Dream Thief by Stephen Lawhead Page A

isn't important.” She smiled at him and cocked her head to one side. “I think we should rejoin the party. Daddy will wonder what happened to me.”
    “You're right.” Spence stood slowly. Ari remained seated, and he looked down on her and then offered his hand and helped her to her feet.
    “Thanks,” he said softly.
    They crossed the room and Ari turned, putting on her jaunty demeanor again, once more the vivacious hostess. “We'll be lucky if they don't eat the tablecloth as well,” she said as they passed the buffet.
    “Well, next time I get hungry for mousse, I know where to come,” said Spence.
    She turned to him and placed her hand on his arm. “I hope you won't wait that long.” Before he could answer she whirled away into the crowd and was gone.
    SPENCE WALKED BACK TO his quarters alone in a mood of fluttery anticipation, almost wonder. He had forgotten his anxiety of only hours before; in fact, he had forgotten a great many things. What had taken possession of him now left no room for those darker thoughts. Though he had no name for what he felt— having never felt it before—he knew it to be in no small way connected with the person of Ariadne Zanderson.
    The warmth of the feeling surprised and confused him. It was wholly beyond his rational ability to describe. It seemed to defy objective analysis, leaving him fumbling for an explanation like a man groping for a light switch in a dark room. That the elusive feeling might be love did not occur to him.
    He punched in his code and the panel whispered back, admitting him into the darkened lab. Neither Tickler nor Kurt were to be seen; he guessed they had finished and gone lone ago. That suited him. He did not care to think about the project, Tickler, or the scans. All he wanted was to throw off his jumpsuit and flop into bed—which he did, after leaving an alarm call with MIRA.
    SPENCE PEERED INTO T H E depths of a vast chasm as the rumble of underground thunder shook the rocks he clung to fearfully. His inward parts trembled to the awesome roar. Below him, whirling in the seething darkness, he could see strange shapes churning and grinding, sending up a fine blue powder like a velvet mist.
    Great jagged flashes of blue lightning rent the air and peeled away the darkness of the pit. He looked down and saw clearly into the tumbling mass below. In the fleeting illumination of the lightning he saw the groaning, shuddering, grinding contents of the pit: bones. The enormous skeletal remains of gigantic prehistoric creatures, thrashing in perpetual motion.
    A bolt of lightning raked the rock on which he perched and he felt his hands torn away as he fell backward into the chasm. He twisted in the air, his fingers clawing empty space for a hold on the rock. It was too late.
    Spence plunged screaming into the whirling dance of the bones.
    Down and down he spun, turning and turning. The fine blue grit ascending on the warm updrafts stung his eyes and filled his nose and mouth, choking him. He squirmed and gasped as black mists closed around him.
    The sound of the terrible rumbling thunder gradually died away. He dropped like a stone through formless space. He felt nothing and heard nothing—only the beating of his own heart and the thump of his blood as it pounded in his ears. He felt as if he would fall forever. He told himself the notion was absurd.
    Perhaps,
thought Spence,
I am not falling at all.
But what else could it be? All at once a new terror seized his mind: he was shrinking. Instantly he could feel himself becoming smaller— dwindling by fine degrees, becoming ever smaller. Though he had no point of reference by which to gauge himself, he felt that by now he must be very tiny. And still the shrinking continued.
    This is the way it will end,
thought Spence. The universe imploding on itself, racing back into its flash of creation, compressing its atoms back into that single elemental spark from which all matter was born. And he was part of it; he was