The Abyss Beyond Dreams (7 page)

‘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 could 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.’

Ibu was gliding slowly along the top of the ridge which the drone flock had scanned. The data feed from his suit was undergoing micro-second dropouts, making the vision flicker every few
seconds.

‘Going inside,’ he said.

The little jets of gas puffed again. Then the crystalline wall was sliding past his helmet. He held his course level, staying a constant fifteen metres away from the side of the vast fold that
opened into the tree. His entire silver-white oversuit shone with the weird radiance that slithered through the crystalline structure. Laura was aware her heart rate was increasing, and she
wondered if it was some kind of telepathic feedback from Ibu.

‘You’re approaching the zone I designated,’ she told him, reading the inertial coordinates from an exovision icon.

‘Yeah. Noticed that.’

Laura grinned. ‘I also have some eggs I’d like to show your grandmother how to use.’

‘I’m sure she’d welcome it.’

Ibu halted close to the bottom of the ride. Fifty metres away, the crystal curved sharply to form the base of a narrow valley. The other wall of the ridge was only seventy metres behind him.
‘Beginning phase one,’ he announced.

Laura’s relayed vision wobbled as he reached down and removed a deep-scan package from his fat utility belt. It was a simple green circle the size of his gauntleted hand.

She gripped the cushioned edge of the couch as Ibu triggered his harness and slowly glided forwards. She could see his arms stretched out ahead. The actual surface of the crystal was hard to
make out in the odd shifting light glowing within.

His fingertips touched, and he rebounded slightly. Then the gas jets were puffing, holding him in place.

Laura let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

‘It’s practically frictionless,’ Ibu reported. ‘My suit’s stkpads aren’t holding.’

‘That’ll be the increased valancy,’ Laura told him. ‘That crystal is going to have fewer surface irregularities than ordinary matter.’

‘Okay. Applying the package now. See if that attaches.’

Laura wasn’t sure what kind of adhesive was on the deep-scan package, but when Ibu pressed it to the surface and applied a short burst from the harness jets to push it down, the glue
seemed to work.

‘Tactile contact confirmed,’ Ibu said. ‘Telemetry good. Moving to second location.’

‘Well done,’ Ayanna told him.

‘We have a problem,’ Joey’s telepathic voice claimed.

Laura blinked her eyes open, banishing Ibu’s visual feed to a small ancillary icon in her exovision. She looked round the forward cabin, but everything seemed to be okay.
‘What’s wrong?’

Joey’s eyes stared at her from his twisted-up immobile face. ‘I’ve been using the shuttle’s optronic sensors to try and find
Vermillion
. I can’t.
It’s vanished.’

‘What?’ Ayanna snapped, and there was no shielding strong enough to guard against the flash of alarm in her thoughts.

‘I can’t find it,’ Joey said. ‘Look, there’s something seriously wrong about losing contact with the drones and
Vermillion
just because of dopplering. It
doesn’t matter how much the link frequency shifts, we should still be able to pick up the signal.’

Ayanna’s expression was edgy. ‘Yeah. I know.’

‘Okay. So. It bothered me – a lot. I started reviewing visual data. The
Vermillion
is thirteen hundred metres long, for fuck’s sake. You should be able to see it with
the naked eye from this distance. The kind of optronics Fourteen is carrying are capable of reading the damn serial number. We know the orbital track, we know where to focus the search. I’ve
run the basic scan five times now. There’s nothing orbiting that world. Not
Vermillion
. Not
Viscount
and not
Verdant
. None of them is in orbit any more.’

‘That can’t—’ Laura started. ‘Oh, bollocks. They couldn’t all crash.’ She gave Ayanna a desperate look. ‘Could they?’

‘They were in a thousand-kilometre orbit,’ Ayanna said. ‘We confirmed that before we entered the Forest’s temporal shift zone. I cannot imagine what kind of power could
pull them out of orbit.’