Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

‘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?’

‘Ask a Skylord. They’ll tell you it’s because we’re not fulfilled.’

‘Screw the Skylords. There’s got to be some reason.’

‘Eat. Sleep. Once we’ve all recovered from the tank yank, we’ll have some functioning neurons and know what to do.’

‘Sure.’ Laura sprayed some salve on her red-raw hand, wincing at all the little blisters, then peeled the wrapper off a taco – meals in freefall were always tacos or something similar; bread produced crumbs that messed with the filters and jammed in bad places. ‘How long are we going to give them?’

‘We’ll find them. Don’t worry.’

‘You said it. The shuttle’s screwed. If we’re going to help them, we need the Vermillion. Crap, I hope they got down okay.’

‘Once we’re outside the Forest, we’ll make contact again.’

‘Joey couldn’t spot them on the surface.’

‘Okay, either you go to sleep, or I grab an aerosol from that medic kit and put you under.’

‘All right. All right.’ Laura settled on a couch and fastened the straps – not too tight. It was pointless because she knew she couldn’t sleep. Her hand throbbed. She chewed on the taco again, tasting nothing. She was about to start asking what Ayanna thought about using the Viking drill on the tree itself, when she fell asleep.

*

Something shook Laura roughly. For a confused moment she thought she was being tank yanked again; the whole thing was like a fading dream that was just too real.

‘Wake up,’ Ayanna was saying, her face centimetres away. Behind the face, thoughts shone with delight and relief – a lot of relief. ‘Wake up. They’re back. They’re coming back.’

‘What?’ Laura asked sluggishly. ‘Who?’

‘Rojas and Ibu. The exopod is coming back.’

‘Huh?’ She tried to sit up. The couch straps dug in, and she fumbled round to release them. ‘How?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ayanna said, her expression half fearful. ‘We’ve lost most of the Mk16bs now. I noticed it was moving a minute ago.’

‘Hell’s teeth. What did they say?’

‘There’s no contact. All I know is the exopod’s coming, and it’s not the greatest bit of flying I’ve ever seen.’

Laura felt a little burst of alarm. ‘No contact? Is the signal down again?’

‘No. The exopod is transmitting. They’re just not saying anything. Hell, that’s no surprise. Our systems have taken a real beating from the Void.’

Laura tried to get her breathing under control. She looked round the forward cabin. There were a lot of red symbols shining on the console. Five of the blue emergency lighting strips were dark. And she was sure it was several degrees colder. ‘What’s their ETA?’ As she said it, she noticed her exovision time display. Ten hours! She’d been asleep for ten hours. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

Ayanna gave her a sheepish glance. ‘I fell asleep myself. Only woke up an hour ago.’

Laura winced as she finished releasing the last strap with her burnt hand. The skin was still red, but the salve had turned the blisters hard. For one silly moment she wondered if the Void had glitched the spray’s chemical structure, rendering the salve useless – or worse.

Several screens on the console were running feeds from Shuttle Fourteen’s external cameras. They all showed her the exopod gliding sedately towards them.

She anchored herself on the front couch and stared through the windscreen. Sure enough, the exopod was close enough to show as a small speck against the glowing crystal, its strobes still flashing away faithfully. ‘It’s them,’ she said in amazement.

‘I told you,’ Ayanna said happily. ‘They’re back.’

‘Where the hell were they?’

‘They had to be inside the distortion tree,’ Joey said.

‘Right.’ Laura hadn’t taken her eyes off the exopod. Her u-shadow had a narrow link to the shuttle’s faltering network, which was monitoring the exopod’s signal. Only the basic telemetry was coming in. ‘Have any of the Mk24s reappeared?’

‘No,’ Ayanna said.

‘I just don’t get any of this. Why—?’

‘Just ask them,’ Joey said. For a moment he managed to force his mouth into a smile.

The three of them went back through the service compartment. Joey lagged behind, his spasming limbs making it difficult for him to manoeuvre as easily as the others. Laura resisted the urge to offer him any help. He was way too proud for that.

Once they were in the EVA hangar her u-shadow lost the link to Fourteen’s network. She grabbed the handholds in front of a backup console on the bulkhead and activated its manual functions. Two screens slid out, showing her that the exopod was a lot closer.

‘I’m opening the outer door,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ Joey’s mental voice urged her as he wriggled his way through the hatch. ‘We don’t actually know what’s inside the exopod.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Laura said. ‘What do you think’s inside? A Prime motile?’ Even as she said it, her secondary routines pulled an image file from her storage lacuna, showing her the eggs of a Prime. They were nothing like the globes on the distortion tree. Bollocks, I’m getting paranoid, she thought.

‘I don’t know. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Why haven’t they ordered the airlock door to open?’

‘With the state of our communications? Come on!’ she appealed to Ayanna.

‘I’d be happier knowing,’ Ayanna said awkwardly.

‘And how are we going to do that?’

‘Wait until it’s on the docking cradle, but don’t open the airlock,’ Joey said. ‘The umbilical will plug in and we’ll have a decent link.’

‘Well?’ Laura asked Ayanna.

‘Seems reasonable.’

Laura turned back to the console, and keyed in the cradle recovery sequence. She felt a tiny vibration run through Fourteen’s structure. On the screen, long electromuscle arms were pushing the exopod’s cradle out from the rear of the shuttle.

‘What the hell is that?’ Joey’s mental voice was twinned with a great deal of concern.

Laura peered at the screen showing the approaching exopod. Its cluster of electromuscle tentacles were curled protectively round one of the dark globes from the distortion tree. ‘They can’t be serious,’ she exclaimed. ‘How did they detach it?’

‘Are you going to let them in carrying that thing?’ Joey asked.

Ayanna shot Laura a glance, her thoughts emanating all kinds of uncertainty. ‘They wouldn’t bring anything harmful into the shuttle. They know the protocols.’

‘If it’s them,’ Joey said. ‘If they haven’t been brainwashed. We don’t know what we’re dealing with!’

‘What do you think?’ Ayanna asked.

‘I think Joey may have a point,’ Laura said reluctantly. Her delight at seeing the exopod return was dwindling fast. Carrying the alien globe back to Fourteen was unusual, at the very least. ‘Let them dock on the cradle, but keep the airlock closed until we establish just what’s going on.’

‘Right,’ Ayanna said. ‘Good call.’

It took several minutes for the pilot to manoeuvre the exopod over the cradle. Laura made no comment about that. Rojas had certainly seemed more competent when the little craft was flying out to the distortion tree.

‘Are they eggs?’ Joey asked as they watched the exopod wobble about unsteadily.

‘We know they contain organic matter,’ Laura said slowly, wishing she’d thought more about the problem before. ‘And we’ve seen a batch flying down to the planet. Logically they’re eggs or seeds, or some kind of biological agent.’

‘Agent?’

‘They come from the trees, which are completely different objects. Shape, nature, material – none of it’s the same. So . . . I’d say the trees manufacture the globes molecule by molecule. And on this scale, that probably means it’s a bioforming system. These trees arrive at a planet in a new star system and start converting it to the kind of environment their creators live in.’

‘That works for me,’ Ayanna said.

‘So what are the Skylords?’ Joey asked.

‘Oh, bollocks to you, Joey,’ Laura snapped at him. ‘They’re the tugboats? I don’t know!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Let’s just keep it calm, shall we?’ Ayanna said.

Laura made an effort to damp her temper down. The screen was showing her the cradle arms reaching out and clamping onto the base of the exopod. One of them carried the data umbilical.

Laura keyed in a series of instructions. The console’s second screen played the feed from the exopod’s internal camera. Laura let out a small gasp of relief. Behind her, Ayanna made an almost identical sound.

The camera was set near the top of the exopod’s cabin. It looked down on Rojas and Ibu suspended in the webs. Both of them were in their suits – without helmets.

‘Welcome back, guys,’ she said inanely.

They both looked up at the camera. Ibu grinned weakly. It looked to be a big effort on his part.

‘Good to hear your voice,’ he said croakily.

‘This is Ayanna. What happened? Where have you been?’

‘We’ve been inside.’

‘Inside what?’ Laura said. ‘The tree is solid.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Ibu said. ‘There’s all kinds of chambers in there.’

‘Where? The drone sensors showed us a solid structure. How did you get in? You were stuck to that globe when the links went down.’

‘There are entrances along the bottom of the folds. The crystal just morphs like our malmetal and plyplastic.’

‘Can you let us in now, please?’ Rojas said. His voice croaked like Ibu’s. It was as if both of them had caught laryngitis.

‘Ask him about the globe,’ Joey’s mental voice urged.

‘Rojas,’ Ayanna said, ‘why have you brought one of the globes back?’

Rojas looked away from the camera, studying the displays on the bulkhead in front of him. ‘Analysis.’

‘What?’

‘Analysis.’

‘Hang on. Wait,’ Laura said. ‘What have you been doing inside the tree? How did you get in and out? Why were you in there so long? You’ve been out of contact the whole time. You know that’s against every protocol ever written.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Ibu said. ‘It’s fascinating in there. You’ll have to come in, Laura.’

‘What’s happened to your voice?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Have you been exposed to the alien environment?’

‘No.’

‘Then what—’

‘Nothing; we’re fine. The exopod’s systems are glitching. That’s the problem.’

‘What’s in the tree?’ Laura asked, trying to keep her concern from creeping into her voice.

‘Nothing. We think the cavities are conduits of some kind. We’ll go over the recordings when we’re back inside.’

‘What was wonderful?’ Joey asked. ‘Ibu said the globes were wonderful, Rojas said they were awesome. ‘Why?’

‘Ibu,’ Ayanna said, ‘what was awesome about the globe you got stuck on?’

‘What?’

‘We need to come in,’ Rojas said.

‘You said it was wonderful. What did you mean?’

‘This whole place is wonderful, that’s all.’

‘Please open the EVA hangar door,’ Rojas said. ‘We need to get the exopod inside.’

‘Rojas, I can’t let you bring that globe into Fourteen,’ Ayanna said. ‘Please release it.’

‘We need to examine it,’ Rojas said. He still wasn’t looking up at the camera any more. His fingers were moving fast across the keypads in front of him.

‘Yes, we will, but after we’ve established it’s safe. You know the protocol.’

‘Open the door.’

‘Jettison the globe,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It won’t go anywhere. We can run tests on it out there.’

A set of graphics on the console turned from amber to blue. The EVA hangar lights flickered. Laura could feel a slight vibration through the handholds.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Ayanna exclaimed. ‘He’s overridden the airlock. It’s opening.’

‘Bollocks,’ Laura grunted.

They all turned to face the airlock’s inner door, just past the remaining exopod. Caution lights were shining purple.

‘What do we do?’ Laura asked.

‘Are there any weapons on board?’ Joey asked.

Ayanna gave him a startled glance. ‘Crap. There’s probably something in the emergency landing pack.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ Laura said, but it was more like a mantra than anything she believed. Nobody in this era needed weapons; biononics could be configured into quite aggressive energy functions if anyone was seriously threatened.

‘You wouldn’t want to mess with some of the engineering tools,’ Joey said.

‘Are they real?’ Laura asked, mostly to herself. The screen showed her that the docking cradle had finished pulling the exopod inside the EVA hangar airlock. ‘Is that Ibu and Rojas?’

‘What the hell else can they be?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Oh, fuck, what is happening?’ Her mental shielding was cracking open, flooding the EVA hangar with raw fright.

Laura found herself in the centre of swirling shadows. They were growing fangs and teeth, turning from phantom grey spectres to solid black figures. Thousands of people shrieking somewhere far away were growing closer. She raised her hands in reflex to ward them off, worried that perhaps Ayanna’s telekinesis would give substance to her imagination. ‘Ayanna! For fuck’s sake get a grip.’

‘I don’t want them in the shuttle,’ Ayanna wailed.

‘Nobody does! We can’t stop the bastards, now. We’ll just have to manage them when they do get in.’

Ayanna looked just as panicked as before, but the outpouring of emotion reduced slightly.

Joey spun round to face the other way. ‘Can we lock the hatch to the silo compartment?’

‘If we can lock it, Rojas can sure as shit unlock it,’ Laura said.

‘Then we break it,’ Joey said. ‘Use telekinesis, wreck the circuits behind the bulkhead.’

Laura glanced at the hatchway herself. It was incredibly tempting. The lights above the exopod airlock turned from purple to green. The malmetal door started to peel open.

‘Oh bollocks,’ Laura muttered. The hatchway to the silo compartment was barely four metres away. She was sure she could get through in a couple of seconds if she powerdived for it – assuming she aimed right, no guarantee of that given her free-fall skill level. Her ESP started to pry around the bulkhead, reducing it to a translucent blue sheet in her mind. It was threaded with dozens of cable conduits. Which ones control the hatch?

The docking cradle trundled into the EVA hangar and placed the exopod on its lockdown clamps. All Laura could do was stare at the alien globe the electromuscle tentacles were clutching. Her ESP revealed nothing; it was a blank zone inside her perceptive field. And yet . . . She smiled, knowing now that there was no reason to worry. Whatever it contained was absorbing Ayanna’s malicious phantoms. A temperate sense of relief filled the EVA hangar. And her heart was racing away inside her chest.

‘Fight it!’ Joey’s mental voice told her, a jarring discord to the tranquillity Laura was feeling.

‘Oh no!’ Laura groaned. ‘No no no!’ Her own dread at the realization of what was happening was enough to damp down the emotional balm the alien globe was giving off. She saw Ayanna had started to move towards the globe, and grabbed her arm. ‘Stop! Ayanna, for crap’s sake! It’s like a narcomeme.’

Ayanna’s head twisted back to stare at Laura, and now she really looked frightened.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Joey said.

Laura swung round on the handholds, and prepared to push off against the bulkhead. She heard the exopod’s hatch open. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization. And even though she knew it was stupid, she paused to glance at what was coming out.

Ibu slid out smoothly, catching hold of a handhold on the EVA hangar’s wall. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, and his voice was still weird, as if there was fluid in his throat.

‘You tell me,’ she barked. ‘What is that thing?’

‘Who knows? We brought it here to study.’ He was bending his knees, swinging round slightly so his feet were pressed against the exopod’s hull.

Ready to pounce, Laura thought.

Rojas glided easily out of the hatch.

‘Get out of here!’ Joey’s mental voice shouted. He began scrambling along the bulkhead, hauling himself towards the hatch into the silo compartment. Shaking arms made him miss the second handhold.

Ibu kicked off, flashing along the middle of the EVA hangar like a human missile. Rojas followed.

Laura screamed and jumped for the hatch. Her foot caught Joey’s shoulder and the collision flicked her sideways. She spun and slapped at the bulkhead, righting her trajectory. Ayanna was right beside her.

Rojas caught Joey’s ankle. The squeal that came through Joey’s spasming throat was like a pig grunting. Then Rojas was clambering along the hyperspace theorist as if the two were caught in some weird dance move. It quickly turned into a furious wrestling match as they squirmed against each other.

Again, Laura hesitated. Her hand grasped the hatch rim. Ibu was close, reaching forwards. And Ayanna was level with her. ‘Go!’ Laura yelped. Ayanna wriggled through the hatchway with the agility of an eel.

Joey’s cries of dread were echoing round the hangar. Ibu’s hand clamped round Laura’s shin. She squealed, first at the shock, then the yell grew wilder as she realized just how tight and painful his grip was. Stronger than any normal human. ‘What the—’

His other hand clamped round her right ankle. She tried to pull herself through the hatch into the silo compartment, but she couldn’t move. Now Ibu began to pull her the other way. She felt her arms starting to straighten out as his unnatural strength over-powered her, tugging her back. Various ancient unarmed combat routines began to unfold from her storage lacuna, slipping into the macrocellular clusters. But Laura didn’t wait; she instinctively lashed out with her free foot, catching Ibu on the side of his head.

It had all the impact of hitting him with a feather.

He snapped her ankle. She heard the bone break with a terrible crack, and her leg went numb for a glorious instant. Then the incredible pain fired into her brain. Secondary routines damped down the impulse, reducing it to a manageable level. But Ibu slowly and deliberately rotated her foot. The fractured bone made a fearsome grating sound. Her macrocellular clusters cut the nerve impulses altogether.

Laura felt sick. But manic strength allowed her to cling on to the hatchway. Through watering eyes she looked back at Ibu, whose face was impassive. He was simply waiting for her to let go, so he could—

What?

Laura couldn’t understand any of this. Rojas had now subdued a frantic Joey, putting him in some kind of submission lock.

Ibu bent her ankle again. Laura knew she only had seconds before she lost her grip and was drawn back. Then Ayanna was back in the hatch, her telekinesis jabbing at Ibu’s face.

Now he grimaced, his own attention diverted, a counter telekinesis parrying her attack. But he didn’t let go of Laura.

Hanging on grimly to the hatch rim, Laura directed her telekinesis to her breast pocket. The Swiss army knife wriggled free, and she flicked the longest blade out. It rotated in mid-air to point at Ibu. Laura shoved it forwards with all the power she had.

The blade sliced down Ibu’s cheek and stabbed into the gap between his suit’s helmet ring and his neck. He froze. Ayanna gasped.

Laura’s ESP perceived the blade penetrate a good six or seven centimetres into his flesh just behind the clavicle bone. A dark blue liquid began to pour out along the side of his neck. For one confused moment, she thought her knife had cut through some kind of coolant tube in the suit. Then she finally acknowledged it was blood – or whatever the Ibu-copy used for circulatory fluid.

With a yell, she twisted the blade, pouring all her savagery and determination into the thought.

The Ibu-copy snarled as the knife turned, scraping against his clavicle. Laura jerked her ruined foot free of his grasp and tugged herself up through the hatch, with Ayanna helping heave her along. The pair of them tumbled into the silo compartment. Laura banged into one of the metal silo tubes, rebounded, and grabbed at the first handhold she could see, steadying herself. ‘Move!’ she bawled. And reached for another handhold.

Ayanna raced along the other side of the compartment, heading for the equipment lockers.

The Ibu-copy squirmed through the hatch, his collar still spitting out blue globules.

Laura was barely thinking. Survival instinct had cut in. She just had to get away. At the back of her gibbering mind was the notion of her and Ayanna barricading themselves inside the forward cabin. Nothing else mattered apart from getting some kind of secure reassuringly physical barrier between herself and the alien things.

She swept past the lockers and dived up the ladder to the service compartment, slapping the rungs as she went, adding speed and stability to her flight. For once she performed the manoeuvre with a decent amount of agility. Ayanna was right behind her.

A hysterical scream tore through the shuttle.

Laura turned in fright, and shock locked every muscle. Ayanna was halfway along the ladder. The Ibu-copy had caught up with her. One hand gripped her thigh, allowing him to bite her calf. Not some angry streetfight snapping of jaws. He had sunk his teeth in, penetrating the shipsuit fabric, and closed his jaw around the calf muscle. As Laura watched, his head wrenched back so he tore out a chunk of Ayanna’s flesh. He began chewing it.

Ayanna wailed in helpless dread. Blood was pumping fast out of her ragged wound, scarlet globules forming a sickly galaxy around her leg. The Ibu-thing lowered his head again and took another bite.

Laura threw up.

The Rojas-copy arrived at the ladder. He swarmed over Ayanna, opening his jaw wide. His strength tugged her arm away from the ladder, and forced her fingers into his mouth.

Ayanna’s screaming was deafening, blotting out the sound of her knuckles breaking as they were bitten through. Her mental voice was an incoherent yell of pain and utter horror. It was like an assault on Laura’s senses, battering her as violently as any physical blow. Yet still the survival instinct was strong enough to goad her into action. She grabbed her way along the service compartment floor and into the forward cabin, her own piteous wailing like a soprano whistle, tears wrecking her vision. Her hand thumped down on the hatch button. The malmetal closed.

ESP showed her a dozen conduits and power lines around the hatch. Her telekinesis reached out and clawed at every one of them, shredding the insulation and the conductors, ripping them apart. The lights went out. Alarms sounded as short circuits blew safety cutoffs. The background whining of several fans faded to silence. Red lights flared on the console.

Laura pushed herself away from the hatch. Ayanna’s screams had stopped before it was closed. Something hit the other side of the hatch. Another strike. Another and another. Then silence.

She curled up into a foetal ball and began sobbing.

*

It was a feeling that took a long time to register. Not a compulsion, but a sensation akin to recognizing a smell.

Laura blinked in confusion. It was her gaiamotes gently apprising her that someone was wanting to talk to her. Joey – that was the mental scent.

Very cautiously, Laura opened up the gaiamotes’ sensitivity.

‘Laura?’

‘Joey?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know if it’s really you. They . . . Oh, bollocks. This can’t be happening. They ate her, Joey. They ate her! And I left her behind.’ The shame was so overwhelming, she wanted to bodyloss – re-life herself free of all this. Vermillion would break out of the Void somehow, and everyone left behind would be re-lifed using memories in the starship’s secure store. Her life would go on without any memory of Shuttle Fourteen or the Forest. No knowledge of what Ayanna had endured.

‘It’s me, I swear it.’ The surge of emotion that slipped through the gaiafield connection from him was profound, and utterly sincere.

Laura started crying again. ‘Oh, Joey, Joey. What are they?’

‘I don’t know. Some kind of copies.’

‘Where are you? What happened?’

‘I’m still in the EVA hangar – look.’

When she closed her eyes and accepted his vision through the gaiafield, she saw the EVA hangar from an off-kilter angle. She/Joey was looking at it from the airlock end. The emergency blue lighting was on, and there was no sign of the alien human-copies.

‘They fastened me in place. But I did it, Laura. What I said – the same thing you did. While they were busy with Ayanna, I closed the hatch with telekinesis, then screwed up the power cables, shorted everything out. They can’t get to me.’

‘Can you move?’

A wash of stoic regret came through the connection. ‘No. My telekinesis isn’t strong enough to break the bond. It’s some kind of tough polymer wrapped round my wrists and ankles.’

‘Can you manipulate a tool? Cut through it?’

‘Laura, please. I’m not sure I’m that accurate. You have to get back here.’

An involuntary tremor ran the length of her body. She let out a pitiful squeak of fear. ‘No. No, I can’t.’

‘They will come for you. You know that. They will find tools. They will cut through the hatch.’

Just the thought of it made tears well up again. Without gravity, the liquid simply swelled up on her eyeballs, distorting her vision. ‘I left her, Joey,’ she confessed. ‘I just left her with them. I didn’t even try to help, I was too scared. How awful am I? She was all alone with them. And she died like that. She died alone, Joey, with those things eating her. Nothing could be worse than that. Nothing! Maybe I deserve them coming for me.’

‘Stop it. They’re strong – much stronger than us. You couldn’t have done anything. It would have happened to you, too.’

‘Have they . . . ? Did they . . . ? To you?’

‘No. I’m intact. I just can’t move, that’s all. Laura, you have to get down here. You won’t have much time.’

‘I can’t get through the hatch; I screwed it up pretty good. But even if I could get it open again, I wouldn’t ever get past them.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t even try to fight your way past them. You have to EVA.’

‘What?’

‘There are emergency suits in the forward cabin. Put one on and break the windscreen. I control the exopod airlock; my telekinesis can reach the control panel. I’ve already opened the outer hatch ready for you. I wouldn’t have suggested this otherwise. Check the network if you don’t believe me.’

It took a long time for Laura to make herself move. Her macrocellular clusters were still blocking the terrible pain from her ruined ankle. Exovision icons were flashing up constant warnings about tissue damage and internal bleeding, which she’d ignored along with everything else as she dropped into a dangerous denial state. She hauled herself along the couches to the curving console under the windscreen. There were several system schematics up and running. They confirmed it: the EVA hangar airlock’s outer door was open.

‘I see,’ Laura said.

‘Then come and collect me,’ Joey said. ‘We’ll fly the second exopod down to the planet and find Vermillion.’

Laura gave the windscreen a long look. The remaining hologram graphics blinking inside the glass were mostly warning symbols. ‘Joey, how the hell am I going to break the windscreen? It can withstand aerobrake entry into an atmosphere, and the shuttle is rated for gas giant work. The damn thing is tough – probably tougher than the rest of the fuselage.’

‘Yeah, but any chain is only as strong as the weakest link, remember? Take a look at how it’s fastened to the main structure.’

Laura took a breath and sent her ESP into the fuselage itself, examining the layers and material, the seal all around the super-strengthened glass. Her mind’s eye revealed the coloured shadows that were stacked against each other like strata in rock – the same as a crude hologram display, she thought. There didn’t seem to be many weak points. Her perception ranged wider, probing the rest of the forward cabin. ‘I’m not coming through the windscreen,’ she told him. ‘There’s an emergency rescue panel in the roof.’ She pushed off the console, and reached out for the rectangle above the second couch. When she squeezed a small recessed handle, it allowed her to pull it away. The metre-wide circle it exposed was covered in warnings about having equal pressure before triggering. ‘There’s a lot of safety locks,’ she reported.

‘Bureaucrats should never be allowed anywhere near aerospace design teams.’

‘True.’

‘Now put your suit on.’

‘Joey, this is a bit—’

Something started buzzing intermittently against the hatch to the service compartment. Softly at first, the way a bee knocks against glass. But then the frequency began to rise and became continuous.

‘A bit what?’

‘Nothing.’

She tugged one of the emergency pressure suits from its overhead wallet. There was a moment of hesitation as she bent her knee, ready to push her foot into the baggy clump of silver-white fabric. Her ankle had swollen dramatically. The small gap between the hem of the shipsuit trouser leg and her shoe exposed skin that was a nasty purple red. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to get the shoe off. The sight of it made her nauseous again – not that there was anything left to throw up. For a moment her nerve block seemed to fail, that or she imagined the pain. It practically overwhelmed her.

Nothing, she told herself with miserable fury. You’re feeling nothing compared to Ayanna. She forced her numb leg into the spacesuit, then pushed her arms into the sleeves. Her u-shadow managed an interface with the spacesuit processor, and the fabric contracted around her.

The intense buzzing from the hatch rose towards ultrasonic. A blue-white point appeared along the edge of the hatch, shining like an arc spot.

Laura grabbed the helmet and jabbed it onto the thick metal collar. It sealed immediately, and dry air hissed in, cutting off most of the buzzing sound. Molten droplets were spraying out from the hatch. They glowed like embers as they swarmed along the central aisle. She pulled down the quick-release lever on the overhead rescue panel. Alarms sounded, and the rim of the hatch turned scarlet. Two safety latches clicked out from the lever, warning her of a one-atmosphere pressure difference. She flicked them back with her thumb, and the alarm grew even louder.