‘
Cheney, it’s Merrit – can you hear me?
’ ‘I hear you, Merrit.’ My lips felt numb.
‘. . .
RARs . . .
’ ‘What?’
‘
They’re malfunctioning!
’ Suddenly, her voice was as clear as a bell. She was sobbing, and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest in fright.
‘Merrit?
Merrit?
’ ‘. . .
Dad saw them! Spraying the struts with acid – tell
Tuddorvzshmmm . . .
’ ‘What? Merrit?’
‘
. . . hydrochloric acid
. . .’
The link went dead.
‘Merrit? Merrit!’ I tapped my collar. ‘Merrit 705 linkup!
Hello?’
But there was nothing.
‘Hydrochloric acid?’ echoed Mum, who had heard every word. We stared at each other. We both swallowed.
‘This diagnostic’s stalled, Arkwright!’ Lais wailed. ‘The whole display’s a mess. I can’t . . . it’s all distorted! The plasma’s clouding up!’
Arkwright headed straight for one of the junction ports. I knew about them, thanks to his careful training: they were behind an access panel in the bulkhead. When he slapped at the pressure catch, however, the panel didn’t behave as expected. Instead of sliding back, it flinched open, like the door. It flinched open like a heart-valve I once saw on our mimexic tour of the human body.
The human body?
I looked around as Arkwright plucked a photovoltaic tool from somewhere beneath his pressure suit. The entire compartment was now a different colour – no longer white, but a strange mixture of slippery pinks, waxy yellows, and livid purples. There were puddles of gloop everywhere. You could vaguely see the dark, stringy shapes of wires and cables through some patches of console, which had lost much of their density, becoming glutinous and transparent. The ribbing of the seams was much less defined. The samplers . . .
The samplers seemed to be throbbing.
‘Aagh!’
It was Arkwright. He had opened one of the electrical sub-conduits, only to be splashed by a spray of fluid. His laser pen clattered to the floor. Grey-faced, he staggered back, while the strange, yellowish liquid continued to spurt out of the junction port. It was dripping from his hand; he had apparently removed his glove assembly.
‘I – I had to get through the insulation . . .’ he croaked.
‘Put that under water!
Now!
’ Mum cried sharply. She sprang from my side, and retrieved Sadira’s Medkit. ‘Is it hurting, Arkwright? Is it burning?’
‘No . . .’ He was already stumbling towards the food dispenser. Mum went after him. Dad was staring at the leak, open-mouthed. We all were.
‘We – we have to patch it,’ Conal stammered.
‘Quenby! You got a patch there?’ Dad exclaimed, and tried once again to contact Sibber. ‘Sibber 24 linkup.
Sibber
24 linkup!
Hell and damnation –
Gower 208 linkup!
’ Mum threw a packet of regeneration patches at Conal, who dropped them, picked them up again, and flew towards the junction port. ‘Keep your gloves on!’ Mum cried. I saw other people muttering into their voice patches, trying to make some kind of connection with other parts of the ship. They were edging towards each other, away from the dribbling bulkheads. Some were pulling on their headpieces. Above them . . .
Something moved.
I only just caught it – a flicker that tugged at the corner of my eye. Whipping around, I peered up, fearfully scanning a stretch of slimy ceiling. The seam-ribs bulged palely through a layer of fibrous membrane. Something large and dark and indistinct lurked behind it. (An air duct, perhaps?) There was nothing else to see except the samplers. These small, round objects – part of the filtration system – had been stuck at carefully calculated intervals all over the various surfaces of Plexus. They were designed to analyse the air quality, and feed their results back to CAIP via microwaves.
They weren’t supposed to look like armless jellyfish.
Nor were they supposed to be . . .
‘
Moving!
’ screamed Lais. ‘They’re
moving
!’
The samplers were moving. They were creeping across the ceiling and bulkheads like animated blobs of pink ice cream.
‘Yeah,’ said a voice. ‘The samplers are crawling around.
Didn’t you know?’
It was Dygall. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I think Dad, for one, almost had a heart attack.
‘Dygall!’ he exclaimed, doing an abrupt, one hundred and eighty degree turn. ‘Zennor!’
Dygall and Zennor had got onto the Bridge – I don’t know how. Unless Zennor (who was, after all, a Senate member) had First Level clearance. He stood just behind his son, dragging his fingers nervously through his neatly clipped beard, his dark eyes bloodshot and anxious.
‘What – what are you doing here?’ Dad demanded.
‘I’m sorry, Tuddor, but I couldn’t exactly restrain him.’ Zennor had a beautiful voice, mellow and smooth. Even at that moment, when he was obviously a nervous wreck, I found him soothing to listen to. ‘It’s against the code of ethics -’
‘This is
red alert
, Zennor!’ Dad boomed. ‘You have an emergency station, and so does he! Where’s Darice?’
‘Um . . . she’s back in Sustainable Services . . .’
‘Where
you
should be! Both of you!’
‘What’s happening in Sustainable Services?’ Arkwright wanted to know. Mum was dabbing his left hand dry. ‘Is it anything like this?’ He waved his right hand at the drooling bulkheads, the spongy floor, the discoloured ceiling.
‘Probably,’ Dygall replied. ‘It was better than this when we left, but that was a while ago.’
‘We got out of our OTV,’ Zennor explained breathlessly.
He was still fiddling with his beard. ‘We didn’t like the look of it.’
That
made everyone pay attention. ‘Why?’ asked Dad.
Dygall and Zennor exchanged glances. ‘It was . . . gooey,’ Dygall said at last.
‘It was running off the rails,’ Zennor added. ‘I’m sorry, Tuddor. I know we shouldn’t be here -’ He yelped then, and ducked. We all did. A sampler had whizzed over our heads.
It had flown from one side of the Bridge to the other.
‘Oh!’ Lais squeaked, and sat down abruptly. She sprang up again at the touch of the sticky, elastic chair, with its strange, swollen, pulpy purple cushion. ‘Oh my God,’ she whimpered, and Haido put an arm around her.
‘This is bad,’ someone murmured. ‘This is so bad.’
There was a brief pause. Finally Haido said, in an unsteady voice, ‘The patch is holding. We’ve plugged that leak.’
‘Okay.’ Dad placed a hand on each temple. ‘Okay, let’s think. Now, Zennor and Dygall got through. That means we can still communicate.’
‘Reconnaissance parties,’ said Conal.
‘Yes,’ Dad agreed. ‘It’s vital we keep in contact with Ottilie. Absolutely vital. She’s the only one who can give us an answer.’
‘I’ll go!’ said Haido.
‘Me too,’ said the balding Navvy beside her.
‘Not me.’ Arkwright was heading for the junction port again, as Mum ordered him to put on his gloves. ‘I’ve got to get into CAIP, somehow. Without CAIP, we’re finished.’
‘All right, you do that.’ Dad then pointed at the bald man. ‘Dane, you get to BioLab, see what you can find out, report back here. Like a runner. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘
Don’t
take the OTVs. Ilaria, you and Feng go to MedLab. Same deal. Zennor -’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said Dygall flatly. For some reason, he crossed the floor to where I was standing. ‘We’re staying right here,’ he declared, folding his arms. His sweaty scalp gleamed through his ginger fuzz.
‘Dygall -’
‘Darice will be waiting, son,’ Zennor remarked. Though his tone was pleasant – reassuring – he was actually wringing his hands. ‘She’ll be waiting for us.’
‘No, she won’t,’ Dygall retorted. ‘She’ll be trying to fix that busted dispenser.’
‘Dygall!’ Dad barked. He pointed at the door. ‘Get back to Sustainable Services!’
‘Make me,’ Dygall growled.
Dad took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Haido stepped forward. ‘I’ll go,’ she declared.
‘And I’ll go to TFP,’ someone else offered, heading for the door. All at once, there was movement – a general surge. I couldn’t help wondering if some of these people wanted to join their wives and husbands and partners.
Before it was too late.
Dad cried, across the milling heads, ‘TFP’s important, okay? TFP might have come up with an alternative comm-link!’ That was when I remembered, and touched Dad’s arm.
‘TFP’s in trouble, Dad,’ I told him. He glanced down at me.
‘What?’
‘Merrit called. TFP’s in trouble.’ I swallowed. ‘She said the Remote Access Repair Units were spraying the struts with hydrochloric acid.’
‘
What?
’ ‘You mean – like the stuff in our stomachs?’ asked Dygall, who had been listening. And Mum, who had also been listening, said, ‘No. I mean, yes – there
is
hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. But if you’re talking about struts, you know what that sounds like?’ Her face was suddenly alert, her eyes as bright and sharp as an X-ray scalpel. ‘That sounds like osteoclasts. That sounds like bone-destroying cells -’
‘Wait,’ said Dad. His scouts were leaving, and he wanted a last word. Chasing them to the door, he barked, ‘Check the germinators! All the rats and the guinea pigs! Tell Ottilie to monitor them – if there’s anything toxic around, they’re bound to react!’
Dane raised a hand in acknowledgement, before disappearing. Almost at the same instant, the door panels uncurled, meeting in front of Dad’s face. When the two sides joined, they made a distinct slapping sound. Like wet flesh on wet flesh.
It turned my stomach.
‘Now,’ said Dad, shifting his attention back to my mum, ‘what was that about bone?’
There were eight of us left on the Bridge: Dad, Mum, Arkwright, Dygall, Zennor, myself, Lais, and Conal. We all clustered around Mum, desperate for an explanation – except for Arkwright. Arkwright was absorbed in the junction port.
‘Osteoclasts destroy damaged bone with hydrochloric acid,’ Mum announced. ‘Then the osteoblasts lay down more collagen and calcium, and repair the damage.’
‘And?’ Dad looked lost. His brow furrowed. ‘How does that relate to anything?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just . . .’ Mum waved her hands. ‘Well, look at all this!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s organic! There’s fluid in the cable conduits! There’s cartilage in the walls! What does this suggest to you, Tuddor?’
‘I – I -’
‘This is
organic life
! This isn’t bacteria eating the hull, this is something else. This is a
transformation
.’
‘But it can’t be,’ Lais gasped. ‘How can it?’
‘Obviously, I don’t know.’
‘Wait a minute. Let me get this straight.’ Even Arkwright was listening. He stood frozen by the junction port, one hand poised over the opening. His great, bulging eyes were fixed on Mum. ‘Are you saying that we’re not dealing with technology any more?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There are microbes in the hull,‘ Dad observed. ‘There’s DNA in the circuitry. There always was.’
‘Yes, but did it ever bleed before?’ Mum asked.
‘What about the lights?’ This was Conal. His gravelly voice sounded reassuringly calm. ‘The lights are still working.’
‘I don’t know about the lights.’ Mum glanced up, saw a sampler squirming across a light panel, and flinched. ‘The lights . . . I don’t know.’
It occurred to me that some bacteria produced light. I had learned about it at school – or was it during my stint in Sustainable Services?
You don’t need technology to produce light.
‘So we’ve got capacitors in CAIP that might have turned into synapses,’ said Arkwright grimly. ‘Electrical impulses that might have become chemical ones. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mum spread her hands. ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Well, that’s going to make things difficult,’ said Arkwright. He turned his head slowly, to study the exposed workings of the Bridge. Already, to my eyes, they looked less like wiring and more like guts. ‘That’s going to make things
very
awkward.’
‘Look – let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Dad declared. ‘We can’t formulate any sort of deduction without solid, verifiable data. We need Ottilie’s input. Ow!’ Another sampler skimmed the top of his head, on its way from wall to ceiling. Everyone ducked automatically. We put our hands on our own heads, to shield ourselves.
‘Then maybe we should
all
go to BioLab,’ Mum suggested. ‘If that’s where the solution is.’
Dad glanced at Arkwright, who sucked in his cheeks. Before Dad could speak, however, someone else did. From behind the door.
‘Hello?’ said a muffled voice. ‘
Hello?
Can someone let me in, please?’
I must have squeaked, or jumped, because Mum stared at me. ‘Yestin!’ I gasped. ‘It’s Yestin!’ When Conal crossed the pressure pad, nothing much happened. The door panels, which were looking more and more like slabs of muscle, twitched and stretched, but snapped together again instantly.
Then Conal stamped
hard
on the pressure pad, and the panels shrank back once more. Because he stayed where he was, they even remained open. The hole, however, wasn’t very big.
Fortunately, it was big enough for Yestin. He began to scramble through it.
‘Here.’ Dad darted forward, tripped, then recovered and flung himself against one of the panels. Slowly it yielded to the pressure of his weight, and the hole widened.
I did the same with the other panel. It felt disgusting, even through my glove assembly – taut, slick and rubbery. As I thrust against it, something small and compact leapt past me into the room.
‘Bam!’ cried Yestin. ‘Heel!’
‘Hell on earth!’ Conal exclaimed.
‘What’s
that
?’ yelped Dygall.
‘Sorry. He’s – I’m sorry.’ Yestin was now through the hole. His legs looked skinny even though he wore pants
and
a pressure suit; you couldn’t, however, see his overdeveloped knees. He had the same bleached, fragile appearance as a bean plant that I once grew for an experiment, in low levels of electromagnetic radiation. His hair was almost white. ‘It’s Bam. He’s a bit frisky.’