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.’