Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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‘Gaiafield. The confluence nest is one system that hasn’t been affected by the Void.’

And the confluence nest which generated the local gaiafield was hardwired into the ship’s network, Laura realized. Funny what worked and what didn’t in the Void.

*

Laura thought the Vermillion’s excursion-prep facility looked identical to the bridge; the only difference was the blue-grey carpet, which was noticeably lighter – a difference due to six years of coffee stains, she assumed. Amazingly for a project to build trans-galactic colony ships there must have been some kind of budgetary issue, either with time or design aesthetics. When it came to compartments in the Vermillion’s command section, someone just pressed the duplicate button.

Including Laura, there were five people in Shuttle Fourteen’s crew. As a gathering, they resembled a bunch of sheepish friends getting together the morning after a particularly wild party, with everyone looking like crap, staring doubtfully into their mugs of herbal tea and nibbling plain biscuits.

Laura sat next to Ibu – a professor of gravatonics who was nearly twice her size, with most of his bulk made of muscle. Suspension hadn’t done him any favours. Flesh sagged, making it look as if he’d deflated somehow, and his normally bronzed skin was a paler grey than Laura’s. He regarded his body’s condition mournfully. ‘Biononics failure has got to be the worst part of this,’ he confided. ‘It’s going to take an age to get back in shape.’

‘I wonder how the Void continuum can tell the difference between natural organelles and biononics,’ Laura said. ‘They’re both fundamentally the same.’

‘Biononics are not sequenced into our DNA,’ Ayanna, the quantum field physicist mused. ‘Not natural. Somehow it must be able to distinguish between them.’

‘Discriminate, more like,’ Joey Stein, their hyperspace theorist, said. His inflated cheeks were constantly twitching, which Laura suspected came from complications with the tank yank. ‘Our microcellular clusters are all functioning away merrily. Yet they’re not a natural part of the human genome.’

‘They’re part of us now,’ Ayanna said. She was combing out her long chestnut hair, wincing as she tugged at various tangles.

‘The Void responds to thoughts,’ Laura said. ‘Has anyone simply thought that the biononics work?’

‘That’s not thinking, that’s praying,’ Ibu said.

Rojas, the shuttle pilot, sat down next to Joey. Captain Cornelius had brought him out of suspension a month ago to help plan the Vermillion’s landing. With his healthy Nordic-white skin and firm jaw showing five o’clock stubble, Laura thought he was the only one of them that didn’t look like a third-rate zombie right now.

‘Thinking systems into functionality has been tried,’ Rojas said sympathetically. ‘The awake crew have spent years attempting to mentally affect onboard equipment. Complete waste of time: the Void doesn’t work like that. Turns out, you can’t wish our machinery to activate.’

‘The Void has an agenda?’ Ayanna asked incredulously. ‘You’re talking as if it was alive, or at least aware.’

‘Who knows?’ Rojas said dismissively. He nodded at one of the big wall panels, which was showing an image of the Forest. ‘This is our assignment, so let’s focus on that, please.’

Ibu shook his head bullishly. ‘All right, then. What do we know?’

‘The Forest is a slightly ovoid cluster of individual objects we’re calling distortion trees, measuring approximately seventeen thousand kilometres down its axis, with a maximum diameter of fifteen thousand. Given the average tree size of nine kilometres and the distribution we’ve mapped, we’re estimating between twenty-five to thirty thousand of them in total.’

‘Are they all identical?’ Laura asked.

‘So far, yes,’ Rojas said. ‘We’ll be able to perform more detailed analysis on our approach.’

Another pane started, showing the elongated shape of a distortion tree. All Laura could think of was a streamlined icicle with a bulbous base, its profile a moiré shimmer. Despite the curious shifting surface pattern, it seemed smooth.

‘They’re like crystal rocket ships,’ Ayanna said in a reverential tone.

‘Hold that thought,’ Ibu said. ‘Does anyone know what the Raiel warships looked like?’

Joey gave him a sharp glance. ‘You think this is their old invasion fleet?’

‘Just asking. The Raiel arkships we’ve encountered are some kind of artificial organism.’

‘Their arkships are bigger than these distortion trees,’ Laura said. ‘A lot bigger.’

‘We’ve no records of any Commonwealth starship encountering a Raiel warship,’ Rojas said. ‘Wilson Kime reported that the Endeavour was approached by a ship smaller than an arkship, but with the same layout. It looked like an asteroid which had sprouted domed cities.’ He pointed to the shimmering spire. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘What’s their albedo?’ Ayanna asked.

Rojas grinned. ‘One point two. They’re radiating more light than the local star shines on them. Just like the Skylords.’

‘This can’t be coincidence,’ Joey said. ‘That would be ridiculous. They’re related; they have to be. Same technology, or parents. Whatever. But their origin is shared.’

‘I agree,’ Laura said. ‘The Skylords can manipulate the local continuum to enable them to fly. These are changing the quantum structure around themselves. The basic mechanism has to be the same.’

‘Those are the conclusions of the captain’s review board,’ Rojas said. ‘What we need to find out is how and why.’

Joey attempted a laugh, but his twitching cheek muscles made it difficult. He drooled from the corner of his mouth. ‘Why are they changing the quantum signature? How do we find that out?’

‘Ask them,’ Ibu said. ‘If they’re sentient like the Skylords.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Rojas grunted. ‘Our mission target is to understand the new quantum composition of the continuum inside the Forest. If we can define it, we might be able to derive its purpose.’

‘Quantum measurement is fairly standard,’ Laura said, then caught herself. ‘Assuming our instruments work.’

‘Ayanna, that’s your field,’ Rojas said. ‘I’ll need a list of equipment you want. If there’s anything we’re not carrying, we’ll see if the ship’s fabrication systems can manufacture it. Don’t be too ambitious; the extruders are suffering along with all the other systems.’

Ayanna gave him a sly smile. ‘I’ll try and remember that.’

‘Laura,’ Rojas said, ‘you’re tasked with determining how the disturbance is created. Other than their size, which varies by a few hundred metres, the distortion trees seem uniform, so we’re assuming the ability is integral to their structure.’

‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Do I get to take samples?’

‘If the Forest zone isn’t instantly lethal to us. If the shuttle can manoeuvre and rendezvous. If the trees themselves aren’t sentient, or self aware. If they don’t have defences. If our spacesuits work. If their structure can be sampled. Then, possibly, yes. We’d prefer an in situ analysis, obviously. Commonwealth encounter regulations do still apply. Please remember that, everybody.’

Laura pressed her lips together in bemusement. ‘Okay, then. I’ll draw up my wish list of gadgets.’

Rojas stood up. ‘We launch in four hours. As well as your equipment, you might want to transfer some of your personal packs onto Fourteen. Once the mission’s over, I can’t guarantee we’ll land anywhere close to the Vermillion.’

After Rojas left the excursion-prep facility, Laura turned to Ibu. ‘Was that a guarantee he will land us on the planet?’ she asked, trying to make it light hearted.

The huge gravatonics professor rubbed a shaking hand along his temple. ‘You think we’ll make it all the way to the planet? I wish I had your optimism. I’m going to check that my memory secure store is current.’

‘I’m more confident about Fourteen getting down than I am about Vermillion,’ Laura said. ‘Actually, I’m surprised Cornelius didn’t assign more specialists to our mission. Fourteen can hold – what, sixty people?’

‘If it works,’ Joey said. ‘I think he’s balancing the risk about right. If we make it to the Forest, we might just contribute something that’ll help us find a way out of the Void. If we don’t . . . Well, face it, the likes of us aren’t going to be missed on a pioneering world where the only machines that work belong to the twentieth century.’

‘Twentieth century?’ Ibu challenged. ‘Another raving optimist.’

‘I grew up on a farm,’ Ayanna protested. ‘We worked the land.’ She pulled a face. ‘Well, I helped Dad program the agribots.’

‘I’ll get my list together, then I might just go check on my secure store,’ Laura declared. ‘Not that any of us will ever be getting a re-life clone in the Void. Looks like we’re back to having one mortal life again.’

*

Time was short, and there were a lot of preparations to be made, all of which were more problematic than they should have been, thanks to glitches in the Vermillion’s network and command core. But Laura found a few spare minutes to go back to the suspension bay. Her sarcophagus was still open, the mechanisms inside cold and inert. She’d half expected engineeringbots to be swarming all over it, but nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the long compartment. There was a simple personal locker at the foot of the suspension chamber. Thankfully it opened when her u-shadow gave it the code. It didn’t hold much – one bag of decent clothes, another of sentimental items. That was the one she unzipped.

Inside, there was the hand-made wooden jewel box Andrze had bought her on their honeymoon on Tanyata, its colourful paint faded now after three centuries. The rust-red scarf with aboriginal art print she’d picked up in Kuranda. Her flute with its wondrously mellow sound, made in Venice Beach – and she couldn’t even remember who she’d been with when she acquired that. The phenomenally expensive (and practically black-market) chip of silver crystal from the ma-hon tree in New York’s Central Park. A bag of sentiments, then, a little museum of self more important than any secure store holding memories her brain no longer had room for. Strange how these physical items gave her a more comforting sense of identity than her own augmented, backed-up, reprofiled neurones. She picked up a ridiculously thick, and impractical, six-hundred-year-old Swiss army knife, with something like twenty different tools and blades. A gift from Althea, she recalled, the artist who made a virtue of rejecting all the technological boons which the Commonwealth provided for its citizens.

Althea, who would have sneered at the very concept of a flight to another galaxy – if Laura had ever gained the courage to tell her she was going. Laura grinned at how her old friend would greet the news that they were trapped in the artificial weirdness of the Void. ‘Hubris!’ she’d no doubt shout gleefully. And now the penknife was probably the most functional possession Laura owned. Althea’s smugness would turn supernova at that knowledge.

Laura put the ancient penknife in her shipsuit’s breast pocket. The weight of it was a comfort, something whose simplicity wouldn’t let her down. It belonged in the Void.

*

Shuttle Fourteen had a basic delta planform, with smooth rounded wing-tips giving it a slightly organic appearance – an unusual halfway machine between an old-fashioned aircraft and the flattened ovoid shape of the Commonwealth’s standard regrav capsules. As well as ferrying passengers down to a planet, it was designated a mid-range preliminary exploration vehicle, able to hop around the planets of a solar system, launching detailed observations, delivering researchers and scientific equipment. Examining a space-based artefact was well within its capabilities.

Inside, Laura could easily believe she’d just stepped back five centuries to the aircraft era. The forward cabin wasn’t quite cramped; there were ten large acceleration couches, in two rows, which seemed to fill a lot of it. Up at the front, the pilot’s couch was solo; overhung by the big curving windscreen. There was a nominal horseshoe console of glossy dark plastic, which usually displayed a few basic craft functions. As with everything in the modern Commonwealth, Shuttle Fourteen was controlled by a cognitive array with the human pilot as a (mainly psychological) safety fallback.

Today Rojas had pulled every emergency manual control out of the console, cluttering it in a bewildering assortment of clunky switches and ergonomic toggles. Flight trajectory graphics slithered about inside the windscreen like holographic fish. Smaller panes that had popped up out of the console glowed with complex system-status symbols.

Laura eyed them suspiciously as she strapped herself into her seat. The colourful 3D glyphs were ominously similar to those she used to see on wall posters at primary school when she dropped her first batch of children off in the morning – and that was three hundred and fifty years ago. Haven’t they come up with anything more advanced since then?

Rojas was sitting comfortably in the pilot’s couch, studying the ever-changing holograms and flicking switches like a twentieth-century astronaut, his voice a low-level murmur saturated with confidence as he talked to the array.

‘Looks like our glorious leader has the right stuff,’ Ibu said quietly as he settled into the couch next to Laura. ‘It makes you feel grand to be alive, doesn’t it, putting your life in his hands?’

She grinned back at him. Ibu had the kind of phlegmatic outlook on life she approved of. He was a good choice for the team. She still hadn’t made her mind up about Joey. If anything, the spasms afflicting his facial muscles had increased. It was pure prejudice on her part, she knew, but it did make him look as if he had some kind of bad neurological problem rather than just some damage from the tank yank, which he kept assuring them was inconsequential. Aside from that, the emotions which did escape from his guarded mind indicated disapproval of the mission. His heart wasn’t in it.

As for Ayanna, she acted like a consummate professional, interested only in the science. The problem with their newfound mental abilities was that everyone could sense the sheer terror leaking from her mind.

‘Two minutes,’ Rojas announced.

Five metres in front of the shuttle’s stubby nose, red warning lights began to flash around the docking bay’s inner doors as they slid shut. Laura made a face and pulled on her padded cap, then used the backup straps to stop herself floating out of the couch, clicking them together in the way she just about remembered from her childhood. Nobody was relying on the couches’ plyplastic cushioning to hold them.

With the straps pressing into her shoulders, she tried to steady her breathing. Apart from the two mandatory emergency training sessions before the colony fleet left Commonwealth space, she hadn’t spent any real time in zero gee for decades. Some people loved it for the freedom of movement. Every time she was weightless, she’d needed her biononics to help suppress the nausea. Andy Granfore had given her some drugs he promised would help, but she didn’t hold out much hope. Besides, she was still so full of tank yank suppressors, her biochemistry would probably register as alien if she was given any decent kind of scan.

‘Fusion chambers active and stable,’ Rojas announced. ‘Onboard systems ninety-four per cent functionality. Umbilical links closing.’

A large purple star flared in one of the console displays. ‘You’re looking good, Fourteen,’ Cornelius Brandt’s voice boomed from the cabin’s speakers.

‘Bollocks to this,’ Laura muttered. It was just a shuttle launch, for crap’s sake. All these reassurances were really starting to crank her tension up.

‘I just wanted to emphasize that your mission is important, but not worth taking any dangerous risks for,’ the starship’s captain continued. ‘Once we’re established on the surface, we’ll be able to turn every resource into finding a way out of the Void, and there are a lot of very smart people in suspension. Any information you can provide will be valuable, even if it is negative.’

‘Copy that, Vermillion,’ Rojas said. ‘And thank you. Fifteen seconds to launch. Umbilical disconnect confirmed. Five greens on clamp release. Regrav units on line. Initiating lift.’

The red docking bay lights turned purple, signalling vacuum, and the outer doors slid back, to reveal a midnight-black universe outside. The shuttle wobbled slightly as it rose from its docking cradle. Rojas eased it out through the airlock.

Despite herself, Laura craned forward for a better view through the windscreen. The weird space she’d only seen on Vermillion’s holograms unveiled for real as Fourteen emerged from the bay. Somehow, Void space managed to appear darker than ordinary space. It was the contrast, Laura reasoned. On the Commonwealth worlds there were always so many stars visible at night, from the faintest wisps of the Milky Way up to the sharp specks of white giants. They were all around and forever. Here there were so few stars visible, probably no more than a couple of thousand. But the nebulas made up for their absence. There must have been hundreds, from the great smears of luminous plasma dust sprawling over lightyears to fainter smudges glowing in the unknown depths.

Gravity fell away over a long moment as they glided clear of the Vermillion. Fourteen began a slow roll, and Laura saw the massive cliff of foam-coated metal slide past as if they were falling parallel to it. It wasn’t an elegant structure, more like heavy-duty industrial modules bolted together and sprayed in the ubiquitous foam, which had bleached and pocked from its long vacuum exposure. Things poked out of the coating on spindly poles: sensors, comlinks, molecular force screen nozzles . . . Bright orange-neon lines glowed in deep fissures that were the seams between modules, the thermal-dump radiators energetically beaming the starship’s excess heat out into the vacuum. Regrav and ingrav propulsion units were clusters of stumpy cylinders as big as the shuttle, made out of dark glass shot through with green scintillations. Vermillion’s rear third was all segmented cargo tubes, like a geometrical intestine. They contained everything you needed to establish a technologically advanced human civilization on a virgin world.

All useless here, Laura thought bleakly.

Rojas applied power to Fourteen’s main regrav drive units, and the shuttle started accelerating away from the Vermillion. Laura’s sense of balance shifted rapidly as the gravity built to one third standard. To her perception, the shuttle was now standing on its tail, putting her flat on her back in the couch while the floor had now become the wall. Rojas was above her, his couch creaking as it absorbed the new weight loading.

‘Are you all right?’ a smooth mental voice asked her.

Laura didn’t need to be told this was the Skylord. The mentality she could sense behind the thought was massive and intimidatingly serene.

‘Er, yes, thank you,’ she replied, instinctively tightening her own thoughts so her emotional leakage was minimal. Judging by the stiff postures all around her, the others were taking part in identical telepathic conversations.

‘You are leaving,’ the Skylord said with a tinge of concern. ‘Is my guidance no longer acceptable? We are so near a world where you will flourish and become fulfilled.’

Rojas held up a hand, stalling anyone else’s reply, and opened up his own telepathic voice. ‘We thank you for your guidance, and anticipate joining our friends on the world you have brought us to very soon.’

‘I am glad for you. But why do you delay?’

‘We wish to explore the nature of this world and everything close to it. It is the way we reach our fulfilment.’

‘I understand. Your current trajectory will take you close to our parturition region.’

‘Do you mean this clump of objects?’ Rojas sent a mental picture of the Forest.

‘Yes.’

‘Is this where Skylords come from?’

‘Not this parturition region. We came from another.’

‘What are the objects in the parturition region? Eggs?’

‘The parturition region creates us.’

‘How?’

‘It does.’

‘Do you object to us going there?’

‘No.’

‘The region is different to the rest of the Void. Why?’

‘It is a parturition region.’

‘Are they important to you?’

‘We come from a parturition region. We do not return. We guide those who have reached fulfilment to the Heart of the Void.’

‘Where is that?’

‘It is at the end of your fulfilment.’ The Skylord’s presence withdrew from the cabin.

Rojas shook his head and sighed. His thoughts were showing a degree of frustration. ‘Thus ends every conversation with the Skylords,’ he concluded. ‘Enigmatic shits.’

‘That’s a fantastic discovery,’ Joey said. ‘The distortion trees birth them or conjure them into existence, or something. This is where they come from. Our mission is half complete and we’ve only been going two minutes.’

‘If you believe it,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re slippery little swines.’ He flicked a switch to open a channel back to Vermillion and began reporting the conversation.

*

Three hours seventeen minutes accelerating at point seven gees, then Shuttle Fourteen flipped over and decelerated at the same rate. Six and a half hours after launching from Vermillion, Rojas performed their final velocity match manoeuvres and the delta-shaped shuttle was left hanging in space, two and a half thousand kilometres out from the Forest.

Laura stared at it through the shuttle’s windscreen – a huge patch of silver speckles that gleamed brightly, blocking off half of space. Her eyes fooled her into thinking each speck was drifting about, while in fact it was just the bizarre patterns of their surfaces that flickered and shimmered. Sensors zoomed in, giving them a decent image of the distortion trees on the edge of the Forest.

‘They don’t have that fog around them that the Skylords do,’ Joey slurred. His facial twitches were growing progressively worse. Now that they were in freefall, drool was slipping out of his open lips to drift round the cabin. Laura didn’t like the way his problems were developing. Shuttle Fourteen had a medical capsule, but it wasn’t as sophisticated as any of the ones on Vermillion. Not, she admitted to herself, that she’d like any medical capsule to run a procedure on her right now. Fourteen’s systems glitches were steadily increasing.

In tandem with Joey’s affliction? she wondered.

‘Other than that, there’s not a lot of difference,’ Ayanna said. ‘These are smaller.’

‘Narrower,’ Rojas said. ‘And they are rotating very slowly around their long axis. Nine-hour cyclic period.’

‘A thermal roll?’ Laura asked.

‘Looks like it. That’s the easiest way to keep a stable temperature in space.’

‘So something’s making them roll,’ Laura said.

‘Nothing visible. It’s not a reaction-control system.’

‘Magnetic?’ Joey asked.

‘I’m not picking up any significant magnetic field,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re almost inert.’

‘What about the anomalous quantum signature?’ Laura asked.

Ayanna studied several of the displays, a frown growing. ‘It is very strange. The temporal component of spacetime is different in there.’

‘Temporal?’ Ibu queried.

‘I think time is progressing at a reduced flow rate inside. It’s not unreasonable; our wormholes can manipulate internal time flow in a similar fashion. We can even halt temporal flow altogether inside exotic matter cages if they’re formatted correctly.’

‘You mean things happen slower in there?’ Rojas asked.

‘Only relative to outside the Forest.’

‘So are the trees made out of exotic matter?’ Joey asked.

‘I’ve no idea. But negative energy is the only way we know of manipulating spacetime, so there’s got to be something like it in there somewhere.’

‘We have to go in and take physical samples,’ Laura said.

‘So you keep saying,’ Ayanna replied drily.

‘Let’s see if we can, first,’ Rojas said. His hands moved nimbly over various switches on the pilot’s console. Two thirds of the way along the shuttle’s lower fuselage, a malmetal hatch flowed open. Four Mk24 GSDs (General Science Drones) emerged from their silo and began flying towards the Forest, looking like black footballs studded with hexagonal diamonds.

‘Functionality is good,’ Rojas said. Each Mk24 was displaying a visual image on a console pane. ‘I’ll send them in one at a time.’

‘There isn’t a clear barrier,’ Ayanna said. ‘The effect simply increases as you approach the outermost layer of trees.’

‘You mean I’ll get an increasingly delayed telemetry response?’

‘Could be,’ Ayanna replied. Uncertainty tainted her thoughts.

‘The first should reach the trees in forty minutes,’ Rojas said.

Laura kept looking at the view through the windscreen; she found it easier than constantly reinterpreting the images from the Mk24s. They weren’t getting much more than the full-spectrum visual feed. Hard science data was sparse. The solar wind was normal, as was the cosmic radiation environment.

‘I wonder if this is what schizophrenia feels like,’ Ibu said after twenty minutes. ‘I wanted a new and exciting life; that’s why I joined the colony project.’

‘But not this exciting,’ Laura suggested.

‘No fucking way. But I have to admit, the Void is intriguing. From a purely academic point of view, you understand.’

‘I’ll take that over boredom.’

The big man cocked his head to look at her with interest. ‘You were going to another galaxy because you were bored?’

‘I’ve had six marriage partnerships, and a lot more fun partners. I’ve had twelve children, not all of them in a tank; I’ve actually been pregnant twice, which wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I’ve lived on the External and Inner worlds and sampled every lifestyle that wasn’t patently stupid. I thought becoming a scientist on the cutting edge of research would be infinitely thrilling. It wasn’t. Damn, unless you’re in it, you have no idea of how much petty politics there is in academia. So it was either a real fresh start, or download myself into ANA and join all the incorporeal minds bickering eternity away. And I just didn’t believe that was a decent solution.’

‘Interesting. What faction would you have joined?’

‘Brandts traditionally join the moderate Advancers. That sounded more of the same. So here I am.’

Ibu gestured at the vast silver stipple beyond the windscreen. ‘And is this not the infinite thrill you were searching for? You must be very content at what fate has dealt us.’

‘Hmm. More like infinitely worrying.’

‘Maybe, but we are in the middle of the galaxy’s greatest enigma. Unless we solve it, we will never return to the real universe. You can’t beat that for motivation.’

‘The more I see and understand,’ Laura said, ‘the more it seems to me we’re lab rats running around a particularly bizarre maze. What kind of power has the ability to pull us in here, then apparently ignore us?’

‘You think we’re being watched?’

‘I don’t know. I suspect this place isn’t quite as passive as the captain believes. What would be the point of it doing nothing?’

‘What’s the point of it at all?’

She shrugged, which didn’t work well in freefall.

‘Vermillion has decelerated into low orbit,’ Rojas announced. ‘They’re launching environment analysis probes into the planet’s atmosphere.’

‘It’s an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere,’ Ayanna said disparagingly. ‘And spectography showed the kind of photosynthetic vegetation we’ve found everywhere we’ve been in the galaxy. Unless there are some hellish pathogens running round loose down there, Cornelius will give the order to land.’

‘He doooesn’t,’ Joey began. The erratic spasms afflicting his face and neck mangled the words, so everyone had to listen hard now whenever he spoke. ‘Ever ned t-t-to lanid.’

‘How’s that?’ Laura asked.

‘Because of the Skathl . . .’ A burst of anguish flowered in Joey’s mind as his traitor muscles distorted his words beyond recognition. ‘Thusss Skahh.’ He shut his mouth forcefully. Began again. ‘Moih woold . . .’ His head bowed in defeat. ‘Because of the Skylords,’ his telepathic voice said clearly. ‘They brought us here for whatever this ridiculous fulfilment kick of theirs is. If they wanted to kill us, the very least they had to do was just leave us drifting in space while all our systems glitched and crashed. But they found us and guided us here, specifically here to this star which has an H-congruous type planet. On top of that, this whole place is artificial. Like Laura said, we’re here for a reason. Death isn’t it.’

‘Makes sense,’ Laura said. ‘On the plus side, it probably means the Vermillion and the others will be able to land intact.’

Ibu grunted in agreement. ‘And probably won’t be able to fly again.’

‘Fulfilment,’ Rojas said, as if hearing the word for the first time. ‘You’re making it sound like a sacrifice to a god.’

‘Best theory yet,’ Ayanna said. ‘The Void is the most powerful entity we’ve yet encountered. God’s not a bad description.’

‘Now you’re into infinite regression,’ Ibu said cheerfully. ‘If this is a god, what does that say of whoever created it?’

‘I’m not sure this qualifies as an entity,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sticking with my theory that the Void’s a more advanced version of ANA. Just a big-ass computer, running a real-life simulation that we’re trapped in.’

‘Nothing so far disproves that,’ Ayanna said sympathetically. ‘But that still means there’s a reason for it existing, and there’ll be a controlling sentience.’

‘My vote’s for a work of art,’ Joey told them. ‘If you can create this, you’re a long, long way past us on the evolutionary scale. Why not do it for fun?’

‘Because it’s dangerous and going to kill the galaxy,’ Rojas said.

‘If you’re a god, that might be fun.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t meet Her then,’ Ibu said sardonically.

Laura looked at the Forest again. ‘Well, I don’t think she’s likely to be in there.’

‘We might not get to find out,’ Rojas said. ‘The first Mk24’s telemetry feed is going weird on us.’

‘Weird, how?’ Ibu asked.

Rojas was studying several displays. ‘The datastream is slowing down. I don’t mean there’s less information; it’s dopplering – the bit rate separation is increasing.’

‘Temporal flow reduction,’ Ayanna said in satisfaction. ‘The quantum sensor data was right.’