The crew loosened up as Lady Mac changed from flight mode to her less demanding orbital status. They drifted around the bridge, used the washroom. Ashly went down to the galley and fetched a meal. Prolonged exposure to high gees was severely tiring. And eating anything substantial during the acceleration was unwise. The mass put a lot of pressure on internal organs, even with artificially strengthened membranes. They devoured the spongy pasta cakes eagerly, chasing runaway squirts of hot cheese sauce round the bridge.
“So if it sees the whole universe,” Liol said, talking round a mouthful, “Do you reckon it knows we’re here?”
“Every telescope sees the whole universe,” Ashly said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they can all see us.”
“Okay, it detected our gravitonic distortion when we jumped in,” Liol said, unperturbed.
“Where’s your evidence?”
“If it knows about us, it’s keeping quiet,” Beaulieu said. “Sensors haven’t found any electromagnetic emissions out there.”
“How did the Tyrathca find it then?”
“Easily, I would think,” Dahybi said.
Under the direction of Kempster and Renato, Beaulieu launched their survey satellites. Sixteen of them were fired, racing away from Lady Mac at seven gees. They were arranged in a globular formation, keeping the starship at their centre. After two minutes their solid rockets jettisoned, leaving them flying free. The main section was an omniphase visual-spectrum sensor array, a giant technological fly’s eye, looking every way at once. Between them, they formed an ever-increasing telescope baseline, capable of huge resolution. Its only real limit was imposed by the amount of processing power available to correlate and analyse the incoming photonic data.
The sweep was conducted by registering every speck of light with a negative magnitude (in standard stellar classification the brightest visible star is labelled magnitude one, while the dimmest is a six—anything brighter than a one has to be a planet and is assigned a negative value). Their positions were then reviewed five times a second to see if they were moving.
Once the planets had been located, the telescope could be focused on them individually to see if the extensive spatial disturbance Swantic-LI had referred to was in orbit around them. They were assuming it was a visible phenomena; the Tyrathca didn’t have gravitonic detector technology. If nothing was found, a more comprehensive sweep of the system would have to be conducted.
“This is most unusual,” Kempster datavised after the first sweep was completed. He and Renato were using the main lounge in capsule C, along with Alkad and Peter. Their specialist electronics had been installed, transforming it into a temporary astrophysics lab.
Joshua and Liol swapped a look shading between surprise and amusement. “In what way?” Joshua asked.
“We can only detect a single negative-magnitude source orbiting this star,” the astronomer said. “There’s simply nothing else out there. No planets, no asteroids. Lady Macbeth ’s sensors can’t even find the usual clouds of interplanetary dust. All matter has been cleared away, virtually down to a molecular level. The only normal occurrence is solar wind.”
“Cleared away, or just sucked into the spatial disturbance,” Sarha muttered.
“So what is the source?” Joshua datavised.
“A moon-sized object, orbiting three hundred million kilometres from the star.”
Joshua and the rest of the crew accessed the sensor array. It showed them a very bright point of light. Completely nondescript.
“We can’t get any sort of spectral reading,” Kempster said. “It’s reflecting the sun’s light at essentially a hundred per cent efficiency. It must be clad in some kind of mirror.”
“You did say: easy,” Ashly told Dahybi.
“That’s not easy,” Joshua said. “That’s obvious.” He loaded the object’s position into the flight computer and plotted a vector to a jump coordinate which would bring them out one million kilometres away from the enigmatic object. “Stand by. Accelerating in one minute.”
The impulsive anger which had pushed Louise out of Andy’s flat had faded by the time she reached Islington High Street. Walking down the empty streets had given her far too much time to think, mainly about how headstrong and stupid this idea was. At the same time that original reason held fast. Somebody had to do something, however futile. It was the getting captured and facing Dexter part that was making her legs all wobbly and recalcitrant.
Her neural nanonics crashed when she started off along St John Street. Not that she really needed her map file any more. He wouldn’t be far from the centre of the red cloud; all she had to do was walk straight down to the Thames, only a couple of miles. She knew she’d never actually get that far.
The edge of the cloud, a frayed agitated boundary, was still creeping slowly out towards the skyscrapers behind her. It had already reached Finsbury, barely a quarter of a mile ahead of her now. A gruff sonorous thunder reverberated down from its quaking underside, echoing along the deserted streets. Leaves on the tall evergreen trees trembled in disharmony as erratic gusts of warm air blew out from the centre. Birds rode the thermals high overhead. She could see the tiny black flecks streaming together into huge flocks, all of them heading in the same direction: out.
They were smarter than people. She was amazed that she hadn’t encountered anyone fleeing the cloud’s advance. The inhabitants were all staying barricaded behind their doors. Was everyone paralysed by fear like Andy?
She passed under the cloud, the sleet of redness closing in on her like a perverted nightfall. It wasn’t just the humid air blowing against her now: the feeling of dismay strengthened, slowing her pace. The rumbles of thunder above her thickened, never quite dying away. Forked slivers of blackness crackled between the roiling tufts: black lightning, draining photons out of the sky.
When they’d said goodbye, Genevieve had offered her Carmitha’s silver pendant of earth. Louise had refused. Now she wished she hadn’t. Any totem against the evil would be welcome. She decided to think about Joshua, her real talisman against the harsh truth of life beyond Norfolk. But that just made her slip into the memory of Andy. She still didn’t regret that—quite. As if it mattered.
Louise had made it down Rosebery Avenue and turned into Farringdon Road when the possessed walked out into the street in front of her. There were six of them, moving with unhurried indolence, dressed in austere black suits. They lined up between the pavements and stood facing her. She walked up to the one in the middle, a tall thin man with a flop of oily brown hair.
“Girl, what the fuck are you about?” he asked.
Louise pointed the anti-memory weapon straight at him, its end barely a foot from his face. He stiffened, which meant he knew what it was. It wasn’t much of a comfort to her; somebody else had one. She knew who.
“Take me to Quinn Dexter,” she told him.
They all started laughing. “To him?” the one she was threatening said. “Girl, are you twisted, or what?”
“I’ll shoot if you don’t.” Her voice was very close to cracking. They would know that, and the reason why, them and their devilish senses. She gripped the weapon tighter to stop it shaking about.
“My pleasure,” he said.
She jabbed the weapon forward. His head recoiled in synchronization.
“Don’t push it, bitch.”
The possessed started walking down the road. Louise took a couple of hesitant paces.
“Follow us,” the tall one told her. “The Messiah is waiting for you.”
She kept the weapon up, not that it would do much good, they all had their backs to her now. “How far is it?”
“Close to the river.” He glanced back over his shoulder, lips stretched into a thin smile. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”