They’d spent a couple of months scanning in all the research papers Coulan had sent them from the Varlan university library, where he’d established himself as just another unobtrusive student. For a century after the Vermillion landed, the scientists who’d been on board had studied the eggs, discovering very little as their equipment slowly failed around them. They didn’t understand the method of absorption/duplication, suspecting a mechanism whose principles were similar to human biononic organelles – but the Faller system worked while the human one failed miserably in the Void. They’d also been unable to establish communication with the controlling intelligence residing in the egg.

‘So it’s a homogenized distribution,’ Nigel said. ‘Interesting. That suggests an artificial construct to me.’

‘You mean the Fallers were made by someone?’ Kysandra asked.

‘Yes. But I’m more interested in why. I’m thinking some kind of weapon.’

‘Against who?’ Demitri challenged.

‘Any biological species. Think: Primes.’

‘Who are Primes?’ Kysandra asked.

‘Aliens who nearly wiped us out,’ Nigel replied. ‘We got lucky and defeated them. But it was a sharp lesson that not every sentient species in the galaxy shares our moral viewpoint.’

She glanced back at the ominous dark sphere, determined to try and lose her fear. The cage wasn’t there to keep the egg confined, that was ludicrous; the bars were to prevent anyone who succumbed to the lure from being eggsumed. ‘Does anything like the Fallers exist outside the Void?’

‘We haven’t come across them,’ Demitri said. ‘Yet. It’s a big galaxy.’

‘I wonder,’ Nigel mused. ‘If we prevented the egg from eggsuming for long enough, would it revert and form the species it was developed from?’

‘Nothing in the institute papers mentioned that,’ Demitri said. ‘I’m hoping my fusion will provide all the information we need.’

Kysandra shuddered. She’d always thought this plan to be insane, but Nigel insisted it was necessary. They had to understand the Fallers in order to work out what was happening up at the Forest. Only then could they start planning how to defeat them.

‘Fergus,’ Nigel ’pathed, ‘let’s get out of here fast before Lieutenant Slvasta figures it out and comes charging after us.’

As she climbed up out of the hold, Kysandra could hear the steam engine picking up speed. It had been modified to Nigel’s more efficient design during the refit, giving the Mellanie a surprising turn of speed. One of a great many preparations they’d been making.

In the long months since they’d returned from the Desert of Bone, Skylady’s sensors had been searching the sky above Bienvenido for Falling eggs. The resolution was nothing like it would have been in the real universe outside, and the radar often glitched, but nonetheless, even with the interruptions and degraded results, they’d spotted nearly a dozen Falls long before the Watcher Guild’s whitescreen telescopes. Nigel wanted the advance warning so the team could be in and out of the landing zone before the regiments even began their sweep. What they needed was a Fall in an area with an accessible river nearby; close enough to Adeone that they could reach it before the regiment arrived, yet not so close that people would recognize them.

The Fall south of Adice was the best chance they’d been offered in six weeks. As soon as the Skylady detected the eggs leaving the Forest and plotted their trajectory, they rode hard for Adeone and took the three barges out, powering along quickly until they reached the Colbal, then turned upstream. Now the Mellanie was retracing that route, but at a more sedate pace than the one used on the outbound leg. The last thing Nigel wanted was to attract attention. However, there were enough logs in the aft hold to keep the engine going for the whole time until they returned to Adeone; there were to be no stops en route.

They took three days of continuous sailing to reach Adeone. The Mellanie anchored three miles downstream for the afternoon, while the other two barges docked. Marek and Ma’s boys got everything ready for the Mellanie’s arrival.

When they did finally tie up at the town’s docks just after midnight, the whole riverside area was deserted apart from Nigel’s people. Three ge-eagles sculpted by Skylady flew high overhead, checking that nobody was venturing close, innocently or otherwise.

Nigel stood on the jetty, supervising the extraction operation. They didn’t bother with a crane. Their combined teekay lifted the eggs (in their cages) out of the hold and onto a pair of custom-built carts. The cages were locked in place and quickly covered with a canvas sheet. The ANAdroids maintained their competent fuzz as they drove the carts carefully along Adeone’s empty streets, escorted by the rest of the group on terrestrial horses.

Barn Seven had been built to hold the eggs. The outside walls were ordinary planks, but then behind that was a further wall of metre-thick cob, followed by an inner brick wall. The roof was held in place by a series of large anbor beams which held up sheets of beaten tin, followed by a half metre of soil, capped by ordinary shingle tiles. To any observer, the structure was no different to the other farm buildings in the compound, and if they followed that up with a quick ex-sight scan, their perception would never get through the solid walls. The inside had been divided into a pair of large pits, with broad metal basin floors, ready to catch any of the yolk fluid if/when the eggs were broken open.

At four o’clock in the morning Kysandra stood on the rim between the two, yawning heavily as she watched the eggs being lowered into place. Bright electric lights shone down, illuminating them in a stark monochrome which only served to emphasize how disturbing they were. The electric cables run into Barn Seven from Skylady also powered a variety of sensors. The ANAdroids set to work fixing them to the eggs. Kysandra yawned again.

‘Go to bed,’ Nigel said. ‘Don’t worry; this part is going to take a couple of days. We don’t get to the next stage until after we’ve learned everything we can from passive scans.’

She nodded agreement and went back to the farmhouse.

The results were pretty much as anticipated and added little to their database. Biononic infiltration filaments were unable to permeate the shell, probably due to their instability in the Void environment. Equally, though, a detailed nuclear analysis determined that the shell wasn’t organic. There was no cell structure, and the molecular bonds were too complex. It was an artificial construct.

Laura Brandt’s doomed science team was right; they were manufactured in the Forest trees.

Two days after the eggs arrived, Kysandra was back on the rim of the pit, along with Nigel and Fergus, looking down fearfully as Demitri walked across the metal floor towards the cage. He was naked, the harsh light giving his pale skin a bright sheen.

‘Do you really need to do this?’ she asked.

Demitri paused at the cage door, and turned round to look at her. ‘I’m not human. Please try and remember that. My eggsumption and conversion will provide a great deal of information.’

‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly.

‘You don’t have to watch,’ Nigel said.

Kysandra didn’t even bother answering that. But she did let the scorn escape her shell.

Demitri smiled as he put the key into the Ysdom lock and opened the door. Kysandra took a deep breath as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Nigel’s teekay turned the key, then the little brass cylinder was flashing through the air to land in Nigel’s hand.

‘Recording,’ Fergus said. ‘Sensors are at eighty per cent efficiency. That’s not too bad.’ The egg had thirty-five sensor pads stuck to it, their thin cables snaking away across the metal basin to three management modules. More sensors were clipped to the cage bars, focused on the shell.