‘Where the hell were they?’

‘They had to be inside the distortion tree,’ Joey said.

‘Right.’ Laura hadn’t taken her eyes off the exopod. Her u-shadow had a narrow link to the shuttle’s faltering network, which was monitoring the exopod’s signal. Only the basic telemetry was coming in. ‘Have any of the Mk24s reappeared?’

‘No,’ Ayanna said.

‘I just don’t get any of this. Why—?’

‘Just ask them,’ Joey said. For a moment he managed to force his mouth into a smile.

The three of them went back through the service compartment. Joey lagged behind, his spasming limbs making it difficult for him to manoeuvre as easily as the others. Laura resisted the urge to offer him any help. He was way too proud for that.

Once they were in the EVA hangar her u-shadow lost the link to Fourteen’s network. She grabbed the handholds in front of a backup console on the bulkhead and activated its manual functions. Two screens slid out, showing her that the exopod was a lot closer.

‘I’m opening the outer door,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ Joey’s mental voice urged her as he wriggled his way through the hatch. ‘We don’t actually know what’s inside the exopod.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Laura said. ‘What do you think’s inside? A Prime motile?’ Even as she said it, her secondary routines pulled an image file from her storage lacuna, showing her the eggs of a Prime. They were nothing like the globes on the distortion tree. Bollocks, I’m getting paranoid, she thought.

‘I don’t know. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Why haven’t they ordered the airlock door to open?’

‘With the state of our communications? Come on!’ she appealed to Ayanna.

‘I’d be happier knowing,’ Ayanna said awkwardly.

‘And how are we going to do that?’

‘Wait until it’s on the docking cradle, but don’t open the airlock,’ Joey said. ‘The umbilical will plug in and we’ll have a decent link.’

‘Well?’ Laura asked Ayanna.

‘Seems reasonable.’

Laura turned back to the console, and keyed in the cradle recovery sequence. She felt a tiny vibration run through Fourteen’s structure. On the screen, long electromuscle arms were pushing the exopod’s cradle out from the rear of the shuttle.

‘What the hell is that?’ Joey’s mental voice was twinned with a great deal of concern.

Laura peered at the screen showing the approaching exopod. Its cluster of electromuscle tentacles were curled protectively round one of the dark globes from the distortion tree. ‘They can’t be serious,’ she exclaimed. ‘How did they detach it?’

‘Are you going to let them in carrying that thing?’ Joey asked.

Ayanna shot Laura a glance, her thoughts emanating all kinds of uncertainty. ‘They wouldn’t bring anything harmful into the shuttle. They know the protocols.’

‘If it’s them,’ Joey said. ‘If they haven’t been brainwashed. We don’t know what we’re dealing with!’

‘What do you think?’ Ayanna asked.

‘I think Joey may have a point,’ Laura said reluctantly. Her delight at seeing the exopod return was dwindling fast. Carrying the alien globe back to Fourteen was unusual, at the very least. ‘Let them dock on the cradle, but keep the airlock closed until we establish just what’s going on.’

‘Right,’ Ayanna said. ‘Good call.’

It took several minutes for the pilot to manoeuvre the exopod over the cradle. Laura made no comment about that. Rojas had certainly seemed more competent when the little craft was flying out to the distortion tree.

‘Are they eggs?’ Joey asked as they watched the exopod wobble about unsteadily.

‘We know they contain organic matter,’ Laura said slowly, wishing she’d thought more about the problem before. ‘And we’ve seen a batch flying down to the planet. Logically they’re eggs or seeds, or some kind of biological agent.’

‘Agent?’

‘They come from the trees, which are completely different objects. Shape, nature, material – none of it’s the same. So . . . I’d say the trees manufacture the globes molecule by molecule. And on this scale, that probably means it’s a bioforming system. These trees arrive at a planet in a new star system and start converting it to the kind of environment their creators live in.’

‘That works for me,’ Ayanna said.

‘So what are the Skylords?’ Joey asked.

‘Oh, bollocks to you, Joey,’ Laura snapped at him. ‘They’re the tugboats? I don’t know!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Let’s just keep it calm, shall we?’ Ayanna said.

Laura made an effort to damp her temper down. The screen was showing her the cradle arms reaching out and clamping onto the base of the exopod. One of them carried the data umbilical.

Laura keyed in a series of instructions. The console’s second screen played the feed from the exopod’s internal camera. Laura let out a small gasp of relief. Behind her, Ayanna made an almost identical sound.

The camera was set near the top of the exopod’s cabin. It looked down on Rojas and Ibu suspended in the webs. Both of them were in their suits – without helmets.

‘Welcome back, guys,’ she said inanely.

They both looked up at the camera. Ibu grinned weakly. It looked to be a big effort on his part.

‘Good to hear your voice,’ he said croakily.

‘This is Ayanna. What happened? Where have you been?’

‘We’ve been inside.’

‘Inside what?’ Laura said. ‘The tree is solid.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Ibu said. ‘There’s all kinds of chambers in there.’

‘Where? The drone sensors showed us a solid structure. How did you get in? You were stuck to that globe when the links went down.’

‘There are entrances along the bottom of the folds. The crystal just morphs like our malmetal and plyplastic.’

‘Can you let us in now, please?’ Rojas said. His voice croaked like Ibu’s. It was as if both of them had caught laryngitis.

‘Ask him about the globe,’ Joey’s mental voice urged.

‘Rojas,’ Ayanna said, ‘why have you brought one of the globes back?’

Rojas looked away from the camera, studying the displays on the bulkhead in front of him. ‘Analysis.’

‘What?’

‘Analysis.’

‘Hang on. Wait,’ Laura said. ‘What have you been doing inside the tree? How did you get in and out? Why were you in there so long? You’ve been out of contact the whole time. You know that’s against every protocol ever written.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Ibu said. ‘It’s fascinating in there. You’ll have to come in, Laura.’

‘What’s happened to your voice?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Have you been exposed to the alien environment?’

‘No.’

‘Then what—’

‘Nothing; we’re fine. The exopod’s systems are glitching. That’s the problem.’

‘What’s in the tree?’ Laura asked, trying to keep her concern from creeping into her voice.

‘Nothing. We think the cavities are conduits of some kind. We’ll go over the recordings when we’re back inside.’

‘What was wonderful?’ Joey asked. ‘Ibu said the globes were wonderful, Rojas said they were awesome. ‘Why?’

‘Ibu,’ Ayanna said, ‘what was awesome about the globe you got stuck on?’

‘What?’

‘We need to come in,’ Rojas said.

‘You said it was wonderful. What did you mean?’

‘This whole place is wonderful, that’s all.’

‘Please open the EVA hangar door,’ Rojas said. ‘We need to get the exopod inside.’

‘Rojas, I can’t let you bring that globe into Fourteen,’ Ayanna said. ‘Please release it.’

‘We need to examine it,’ Rojas said. He still wasn’t looking up at the camera any more. His fingers were moving fast across the keypads in front of him.

‘Yes, we will, but after we’ve established it’s safe. You know the protocol.’

‘Open the door.’

‘Jettison the globe,’ Laura said firmly. ‘It won’t go anywhere. We can run tests on it out there.’

A set of graphics on the console turned from amber to blue. The EVA hangar lights flickered. Laura could feel a slight vibration through the handholds.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Ayanna exclaimed. ‘He’s overridden the airlock. It’s opening.’