Ayanna started steering a couple of the Mk16bs over to the exopod.
‘As close as I can get,’ she announced eventually.
The hologram was showing the pod in high resolution. It hung above the forward cabin’s couches like a chunk of collective guilt. They could all look in through the open hatchway and see the coloured graphics flashing across the display panels inside. Web straps floated lazily, their buckles weaving about through the empty space as if they were chrome snake heads.
‘He’s not in there,’ Laura whispered. It felt as if her space sickness was returning; certainly she was light headed. Her skin was chilling down rapidly.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ Joey asked.
‘The flock would see the suits if they were anywhere within fifty kilometres,’ Ayanna said.
‘You know where they are,’ Laura said, forcing herself to say it. ‘Inside.’
‘Inside what?’ Joey said. ‘Inside the tree or inside the globes? Are they like an airlock?’
‘We haven’t picked up any cavity inside the crystal structure,’ Ayanna said.
‘Scan the globes,’ Laura told Ayanna. ‘I don’t care if you have to smash the drones into those bastards and crack them open. We’ve got to find them.’
‘Right,’ Ayanna nodded abruptly, and set about redirecting the flock.
The wrinkled surface of the globe was some kind of carbon, but the interior was impervious to any scan. Ayanna had eight drones poised in a bracelet formation around one of them, but their sensor radiation hit the surface and got no further.
Laura took control of a drone and sent it racing at the globe. The rest of the flock showed them a perfectly clear image of it striking – and rebounding, spinning away erratically.
Refusing to give up, Laura took control of another, over-rode the tiny ion drive’s safety limiters, and accelerated it from five hundred metres’ distance. It was travelling at four metres per second when it struck. The impact killed half its systems, but the globe didn’t even have a scratch.
‘Zero effect,’ Ayanna said levelly; there was an implication of censure in the tone.
Laura flew a third probe two kilometres out from the tree, then accelerated it in. This one reached twenty-eight metres per second when it hit a globe. Its casing shattered and the fragments went tumbling off into space. The globe was unscathed by the impact.
‘What the hell are they made of?’ she demanded. ‘They must open somehow, like a clam shell. Ibu and Rojas must have been taken inside.’
‘Laura, there is no inside,’ Ayanna said.
‘Bollocks to this! The drone flock sensors aren’t good enough. They’re inside! Where the hell else can they be?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m suiting up. I’m going to take the other exopod over there, and I’m going to cut—’
‘No,’ Ayanna didn’t speak loudly, but it was definite, and her thoughts made it very clear she meant it. ‘You’re not taking the exopod anywhere. Not until we know what happened to them and have some kind of recovery plan.’
‘You heard Rojas,’ Laura said heatedly. ‘The exopods have powerblades that can cut the globes open.’
‘Then why didn’t he do that? Laura, just stop and think. Please! We’re in Voidspace, which is weird enough; the tree is an alien mechanism operating at a molecular and quantum level we cannot comprehend, and two of our people have vanished and we don’t know how or where. Charging over there all angry isn’t going to resolve anything, and it certainly won’t help Ibu and Rojas. We need information, a lot more information.’
‘She’s right,’ Joey said. ‘Rojas is smart and experienced, and he knows exploration mission protocol better than we do. And now he’s just as gone as Ibu.’
Laura knew they were right, but . . . ‘Ah, bollocks,’ she said. Admitting she was wrong, behaving like some hothead young first life, was painful. She hadn’t acted on wild impulse for centuries. ‘I’m not thinking straight. Sorry. Must be the tank yank.’
‘No,’ Joey said. ‘The Void is getting to all of us. It’s not natural.’
‘We’re going to get them back,’ Ayanna said earnestly. ‘We just have to figure out how.’
‘I don’t think this is entirely a physical problem,’ Joey said. ‘Remember, Ibu said they were amazing. Where did that come from? He’d just finished telling us he couldn’t use his ESP to see inside the globes. What else, what new piece of information, could make him say that? He’s as smart and as rational as the rest of us. He’s not going to blurt that out without a reason. Same goes for Rojas.’
‘That’s really awesome,’ Laura said, pensively. ‘That’s what Rojas said. And you’re right; it’s a complete disconnect from everything that was happening. A colleague stuck to an alien artefact – all he’d be thinking about was what to do, what procedure to follow.’
‘Something got inside their heads,’ Ayanna said. And once more the terror was leaking out of her own mind. ‘It pulled them in.’
‘Bee to pollen,’ Joey said. ‘Shark to blood.’
‘The distortion tree is sentient,’ Laura said. There was no reason to doubt the notion of mental compulsion; she could remember when narcomemes emerged into the gaiafield back in 3025. The first ones were simple product placements, amplifying the pleasure effect of various beers and aerosols. Modifying the memories available in the gaiafield to produce enhanced enjoyment was a trend that lasted for several years, almost wrecking the fledgling gaiafield concept entirely, until counter-routine filters were developed for the confluence nests. Having experienced those, Laura could well believe in more forceful variants of telepathy working in the Void.
‘Yes,’ Joey agreed.
As one, they looked through the windscreen at the massive bulk of glowing crystal.
‘So how do we get it to let them go?’ Laura asked.
‘First, we need to work out why it wants them,’ Joey said.
‘But we don’t even know what it is. What other drones have we got? There must be some kind of sensor we can use.’
‘The sample modules would be best,’ she said cautiously. ‘They were giving a good picture of the interior where Ibu placed them.’
‘But they have to be applied by hand,’ Joey retorted. ‘It has to be a drone.’
‘Half of them are designed for planetary exploration,’ Ayanna said. ‘Surface landers, atmospheric researchers. There’s not much more we can send out there.’
Laura thought for a moment. ‘Do any of the surface landers have drills? Something that cuts through rock to lift core samples?’
‘Yes. The Viking Mk353. It was designed for regolith coring down to a hundred metres.’
‘Send it.’
Half of Fourteen’s backup power systems failed while the Viking Mk353 flew over to the distortion tree. Ayanna and Laura turned off all the systems in the main passenger cabin to cut power consumption. Six of the fans in the forward cabin’s environmental systems also packed up. That was more worrying. The air was still breathable, but the gentle rush of air coming from the vents was severely reduced.
Laura went down to the payload bay’s equipment lockers and returned with two portable atmosphere filters. The thick metre-long cylinders were completely independent, with a grille on each end. One end sucked in air, which was scrubbed and filtered and blown out of the other end. She strapped them onto a couple of couches. She tested them, and switched them off again.
She did her best not to stare at Joey when she was sorting out the portable filters. He was still strapped onto his couch. But the shakes on his hands were moving down his arms, causing both limbs to twitch.
‘Keep going,’ his mental voice told her. ‘I can manage.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. I’m keeping busy. The shuttle’s external sensors are still working – some of them, anyway. I’m still trying to see if I can spot the ships down on the surface. There’s certainly no evidence of a crash so far.’
‘That’s good
.’ She caught the unease in his thought. By now she had enough experience to know it was powered by something more than just his physical deterioration. ‘What is it?’
He shook his head – a sharp juddering motion. ‘There’s something wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
‘Yes. I’m looking and looking at the planet, and I know there’s something wrong with what I’m seeing, but I don’t know what.’
‘What kind of thing?’ she asked cautiously.
A spasm rippled over his twisted-up features. ‘I don’t know. I’m looking right at it. I know I am. But I can’t see it.’
‘Can I help? Do you want me to review the images with you?’
‘No. Thanks. I’ll find it.’
‘Okay.’ There was a lot she wanted to say about how his illness might be affecting his thoughts. Instead, she gave him a sympathetic smile and pushed off to glide down the aisle.
‘How’s the Viking’s signal?’ she asked, when she rejoined Ayanna up at the front of the cabin.
‘Not bad.’
A display screen on the console was showing the Viking approaching the tip of the tree. The exopod’s strobes were flashing away in the centre of the picture.
Laura watched the lander approach the shallow fold where Ibu and Rojas had vanished. Ayanna was remote flying it competently, bringing it to rest a hundred metres from the exopod.
‘I was thinking,’ Ayanna said. ‘If they are inside those globes somehow, we don’t know which ones. So I’m going to start drilling one of the small ones, something they couldn’t possibly be held in.’
‘Sure,’ Laura said. ‘Good idea.’ She hadn’t been thinking quite along those lines. Some part of her was expecting to use the drill to free their missing team members – even if exactly how eluded her.
The Viking descended to hover less than a metre above a globe that measured a metre ten in diameter. The little onboard array held it in place with small bursts from its ion thrusters and deployed the drill.
‘We’re going to have trouble countering the torque,’ Laura said. ‘There’s not much fuel on board. The Viking wasn’t designed for space operations, just getting through the atmosphere intact and landing.’
‘I know,’ Ayanna said.
The ion thrusters flared and the Viking began to rotate around its axis. The drill spun up. Powerful landing thrusters flared briefly, pushing the Viking hard towards the globe. The picture shook as the drill touched the upper surface of the globe. Then it turned to smears as the Viking began to spin. Thrusters fired again, trying to compensate. Now the image was of juddering smears.
‘What the—’ Ayanna exclaimed.
The Viking was suddenly shooting off, away from the tree, tumbling end over end.
Laura stared at the hologram which was showing the combined imagery from the Mk16b drones. ‘Oh my, will you look at that?’ The Viking’s drill must have succeeded in penetrating the small globe. It was squirting out a pale white liquid, a thin fountain that was over three metres high before it started to break apart into a shower of globules that kept on going, oscillating wildly as they sprayed out into the vacuum.
‘Did the Viking get any?’ Laura demanded as Ayanna tried to regain control of the tumbling lander, slowing the gyrations and stabilizing the trajectory.
‘What?’
‘The samplers in the drill head? Did any of that stuff touch them before the pressure blew it off?’
‘I think so. Hang on.’
The pale fountain was slowing, shrinking. Within seconds it was just a tiny runnel of syrupy fluid trickling out of the puncture hole. A thin fog swirled gently around it as it began to vacuum boil.
‘If all the globes are full of liquid, then Ibu and Rojas can’t be inside them,’ Joey said.
Laura glared at the globe and its bubbling wound. ‘Then where the hell are they?’
‘Same place as the Vermillion and the Mk24s.’
‘You’re not helping.’
‘I’ve got the Viking stable,’ Ayanna said. ‘The drill samplers did get something.’
They both turned to watch the display screen on the console bring up the preliminary spectral analysis.
‘Hydrocarbons,’ Laura read the raw data, the routines in her macrocellular clusters running analysis. ‘Water. Sugars. What’s that? Looks like a protein structure.’
‘The fluid’s organic,’ Ayanna said in shock. ‘The globes are alive.’
The cabin lighting went off, to be replaced by the low blue-tinged glow of the emergency lighting. Somewhere in the shuttle a fire alarm was shrieking.
*
It had taken a power screwdriver from the equipment locker to prise the panel off the passenger cabin bulkhead. By the time they did that, the composite panel was blackening and starting to blister. There were no flames inside, but the power cell was glowing. Spraying it with extinguisher gel wasn’t the answer.
Laura yanked one of the emergency suits out of its overhead wallet and jammed her arm into the sleeve. The glove had just enough insulation. With Ayanna cutting through the power cell’s surrounding cables and mountings, she tugged it out and lumbered her way down to the payload bay. The whole suit went into the airlock, wrapped around the now-sizzling power cell. She slapped the emergency evacuation button. And the smouldering mess went flying off into space when the outer hatch peeled open.
‘Got another one,’ Ayanna was calling from the passenger cabin above the multiple alarm sirens.
Laura started opening lockers, hunting for some decent tools. Her hand was blistered where the power cell’s runaway heat had soaked through the suit glove’s insulation. She hauled herself back to the passenger cabin, lugging a utility belt.
In the end they had to remove four of the shorted-out power cells and physically inspect the rest. There were seventeen in the shuttle.
‘Just brilliant,’ a shaking Ayanna said when they checked behind the last panel. ‘There have been so many Void glitches they finally induced a genuine problem.’
Laura’s u-shadow managed to link to the power cells’ management processor. ‘Power surge broke the cut-offs here, but they fused in safe mode. We need to replace the main circuits if we want to enable the systems it supplies.’
Ayanna gave the passenger cabin a disgusted look. The blueish emergency lighting was somehow cooling, and the panels floated about chaotically, along with fragments and broken cabling they’d cut free. One of the portable atmosphere filters they’d brought in to deal with the fumes was creating a steady breeze, which stirred all the fragments. They were constantly flicking them away from their eyes. ‘We don’t have time to deal with this crap,’ she said. ‘It’s only the backups which have failed, not the main fusion tubes. And there are still a whole load of power cells left. It was just the ones in here that absorbed the surge.’
Laura followed her gaze round the shambolic cabin. There was still a tang of ozone and burnt plastic in the air. It had taken them over three hours to deal with all the power cells and their associated ancillary systems, which had to be disconnected as well. There wasn’t much to show for all that work, and they hadn’t even begun repairs. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted.
Joey was in the service compartment, staring at a panel they’d opened on the ceiling to expose an environment system unit which had suffered in the power surge, shutting down to protect itself. His arms and legs were now twitching constantly, preventing him from doing any precise work. But Laura watched in fascination as wires and electronic modules moved obediently as he manipulated them with telekinesis. Even screws unwound themselves under his control and hovered in a neat three-dimensional stack to one side.
‘Cool,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ His mental tone was one of relief. ‘I do have a use after all.’
‘You’ve had a use right from the start.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Come on, you’re not some first-life sympathy junkie. All anybody does in this age is think. We don’t measure
people by their physical ability any more.’
Joey emitted a low grunt of disparagement. ‘That might just be about to change once we reach the surface. No bots down there; it’ll be back to physical labour for us.’
She arched an eyebrow coyly. ‘A Brandt doing manual work? We’re doomed, then.’
He let out a guttural laugh and focused on the complex innards of the unit he’d exposed.
Laura airswam into the forward cabin and took a look at all the display screens and holograph projections. The drone flock was still surrounding the tip of the tree, though it was down to sixty-three operational units now. There was no sign of Ibu or Rojas, no signal from their suits. The exopod remained in place, holding station where Rojas had left it. And her burnt hand hurt like hell.
‘Ouch! Bollocks.’ Laura pushed stray fronds of hair back inside her padded helmet with her good hand. Like a child, she’d imagined that everything would have come right while she was away giving her attention to the shuttle’s screwed-up power systems.
‘Take a rest,’ Ayanna said. ‘You’re exhausted.’
‘So are you.’
‘Grouchy, too.’
‘I’m . . . Ah, crap.’
‘It’s okay. I’ll wake you in a few hours. I need sleep, too; you’re right.’
‘We have to do something.’
‘The shuttle’s falling apart. We’re too strung-out to think objectively. Nothing out here makes any sense. We don’t have enough data. You want me to go on?’
‘No.’
‘Get something to eat. Spray some painkiller on that hand. Go to sleep. Trust me, I won’t let you have long.’
‘Right.’ Laura nodded in defeat. She drifted to the rear of the cabin where they’d stowed thermal bags of food. ‘You know what worries me more?’
‘More than Ibu and Rojas? You’re kidding.’
‘I guess they’re a part of the worry.’
‘Go on.’
‘Where everyone goes.’ She opened a medic kit on the bulkhead above the thermal bags. ‘I get that the tree snatched Ibu and Rojas, or zapped them, or teleported them back outside the Void or something. But the Vermillion, too? Everybody vanishes apart from us. Why? What’s different about us three?’