Milly had spoken with the worm…
‘Are you OK, Luke?’ said Yasmin, running over to him with Yuri. ‘I was going to save you till I saw all that alien, er… snot. Not good for the hair.’
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Luke. ‘And obviously your hair must come first.’
‘But what an amazing creature!’ said Yuri. ‘It’s absolutely magnificent!’
‘You got that right,’ said a voice behind the three friends. ‘It looks as if there might be something worth hunting on this frozen lump of space rock after all.’
Luke whipped round and saw that Quint had come over with Leon and Biff. It had been Quint who had spoken, and all three men were smirking.
‘You cannot be serious,’ snarled Yasmin. ‘It will eat you for breakfast.’
‘I think we’ll be the ones doing the eating, if it tastes any good,’ laughed Quint. ‘It’s only the size of a whale, and humans didn’t have any trouble hunting whales on Earth, did they? Right lads, we’ve got a trail to follow.’
Quint led his two henchmen to their vehicle, and soon it roared off in a cloud of black smoke, heading in the same direction as the giant worm, towards the mountains. Milly squirmed in Luke’s arms, and had long since stopped purring. She was making a sad little noise instead, a kind of unhappy, low moaning.
‘I know, Milly,’ said Luke, softly stroking her. ‘We don’t like them either.’
‘Huh, that’s putting it mildly,’ muttered Yasmin. ‘I hope they do get eaten.’
‘But what if they don’t?’ said Yuri, his face full of concern. ‘What if they track that incredible creature and…’ He stopped speaking, unable to carry on.
‘We can’t let that happen,’ said Luke. ‘We’ve got to stop them, somehow. Come on, let’s go and ask Chung if we can get in touch with my mum.’
He heard a deep rumble in the distance as he spoke, and felt a faint tremor beneath his feet.