Chapter 24

chapter twenty-four "Ooh, you invited Thrull?" Debra squeals. "How exciting!" "NO! I DIDN'T!" Wracksaw snaps. "Did you?" "No." "Eye-Bulb?" "Not me." "You're both going in the carcass pit later," Wracksaw growls, then shuts up as Thrull marches down the ship's tongue-ramp. The Dire Nurses quickly attempt to look busy. Debra flicks gunk off the table. Eye-Bulb polishes his eye-bulb. Thrull's voice booms. "I hope I am not interrupting you, Wracksaw. But I have grown tired of waiting." Wracksaw attempts to look calm, but the patterns along his armacles tell the truth: tiny, helpless polka dots, like goose bumps. He sinks into a sad little bow. "You could never interrupt me, Thrull. I am, after all, your humble servant." Thrull's presence sends a nervous chitter through the guards. And a nervous chill through me. The last time I saw Thrull, he'd just speared Ghazt like a cocktail wiener—then disappeared like a thief in the night.

Wracksaw regains his composure. "Your timing could not be more perfect. The Tower Schematics are nearly found." "So get on with it," Thrull orders. "Of course, my lord," Wracksaw says. He returns to his work—angrily wrenching the probe back and forth. Electronic hissing echoes through the theater. And then— Something like a holographic cross section of a nightmare is projected. "There!" Thrull cries in a voice that borders on actual joy. "At long last..."

The tower schematics.

I look to my friends. Nervous glances pass between us. Rover and Drooler are frowning. "What do we do?" Dirk whispers. I don't respond. I don't shake my head. I don't move an inch. Because I truly, truly do not know. "The bio-vac tube, Debra. Now!" Wracksaw snaps. "It is time to extract and transfer the information." Debra hands Wracksaw what looks like a pool noodle made of worm skin. I spy a toggle switch on one end. Wracksaw yanks out the probe and drops it onto the slab. The schematics flicker away. Wracksaw raises the bio-vac tube high above Ghazt's cranium. He looks like he's about to stake a sleeping vampire through the heart. "Placing the extractor-end... NOW!" he says, jamming it into Ghazt. Once it's secure, he turns to Thrull. "The honor is all yours, my leader," Wracksaw says, offering him the tube. Thrull's long fingers—all bone and vine—wrap around it. He lifts it up and presses it against his face. No. Actually—into his face. We watch in horror as Thrull's head splits, opening in a vertical seam down the center. His forehead opens, his cheekbones crack, his eyes shudder sideways.

Thrull forces the tube into his wide, horrifically open visage like he's inserting a gas pump nozzle into a car's gas tank. "DELIVER THE SCHEMATICS TO ME!" Thrull roars. Eye-Bulb reaches for the toggle, but Wracksaw slaps his hand away. He flicks the toggle—and Ghazt's head jerks. The tube snaps to life—and I realize it's like a vacuum hose. It pulls and pulls until, with a sickening schlorp— POP! The crucial piece of brain-knowledge—the Tower Schematics—are suctioned out of Ghazt's brain. The

tube bulges as the information is carried toward Thrull, and then finally into Thrull. The rush of information is so powerful it lifts Thrull's body off the floor as he cries out— Yes, now I see. Now I understand. Now nothing will stop the completion of the tower With each neuro-byte of information, Thrull's body spasms. It looks like this process might tear him apart, rip him open. But we don't get that lucky... There's one last, long tremble—then Thrull crashes back down to his feet.