‘Applegate, Susan’ was near the top. Discharged an hour ago.
Jack cut straight across the sales guy’s patter, as though he wasn’t there. ‘Kirsty, is Dr Tegg available for interview at the moment?’
‘I think I was speaking, actually,’ interjected the sales guy. His sharp green eyes flared with anger behind his strained but polite tone.
‘I don’t care, actually,’ Jack told him. ‘Can’t you see these guys are real busy tonight? Why don’tcha take your briefcase and sit on it. Over there. Five hours waiting time.’
‘Thanks.’ Kirsty smiled at him with evident relief, though he was pleased to see there was a more appraising look returning to her eyes. ‘I’m afraid Dr Tegg went off duty about an hour ago. Are you together? Only she left with another doctor. Good-looking guy, too.’
Jack laughed at Kirsty’s transparent attempt to exaggerate Owen’s appeal. Or perhaps he was her type, and he should convince her that this salesman was a better prospect tonight. There he was against the wall, sitting on his briefcase and looking resentfully over at them.
Briefcase, thought Jack.
Wildman had a briefcase when he chased him through town. But he didn’t still have it when Jack caught up with him on the eighth floor of the building site. He must have concealed it somewhere in the partly constructed Levall-Mellon building. And his wasn’t full of proprietary drugs, either; it would be where Wildman had concealed the remaining nuclear fuel packs.
Jack beckoned the sales guy over to the reception desk. The thin guy jumped off his case and scurried across. ‘Mr Majunath will be free in an hour,’ Jack told him. ‘You should talk to Kirsty about setting up a meeting. And when you’ve got that sorted, she can get you to see the Clinical Director, too.’ He pointed to the wall opposite. ‘Don’t lose your briefcase.’
Jack strode confidently through the exit of A amp;E, oblivious to the rain that pelted down around him, heading for the SUV. He had a briefcase of his own to collect downtown.
Another couple of minutes in the sub with Toshiko might have driven Gwen insane. Toshiko was going on about algal populations, and how they changed depending on the temperature in the Bay or the amount of sunlight or some nutrient or other. Gwen was a lot less interested in how blue-green algae formed a scum on the surface than in finding the scum who’d been killing innocent people back on shore.
It was almost possible to forget all of that when they got into the alien ship.
The alien ship. Gwen had to say it to herself over and over. The alien ship.
She’d never seen anything like it, never been inside an alien ship. There’d been the meteor strike and she’d seen fragments of the transportation shell they’d dug up in the foundations of a new supermarket. This was different.
While Toshiko was making sure that the sub was safely connected to the outer hull, and that there was air inside for them to breathe, Gwen had been wondering how it would look. She’d expected it to be like a film set. After all, she’d sat yawning through enough DVD special features with Rhys to know how the effects were done. That the sets were lit specially and then the post-production effects made the places look, literally, out of this world.
This was beyond anything Rhys could have imagined, spilling Doritos on the carpet because he was so engrossed in the film. The only thing Gwen recognised here was the smell of salt water in the air. The rest was — why was she surprised? — alien. She swallowed hard to release the pressure building in her ears.
The walkways were spongy beneath their feet as they stepped deeper into the ship. Soft green light dappled the undulating walls, rippling like a zoo’s aquarium all around them. Frothy fingers of thin material wafted from an unseen ceiling, almost beckoning them to go further. Occasionally a sharp-edged symbol would fade into view on a wall and then just as slowly fade away. Gusts of brine-tasting air swirled gently as they proceeded.
‘It’s getting darker,’ worried Toshiko. Her hand-held computer wasn’t giving her any reassurance.
Gwen noticed that when they spoke there was no echo, even in what seemed to be a cavernous space. ‘What’s worrying you, Tosh?’
‘There could be more of those starfish things you mentioned.’
Gwen brandished her torch. ‘Use your flashlight.’
‘Will that scare them off?’
‘No,’ admitted Gwen. ‘But at least you’ll see them waving their tentacles at you.’
The floor heaved beneath their feet, and a bass growl came from somewhere deep inside the ship. ‘It’s still lurching through the Rift,’ explained Toshiko. ‘It’s shaking about like a stalling car. The ship could be tearing itself apart in the process.’
‘There’s a cheering thought,’ Gwen told her. At a kind of T-junction, Toshiko took the left-hand fork, and Gwen hastened to join her.
They entered a wide expanse that contained a circle of suspended cages. They faced inwards towards a cylindrical block at the centre. Each cage had a curved back, and reminded Gwen of elongated versions of the enclosed retro chairs Rhys kept on about wanting them to buy. Probably because he’d been watching the DVDs of The Prisoner she’d bought for his birthday. One of the cages was enclosed at the front.
But that wasn’t what had alarmed Toshiko. She was pointing mutely at the third cage along. Owen was slumped in it. Head drooped to one side, face pallid, eyes closed.
Gwen started forward to see if she could free him, but Toshiko held her back. ‘Careful,’ she hissed. ‘On the floor in front of him…’
A short-haired blonde woman lay in an awkward heap in front of Owen’s cage. In the half-light of the room, it seemed to Gwen at first that a large vein in the woman’s neck was throbbing. Gwen stooped to take a closer look, gasped and immediately leapt away again. One of the starfish creatures was attached to the woman’s neck, arching up and down like a hand pressing up against the woman’s jaw.
Gwen reached for her gun. ‘No! You can’t fire that in here,’ snapped Toshiko. ‘The whole place is pressurised.’
‘And I can hardly shoot it while it’s on her face.’ Gwen holstered her weapon, and took out her torch. She waited until the starfish creature was on one of its upward movements, and then prised it free with the lamp end of the torch. It rolled away from the woman’s head, on its back, the four legs waggling pathetically as it struggled to regain a grip. Gwen pushed it further away with the torch, noting how the mouth section in the centre puckered in a foul parody of disappointment. The woman’s neck and lower face were a raw mass of part-digested flesh. Her lips were eaten away at one side, revealing the teeth and lower jaw.
Gwen hefted the heavy torch and brought it down in a sharp blow in the centre of the creature. It squeaked, the sound of two rubber boots being kicked together. She slammed it with another blow, and another, and another, until its centre was pulped and two arms had detached. It wasn’t twitching any more.
‘OK, stop now.’ Toshiko was holding her arm.
Gwen dropped the torch, and the light rolled around the room in a bright swirl until it came to a halt in the sticky remains.
Toshiko gave her arm a quick squeeze of reassurance and then stooped down over the blonde woman. By playing her own torch over the remaining half of the woman’s face, she could identify her: ‘Sandra Applegate.’ She carefully felt for a pulse in the remaining half of her neck. ‘Nothing we can do.’
Toshiko stood up again and examined Owen in his cage. His breathing was slow but regular. When she lifted his lids, his eyes were rolled right back into his head.
The ship heaved and shuddered more profoundly than before.
‘Let’s get him out of this thing,’ Toshiko told Gwen. ‘We need to get him back to the Hub.’