Still there was no clear image of it as it moved along the vestibule; all the sensitive cells could discern before they died
was a tumour of darker shadow within the lightless chamber. And now the habitat personality was having to divert its attention
to the rest of the Orgathé swarm that were slamming their way through other starscraper windows. Emergency pressure locks
and muscle membranes were closing throughout the deserted structures, desperately trying to contain the atmospheric breaches.
The Orgathé continued to surge forward into the starscraper, hunting round for concentrations of life-energy to consume. It
was spread thinly here, nothing like as rich as the layer beneath the object’s outer surface. Instinctively, the Orgathé barged
upwards towards that mammoth source. Flat planes of matter splintered as it hammered through them. Further harsh gusts of
gas whistled past. Then it found what it wanted, a solid stream of liquid suffused with life-energy pouring along the core
of the starscraper. It moved as close as it could, siphoning the heat out of the thick wall of matter surrounding the stream
until the outside began to crack. Then it bored through with a couple of appendages, and immersed their tips in the current.
Sweet, vital life-energy flowed back into the Orgathé, replenishing it after its considerable exertions. It settled down and
began consuming the apparently infinite torrent, growing in a way impossible before.
______
Three trucks approached the ring of dilapidated hovels encircling the Djerba’s lobby. Each vehicle had two people inside,
a nervous driver and an even more nervous lookout armed with a heavy calibre rifle. They began to nudge along the muddy tracks
between the precarious walls, heavy wheels squelching cans and empty sachet wrappers into the ground.
Past the hovels, they pulled up short of the lobby. As with all Valisk’s internal buildings, it was an elaborate edifice,
a dome shape from gradually inclined tiers of long white polyp window arches with a circular apex of amber-tinted crystal.
Inside, it had the kind of furniture nests and large marble floors endemic to any human travel station. A few cracked windows
along the bottom tier, and smashed furniture smeared across the floor, was the only evidence of past battles between Kiera
and Rubra.
Tolton gave it all a jaundiced look. “God, I really didn’t expect to be coming back here,” he grumbled.
“You’re not alone,” Dariat told him.
Erentz climbed down out of the passenger seat, keeping her rifle trained squarely on the lobby. The visitors had been in Valisk
for thirty hours now. In all that time, not one of them had emerged from a starscraper, nor made any hostile move. If it hadn’t
been for the broken windows and closed emergency locks there would be no evidence of their incursion at all. After their desperate
efforts to gain entry, such inactivity had everyone troubled and confused. The personality was determined to discover what
nefarious activity they were cooking up in the starscrapers.
The lifts were clumped together in the centre of the lobby, a broad column of grey polyp reaching half way to the amber crystal
above. Its curving wall was inset with silvery mechanical doors. One of them slid open as the group approached. Erentz put
down the large case of equipment she was carrying, and inched over to the rim so she could snatch a look down. The top of
the lift was out of sight, leaving a dark circular shaft with vertical rails that faded from sight after a few metres. She
shone a torch into the gulf. All that did was show her more of the rails, and another set of emergency fire-control doors
on the inside. If she leaned right over, she could just make out the door below.
From what I can discern, the visitor is now on the twenty-second floor,
the personality said.
I have managed to seal off the floors below, so the twenty-second remains fully pressurized. The twenty-third is the same.
Twenty-four is partially pressurized. Twenty-five is now in a vacuum. Your only escape route, Erentz, is up. Dariat, I imagine
you can use the lower floors. A vacuum really shouldn’t bother you.
Dariat nodded thoughtfully.
Let’s try not to put that theory to the test, okay? Besides, where would I go once I reach the bottom?
It took twenty minutes to prepare. Three of the group started to rig up a winch they’d brought, securing it on the lobby floor
with large bolts. The rest helped Erentz into the silver-grey suit which she was going to wear for the reconnaissance. They’d
chosen a thermal emission suit, capable of protecting its wearer from extreme temperatures. It had a thick layer of insulation
with a molecular structure similar to the nulltherm foam used by starships. The one drawback to that particular property was
that the heat generated by a living body’s organs and muscles couldn’t escape. Any wearer would cook themselves to death inside
thirty minutes. So before getting into it, Erentz had to put on a tight-fitting regulator overall made from heat absorber
fabric. It was capable of soaking up and storing her body’s entire output for seven hours before having to be drained.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Tolton asked as he sealed the outer gauntlets to her sleeves. The suit’s puffy appearance
was making her look like an arctic skier.
“You were down there with it before,” she answered. “It has some kind of active heat-sink ability. I’ve got to have something
to shield me from that if I get too close. And I can’t risk wearing an SII suit, not in this continuum; there’s no guarantee
it’ll even work below the first floor.”
“All right. If you’re happy…”
“I’m not.” She slipped the suit’s breathing mask on, fiddling with it until it was comfortable. The suit wasn’t pressurized,
but the mask maintained her air supply at a constant temperature.
Tolton handed her the electron rod. Its spiked tip was capable of giving off a ten thousand volt shock. “This should stop
it getting too close. Electricity seems to be our one constant these days. It can blast the possessed back into the beyond,
and it certainly scared the visitor.”
She held up the rod, then slipped it into her belt next to a laser pistol and a fission blade. “I feel like I’m off to poke
the tiger,” she mumbled round the mask.
I’m sorry,
said the personality.
But we really do need to know what these things are up to.
Yeah yeah.
She pulled the helmet visor down, a transparent material thick enough to give the world a gentle turquoise shade.
You ready?
she asked Dariat.
Yes.
His affinity voice might have said it, but his mind didn’t.
The winch cable had been looped round a pulley at the top of the lift shaft. It ended in a couple of simple straps which Erentz
clipped onto a harness around her torso. Above the straps, there was a simple control box on a flexible stalk, with four buttons
to govern the winch. She tugged at the thin cable, testing its strength.
It’s a linked molecule silicon fibre,
explained one of the engineers who’d rigged it up.
Totally reliable; it can support a hundred times your body weight.
He indicated a small toggle-like handle nesting in the junction between the two straps.
This is your fast retrieval handle. The winch drum is recoil-wound, like a spring. The further you go down, the tighter the
tension. So if you need to get back up here in a hurry, forget the control box, simply twist and pull. It’ll reel you in fast.
And the whole mechanism is mechanical, so no demon spook can mess with it.
Thanks.
Erentz touched the little toggle reverently, the way she’d seen Christians stroking a crucifix. She walked over to the rim
of the lift shaft, switching on her helmet and wrist lights.
We’re on.
Dariat nodded and came over to stand behind her. He put his arms round her chest. His legs he bent so they were wrapped round
hers, his feet hooking together between her ankles. It felt like a solid hold.
I think I’m secure.
Erentz stepped off into space, and swung out into the shaft. She dangled over black emptiness, rotating very slowly. Dariat
weighed nothing at all. The only way she knew he was still there was the faintest glow coming from his arms as they clung
to her.
All right, let’s go see what it’s up to.
She pressed the descent button, and the cable started to play out, lowering her. The last she saw of the lobby was three
people crowded shoulder to shoulder in the bright doorway, craning down to watch her. Twenty-two floors is a long way to go
when you’re hanging on the end of an invisible cable in absolute darkness.
The shaft’s horizontal pressure seal on the thirtieth storey is closed,
the personality said.
The drop is not as fearsome as you imagine it.
I’m really trying not to imagine it at all,
she shot back waspishly.
Dariat didn’t say anything. He was too busy fighting the fatigue trembles in his legs. The awkward position he was in made
his muscles prone to cramps. Stupid for a ghost, he told himself repeatedly.
The lift doors kept sliding by, buff silver panels affixed to the polyp by a web of support rails and actuator cabinets. Dariat
kept trying to use the sensitive cells on each floor to survey the vestibule as they dropped past, but the neural strata was
badly affected by the dark continuum’s enervation. The thought routines inside were confused and slow, providing meagre pictures
of the darkened corridors. Even those had vanished by the twenty-first storey. Real worry began to seep into Dariat’s thoughts.
It was the visitor who was causing this part of the affliction. Almost an anti-presence, soaking up life and heat like some
hazy event horizon. This was
alien
at its extreme.
Here we are,
Erentz said. She slowed their descent until they were level with the doors to the twenty-second floor vestibule.
I don’t think I can hold on for much longer,
Dariat said.
My arms are starting to ache.
Erentz’s mind was moderately incredulous, but she spared him a direct comment. She started to sway, building up pendulum momentum,
carrying them closer to the shaft wall each time. Catching hold of the struts and conduits beside the door was easy, and she
steadied them against the polyp, feet resting on a latch motor casing. There was an emergency release handle on the top rail,
which she turned through ninety degrees. The door slid open with a quiet hiss of compressed air.
With one hand poised ready on the retrieval toggle, she shuffled along the lower rail and swung round the edge of the door.
Okay so far,
she told the personality and all her relatives who were monitoring her progress. The vestibule was as dark as the lift shaft.
Even the emergency lights had failed. Frost glinted everywhere her lights touched. The suit’s environment sensor reported
the air was fifty degrees below freezing. So far here electronic systems were functioning close to their operational parameters.
Erentz slowly unclipped the winch cable, and secured it on a strut just inside the rim of the door; easily available in a
hurry. She and Dariat shared an affinity layout of the floor, with the visitor’s approximate position indicated by a black
blob. It wasn’t very precise, and they both knew that since the floor’s bitek and electronics had failed, it could have moved
without the personality knowing.
That was one of the reasons the personality had wanted Dariat along on the reconnaissance. They knew he was affected by the
visitor, implying he might just be able to sense it while Erentz in her insulated suit would remain unaware. As theories went,
it wasn’t the most inspiring. In the end, Dariat only agreed to accompany Erentz because he knew more than most just how grim
their position was. The personality held nothing from him, treating him almost as an adjunct of itself, like an exceptionally
mobile observation sub-routine (or favourite pet, he thought on occasion). They desperately needed quantifiable data on the
dark continuum if they were going to get a message out to the Confederation. So far the probes and quantum analysis sensors
had returned next to zero information. The visitor was the only source of new facts they’d encountered. Its apparent ability
to manipulate energy states could prove valuable.
“Earth’s recipe for omelettes,” Dariat murmured silently. “First steal some eggs.”
Let’s go,
Erentz said.
Try as he might, Dariat couldn’t find true fear in her mind. Apprehension aplenty, but she genuinely believed they would be
successful.
They set off along the gently curving vestibule, heading for the visitor. Fifteen metres from the lift, a massive hole had
been punched through the floor. It was as if a bomb had detonated, smashing the neat layers of polyp into a jumble of large
slabs and pulverised gravel. Nutrient fluid, water, and sludge had leaked out from various severed tubules, oozing down the
piles of detritus before turning to rucked tongues of dull grey ice. They stood at the broken rim, and looked down.
We won’t stand a chance against this thing,
Dariat said.
Holy Anstid, look at what it can do; the strength of the fucking thing! That polyp’s over two metres thick, look. We’ve got
to get out of here.
Calm down,
the personality replied.
Whoever heard of a ghost being frightened?
Well, hear it and weep. This is suicidal.
Physical strength alone didn’t do this,
Erentz said.
It was helped by the cold. If you lower the polyp’s temperature far enough it becomes as brittle as glass.
That’s a real comfort to know,
Dariat retorted scathingly.
The personality is right, we shouldn’t balk just because of this. It demonstrates that the visitor uses cold the same way
we use heat, that’s all. If we’d wanted to break through a wall, we’d heat it with lasers or an induction field until it weakens.
This is an example of how logic progresses in this continuum; concentrating enough energy to heat something is fantastically
difficult here, so the visitors simply apply the inverse.