‘Link to Vermillion is dopplering,’ Rojas said.
Laura checked her exovision displays. Fourteen was now thirty kilometres from a distortion tree, and closing. Rojas cut their acceleration to zero. Everyone fell silent as they glided past the slimmer end of the tree, which was oriented planetwards. Its shadow enveloped them. Rojas flipped the shuttle, and accelerated at half a gee to kill their velocity relative to the Forest, leaving them stationary inside. Laura’s u-shadow noted the time. She was intrigued what the difference would be when they emerged out into ‘ordinary’ Voidspace again.
‘I am showing a slight blueshift from several baseline stars,’ Ayanna said. ‘We’re inside the altered temporal flow.’
‘And still alive,’ Ibu said.
‘The link to Vermillion has gone,’ Rojas said.
‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ Ayanna said. ‘I thought we might still receive them, but at a higher frequency.’
Rojas pulled a face. ‘Nothing, sorry.’
‘What about the Mk24s we sent in ahead of us?’ Laura asked. ‘Shouldn’t we be picking them up again now we’re in the same timeframe?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Rojas said. ‘I’ll run another scan.’
‘Nothing from the Laika,’ Ayanna reported.
‘The Mk24s aren’t showing up on the radar, either,’ Ibu said.
‘That’s not right,’ Laura said. ‘Fourteen’s radar is good enough to pick up a grain of sand from two hundred kilometres away. Even if the Mk24s’ power glitched completely, they should register.’
‘They must be behind another tree,’ Joey said.
‘All of them?’ Laura said sceptically. ‘After their link antennae failed and they went inert? Bollocks to that.’
‘So how do you explain it?’
She glanced at the huge crystalline fissures of the nearest distortion tree. ‘Something pulled them in.’
‘We didn’t detect any anomalous gravatonic activity,’ Ayanna said. ‘I don’t know what else could divert their trajectory.’
‘Telekinesis,’ Rojas said. ‘If those trees are alive by any standard, they’ll have a big old brain buried somewhere inside.’
They all fell silent again. Laura gave the tree outside a mildly concerned glance. ‘If it’s alive, it’s not talking to us.’
‘This is where you’re in charge,’ Rojas told her. ‘What do you want to do next?’
‘Get closer to one. Run some density scans, see if we can get an image of its internal structure, then apply some sampler modules above the more interesting sections.’
‘Close enough and we can use our ESP on it,’ Joey said.
‘Whatever gives us a clearer idea of what is going on inside the trees,’ Laura told him without irony.
Shuttle Fourteen approached to three kilometres of a distortion tree; Rojas locked its position halfway along the crystalline behemoth, using tiny puffs of cold gas from the shuttle’s reaction-control nozzles. A flock of AISD (Advanced Interlinked Sensor Drone) Mk16bs burped out from a fuselage silo. Two hundred and twenty of the glittering fist-sized drones swirled into a wide bracelet that surrounded the distortion tree. With their formation locked, and datastreams unified, they slowly slid along the tree’s nine-kilometre length, deep scanning it.
Laura tried not to show too much disappointment with the image that built up in her exovision. The intricate curves and jags of the creased crystalline structure were mapped with millimetre precision, revealing the exact topology of fissures that extended for over a kilometre below the meandering ridge peaks. But the sensor flock couldn’t resolve anything beneath the surface.
‘Like a mountain range scale fingerprint,’ Ibu described it.
Laura closed her eyes, immersing herself in the sensor imagery. ‘The quantum distortion is strongest along the ridges,’ she said. ‘But that’s not telling me where the generating mechanism is.’
‘There’s definitely some kind of negative energy effect going on in there,’ Ayanna said. ‘The trees are the source of the temporal flow change, all right. That illumination within the crystal must be this continuum’s variant on Cherenkov radiation.’
Under Rojas’s guidance, the drone flock split into two and slipped down into the gaps on either side of a crystalline ridge, sinking out of the sunlight to be illuminated by the eerie ever-shifting phosphorescence.
‘We can keep in contact with the flock but not the Mk24s,’ Ibu said. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
‘They’re closer,’ Rojas pointed out.
‘If the Mk24s are just drifting around in the Forest, one of them would be out from the radar shadow of the trees by now.’
‘Okay, so what do you think happened to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said solemnly.
‘Definitely some carbon in the tree mass,’ Laura said, reading the fresh batch of data from the flock.
‘It’s a diamond?’ Joey asked in delight.
‘No, sorry. There are traces of other elements in there as well, nothing too elaborate. But this is interesting: valency bonds seem stronger than we’re used to, and matter density is certainly higher than normal. I don’t suppose there’s much vacuum ablation. But I still can’t get a reading more than a few millimetres deep.’
‘So that means you have to go out there and chip a few bits off, right?’ Ibu said.
Laura reviewed the density results again. ‘I think the filaments on the sampler modules should be able to cope.’
‘Damn, I was hoping to hit it with a hammer,’ Ibu said with a grin. ‘Can you imagine it? A single tap, and this one tiny little crack starts to multiply . . .’
‘The Commonwealth First Contact Agency would fine you to death,’ Laura told him.
‘Let’s just allow the flock a little more time,’ Rojas said.
‘I’m reading some interesting fluctuations in the quantum signature inside the fissure,’ Ayanna said. ‘I’d like the flock to complete a full scan down the whole length of the tree, find out where it’s strongest.’
‘That’ll help me,’ Laura admitted. ‘But we are going out there, aren’t we?’
Rojas sighed. ‘We’ll run some functionality tests on our equipment while we wait for the flock to finish this run.’
*
The shuttle’s service compartment was sandwiched between the forward cabin and the main passenger cabin. It contained the boarding airlock, a small galley and washrooms, along with a hatch which led down to the payload bay running the length of the fuselage beneath the passenger cabin.
Laura floated after Rojas, keeping a respectable distance between her head and his feet. Even though her biononics were slowly recovering, she still wasn’t terribly proficient in freefall. The risk of getting kicked in the face was always on her mind.
She allowed herself to float down the hatch, occasionally using one of the handholds that bristled from every bulkhead. The first quarter of the payload bay was a narrow corridor with walls of equipment lockers. That opened out into a larger metallic cavern, where the thick tubes of the drone silos formed twin rows. Laura grabbed the handholds and hauled herself along its length, trying not to bang her elbows into anything. At the far end of the silo compartment was an airlock hatch into the EVA hangar. Two spherical exopods were secure in their cradles – two-person spacecraft with a cluster of electromuscle tentacles on the front; retracted, the tentacles were coiled in a fashion that somehow managed to look faintly obscene. Spacesuits were stored in small cabinets, together with three sets of personal-manoeuvring harnesses. A long array of tools and science sensors were clipped to the bulkhead, opposite a row of inert zero-gee engineeringbots half the size of a human. At the far end was an airlock chamber big enough for an exopod.
‘I’ll power up one of the exopods,’ Rojas said, ‘if you’d like to check the suits.’
‘Sure,’ Laura told him. The suit was simple enough, a slippery one-piece of silver grey fabric lined with elecromuscle threads. It expanded like a loose sack so the wearer c
ould pull it on, then the elecromuscle would contract, making it cling to the body like a second skin. Pores and capillaries harvested sweat, while a thermal-conductor web dissipated the excess heat a body generated, keeping temperature constant and comfortable. The helmet was a classic transparent globe, with a multitude of filter functions and sensors built in. The suit collar adhered to it easily. Oxygen regeneration was handled by a small package at the top of the spine. Usually, a force-field skeleton was worn on top, but Laura didn’t trust them right now. She checked some of the other lockers, relieved to find thick protective outer suits that would be almost as effective at shielding the wearer from micro particle impacts. Exactly the kind of thing Ibu had talked about putting on. I should take one back up to him.
Her u-shadow reported Ayanna opening a direct connection. ‘We’re getting some interesting results from the Mk16bs,’ she said.
‘I’ll take a look,’ Laura replied. Her u-shadow opened the feed from the flock, and she stopped bundling the protective oversuit back into the cabinet as she saw what her exovision was presenting.
The flock had almost completed their exploratory flight along the deep ridge. Right at the narrow tip of the distortion tree, where the twisting ridges began to merge, the scan had revealed some irregular lumps. Lumps that had a surface temperature of thirty-five degrees Celsius. The flock shifted sensor focus, concentrating on the anomaly.
In Laura’s exovision they were dark spheres, tumours that had swollen up out of the elegant glowing crystal of the main structure. The visual sensors showed over fifty of them, ranging in size from pebbles to globes nearly three metres across. Their skin was wrinkled, a dark grey that might have been at the extreme edge of green.
‘Avocados,’ she murmured. ‘Ripe avocados.’ For that was what they resembled.
Despite the best efforts of the drone flock to magnify the site, the point where the crystal ended and the globe began was uncertain; they merged together as if the globes were somehow rooted into the ridge, emphasizing the whole tumour concept.
‘Skylord eggs,’ Joey said.
‘We need to go and take a sample,’ Rojas said.
‘We do,’ Laura said, reviewing the rest of the results from the flock. ‘But our primary mission is to assess the Forest’s quantum abnormality. Take a look at the negative energy effect down at the bottom of the ridge; those are very complex patterns. That has to be where the whole time-flow manipulation is generated.’
‘Okay, I’ll prioritize that,’ Rojas said.
‘Great.’ Laura flashed him a smile of thanks across the EVA hangar.
‘Let me know what functionality the sample modules have got, and check the deep sensors as well, please.’
‘Sure.’
‘Ibu, come down and grab yourself a suit,’ Rojas said. ‘You can take the right-hand seat.’
‘On my way,’ Ibu replied.
‘What?’ Laura snapped. She’d simply assumed she’d be the one in the right-hand seat of the exopod.
‘Ibu has a thousand hours’ zero-gee work logged in the last twenty years,’ Rojas explained patiently. ‘You have a couple of mandatory one-hour safety drills, and the report said you didn’t handle them well.’
‘But it’s my field,’ Laura shot back, knowing she was responding peevishly.
From the side of the exopod, Rojas gave her a sympathetic glance. ‘Whatever molecular structure makes up this thing is your field. Hammering sensors onto it and getting results for you is down to us.’
Laura gave a curt nod. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll check the systems I want you to deploy.’
‘Thank you.’
A minute later, Ibu came gliding down the length of the silo compartment. Laura pressed her teeth together; despite his size, he was as graceful as an angelfish. Ah, bollocks, Rojas is right to take him.
‘Sorry,’ Ibu said as he came level with her. ‘Just think of me as your additional pair of hands.’
Laura’s face coloured slightly. She wondered just how effective her mental shield was. ‘I’d like a quintet of deep scan packages on these areas.’ Her u-shadow sent him the file. ‘And when I’ve refined their results, I’ll show you where to apply the sampler modules.’
Ibu’s eyes closed as he examined the locations she’d selected. ‘Going for the exotic matter, huh?’
‘If we’re going to understand the process here, I need to see what manipulates energy flow. It’s clearly molecular based.’
‘Like our biononics?’
She grimaced. ‘Get me the samples and I’ll let you know.’
*
Laura was back in the forward cabin when the exopod left the shuttle’s small hangar. Ayanna was sitting in front of her in the pilot’s couch, officially running the mission. Joey was strapped into a couch near the rear of the compartment. Laura was starting to get seriously concerned about the hyperspace theorist. The muscle twitches in his cheeks had now grown to such an extent that they’d effectively paralysed his face into a straining mask, leaving his lips twisted up into a wretched sneer. She’d seen his shoulders begin to shudder with increasing frequency. If he hadn’t been strapped in, he’d be bouncing about the cabin. And it was telling that he kept his hands behind the couch in front, out of view from her and Ayanna. When she sneaked a look with her ESP, she could see his hands jerking about; his feet were afflicted too. Maybe she should suggest he try Fourteen’s medical module – except she knew what his response would be.
The silver-white sphere of the exopod slid past the windscreen. Laura resisted the impulse to wave.
‘How are your systems?’ Ayanna asked.
‘Mostly working,’ Rojas replied, his voice coming through the cabin’s speakers. ‘Stand by for ion drive burn.’
Cold blue light emerged from four of the slim rectangular nozzles in the exopod’s fuselage, and the little craft drifted away from Fourteen at a gentle rate.
‘Burn vector good,’ Rojas said. ‘Rendezvous with tree in seven minutes – mark.’
Laura sighed and shook her head at all the gung-ho theatrics. Boys and their toys.
‘They don’t get out to play often,’ Ayanna said quietly. They grinned at each other. Then Laura groaned as her link to Fourteen’s network went down.
Ayanna started flicking switches on the console; one hand typed fast on a keyboard. Laura envied that skill; she was sure her fingers weren’t so dextrous.
‘Getting some power dropouts,’ Ayanna murmured. ‘Rojas, what’s your status?’
‘Good, Fourteen.’
‘They’re not dopplering,’ Ayanna said.
The cabin lights flickered. Laura glanced suspiciously up at the strips. ‘Great, that’s all we need. Real power failures.’ She shut up as her u-shadow reported it had re-established a link to Fourteen’s network.
‘You might want to make sure all the mission data is backed up,’ Ayanna said.
‘Good idea.’ Laura ordered her u-shadow to open a new file in one of her storage lacunas and began downloading copies of all the drone logs.
While they were downloading, Ayanna altered Fourteen’s attitude, so they could see the exopod through the windscreen. Her thoughts were cheerful at demonstrating how she could fly Fourteen just as well as Rojas. The off-white sphere itself was soon lost against the flickering phosphorescence within the tree’s folds, but the navigation strobes kept up a regular pulse that remained visible against the massive alien object.
‘Positioning burn complete,’ Rojas eventually reported. ‘Holding station two hundred metres from artefact’s surface.’
When Laura checked through the windscreen, she saw the strobes flash about a quarter of the way along the tree from the slim end. ‘Ibu, I’d like to ride your optics, please.’
‘Sure,’ his voice came back.
Laura shut her eyes and settled back in the couch. Ibu’s vision expanded out of a green and blue eye symbol in the middle of her exovision, and she looked round the restricted interior of the exopod. Rojas was next to
Ibu, held in what resembled a standing position in front of the exopod’s small port by a web of broad straps. The cabin walls were mostly display panels, lights and handholds.
Ibu slipped a helmet down over his head. Rojas was doing the same thing. Then several of the lights surrounding the pair of them turned from red to purple.
‘Vacuum confirmed,’ Ibu said. ‘Opening pod airlock.’ He disconnected the webbing straps that were holding him in place, and twisted round. A third of the cabin’s rear wall had dilated. Ibu carefully crawled out into Voidspace. Just outside the airlock lip was a rack with a free-manoeuvre harness. He wriggled his way into it, and the clamps closed round his shoulders and thighs. ‘Testing harness.’
Little spurts of cold gas coughed out of the nozzles on the harness extremities, like puffs of white dust. ‘Function good. Heading over.’
He drifted slowly round the bulk of the exopod. The tree rose round the curving grey-white globe like planetdawn on a gas giant’s moon. This close it was massive. Just seeing it through human eyes made Laura shiver. Something that big, quite possibly alive, and thoroughly alien, was somewhat intimidating. Curiously, it disturbed her more than the Void itself.
‘I don’t think the trees are part of the Void,’ she murmured. ‘I think they were pulled in, just like us.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Ayanna asked.
‘If they were part of it, they wouldn’t be trying to change Voidspace. They’re prisoners, like we are. That’s bad.’
‘How so?’
‘Their control over mass and energy is clearly more advanced than ours, and they’re still here.’
‘If they are from outside,’ Ayanna said hastily.
With her eyelids still closed, and her vision still coming directly from riding Ibu’s eyes, Laura smiled. ‘They are.’