Matt’s voice broke in: “Hutch, get clear.” He sounded frantic. “Do it now. Get out of there.”

Had Antonio not been harnessed in, he’d have jumped out of his seat. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Don’t know,” said Hutch. She nevertheless pulled back on the yoke. “Matt, do you see something?”

They’d been caught at a bad time. The ship was reversed, traveling backward, gradually braking. If she hit the mains, it would only slow them down more. She rotated the ship again, to get it pointed away from the wall. While they waited to complete the maneuver, Antonio hanging on to the arms of his chair, Matt’s response came in: “Up ahead. It’s watching you.” His voice was shrill.

“What’s watching me, Matt? What are you talking about?”

“The cloud.”

“Matt—?”

“For God’s sake, Hutch. The cloud is. Look at it.”

ANTONIO’S NOTES

When I heard Matt’s voice, heard how he sounded, telling us to clear out, I got pretty scared. I’d been hoping all along that the hunt for the omega factory would be fruitless, although I’d never have admitted that to anybody. I don’t think it had anything to do with my being a coward, per se. That place, where the sky crowded in, where everything was filled with lightning, was really scary. All I really wanted was to declare there was nothing there and go home.

—Wednesday, March 12

chapter 35

IT WAS LIKE being in a dark house and having something jump out of a closet. Hutch fought down the impulse to hit the main engines but continued waiting while the ship rotated away from the cloud. It seemed a painfully slow process. “Do you see anything, Antonio?”

Antonio looked as if he would have been hiding under his seat had he not been belted in. “Nothing. Just the wall.”

“Phyl?”

“Nothing, Hutch.”

It was an illusion. Matt’s imagination. Had to be.

Finally, she got clearance. She told herself not to panic, warned Antonio, and started to accelerate.

He yelped as they pulled away.

“I can’t see it now,” said Matt. “We’ve lost it.”

“What was it, Matt?”

“Priscilla, I know how this sounds. But it was an eye.”

“An eye? Matt, how could you have seen an eye from out there?” Her heart was pounding. Been away from this too long.

“Because it was big.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’re clearing.” She continued the turn, maintained thrust, and favored Antonio with a smile meant to be reassuring but which seemed only to alarm him more.

“You think he really saw something?”

“Get the right lighting here,” she said, “and you probably get a half dozen faces in the cloud.” She switched back to the McAdams. “Anything more, Matt?”

“No, Hutch. But I don’t think we were seeing things. Jon saw it, too.”

“Okay.”

“It was real.”

“Okay.”

Phyl cut in: “There,” she said. “That might be what they saw.”

A dark circle within the cloud. No. More ovoid than circular. With a black patch in the center.

Beside her, Antonio shifted, tried to get comfortable.

The picture was at maximum mag. Whatever the thing was, had they continued on their original course, they’d have passed directly in front of it. “Can you give us better definition, Phyl?”

The AI tried to adjust. Not much of an improvement. “We see it,” she told Matt.

“Yeah. We got it back, too.”

“It’s just the light,” she said.

“Maybe.”

It did look like an eye.

Pensive. Emotionless. Looking at her.

“How big is it, Phyl?”

“Ninety meters by seventy-four. Error range of five percent.” Phyl put up a map and located the position of the object.

Deep in the cloud, she saw lightning.

Hutch eased back on acceleration, gave it another minute or two, and cut forward thrust altogether. They were, of course, still racing away from the wall. When she was two thousand kilometers out, she angled to starboard and began running parallel to it again. “Phyl, are you reading any change in energy levels?”

“Negative,” she said.

“Very good. If there’s any shift, anything at all, up or down, I want to know about it. Right away.”

“Yes, Hutch.”

“You’re worried about lightning?” said Antonio, who obviously was.

“I’m cautious, Antonio.” She had no interest in trying to outrun a lightning bolt. “Phyl—”

“I’m listening.”

“Make sure we keep the Locarno charged at all times for an instant departure. Okay?”

“Hutch, that will be a severe drain on our fuel.”

“Do it anyhow. Until I tell you to stop. Matt, are you listening?”

“I’m here, Hutch.”

“I need to talk to Jon.”

Phyl was giving them a close-up of the disk. The eye. Whatever. “That is an eye,” said Antonio. “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

Jon’s voice was usually a deep baritone, but at the moment it sounded a shade or two higher: “Hello, Hutch. What can I do for you?”

“What do you think about the eye?”

“Don’t know. I don’t think there’s any question there’s something alive in there.”

“Okay. Give me best guess: What is it?”

“How the hell would I know? It’s probably some sort of plasma creature. But it could be anything. I’d say we keep our distance.”

“You think it’s intelligent?”

“Not if it’s living out here.”

“Seriously, Jon.”

“No way to know. Look, Hutch, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing. My field is propulsion systems.”

“Nobody knows anything, Jon. I’m asking about your instincts.”

“Okay. I’m not convinced yet it isn’t an illusion.”

“It doesn’t look like an illusion.”

“Illusions never do. But if it’s really there, and it’s surviving out here, I’d say we don’t want to mess with it.”

“It, ah, isn’t possible the whole cloud could be alive, is it?”

“You mean a single living organism?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too big. If something happens at one end, it would take hours to get a message to the central nervous system. Help, I’m on fire.”

“Would it have to have a central nervous system? Maybe it’s dispersed in some way.”

“If we’re assuming this is what put together the omegas, then we’re talking intelligence. I don’t see how you could have that without a brain. One brain, centrally located. But what the hell do I know? Maybe it’s some sort of hive. Individual animals cooperating the way, say, ants do. But I’m damned if I can see how anything could live in there. Especially with all this radiation.”

“So we can assume they’re in the cloud.”

“I think so.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I’d say the smart thing now would be to assume this is the source of the omegas. And go home. We have what we came for. Let somebody else come and sort out the details.”

“He’s right,” said Antonio. “Phyl, we’ve got that thing’s pictures on the record, right?”

“Yes, Antonio.”

“What a story that’s going to make.”

No question. An eye twenty stories high. “Matt,” she said, “you had a wider angle on it than we did. Could you see anything else in there? Any indication of a shape, possibly?”

“Like maybe tentacles?” Antonio was trying to lighten the mood.

Matt relayed the McAdams record to her and Phyl put it on-screen. Nothing else of note was visible. Just the eye.