‘Yes,’ Joey agreed.

As one, they looked through the windscreen at the massive bulk of glowing crystal.

‘So how do we get it to let them go?’ Laura asked.

‘First, we need to work out why it wants them,’ Joey said.

‘But we don’t even know what it is. What other drones have we got? There must be some kind of sensor we can use.’

‘The sample modules would be best,’ she said cautiously. ‘They were giving a good picture of the interior where Ibu placed them.’

‘But they have to be applied by hand,’ Joey retorted. ‘It has to be a drone.’

‘Half of them are designed for planetary exploration,’ Ayanna said. ‘Surface landers, atmospheric researchers. There’s not much more we can send out there.’

Laura thought for a moment. ‘Do any of the surface landers have drills? Something that cuts through rock to lift core samples?’

‘Yes. The Viking Mk353. It was designed for regolith coring down to a hundred metres.’

‘Send it.’

Half of Fourteen’s backup power systems failed while the Viking Mk353 flew over to the distortion tree. Ayanna and Laura turned off all the systems in the main passenger cabin to cut power consumption. Six of the fans in the forward cabin’s environmental systems also packed up. That was more worrying. The air was still breathable, but the gentle rush of air coming from the vents was severely reduced.

Laura went down to the payload bay’s equipment lockers and returned with two portable atmosphere filters. The thick metre-long cylinders were completely independent, with a grille on each end. One end sucked in air, which was scrubbed and filtered and blown out of the other end. She strapped them onto a couple of couches. She tested them, and switched them off again.

She did her best not to stare at Joey when she was sorting out the portable filters. He was still strapped onto his couch. But the shakes on his hands were moving down his arms, causing both limbs to twitch.

‘Keep going,’ his mental voice told her. ‘I can manage.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. I’m keeping busy. The shuttle’s external sensors are still working – some of them, anyway. I’m still trying to see if I can spot the ships down on the surface. There’s certainly no evidence of a crash so far.’

‘That’s good.’ She caught the unease in his thought. By now she had enough experience to know it was powered by something more than just his physical deterioration. ‘What is it?’

He shook his head – a sharp juddering motion. ‘There’s something wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘Yes. I’m looking and looking at the planet, and I know there’s something wrong with what I’m seeing, but I don’t know what.’

‘What kind of thing?’ she asked cautiously.

A spasm rippled over his twisted-up features. ‘I don’t know. I’m looking right at it. I know I am. But I can’t see it.’

‘Can I help? Do you want me to review the images with you?’

‘No. Thanks. I’ll find it.’

‘Okay.’ There was a lot she wanted to say about how his illness might be affecting his thoughts. Instead, she gave him a sympathetic smile and pushed off to glide down the aisle.

‘How’s the Viking’s signal?’ she asked, when she rejoined Ayanna up at the front of the cabin.

‘Not bad.’

A display screen on the console was showing the Viking approaching the tip of the tree. The exopod’s strobes were flashing away in the centre of the picture.

Laura watched the lander approach the shallow fold where Ibu and Rojas had vanished. Ayanna was remote flying it competently, bringing it to rest a hundred metres from the exopod.

‘I was thinking,’ Ayanna said. ‘If they are inside those globes somehow, we don’t know which ones. So I’m going to start drilling one of the small ones, something they couldn’t possibly be held in.’

‘Sure,’ Laura said. ‘Good idea.’ She hadn’t been thinking quite along those lines. Some part of her was expecting to use the drill to free their missing team members – even if exactly how eluded her.

The Viking descended to hover less than a metre above a globe that measured a metre ten in diameter. The little onboard array held it in place with small bursts from its ion thrusters and deployed the drill.

‘We’re going to have trouble countering the torque,’ Laura said. ‘There’s not much fuel on board. The Viking wasn’t designed for space operations, just getting through the atmosphere intact and landing.’

‘I know,’ Ayanna said.

The ion thrusters flared and the Viking began to rotate around its axis. The drill spun up. Powerful landing thrusters flared briefly, pushing the Viking hard towards the globe. The picture shook as the drill touched the upper surface of the globe. Then it turned to smears as the Viking began to spin. Thrusters fired again, trying to compensate. Now the image was of juddering smears.

‘What the—’ Ayanna exclaimed.

The Viking was suddenly shooting off, away from the tree, tumbling end over end.

Laura stared at the hologram which was showing the combined imagery from the Mk16b drones. ‘Oh my, will you look at that?’ The Viking’s drill must have succeeded in penetrating the small globe. It was squirting out a pale white liquid, a thin fountain that was over three metres high before it started to break apart into a shower of globules that kept on going, oscillating wildly as they sprayed out into the vacuum.

‘Did the Viking get any?’ Laura demanded as Ayanna tried to regain control of the tumbling lander, slowing the gyrations and stabilizing the trajectory.

‘What?’

‘The samplers in the drill head? Did any of that stuff touch them before the pressure blew it off?’

‘I think so. Hang on.’

The pale fountain was slowing, shrinking. Within seconds it was just a tiny runnel of syrupy fluid trickling out of the puncture hole. A thin fog swirled gently around it as it began to vacuum boil.

‘If all the globes are full of liquid, then Ibu and Rojas can’t be inside them,’ Joey said.

Laura glared at the globe and its bubbling wound. ‘Then where the hell are they?’

‘Same place as the Vermillion and the Mk24s.’

‘You’re not helping.’

‘I’ve got the Viking stable,’ Ayanna said. ‘The drill samplers did get something.’

They both turned to watch the display screen on the console bring up the preliminary spectral analysis.

‘Hydrocarbons,’ Laura read the raw data, the routines in her macrocellular clusters running analysis. ‘Water. Sugars. What’s that? Looks like a protein structure.’

‘The fluid’s organic,’ Ayanna said in shock. ‘The globes are alive.’

The cabin lighting went off, to be replaced by the low blue-tinged glow of the emergency lighting. Somewhere in the shuttle a fire alarm was shrieking.

*

It had taken a power screwdriver from the equipment locker to prise the panel off the passenger cabin bulkhead. By the time they did that, the composite panel was blackening and starting to blister. There were no flames inside, but the power cell was glowing. Spraying it with extinguisher gel wasn’t the answer.

Laura yanked one of the emergency suits out of its overhead wallet and jammed her arm into the sleeve. The glove had just enough insulation. With Ayanna cutting through the power cell’s surrounding cables and mountings, she tugged it out and lumbered her way down to the payload bay. The whole suit went into the airlock, wrapped around the now-sizzling power cell. She slapped the emergency evacuation button. And the smouldering mess went flying off into space when the outer hatch peeled open.

‘Got another one,’ Ayanna was calling from the passenger cabin above the multiple alarm sirens.

Laura started opening lockers, hunting for some decent tools. Her hand was blistered where the power cell’s runaway heat had soaked through the suit glove’s insulation. She hauled herself back to the passenger cabin, lugging a utility belt.

In the end they had to remove four of the shorted-out power cells and physically inspect the rest. There were seventeen in the shuttle.