4

TWEAKING

The technology for artificially altering the human genome has been available for a century, mainly in the form of viral recombination to negate hereditary diseases. But, as always, there are rumours of dark goings on in secret government laboratories. In these places the geneticists have tried to make the perfect soldier, have tried to classify what combination of genes leads to high intelligence or even genius. They have tried to make human beings that mature quickly, consume less and die quickly after a limited span. They have tried to make humans more disease-and injury-resistant and to even eliminate death. Anything you can think of has been tried in those dark and secret places, and all of this would have remained rumour if we on the Subnet had not reported the truth. The Committee’s contempt for human life was what let the secret out. All would have remained simply rumour had they properly disposed of the failures, but they did not, as attested to the monstrous corpses pulled from the Ganges just a few kilometres down from the All Health research centre in Pabna. And we can be sure that where there were failures there were also successes, and that they live among us now.

ARGUS

Alex now stood upon one of the lattice walls beside Arcoplex Two, above the accommodation unit he had been assigned to, which lay sandwiched between the two walls below; a sensation of immanence permeated the station. And everything around him seemed slightly distorted, as if it was slightly out of synch with the surrounding universe. Yet he could not nail the reason for this, and he wondered how much was due to the vortex generator winding up to speed, or his knowledge that it was doing so.

He gazed across to the space-plane docks as the big manta winged Mars-format space plane, like some giant metallized fruit bat, swooped towards the limb of Dock Two for the fourth time; he felt amazed that he could now actually see both it and the dock. This was because most of the upper enclosure now rested in a small city of stacks on the upper lattice wall, just a kilometre away from him. It was proof, if any was needed, that Gladys’s observation of five days ago seemed truer than ever. The robots were working much faster and more efficiently—but the humans were too. Alex could never remember anything getting done so quickly throughout his time here undercover when the Committee was in charge. Always there had been technical hold-ups, hitches in supply of materials and components, or jobs getting done in the wrong order and having to be reversed, or the work interfered with by the bureaucracy. He also remembered that the bureaucratic interference included workers disappearing because of some perceived slight towards an Inspectorate executive, and that generally everyone had worked with a complete lack of enthusiasm, doing only the bare minimum to get by.

Now the human teams were actually competing with each other and with the robots, while the robots never stopped, and the proctors, of whom everyone had been wary, had become a reassuring presence always ready to smooth out any of the few irregularities when not themselves employed on something related to the EM shield. Both smelting plants were also working, though at this distance from the sun they were not at full power, and a haze spread out behind them, marking the path of Argus around Mars. The ore transporters were on the move too, though intermittently since it was mostly salvage that was being smelted, while the smelting-plant docks continuously vibrated in sympathy with the busy roar of the rolling mills, extruders, presses and forges. Robots the size of train carriages were taking salvage to the ore carriers, then returning with components—brackets, beams, rolls of welding wire and crates of fixings—and distributing them. And the shape of the station had changed.

Not only had most of the enclosure been taken down, but incurving beams were being fitted to the rim, visible in some areas like the rib bones of titanic beasts decayed on a steel shore, slowly but surely etching out the eventual shape of this station—this ship.

“That you, Alex?” came the enquiry through his fone.

He turned to see Ghort—the man’s bulk easily recognizable even in a heavy work suit—climbing up onto the lattice wall and heading over.

“It’s me,” Alex replied, raising a hand.

“Thought so, as most of us enjoy our free time not wearing a suit.” Ghort sauntered over. “Looking good,” he commented casually when he arrived at Alex’s side, then his gaze strayed to the scene over beside them. “But those give me the creeps.”

Even though he knew now that Ghort was perpetually probing people around him for their reactions to the situation they found themselves in, Alex had to agree. On the face of the lattice wall, near where it ended at a gap beside the curved edge of Arcoplex Two, the latest product coming out of Robotics had been arrayed in a neat square—hundreds of them—all laid out like a legion on a gamer’s model battlefield. They gleamed, these things: squat cylindrical bodies supported horizontally by double-jointed limbs terminating in six-fingered hands resting flat against the deck, further cylindrical tool caches affixed to their upper surfaces, all arrayed so close together that from some angles the outlines of them looked like polished brass centipedes. Even as the two men watched, another transport trundled down from the end of the arcoplex on its gecko treads to unload yet another batch of them, forming the corner of a new square.

“We’ll be obsolete soon, according to Gladys,” he said.

“Maybe not just yet,” Ghort replied. “The new boss has reassigned us.”

That had come as a surprise. Alex had expected the Owner, upon his return, to take a firmer grip on the reconstruction, but they now had a human in charge who had been, so Alex was told, the overseer of the Traveller construction project. Even on the first day, she had started making changes, reassignments which had been annoying but after a short time seemed like a squirt of lubricating oil to the station machine. Those doing the reconstruction were now working directly under Varalia Delex, who addressed them daily over the screens, describing further the ship they were to build. She seemed to be everywhere, offering encouragement, actually asking advice, often mucking in with some of the drudge work, and just being there. This had boosted morale, as it made people realize that they truly were part of something amazing, and in the end it had been her rather than the Owner who had given the project its present shape and impetus.

“Reassigned where?” Alex asked.

“It seems these new fellas”—Ghort stabbed a finger towards the nearby legion of robots—“are taking over our job, and will be building the framework of the ship’s sphere. The human teams and a lot of the older-design robots are moving above and below.” Ghort gestured back towards the asteroid and to Tech Central. “We are first slicing up the asteroid—completely removing it—and then we connect all the station spokes and beam-work that used to be bolted to it to a central core, then we divide into groups. Some will be taking apart Tech Central and erecting an arcoplex spindle in its place. The one we’re now in will build downwards, for two kilometres, making a tough shock-absorbing column to support a platform.”

“Platform?”

“Yeah, it seems the boss isn’t happy with the current position of the Traveller engine—so we’re going to be moving it.”

Alex stood there, dumbfounded, then ventured, “And when are we to start doing this?”

“Well, right now we’ve got to lock down our previous job and pack away our tools,” said Ghort, “then we start on our new job once the sun is shining.”

Did the tension seeming to lace the very air demonstrate that the vortex generator’s effect on space-time was somehow against nature? No, Hannah decided, it was once more a demonstration of how human technology was outpacing the old naturally evolved human bodies, and further justification of everything she was doing in her laboratory and now also here in this factory area Saul had provided.

“We’ve been avoiding each other,” said Var.

Hannah turned to study the woman stepping out from the laboratory and onto the floor of the new biofactory. In one sense Var Delex’s appearance was reminiscent of one of the Saberhagens, what with her pale hair, narrow features and athletic physique. But there was something much harder ground into Var, just as the Martian rouge had been ground into her skin. The Saberhagens were youngsters—just in their twenties—this woman, being Saul’s sister, had to be at least fifty years old, like Hannah herself.

“It seemed the politic thing to do for now,” said Hannah. “You’ve had a lot to do, I understand: a lot of computer design, reorganizing—in fact all that’s involved in turning a space station into a starship.”

Var gazed at her very directly. “And yet I feel as if I’ve been given make-work, as if he left things undone just so I wouldn’t feel redundant.”

Hannah shrugged. “One of the penalties of serving a demigod?”

“So it would seem.” Var folded her arms and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve tried to make the reconstruction completely mine, so as to give the human teams a human face to talk to, and I’m trying to divorce their work from that of the robots—since many of them were starting to feel outmoded.”

“And it’s working, so I’m told.”

“It is.” Var nodded in solemn agreement.

“How are things with the rest of the … Martians?” Hannah asked. “I understand that most of them are located here now.” Along with one Thomas Grieve, who had recently been a guest in Hannah’s surgery—she hoped he was the last subject she would ever have to mind-wipe.

“There were a few problems to begin with, when they found out they couldn’t choose where they were assigned, and that therefore they couldn’t stay together,” said Var. “But growing up under the Committee results in obedience.”

Hannah grimaced, decided not to pursue her thoughts about Grieve. Instead she focused on the problems about the assignment of personnel, since she had already heard and discussed them, if only briefly, with Saul.

“A good thing about humans is that they form communities,” she said. “A bad thing about humans is that they form ghettos.”

“Precisely what he said to me.” Var frowned. “My brother seems to have become quite the philosopher. Of course, now the people from the base have to get used to their feeling of obsolescence here.” She cast an eye across the various machines in Hannah’s factory. “What about you?”

Hannah’s hand embraced the same machines. “Not obsolete yet.”

“I understand you’re taking neural tissue samples from every one, apparently to be grown into grafts for the repair of head injuries,” Var commented neutrally. “I also understand that you’ve asked for volunteers from among the staff to try out some new cerebral hardware.”

Hannah flicked her gaze towards the group of four workers, all clad in paper overalls, steadily making their way up the factory as they installed automated biofactors and the base hardware of cylindrical glass growth tanks that had yet to be manufactured elsewhere. This was effectively a small job, hence the presence of only one small general-purpose robot working alongside them: a thing running on treads supporting a cylindrical upright body wrapped in a carousel of limbs sporting a variety of tool heads. She then swung her gaze to a large temperature-controlled safe.

This contained the remaining hundred and fifty cerebral interfaces. These were an older design than the one Saul currently used and were the same as those employed by the seven comlifers on Earth. They were also the kind she herself had used to wipe the minds of all the Committee delegates surviving here—biological interfaces that were the precursors to the one in Saul’s head, but which in the delegates were now effectively inert, which seemed a kind of justice. Until she made more, of a better design, these interfaces would provide the link for one hundred and fifty personnel to their backups, once they were ready, and would give them limited access to the station system and the robots.

“What has he told you?” she asked.

“He talked about travelling to the stars and I talked about human mortality,” said Var, “whereupon he suggested I talk to you about the work you are doing.”

Hannah felt a flash of jealousy upon hearing that, for when had Saul last communicated with her about anything above the completely practical? She suppressed the reaction, then pointed to the racking fixed along one wall, which now held twenty aerogel boxes, all tubed and wired together with secondary power supplies in place and provided with optics ready to attach them to the station’s computer system.

“The components are here in Arcoplex Two,” Hannah explained. “Aerogel matrices in which to grow organic backups to a human mind, cerebral implants and exterior com hardware linked to those backups.” She gestured to the safe. “And in another area we’re installing the equipment for growing human clones.”

Just as with Le Roque, Hannah needed to explain no more, for Var Delex understood at once, or maybe her suspicions had been confirmed. Her eyes grew wide nevertheless as she processed the news that the inevitability of her own death could be postponed. But then she moved beyond that.

“Cerebral bioware connecting to exterior hardware?” she queried.

Hannah shrugged, feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

“He’s put in an off-switch,” Var continued, “so he’ll be able to sever their link to their backups.” She paused reflectively. “Demigod indeed.”

“I don’t like it,” Hannah agreed, “but—and now I’m going to sound like a Committee executive—too much freedom could be a bad thing.”

“For him, you mean,” said Var. “Tell me, will you yourself have this exterior hardware?”

Though one of Hannah’s new assistants had taken a sample from her skull, she hadn’t even considered beyond that. How did she feel about Saul being the gatekeeper between her and eternity?

“I trust him,” she said. “Though he’ll control my link to my backup, I will still have the chance of living forever, or at least for thousands of years, so who knows what might happen in the future? Perhaps one day he will cease to feel the need to control me.”

“Or perhaps,” said Var, “you will cease to trust him.”

“Such cynicism,” said Hannah. “Obviously you have a lot to think about and would perhaps prefer not to go this route?”

“It seems a road worth travelling.”

“So when will you want me to take a sample from you?” Hannah persevered.

Var Delex grimaced. “Not just yet.”

Hannah just watched her, still not quite understanding this woman whom Saul felt was important enough to risk his life in rescuing her from Mars.

“Later, perhaps after the current shift,” Var added, “I was considering trying out this bar in the Arboretum. Perhaps you could join me and we can start to get to know each other better, since it’s possible we may be in each other’s company for a very long time.” She gestured to the backups. “A very long time indeed.”

Hannah nodded, something tightening in her torso, like that faithless friend, her panic attacks—but a much deeper and more hollow feeling, like awe. She realized that she had been so wrapped up in the detail of what she was doing that she had failed to incorporate the big picture, and yet Var’s simple remark had opened her eyes.

A very long time indeed.

It was as if Saul held space hooked over his finger, drawn taut and ready to be released, but time dragged in the world he occupied, seeming a hundred years behind the intricate images he had constructed in his mind. Many weeks had passed since he had saved his sister’s life and, by any human measure, his plans for Argus had advanced at an amazing rate, but Saul did not measure reality in human terms. It was all too slow; the delays between thought and action and achieving final product were interminable, frustrating. Yet Saul possessed absolute control of his own mind, so frustration, a thoroughly human malady that served no purpose, was something he could just eliminate from his skull. Time dragged but Saul watched with the patience of Jove, while turning a human face to the world.

“From the beginning, both of you claimed you wanted to work here,” he said, peering down through the glass floor at the hive of activity in the robotics factory.

“That’s true,” said Brigitta.

Judd was down below with a small team of humans, stripping down one of the assembly machines only because that was quicker than letting it repair itself. Such malfunctions had been a rarity since Robotics had become ever more … robotic, therefore the components called human and proctor were required less and less often. Thus far, three legions of the new-design robots were standing ready, gleaming out there on the lattice wall beside the arcoplex. Saul probed the neat function-ality of their minds, the perfectly in-consonance diagnostic returns from their bodies. Just a thought from him, and they would be in motion but, though they were ready, the station was not. Even if they had enough power, they could hardly keep operational for a day before they used everything up. Thus the smelters needed to go over fully to solar power, and begin producing components at their maximum rate. This would free up reactor power for the robots, which would supply themselves from numerous recharging points, even while solar power fed, via cells inlaid into their skins, the rectifying batteries inside their bodies. Once operating together as a large efficient machine constantly supplied with energy and components, they could really go to work.

Saul now transferred his human attention to the weapon he held—one of the plasma rifles Brigitta and Angela had fashioned for use in the fight against the troops from the Scourge.

“I want you to do something else,” he said.

“Evidently,” Brigitta replied.

“I want you to leave Robotics to Judd and go back to work on the station weapons,” Saul continued, “including the plasma cannon I want you to design and build. I’ve given you some of the parameters and eventual position of all the weapons in the completed ship. I’ve also opened up a new area within this arcoplex for you to develop them and, if they are available, will supply the workers and robots you may require.”

The twins exchanged a look, and then Angela gave a brief nod.

“Okay,” said Brigitta. “Things were starting to get a bit samey here, anyway, and we always like a challenge. By the way, is there any chance of us getting our hands on some radioactives?”

Saul handed the weapon back to her. “When we go after new materials, yes, but right now it’s all about energy.”

“Good, because that’s our big disadvantage against anything sent from Earth. Remember, they’ve got the nukes.”

Saul nodded briefly and turned to head back the way he had come, but most of his mind was already ranging elsewhere. Much more data were available from Earth, and now he saw a further cost of having rescued his sister and salvaging the equipment and personnel from Mars. He should have attacked. Instead he should have taken Argus Station straight from the Asteroid Belt to Earth and methodically destroyed everything in orbit. Since he had not done so, Galahad had responded very quickly to the threat he represented, and he had just watched the test firing of two new heavy railguns, one from the Traveller construction station and another from Core One. Attacking now was still an option, but better for him to spend as much time in the solar system as was safe, and then just run. In the end, if he wanted to keep a lid on Earth, he would have to stay within the solar system, knocking down any attempt by the Earth-bound to reach out into orbit. Why trap himself here in such an onerous chore when a whole universe lay within his reach? At some point the Saberhagens would realize that the weapons they were building weren’t intended as a defence against Earth, but against anything they might find way out beyond.

Sixth docking …

As Saul arrived at the elevator that would take him out of the arcoplex, his constant companion spidergun climbing in ahead of him, he mentally reached out and locked the docking clamps holding the Mars-format space plane to Docking Pillar One—the disassembled fusion reactor aboard it could wait to be offloaded—then began similarly locking down all the way across the station. The smelting plants had already finished their latest run, and the transporters running between them and the station were parked down in the bases of the smelting-plant docks. Now the smelters began pulling in the mirrors which had been supplying meagre concentrated sunlight to complement the output of the fusion reactors, while the big cable drums jerked into motion for hauling them back towards the station. Having now received the order, both human and robot work parties finished their latest jobs and began putting away their tools—the robots to then head off and cling to some nearby section of the station structure while the humans returned to their accommodation.

An enclosed walkway now led straight from the elevator exit into Tech Central. Saul took this at an unhurried pace, finally entering the cageway leading up to the main control room and propelling himself up after his spidergun. As he entered, the occupants busily working their consoles hardly spared either him or the robot a glance, having become used to seeing both now. Le Roque oversaw the team, speaking to someone through his fone, while Rhine was sitting at the navigation console. Saul headed over to stand beside him.

Rhine glanced up. “We might hit something on the way in,” he warned. “Not everything is mapped.”

“The chances are low,” Saul opined, “something like one in a hundred for us hitting something and twice that for it to be big enough to knock out the drive bubble.” He sat down at the console next to Rhine’s—the one that had before been occupied by Girondel Chang, who now resided in the rim mortuary. Really, there was no need for Rhine or anyone else to be here, since Saul was in full mental control of the whole operation.

“It’s going to be hot,” Rhine added.

“Nothing the station cannot handle, and we need the additional energy.”

To pass the time, Saul again checked the programming he had in place. The moment they arrived at their destination, he wanted action, and he intended to get that—though perhaps not from the humans aboard, since they might take a few hours to adapt.

The first smelting plant locked home in its dock, then the second. He watched as Leeran and Pike—the stalwarts in charge of those plants—and other workers there, headed towards their offices and there strapped themselves into chairs. Most of the robots were now locked in place, while just a few humans had yet to sort themselves out. Le Roque took a seat and fastened his lap strap, while those around him did the same. All of this securing and locking down was completely unnecessary if the drive functioned as before, but there was always a chance of something going wrong. This was, after all, only the third time ever this new technology had been used.

“Two minutes until shift.” Saul’s voice issued from intercoms all across the station. “If you’ve forgotten something, then it’s too late now. Just leave it and get yourselves strapped in.”

Beyond the windows of Tech Central, the station rim—its inwardly curving rib bones rising up all around it—seemed to lift like the lower jaw of an angler fish. Beyond that the view of Mars turned hazy. With the drive fully up to speed, Saul could now fling them away from here with just a thought, but he allowed the crew some remaining time. While that passed, he watched Hannah securing herself in the surgical chair in her laboratory, the Saberhagen twins strapping into chairs in an office adjacent to Robotics, and his sister standing, in a heavy work suit, on the rim of the station, with her feet solidly planted and a line attaching her to one of the nearby ribs. Everyone else was safely inside the station, but Saul had made no rule about how they should secure themselves, and Var was only putting herself at minimally more risk by staying where she was.

“Giving yourself a grandstand view, sister?” he asked her.

“It’s a bit disconcerting out here. It feels just like I’m standing on the inner face of a tidal wave, and now the stars are changing colour and … damn, look at Mars.”

Visible through the windows of Tech Central, Mars was noticeably changing hue, first turning as red as it was supposed to be, before intensifying to something as unnaturally bright as fluorescent paint.

“I’m surprised I’m the only one outside,” she added. “I would have thought that you, at least, would also want to be this close.”

“I’m even closer, since I can view through every sensor of the station,” Saul replied.

“That’s hardly the same.”

“You’re quite correct. Ordinary human senses can be so dull.”

Var just snorted at that. It was time now.

“Shifting,” Saul announced.

Everything beyond the station turned black, and again Saul felt as if he was folding space around himself like a thick blanket, and rolling away into another world. He visualized the warp bubble as a droplet of water skittering across a hotplate, as he counted down the seconds then minutes of their journey. It began to grow uncomfortably hot inside the station but, out on the lattice wall, the legions of robots sucked up and rectified that increase of energy into something usable, while elsewhere throughout the station Rhine’s rectifying batteries rose quickly to full charge. A momentary shudder had Saul reaching down to grip the arms of his chair, but it soon passed. The warp bubble must have clipped something, or else destroyed something too small to stop their progress. Saul calculated it must have been an object massing just under half a tonne, before he sank into the esoteric maths concerning warp-bubble impacts, just to pass the remaining interminable yet fantastically short ten minutes of the journey.

Next, the universe suddenly turned the lights back on. Bright sunlight glared, as bright as Mediterranean daytime. They had just travelled across an appreciable portion of the solar system in a matter of mere minutes. Saul blinked. Would an experience as fantastic as this start to become as prosaic as a routine flight in an aeroplane? He unstrapped himself and stood up, walking over to the windows that had already taken on the tint that had disappeared when they had left Earth behind.

“How was that for you?” he asked Var.

“Like nothing else,” she replied, her voice hushed, sounding slightly depressed. Saul understood her reaction. She had been excited before, but actually seeing the drive work made her feel very small, and she did not like feeling that way. Despite being busy with the reconstruction, her pride was still suffering wounds. Irritated by his sister’s apparent weakness, he slid the fragment of his attention he had allotted her away and elsewhere. Light and heat suffused the station, as energy storage, which out at Mars had forever been on the point of depletion, continued to rise, and he too felt energized as a thump reverberated under his feet—Leeran and Pike obviously feeling no need to take stock, and already extending the smelting plants. The power of sunlight, it seemed, affected all of those it touched, for even now people were unstrapping themselves and checking work rosters; while others, who knew what to do, were already donning spacesuits.

The old robots first, Saul decided, feeling them unpeeling instantly from the points in the station they had been clinging to, and dispersing to obey their queued-up orders. He then felt further vibrations through his feet as the mining robots again began hacking into the asteroid below, and as the ore carts began hauling their loads towards the big transporters.

“It’s like … like waking up,” said Le Roque at his shoulder.

“We’ve been sad,” quipped Rhine at his other shoulder. “That would be—”

“Yes, I know what seasonal affective disorder is, Rhine,” Saul interrupted.

“I need to get back to it,” said Rhine, unperturbed, as he turned away. “This Mach-effect stuff is fascinating.”

Rhine, Saul had realized, possessed the kind of mind best kept at work so, with a little help from the proctors, he was already finessing the design for the Mach-effect drive, and deciding how best to integrate it with what they already had.

“Crazy, but brilliant,” Le Roque commented, once Rhine was gone. Then, turning back to Saul: “So now we really go to work?”

“We do, and you yourself need to relocate to the secondary control centre.” He glanced towards him. “They’re already cutting the anchors down below.”

“Quick work.”

“Rhine just suggested that we’re all coming out of SAD, out of suffering from a lack of sunlight, but perhaps there’s more to the power of the sun than merely that.” Saul considered all the possible effects of this relocation, and could not shake off the feeling that the personnel here were as linked into Argus Station, in their own way, as he himself. Certainly, new measurable power was running through everything aboard, but it seemed as if a psychic current had been set up, too. He did not believe in any supernatural explanation, of course, but was not prepared to discount an esoteric scientific one.

Steadily increasing activity became visible in the station outside. Saul briefly watched teams of humans and robots heading from their accommodation towards the Mars Traveller engine, which they intended to detach from the asteroid. He watched another team begin work alongside the mining robots, cutting their way towards a fault that would eventually break the steadily shrinking mass of nickel iron in two. Then, through the windows ahead, as well as in his mind, he focused on the extent of lattice wall beside Arcoplex Two.

Now.

Smooth as oil, a neat line of the new robots began flowing across the lattice wall towards the rim, the square formation they were emerging from steadily shrinking. On their way they diverted to a stockpile of beams and other components, and that pile rapidly shrank like ice under the jet of a steam cleaner. The other two squares began to move next, sliding into thicker lines: one going straight over the curve of the arcoplex to start work on the ship’s skeleton beyond, while the other came back towards Tech Central and circumvented it to head over to the other side of the station. The robots moving there began the essential armouring of the vortex generator, thus further stockpiles diminished, and all the materials taken down from the enclosure went too.

A sudden leap in power supply marked the moment the smelting plants began opening out their mirrors—no longer requiring power from the reactors either to move themselves into position or run back up to temperature. Smelters that before had been functioning at only half of their potential performance now went straight to full capacity, as the various plants issued plumes of vapour and ash, turning bright and silvery in the sunlight. Molten metal boiled with inert gases, and coolers that had not been needed out in the orbit of Mars soon came online. The rolling mills, presses, auto-forges and casters; the capstan lathes, milling machines, diamond saws and drills; the matter printers, nano-weavers and bucky-spinners: all of them seemed to let go with joyous abandon until once slow-moving swarf conveyors steadily increased to full speed.

In Arcoplex Two, Robotics screamed with activity—no power outages now, no requirement to build up a charge for any of the high-energy processes. Here the machines seemed to be hearing the message from their larger brothers out in the smelting plants: Energy to burn, guys. Let’s do it. There was power now for further high-temperature work, too; and, elsewhere in the arcoplex, silicon quickly turned molten as a chip factory started up, as did a powder forge for making the cutting tools that would soon be needed to replace those already in use.

Saul smiled as power levels just continued to rise. Already the first of his new robots were working around the rim, sometimes singly, sometimes conjoined into short centipede forms, hauling up and affixing structural beams at high speed. And the skeleton of the space ship grew visibly; dream turned into hard reality.

SCOURGE

Clay Ruger woke to feel the constant ache of his battered body, reached out for the painkillers and iodine pills on his bedside shelf, popped two of each out of their blister packs and washed them down with a gulp of water from his suit spigot, and he waited. There wasn’t one of the survivors without broken bones, wrenched joints and a mottled effect of fading bruises from head to toe. Clay himself had two broken shins, ribs broken all down one side, and few other bones in his body without at least hairline cracks, including his skull. But at least he wasn’t one of those who had ruptured something internal or suffered one of the cerebral haemorrhages that had killed a third of the crew. And at least, unlike Gunnery Officer Cookson, he hadn’t ended up with a snapped spine.

When Argus Station’s warp bubble had brushed against the Scourge, gravity waves had travelled the length of the ship like invisible walls. Compression waves were how Pilot Officer Trove described them, her voice slurring because of her broken jaw; while Captain Scotonis called the event a “tidal surge.” All Clay knew was that it felt as if, in just a matter of seconds, he had been simultaneously smashed against something, then stretched through it. Afterwards he felt as if he had spent months in an old-fashioned adjustment cell—one where they weren’t bothering to use inducers, just batons, army boots and fists.

Finally the painkillers began to kick in and he was able to drag himself from his bed—a laborious exercise even in zero gravity. Just as they all did, he still wore a full spacesuit: after yet another atmosphere breach only two days ago, none of them fully trusted the repairs. The suits also offered some protection from the high levels of radiation caused when one of the warheads in the armoury exploded. It hadn’t gone into fission, but it had acted like a dirty bomb, spreading radioactive material throughout the ship. It was this, Clay knew, that would eventually kill him. Broken bones weren’t the only common injury for not one of them hadn’t suffered radiation sickness, or did not register positive for pre-cancerous cells, if not overt signs of some sort of cancer. Clay was sure that some of the stuff coming up out of his lungs had little now to do with his initial injuries.

Before stepping out of his cabin, he closed his suit visor, then once outside he began making his way up a corridor that was no longer straight, but in fact had taken on a slightly corkscrew shape. A crew member passed him heading in the other direction, dolefully towing herself along like an ancient.

They ignored each other—crew generally had little to say to him, and not much more to say to each other, either. Eventually, the doors to the bridge came in sight, but before he reached them the command crew came out.

Scotonis, Trove and even Cookson were there, pulling on their suit helmets. They all looked ill—Cookson the worst of all as he pulled himself along with everything below his waist hanging dead. It struck Clay that they had all been animatedly discussing something before his approach and had now fallen silent, but paranoia was all too easy aboard this ship of the damned.

“How are you, Cookson?” Clay asked, as he drew closer.

Cookson swung a corpse-like face towards him. He was deadly white, with a slight bluish tinge to his lips and a yellow mass of bruising down one side of his face. He gave a sickly grin that exposed the missing teeth in that side of his mouth.

“Not dead yet,” he replied. “I want to live long enough … just long enough.”

“Something we can all say,” said Clay. Then, studying the others, “So what’s up?”

“It’s something Dr Myers can’t say now,” said Scotonis, “because he’s dead.”

“What?” Clay felt a creeping horror. Myers, thankfully, had been one of the least injured of them all, having managed to escape without any broken bones—just minor cracks—and, with them all in the process of dying, he had become the most essential member of the crew. Now he was dead?

“Come on,” Scotonis gestured for them to follow him, and limped off down the corridor.

“I’ll … I’ll leave it for now,” said Cookson, clinging to one of the handholds set in the wall.

Scotonis halted, turned to study him, then nodded and continued on. Clay followed, wondering just how Cookson was managing to stay alive and how much longer he would survive.

No matter how hard they had tried to seal off the compartments into which they had loaded the corpses, the stench was spreading out into the rest of the ship. As well as the damage throughout it—walls bent and buckled, panels out of line and exposing electronics and plumbing, floors twisted, fluids leaking—a free-floating mess was also accumulating. As they neared the crew medical area, Clay noted occasional dressings, some already used, most simply discarded while dealing with the rush of injuries after the gravity waves struck. Here and there old, brown blood was spattered on the metalwork, and down in one corner lay what looked like mouldering splinters of bone.

“This needs cleaning up,” commented Scotonis.

Neither Clay nor Trove replied. Who would do that? Who would care enough to do it?

Finally they reached the section of corridor outside Medical, where three sorry-looking crewmen loitered, arms wrapped protectively around their torsos as they waited for a cure that wouldn’t be available. Scotonis marched past them, opened the door into Medical and stepped through. Clay and Trove followed him.

“Well,” Trove eventually managed, “he didn’t die of his old injuries.”

Dr Myers sat strapped into his own surgical chair. Someone had removed all the fingers from his right hand, scooped out one eyeball, then cut his throat. The man’s blood still beaded the air, and Clay resisted the urge to try and brush away droplets of it landing on his spacesuit.

“We have to find out who did this,” said Scotonis. “They must be punished.”

Why bother? Clay wondered, again sinking into fatalistic depression. Myers had reached the state they would all be reaching soon enough, he reckoned. Then he shrugged and gritted his teeth. He had a mind, he had intelligence and what had once been described to him as a low animal cunning. He would not have risen so high in the Committee administration without these, and they were precisely what would enable him to survive. Somehow there would be a way out of this, and he must find it.