The technicians had cleared out of the area around the recovery bubble. Machines moved into different positions. Auger even noticed three snake robots in defensive/offensive postures, poised like spitting cobras.
“They expecting something nasty?” she asked.
“Just a precaution,” Skellsgard said. “Once that ship’s in the pipe, we can’t communicate with it or the remote portal at E2. That’s a thirty-hour communications blackout. It makes us twitchy.”
“And why is that?”
“Theory says there’s no way that the Slashers could tap into this leg of the hyperweb even if they knew it existed. But theory might be wrong. Also, we’re defending against the possibility that the E2 portal might have been compromised by what the military boys are calling ‘indigenous E2 hostiles.’ ”
The needles on the analogue dials jammed hard into the red. From somewhere beyond the bubble—shining through it with X-ray intensity—came a cruel blue light, brighter than the sun. Auger turned away, holding a hand over her eyes. She could make out the sketchy, anatomical shadows of her finger bones. As quickly as it had arrived the light was gone, leaving only a tracery of pink afterimages on her retinas. Through pained eyes, Auger squinted at the bubble just in time to see a blur of motion as the incoming transport arrived. The ship rammed into the cradle like a piston. The cradle lurched, cushioning the deceleration. This happened in absolute silence. Then the cradle reached the limit of its motion and the entire glass bubble bulged visibly, compressing its huge pneumatic supports with an enormous steely groan, followed by a slow, sighing relaxation back to its original position.
“You keep mentioning E2,” Auger said. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Earth Two,” Skellsgard said, without batting an eyelid.
Somewhere, the vacuum integrity of the bubble had been breeched. Air shrieked into it, the breeze already tugging at Auger’s hair. Klaxons and warning lights went berserk. Auger renewed her grip on the cage’s support railing. The white-suited technicians were already scurrying back to their posts.
“That looked rough,” Auger remarked.
“They’ll live,” Skellsgard replied.
“Has anyone not lived?”
“Once, back when we were still ironing out glitches in the system. It wasn’t pretty, but we’ve learned a few things since then.”
The transport began to descend, passing into some kind of enclosed structure nestling in the base of the bubble. Doors sealed it from view.
“C’mon,” Skellsgard said. “Let’s take a closer look.”
Auger followed her through a network of caged ladders down to the lower level. The glass bulb of the bubble loomed over them. It had been patched and sealed in many areas, with fresh star-shaped flaws marked and dated in luminous paint.
“All this was built in a year?”
“It’s been two years since they found the portal,” Skellsgard said. “Hey, give the military guys some credit—they did make some progress before I came on the team. Even if most of it consisted of poking the portal with a series of increasingly large sticks.”
“All the same… I’m still pretty impressed.”
“Well, don’t be. We’ve been as clever as we can be, but we couldn’t have achieved any of this without a healthy dose of Slasher know-how. And I don’t just mean the kind of intelligence we got from Peter.”
“What other kind is there?”
“Technical assistance,” Skellsgard said. “Contraband technology. Not just the obvious stuff like the robots, but control gear—cybernetics, nanotech, all the stuff we need to interface with the pathological-matter mechanisms of the original portal.”
“How did you steal that kind of thing?”
“We didn’t. We asked nicely and we got it.”
Beneath the bubble, the newly arrived transport emerged from the airlock structure, lowering on a piston-driven platform. The cylindrical craft was shaped like an artillery shell, its skin a rococo crawl of complex pewter-coloured machinery. There was evidence of damage. Hinged banks of machinery packed around the cylinder were either mangled or missing entirely, sheared off leaving patches of bright metal. Various panels and ports had been ripped free, exposing scorched, frayed viscera of wiring and fuel lines. The whole thing still smelled faintly of burning oil.
“Told you it was a rough crossing,” Skellsgard said. “But she should be good for another round-trip, once we get her patched up again.”
“How many trips did it take for her to get into that state?”
“One. But it’s not usually that bad.”
The ship slid sideways on its platform. Two of the three snake robots slinked over to it, weapons and sensors popping out of their head spheres. A gang of white-clad technicians were already fussing over the transport, plugging bits of equipment into it and making cautious hand gestures to each other. One of them shone a torch into the dark patch that was one of the cabin windows. Meanwhile, one of four intact transports slid over from a storage rack, guided by other technicians. Auger watched as it moved up into the airlock, disappearing and then re-appearing inside the recovery bubble, with its nose aimed towards the far wall. The pressure leak had already been fixed and most of the klaxons had now fallen silent. Odd as it seemed, it all had the feeling of business as usual.
“What’ll happen now?” Auger asked.
“They’ll run some pre-flight checks, some tests on the ship and the weather conditions in the link. If everything behaves itself, we’ll be looking at an insertion in about six hours.”
“Insertion,” Auger repeated thoughtfully, looking at the blunt machine and the narrowing shaft it was aimed at. “It’s all very phallic, isn’t it?”
“I know,” Skellsgard said confidingly, “but what can you do? The boys must have their toys.”
She opened a cabinet and pulled out two white smocks. She passed one to Auger and donned the other one, closing the Velcro seams tightly. “Let’s see how they’re doing, shall we?”
With the snake robots still monitoring events, the technicians used a variety of heavy-duty tools to open the ship’s airlock. It finally gave way with a gasp of equalising air pressure, then swung open and aside on complex hinges. Warm red light spilled from the interior of the transport. One of the technicians climbed aboard, then re-emerged a minute or two later accompanied by a cropped-haired woman dressed in what looked like the interior layer of an environment suit. The woman supported one arm with the other, as if she had fractured or broken a bone. A man emerged behind her, his face pale and drawn, etched with what looked like years of fatigue. Skellsgard pushed through the retinue of technicians and spoke briefly to the two passengers before giving them both a reassuring hug. A medical team had appeared from somewhere and began fussing over the two arrivals as soon as Skellsgard had finished with them.
“They had it pretty rough,” she told Auger. “Hit some bad throat turbulence during the insertion at the other end. But they’ll live, which is what matters.”
“I thought hyperweb travel was supposed to be routine.”
“It is—if you have the experience that the Slashers do. But we’ve only been doing this for a year. They can squeeze a liner through their portals and not touch the sides. For us, it’s a major headache just to get one of these dinky little ships through in one piece.”
“What were you saying about Slasher technology just now? How can there be Slasher involvement with this if you say they don’t even know about this place?”
“We have our share of sympathisers amongst moderate Slashers, people who think the aggressive expansionism needs a moderating influence.”
“Defectors and traitors,” Auger said scornfully.