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SHE DIDN’T WANT TO leave the cosy confines of her crate. The packing material she’d gathered around herself was quite cosy. It wouldn’t last forever, as all packing material was biodegradable, and the newly appointed Space Gardener as Lena called him, would want all of this for compost. Jenny had waited to be invited in very politely, but now the two of them had been cosy in there for a while. Lena noted that Jenny had clearly been searching for her as she’d brought snacks, but that she’d also not been calling out to try to find her, so she’d either figured Lena didn’t want to be found or was being stealthy about looking for her. Either way, Lena was quietly impressed.
“Jelly baby?” said Jenny, proffering the bag.
Lena took one and began chewing its legs off one at a time. “How did you find me?”
“The ship told me.”
“I thought you couldn’t speak to it?”
“I can’t. She kinda led me here,”
“Traitor. How come no one else found me?”
“She made sure I was the only one looking, as far as I can tell. This hold has been full of marines drilling on and off.”
“I know I heard them clomping about. I’d hoped my hiding place was perfect, since they didn’t find me.”
“I wouldn’t either if the ship hadn’t flagged you.”
“How did she?”
“She kinda back-lit just your crate in a rather fetching pink. Quite clever really.”
“Oh, she’s smart all right. That’s what worries me half the time.”
“I thought you and she were best buds?”
“We were. Until she got all bossy on me.”
“I feel some butting of heads here,” Jenny scrunched her nose. Lena stared hard and crossed her arms. “If Rowie didn’t care about you, she wouldn’t have wanted a friend to find you rather than anyone else.”
Lena looked from under her fringe, “Is that what you are?”
“Yes, you idiot, if you’ll let me be! And Maggot too. She’s a funny auld fish but she’d do anything for ya.” Jenny proffered the packet again, Lena took another. “Don’t be having all of the raspberry ones, you.”
“I thought we were friends,” Lena said, starting on the legs of the next sweet.
“That only goes so far,” Jenny ferreted into the packet. “You’re safe. There’s one left.”
Lena took two sweets, sat back, and chewed thoughtfully.
“Have you had chance to think about what caused all this?”
“We got frustrated with each other I guess?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“She keeps saying that there’s something there in that signal, and there’s just nothing but static.”
“Well, it turns out Ash might have a theory about that. They can’t hear anything either and it’s making them cross too.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. Ash said that if the signal is that hard to hear, maybe human ears can’t detect it. Wanna come see what they’re up to?”
“Kay,” said Lena.
Jenny helped her out of the crate and paused, looking back at the door. “Shall we close it up again and put it back against the wall, just in case?”
“Yeah, why not.”
They rearranged everything and then, set off back for the communications blister Lots of crew waved as Lena passed them. She smiled. She didn’t really have the energy to wave back. She was pleased when they got to the bridge that the captain wasn’t on duty. It was probably meant to be Fazar as senior officer, but he often was about doing things on his shift, either way, she and Jenny got to creep up the helix staircase without any fuss, towards the ominous sounds of hissing from Ash Cento’s tech nest.
“This should work,” Cento said. They had their back to them, so it wasn’t clear whether they were talking to them or not. “I’ve made a self-evolving algorithm that’s looking for any kind of signal that any kind of creature could produce or hear.”
“That’s nice,” said Lena.
The output of all of Cento’s tinkering seemed to be relayed through a series of speakers dotted round the edge of the bubble on waist-high pillars. Lena thought it created a kind of audio sea, complete with waves and eddies and as she moved around the chamber, the sound picture changed.
“And I’ve got a raft of subroutines running over there to sift out everything extraneous—white noise, pink noise, microwave background, solar distortions, though there’s not that much of that out here—”
They all froze, then spun to face the same pillar. The sound was vanishingly faint and over in an instant. The three searched each other’s faces in a did-we-really-hear-that? kind of a way. Then silence. Ash leapt to a panel at the central station, listened round to all the pillars again, shutting the hissing off in them all except one. Jenny hadn’t moved, glaring at the pillar like a hunting beast that had heard prey in a burrow.
“Wait. There!” she said.
Lena and Cento whirled again. It was definitely a noise, but it sounded like a crunch that could have been electrical or the odd crackles one always got in listening kit when cosmic rays whizzed through the electronics. They waited. No one breathed. The crunch again. Then a low almost nnn sound—a drone.
“That’s it!” cried Lena. “That’s the noise Rowie could hear.”
“What the hell is it?” said Jenny.
“No human, that’s for sure,” said Cento.
“Rowie says it’s still a person,” said Lena.
“What in the same way that she’s a person?” Ash said.
“Ye-ss?” said Lena.
“Gug...“said the speaker.
“Wait, that’s a human voice!” said Jenny, but then the noise flipped and became a high pitched weep-weep-weeeeep. “Are we sure all this noise is coming from the same place?”
“Yup,” Cento said.
“Rowie says it’s all from the same person.”
“How the hell?” said Jenny.
“And she says, he’s hurting.”
The trio had no time to process that before the speaker screamed.
