I am getting very close to a final draft of the WWII drama Attack Hitler’s Bunker! so hopefully there will be an excerpt from that here next week. For now, however, another excerpt from Worlds Like Dust, this time an amusing one.

Worlds Like Dust
Copyright © 2012 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

(Unedited excerpt)

The four Ischians made a comical sight, squeezing their huge bodies into the small Maintenance POD. With two minutes to go, Luxmi Davidos had just finished rigging the main Nitrogen and Oxygen tanks to explode when she heard a tapping sound beside her. She had just sent the last grunt back with some tools, and grabbed her laser to defend herself.
There was a small grubber tank – filled half way with liquid around a rocky island, next to her. “Oh God, I had forgotten about you. Why the hell did you have to emerge right now! Now I will have to take you too!”
She grabbed an old oily towel, hanging next to a disfunctional diesel engine, and lifted the lid of the tank. Scooping the cat sized, grub-like, wriggling creature, she wrapped it in the towel and stuffed it under her arm.
“Who knows? You may be the only life-form from Earth alive, besides us, when this is all over! Time to go!”
The cruiser hatch was shut behind her, right on the fifteen minute mark.
“Hold this!” she said, handing one of the grunts the wriggling bundle.
“What the hell is it?”
“A grubber. ‘Genetically-engineered Recycling Utility Bio-organism’ – a creature that can live in air, water, gasoline – just about anything. Used to keep pipes clear and clean. It’s a recent addition to the Station.”
“What do I do with it?”
“It’ll be okay in air for a while but we need to put it in water soon. Don’t worry, it will clean the water for us: it will clean anything.”
“Genetically engineered from what?” Dittmer asked.
“God only knows. Anyway, no time to explain now, We gotta go. Where we goin’?”
“J5, you said.”

Other News
I am still hard at work editing. But that hasn’t stopped me continuing with Worlds Like Dust. I am about half way through – more than half way through in fact, because I have had to consider and plan out Act III. This point in a novel’s growth is always one for much thought. It’s at this balance point that you realise the potential of a story; all the possible ways it could develop, and one feels the challenge most keenly of making the best climax.

• Lazlo Ferran - Author