Megan interrupted his thoughts as she slewed the Skoda to a halt and pulled the handbrake into position with a ratcheting noise that made his teeth grind.
‘We need to walk from here,’ Sandra told them. She popped open the rear passenger door and stepped out into the storm before they could protest.
‘I must be insane,’ Megan told Owen. ‘What am I doing driving her out here on a night like this?’
He was going to show her the Bekaran device again as an encouragement, but found that it was no longer in his pocket. He felt his face and neck flush in a momentary panic at the thought of the alien tech turning up at the hospital, until he resigned himself to the impossibility of doing anything about it. So instead he said to Megan: ‘Come on. You’re not going to believe your eyes.’
‘Assuming we can see anything in this howling gale,’ she said.
They abandoned the Skoda in the St David’s Hotel car park, and followed Sandra as she set off at a determined pace down a gravel walkway that led into the Reserve. In the open here, the storm seemed worse than ever. Owen started to worry that they would be blown clean off their feet. Last time he’d been here, on a date, his companion had pointed out the magnificent view across the Bay. Today, the towering clouds overhead let little sunlight through, and the wash of rain made it impossible to see across to the Penarth Headland. He could barely make out the barrage across the Bay.
What Owen remembered as a large reed-fringed reservoir was now a choppy lake edged with flattened grasses and snapped willows. Sandra led them along a network of flooded paths. Routes through the Reserve that had once been flat, hard-surfaced paths running around the wetland were now rapidly submerging below cold dark water. In places, it was deep enough that Owen could see fish shoaling beside the walkway as they broke the surface briefly and then vanished back into the dark.
Sandra was surging ahead of them. The howl of the wind made it impossible to speak, and even when he shouted Owen could barely make himself heard. He took hold of Megan’s hand, to encourage her as much as to support her physically. She tagged along with him, her head bent against the oncoming storm. Owen muttered and cursed to himself as his shoes filled with water and his trousers got soaked up to the knees.
Eventually, Sandra navigated them over a precarious, wobbling boardwalk that stretched across the water. If the wooden structure had been secured, it would long ago have sunk beneath the swirling surface. Instead, they were able to make slow progress until Sandra gestured at something that was poking up through the nearby reeds.
It looked like a lump of burnished metal. The dark water lapped over it as the wind whipped up the waves. Sandra stooped down and lifted a concealed flap to reveal a curiously shaped panel of sparkling light. She activated one of the controls, and motioned for them to stand well back.
The water around the burnished metal surged and frothed. Within a minute, a tall wide cylinder had risen from the murky water.
The boardwalk bucked and twisted as the cylinder displaced a surge of water. Owen squatted, pulling Megan down gently as he did so, to lower their centre of gravity and avoid toppling off the wooden walkway. He glanced across at her. ‘An escape pod!’ he yelled. He could tell from her frown that she hadn’t heard so he mouthed the words to her with exaggerated enunciation.
Megan leaned in close to him, hugging his shoulder, placing her lips near his ear. ‘What happened to her boat? She said she’d used a boat.’
Owen pointed at the cylinder, which bobbed more calmly on the water now. His implication was: this must be what Sandra described.
Megan pushed against him again to speak again. Even in the biting cold rain, he could feel her hot breath against his skin. ‘And where’s her sub-aqua gear?’
He reluctantly allowed her to move her head away from his, so that she could see his reply. He pointed into the water, and nodded: down there somewhere.
Sandra opened a small doorway in the cylinder, and beckoned for them to follow her in. It was a cramped space, no wider than three telephone boxes stacked side by side. There were four moulded alcoves in the wall, oriented vertically. Owen noted that they appeared to be designed for a humanoid figure somewhat larger than the average man, and he remembered how Sandra had described the aliens earlier. At the far end of the craft he could see another softly flickering set of controls.
Once they were all in the cylinder, Sandra activated one of the controls and the entrance door slid shut. Owen felt his ears go pop as the air pressure inside changed. The raging noise of the storm outside was suddenly reduced to a dull murmur. The rocking motion of the craft started to disorient him.
‘I think I might throw up,’ said Megan.
‘It’ll be better once we are under the water.’ Sandra slumped into the nearest of the alcoves, and struggled to strap herself in. It was as though she was afraid that she might fall down if she didn’t somehow secure herself. Now that she was out of the rain, the blood from the wound in her shoulder was starting to seep down her sleeve and out over her hand. The frantic energy that had sustained her through the car journey and down the pathways into the Reserve had dissipated.
‘I said you weren’t well enough to travel,’ insisted Megan. She checked Sandra’s eyes, and took a pulse from her neck. Clearly not entirely happy with what she saw found, Megan slipped a boxed syringe from her jacket pocket and administered a painkiller. Then she checked the pulse in her neck again.
Sandra wriggled her head away from Megan, as far as the moulded restraint would let her. ‘We have no time. We have to get to the ship and stop it. You must secure yourself in a harness for the journey.’
Owen helped Megan to slot her small frame into one of the alcoves. She gave a little squeal as he fixed one of the straps. ‘Steady! That pinches. Ow! It’s too tight.’
‘Sorry. How’s that now?’
‘Better.’
‘Now, hold on to these grips.’ He moved her hands into position.
‘Now what?
‘This,’ he said. He leaned his face in at an angle, and kissed her. She made a little noise of surprise. But then the tip of her tongue was pressing back against his. Her hands slid off the grips and around him until he could feel them squeezing his bum.
He heard a short groan from behind him, and broke the kiss. Megan pouted at him.
Owen shuffled around on the spot, and saw that Sandra’s head was pressed back into her alcove. The rain had plastered her short blonde hair flat, and her skin was ashen. ‘OK, we’d better get going,’ he told her. ‘I presume you know how this thing works?’
She nodded feebly. ‘Terrific,’ he said. ‘Then you can explain it to me as we go. It is so my turn to drive.’
It was easy enough to operate the escape pod. It didn’t have much speed, and the direction controls were simple. Owen was soon able to dispense with Sandra’s explanations about the function of the pod’s controls, and concentrate on her instructions about where to move the craft rather than how. The woman was a back-seat driver, no question about it.