But in the end it came down to convenience. Though it would not be easy for Mika to repair this woman's fractured skull and the consequent thrombosis, it was by no means impossible. If Mika was perfectly honest with herself, the only reason she had been avoiding the chore was so she could spend more time studying the human/calloraptor hybrid Cormac had killed. However, this choice was unfair on the boy Apis as, though he might seem rather advanced for a teenager, he'd had some hideous experiences and was now amongst strangers. He needed his mother.

Plugging the optic cable of her laptop into the woman's coffin, Mika waited impatiently for the status list to come up on the screen. After a moment, she looked about herself to make sure she had not overlooked the presence of anyone, then began to speak out loud.

"Who are you?" she asked. "What is that? Why is this? How do you do that?" It was so easy for normal Polity citizens to ask direct questions, yet for Life-Coven graduates it seemed so difficult and unnatural. The ideal was that you used all the resources at your disposal to discover answers — including your own reasoning abilities — and that to have to ask a question was a kind of defeat. In cases where there were no other options available the Life-Coven taught that you should then feel free to ask, which was all very well if the concept of not asking had not been as deeply inculcated from birth as potty training. In this respect Mika was discovering just how wrong her early training had been, so was attempting to retrain herself.

"Where is this item? Do you have this ability? Are you…?" She trailed off, realizing that the status list was taking an awful long time to come up on her screen. Quickly she started the laptop's self-diagnostic program, and immediately got a response that assured her there was nothing wrong with the device. Now she sent a search engine through the console's memory space to try to find the optic connection. Briefly there came a flash of some very odd code across the screen, then the words 'Nil Return Signal'. Frowning, Mika rested the device on top of the cold-coffin and headed down the aisle to the instrument wall. Here the same strange code was scrolling across all of four different screens. She tried the touch-controls and the code disappeared, but beyond that there was no response.

Running back to the cold-coffin, Mika felt a horrible sinking sensation. Problems with cold-sleep coffins? They did not have problems — it was unheard of. Grabbing up her laptop she quickly detached it, fed its own optic cable back into it, and laid it on the cold-coffin behind her. Now she tried the touch-plate lock on the lid of the coffin: nil response. Nothing else for it but to use the manual lever — no matter how many alarms this caused to go off. She gripped the cold metal and drew it back towards her, and with a thunk the lock disengaged and the coffin lid sighed open. Gazing at the Outlinker woman, Mika immediately knew something was terribly wrong: the woman's skin had been light lavender when Mika had transferred her from the landing craft, but now it was dark. It was always the case that people in cold-sleep looked colourless, pallid, simply because the blood had been withdrawn from them and replaced by clear fluid. This woman should be bloodless and she was not. Mika placed her hands on the woman's chest. Nothing. With sudden fierce strength, she got hold of her and pulled her onto her side. Stiff with rigor mortis. Her underside was also deep purple where the blood had pooled in the lower portions of the corpse — for this was what she was now dealing with: a corpse. Mika let the woman drop back into place in her aptly named box.

"AI… Occam, this is Asselis Mika reporting a malfunction in Cold-sleep Room One." After no response from the intercom set into the control wall, she rushed out into the corridor and tried the intercom there.

"There is no malfunction in Cold-sleep Room One," one of the AI's subminds informed her.

"The Outlinker woman who we recently placed in a coffin there is dead," Mika replied, trying to keep her voice from getting shrill.

"System function return is optimal. There is no problem in Cold-sleep Room One," repeated the sub-mind in a somewhat annoyed tone. Clearly, even though only a submind, it did not like having to point out the obvious to idiots.

"I suggest you send a drone here as fast as you damned well can, because I don't think that rigor mortis and postmortem lividity are particularly healthy symptoms even for someone in cold-sleep! Also, I'm standing out in the corridor at the moment since the com in there does not work either."

"System function return for com is optimal. There is no problem with the com in Cold-sleep Room One. Asselis Mika, do you require medical assistance?"

"I want a direct link with Tomalon or Occam itself," she demanded.

"You have a problem," immediately stated the voice of Tomalon. "Occam is gearing for a full diagnostic check and I have sent Aiden and Cento to assist you."

"Good," said Mika. "I must go back in now to check the other coffins."

"If you do," said the Captain, "do not use your console, as it may be infected."

"You suspect a computer virus," Mika stated.

"Virus or worm, whatever. There are too many safety backups in the cold-sleep control system for it to be anything other than deliberate subversion of programs."

"Murder," muttered Mika, heading back into the room and instantly thinking, like so many of those who have sought to do the best for a patient and failed: How do I tell her son? And there was no one who could answer that question for her, dared she even to ask it.

Every com-unit howled, whether it was mounted on a wall, integrated in a wristcom, or part of the device built inside a Golem's head. Cormac exited his room and broke into a run. Halfway down the corridor he felt something lurch through his body as he passed over a fluxing grav-plate. He immediately halted and stepped over to a nearby handle affixed to the wall and gripped it for support.

"Tomalon? Occam?"

From his wristcom issued a sound that could have been interference but sounded more like a steady keening.

"Aiden? Cento?"

"Online," came the twinned reply.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"All the people in Cold-sleep Room One are dead," replied Aiden flatly.

"Oh God, no…" Tomalon intruded, his voice fading into then out of audibility. Nothing useful there.

"Aiden, get yourself and Mika back up to Medical. I advise you to use the shaft ladders, as the drop-shafts may not be functioning correctly. Do we know who else hasn't gone into cold-sleep yet?"

"There is no one else," replied the Golem.

"Okay." Cormac paused, not wanting to examine too closely what that might mean. "Is Gant still in the Security Area?" he finished.

"He is."

"And still no response from there?"

"None."

"Right, that seems one likely source of our problem. Cento, I want you to join me there."

"Will do," replied Cento. Then, "There is another probable source."

"Yes," replied Cormac, thinking about the millions of tonnes of alien attached to the outside of the ship. "But would Dragon attack like this from such a vulnerable position? It knows that the Occam could turn it to space-borne ash in a few seconds, and anyway every system on that side of the ship is isolated." He believed this was nothing to do with the alien — so it was something else.

"Tomalon?" Cormac asked again.

Again that keening sound, then eventually Tomalon spoke. "They're all dead," he said dully.

"We know that," spat Cormac. "Let's now find out why and prevent any more deaths."

"They are all dead," Tomalon groaned.

"What precisely do you mean?" asked Cormac, suddenly all cold function.