Edmund Cooper
Sea Horse in the Sky
Synopsis
Sixteen people, passengers on a jet aircraft from Stockholm to London, wake up in plastic coffins in the middle of a road that leads to nowhere. On one side of the road is an hotel empty. On the other side is a supermarket also empty. There are two cars on the road without batteries or engines. And all around there is nothing but forest and wilderness So begins an adventure in which the appearance of medieval knights, Stone Age warriors and 'fairies' leads to an exciting denouement. For the abducted passengers and their new companions are not on Earth. They have been brought to an alien world for reasons which, at the end, are movingly explained by their captors.
CHAPTER ONE
it looked like Resurrection Day.
Or some incongruously daylight nightmare with a touch of Breughel, a dash of Dali and a soupcon of Peter Sellers. It made you want to laugh or scream, or something. Presently people began to do both or something. Because there is nothing more likely to disturb, disorientate or discommode than not knowing where, how, why or even who.
Russell Grahame was the first one out of his 'coffin'. He was lucky. He knew almost immediately that he was Russell Grahame, Member of Parliament for Middleport North in the county of Lancashire.
He knew who, but he didn't know where, how or why. He didn't even know when. So clearly it was just a crazy dream, and presently he would be woken up by the sound of some one saying: "Please fasten your seat belts and extinguish all cigarettes. We shall be landing at London Airport in about ten minutes."
But he didn't waken up, because he was already awake and the nightmare was real.
The 'coffin' he had just vacated appeared to be made of pale green plastic. It lay in the middle of the road at the end of a neat row of similar coffins, between the building labelled 'Hotel' on one side and the building labelled 'Supermarket' on the other. The road was about ten metres wide and a hun dred metres long. At each end it disappeared into grass and shrubs. It was just a thin oasis of urbanization in a great green wilderness. A taxi was parked outside the hotel. A car was parked outside the supermarket.
But there were no people apart from those emerging from the man size green boxes.
A dark skinned girl literally kicked the lid off her box, stood up, shrieked piercingly and fainted. It was the signal for general pandemonium. A man and a woman, both white, were the next to emerge. They looked round wildly, saw each other and almost fell together, gripping so tightly that it looked as if they would never let go.
Two men got out of adjacent boxes, bumped into each other, fell over and almost immediately started fighting. And almost immediately stopped.
Three girls were laughing and crying, terrified but find ing an odd security in their mutual terror.
Presently, sixteen people, having got out of sixteen boxes, were themselves making enough noise to wake the dead or, at least, to excite the attention of any occupants of the hotel or the supermarket. But, if anyone was in residence in the hotel, or shopping in the supermarket, they were sufficiently familiar with the mechanics of resurrection in the middle of the main and only street not to wish to investigate further.
No one came out.
The pandemonium went on and on, with people talking, shouting, gesticulating or babbling incoherently. They seemed dazed, traumatized, as if they had been through one hell of a harrowing experience. Which, of course, they had. And it was still happening.
Russell Grahame, feeling oddly detached from the whole absurd carnival, ran his left hand mechanically and re peatedly through his hair in the characteristic manner that had earned him the sobriquet Brainstroker among his few friends in the House of Commons. After a time, he became aware that his head wasn't quite the shape it used to be. There was a bump somewhere in the region of the cerebellum. It was a fairly large bump, neat, round and with a sug gestion of scar tissue on top of it. The hair that covered the bump was nowhere near as long as the rest of his hair.
Russell Grahame, M.P., licked his lips and suddenly felt very shaky indeed. He needed a drink. He needed a drink rather badly. Glancing at the hotel, he walked slowly and cautiously towards it. It would not do for a Member of Par liament even one who had finally made up his mind to get out of that madhouse where mass euphoria was permanently topped up with abstract nouns to fall flat on his face in the middle of the road.
The hotel foyer was empty except for an assortment of baggage piled in a heap near the revolving doors. There was no one at the reception desk. He hit the bell three times, but no one came.
Then he saw on the wall the words Cocktail Bar, and an arrow pointing down a short passage. He went to the cocktail bar. That was deserted also. After a moment's reflection, he went behind the bar and poured himself a very large whisky.
He took a good long pull at the whisky. Then, with tremb ling fingers, he felt for his cigarettes. The noise outside seemed to be subsiding a little. He felt the bump on the back of his head and took another good swallow of whisky. He began to feel a bit better.
Somebody else was hitting the bell at the reception desk. He was in no mood to go and enlighten them. Let them come to him.
They did. Or, rather, one did. The rest found their way later.
The newcomer was a man between twenty five and thirty tall, blond, blue eyed and rather good looking in an extraverted continental sort of way. Grahame was immediately conscious of feeling anciently forty and very English.
"A large vodka, and what the hell has happened to the service?" demanded the tall young man truculently.
Obediently, Grahame poured the vodka. "Cheers. There is no service."
"Then who are you?"
The Englishman eyed his whisky seriously and took another mouthful. "Just one of the walking dead. My name is Russell Grahame." Then he felt impelled to add: "British And you?"
His companion opened his mouth, closed it, put down the glass of vodka on the bar with a shaking hand and looked very confused.
"Take your time," said Grahame sympathetically. "That is something I have a notion we are not going to be short of. Something tells me we are going to have all the time in the world."
"Norstedt," announced the young man, with a curious element of doubt in his voice. "I am Tore Norstedt Swedish Pleased to meet you."
He held out his right hand. Grahame shook it formally.
"Well, now we know each other. Have another drink. I'm going to." He smiled. "I think it's on the house."
"Thank you. Yes." Norstedt also smiled. "I think per haps the vodka treatment is indicated." Absently, he felt the back of his head.
Grahame noted the gesture. "Don't worry," he said. "I have a bump, too. It appears to be all part of the operation. "
Norstedt slammed his glass on the bar so that some of the vodka slopped over. "What operation? Where are we? What the devil is going on?"
"Take it easy. I'm in the dark, too. When we have drunk some of the shakes away, we'd better try to make some sense out of it Incidentally, you speak excellent English."
Norstedt shook his head. "Swedish. I speak Swedish as you are doing."
Grahame shrugged. "Have it your own way. But, for the record, I don't speak Swedish well, not much." A thought suddenly struck him. "Arlanda!"
"Yes, Arlanda!" repeated Norstedt excitedly. "That's it!"
A piece of the jig saw was falling into place.
"Arlanda airport," went on Grahame. "The afternoon jet from Stockholm to London That is where I saw you at the airport. You were right ahead of me. You you had excess baggage. Ten kroner
