“You’re clear,” Rohit said.

  Jodge opened his eyes and saw Rohit bent to the floor washing what looked like a blue-light flashlight over the green slime that was splattered there. The slime went black and smoked, then turned gray and as fine as dust.

  “Got you, you boogers,” Rohit whispered.

  Two seconds later a squeal echoed through the facility from the direction of the living quarters.

  CHAPTER 17

  Davide relaxed, if only a little. The A.I. might be down, but the light show in the Drill Dome had done its job and Rohit was working on getting it back. Meanwhile they’d done a full sweep of the Lab Dome and found no evidence of the Opas, and they were halfway through a sweep of the living quarters having found nothing untoward. Maybe they’d been worrying unduly.

  Anna walked ahead of them, with Davide and N’tini hand in hand behind her. They were approaching the bedroom where they’d laid the trap earlier, and it was only as Anna was pushing open the door that he remembered.

  They eat ash.

  His heart was in his mouth as the door opened, revealing only darkness beyond.

  “Can you put the lights up?” Anna said, but the A.I. still didn’t respond. Anna stepped forward into the door frame. At the same instant a blue green aurora flared inside the room and something moved in the darkness. N’tini let out an instinctive shriek of surprise. A creature the size of a large dog leapt out of the darkness, knocking Anna off her feet. She tumbled backwards, overbalancing both Davide and N’tini in the motion.

  We’re done for, Davide thought, but the beast seemed only intent on escape. Davide had to roll aside to try to get his legs under him and only caught a glimpse of it as it went round the curve of the dome and out of sight in the corridor. It loped like a wolf although it had six legs. Like everything else they’d seen so far it was green and warty but, for the first time, Davide felt a real fear grip at him. This wasn’t anything like an insect or a frog or even like the cat-thing Rohit had reported. Despite the fact that the beast had tentacles instead of fangs or teeth, this was most definitely a predator.

  And we’re likely to be the prey.

  b

  “Where did it go?” Anna shouted as she got to her feet.

  “It was heading towards the mess last I saw of it,” Ntine replied.

  Jodge came over the com.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “A minor scare,” Anna said. “We’ve got bigger company.”

  “Do you need me?”

  “No. Stay with Rohit. Get the A.I. back online if you can. We’ll deal with this booger.”

  Anna sounded a lot more confident than Davide felt, and he was keenly aware of his lack of a weapon as they made for the mess area. Even with Anna going first Davide felt exposed, aware that an attack might come from anywhere.

  “We’ve lost control of this situation,” N’tini said. “We should be evacuating.”

  “I agree,’ Davide added.

  “Lucky for me this isn’t a democracy. Head for the lander if it’ll make you feel any better being in there,” Anna replied. “But nobody’s leaving until these things are eradicated. Am I clear?”

  Hiding in the Lander certainly sounded like a better prospect than blundering about the domes with no real plan in mind, but once again Davide held his peace; he owed that much to the team at least. He felt N’tini squeeze his hand and knew that she had come to the same conclusion.

  But the lander option is looking better all the time.

  b

  Anna entered the mess first. The lights were flickering constantly now, but the stroboscopic effect actually made Davide feel less exposed; it reminded him of how they’d disincorporated the Opas back in the Drill Dome. Perhaps the flickers would have a similar effect here.

  It was quiet in the mess room, the only sound was the slight buzz from the flickering lights and their own footsteps on the floor.

  “Can you see it?” N’tini whispered.

  “You’ll know as soon as I do, trust me,” Anna replied. “Now quiet. We know it’s here, it knows we’re here, and our only advantage is this blowtorch. Just stay behind me and make sure you don’t get torched.”

  They did a sweep of the room. There was no sign of the dog-thing.

  “Where did it go?” Davide asked.

  Anna moved a table aside from against the wall to reveal a low grill at floor level. It was coated in more of the green slime material and a faint aurora hung around it.

  “It went through there,” she said.

  “That dog-thing? No, it was too big.”

  “Only until it was too small,” Anna replied. “We’ve seen how quickly they can change, and how fast they can move.”

  She washed flame over the grille until the aurora faded and there was only ash remaining. Even then she kept burning, until the ash itself was reduced to only a black smear on the metal grille.

  CHAPTER 18

  Rohit watched as Jodge touched his ear gingerly. It came away with a black smudge on his fingertip.

  Rohit smiled thinly.

  “I may have overdone the strength of the UV. Looks like I’ve given you a tan.”

  Jodge’s face looked pink and shiny, as if stretched too tightly over his cheekbones.

  “Thanks, man,” Jodge said. “I owe you one.”

  “Let’s see whether the A.I. can be saved before I start calling in favors,” Rohit said, and stepped up to the tube containing the A.I. hardware. He aimed his UV lamp at the open panel and washed the blue light backwards and forwards. The result was immediate; the dripping slime turned black, then gray and fell to the floor slowly in a swirling column of fine ash. Inside the unit the circuit boards continued to spark and crackle with short circuits. He saw that most of the wiring was indeed stripped of its casing and some of the boards were blackened and burned out. At least two of the crystals were shattered.

  He stepped forward and chanced a look up through the open panel to the rest of the tube. There was a rustling, scraping sound up there; more of the insect things, still working away in the dark, safe from the earlier light show and from the UV. He put the lamp inside the tube and aimed it upwards.

  After a minute some fine ash fell down towards him. He removed his hand quickly to avoid getting any on him. The rustling continued high up in the tube.

  “Can we fix it?” Jodge asked.

  “It’s still infested,” Rohit replied. “High up in the works, in the dark. Short of dismantling the whole thing…which is a week’s work in itself… there’s no way to get at them.”

  “And the A.I.?”

  “Screwed,” Rohit replied. “This unit has spoken its last.”

  “Could we cannibalize the one in the lander?”

  “Not if we ever want to take off. We need it for navigation.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  The lights flickered overhead, threatened to go out then came back, not quite as strong as before.

  Rohit was thinking.

  “There might be a way to hook up the A.I. in the lander to the dome’s systems though. It would mean exposing the lander.”

  “Anna won’t go for that.”

  “We might not have a choice if this situation keeps going sideways.”

  “I hear you,” Jodge replied.

  Anna came over the com in Rohit’s ear.

  “Any luck?”

  He gave her a quick rundown of the situation and heard her swear under her breath.

  “Okay, stay where you are, we’re coming back to you. We need a confab.”

  “We need a miracle,” Rohit muttered under his breath.

  The lights flickered as if in response.

  b

  Five minutes later they were all standing beside the submersible where it hung in its cradle. The pool that led to the tube below glistened and threw rippling shadows on the roof, and the top of the A.I. unit gave off a faint blue-green aurora to remind them that the things were still in there, probably still feeding.

  “What do we do now?” Davide asked.

  Rohit spoke first.

  “I think I can hook up the A.I. in the lander to the systems here,” he said. “But it means trailing cable from the lander bay through the facility to here. I think we’ve gotten enough cable on hand, but it’ll expose the lander if the Opas get to them like they’ve got to the wiring in here.”

  Anna shook her head.

  “The lander’s our option of last resort. But we can’t risk exposing it and trapping ourselves down here. I need another way to eradicate these things.”

  N’tini spoke up.

  “The trap worked the last time.”

  “Up to a point,” Anna replied.

  “Maybe we just need a bigger trap, more bait,” Rohit added. “I liked that idea about using the submersible.”

  “We don’t even have to do that,” Davide said. “All we need to do is lure them out into the open. We’ve got the light sequence on the sub and…

  Jodge interrupted him.

  “The lights blew out the last time we used them, too much of a strain on the system, I think. We’d need to run repairs first.”

  “And we don’t have time for that,” Anna said. “Every minute we waste just gives them more eating time, more growing time. No, we go with the original idea…get them in the sub and send them down the tube.”

  “That only works if we’re sure we get them all,” Jodge said.

  “At this point I’ll settle for getting most of them,” Anna said. She turned to Rohit. “What do you need?”

  “Bait, and plenty of it,” Rohit replied, his mind racing, “and I’ve got just the thing.”

  “Get set up then,” Anna said. “Then we’ll all head through to the lab and run the op from there.”

  “I don’t think so. We can’t be sure the systems are all operating at a hundred per cent. The boogers got into the A.I. circuitry. They could be in everything else. No, I’ll stay here, and send the sub down manually if the bait is taken and the systems are down.”

  “That’s too risky,” Anna said. “I’m taking the big torch with me.”

  “I’ll stay with him,” Jorge said. “There’s a couple more of those small torches around here, And Rohit has the UV lamp. If it all goes belly up we should at least be able to fend them off until you get back here to help us. Just stay on the com.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Once the others had left to make their way to the lab, Jorge turned to Rohit.

  “You’re the boss on this one, man. What do you need from me?”

  Rohit pointed at a large container sitting off to one side.

  “The biofuel for the sub is our bait,” Rohit said. “We know they’ll eat plastics, and that’s just a complex hydrocarbon. I’m pretty sure they’ll go crazy for oil.”

  “Where do you want it?”

  “Sitting in the bucket seat with the cap open,” Rohit said. “Once we’ve got it in there we’ll winch the sub over the top of the tube. Then we wait. The beasties get hungry, crawl into the sub, we close the hatch and send them back where they came from.”

  “And the sub?”

  “That’ll be a goner, I’m afraid. We can’t afford to bring her back up.”

  “You know how much of my life is in that thing?”

  Rohit looked at him with contempt.

  “You know how much of my life was in Mark?”

  Jodge decided silence was his best option. He helped manhandle the fuel canister into the sub; it was a tight fit but finally they got it dropped down into the bucket seat.

  He stood to one side while Rohit winched the sub over to sit precariously on the edge of the tube.

  “If they take the bait, all we have to do is get Anna to release the clamps. She can send it down from the lab. Failing that, we release the clamps manually and give it a shove,” Rohit said.

  “You know how much that thing weighs?”

  “Okay, we give it a big shove. Don’t worry. This is going to work. I promised Mark when I gave him his send-off.”

  “About that…” Jodge started.

  Rohit stopped him.

  “No need. You saved my life in the medical room by getting me out. We can discuss everything else over a drink once we’re out of this mess.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” Jodge said.

  “Best get a blowtorch,” Rohit said. “This UV unit was so quickly patched together I’m not sure how long it’ll last.”

  Jodge fetched four of the small blowtorches from the equipment rack, put three at his feet and held the other in one hand, the heavy wrench in the other. He gave Rohit a nod.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said.

  Rohit spoke into the com.

  “Everything’s in position here. Ready when you are.”

  Anna came over the com.

  “The control panel and the holo seem to be working for now so we’re good to go here too. Lights are on the fritz. Better hope they hold.”

  b

  The wait proved to be a long one. Jodge didn’t know what to say to Rohit, and Rohit seemed to have withdrawn into himself. The lights flickered and guttered overhead, but at least the hazy aurora that hung around the top of the A.I unit didn’t get any stronger. They’d left the cap open on the fuel container. Fumes wafted up out of the submersible.

  “It’s going to get heady in a bit,” Jodge said quietly.

  “Let’s see if we can speed things up,” Rohit replied.

  He walked over to the main door of the dome and closed it. At the same time he reached over and switched off the main lights.

  Their only light now came from two dim emergency lights high overhead, and the, now much brighter, blue-green aurora around the A.I. unit.

  The response was almost immediate.

  Even from the far side of the dome the two men heard the rustling in the A.I. casing get louder and more insistent. The aurora swirled and intensified, spreading to encase the whole tube from floor to ceiling. Green slime began to pile up beyond the open casing, filling the interior of the tube and then spilling out to fall thickly to the floor where it bubbled and coalesced, the size of a mouse, a frog, a cat until, finally, a large dog took shape out of the festering chaos.

  Every fiber of Jodge’s being wanted to run.

  “Let’s torch it,” he whispered.

  The dog-thing, still in the process of solidifying, turned what passed for a head towards the sound of his voice. A mass of foot long tentacles sprung wetly from what might be a snout, and waved in the air, like a sea-anemone looking for passing food.

  Rohit put a finger to his lips, and Jodge got the message well enough.

  There was now more green slime piling up behind the dog-thing, and more still oozing out of the panel in the A.I. unit, an almost snake-like column of it falling down into a new bubbling morass that looked already to be of equal size to the first.

  How many of these things are there going to be?

  The first beast’s tentacles swayed away from being aligned with the two men and fixed on the submersible, as if staring at it. The tentacles wafted slowly, then faster, until they were whipping in frenzy. The beast, fully formed now, a dog as big as a wolfhound and looking equally as lean and powerful, stepped away from the A.I. unit, heading for the sub. Behind it a second dog-thing was taking form.

  And still the slime poured out of the A.I. casing.

  b

  The first dog had reached the submersible. It raised its head, letting the tentacles run across the hull, tasting it. The second dog, already fully formed, had already sprouted tentacles and they too were tasting the air. Behind that Jorge saw, with a silent prayer of thanks, that the flow of slime had finally slowed, although there was already a large enough pile at the base of the A.I. unit to make another, only slightly smaller, of the dog things.

  The first creature continued to taste the hull. The second was also making its way in that direction. A third was beginning to take shape in the slime, a definite head already forming.

  The emergency lights high up in the dome flickered, dimmed, than brightened again. Anna spoke in his ear.

  “We’ve got problems,” she said. “The fusion generator is reporting a drop in efficiency.”

  “One thing at a time please,” Rohit whispered.

  The first dog-thing took no heed and clambered up onto the sub, its tentacles focussed on the open hatch. But the second dog’s tentacles turned in their direction and tasted the air. The creature changed course, coming towards them. The lights were dim enough for Jodge to see the blue-green aurora strengthen and swirl.

  The first dog-thing dropped down into the submersible. The third one was still standing by the A.I. unit.

  “We can drop the sub anytime, just give the word,” Anna said in his ear.

  “Not yet,” Jodge whispered.

  The second dog-thing came at them faster.

  CHAPTER 20

  Davide was monitoring the inside of the submersible and had a close-up view of the first dog-thing as it dipped its tentacles into the open canister of oil and began to feed, the sucking, slurping noises coming clearly over the con. The green warty skin rippled and emitted an ever-stronger aurora that pulsed in time with the frantic slurping.

  Another noise joined the slurping, a ping from the sonar, then another. Davide adjusted the view to check the screens in the sub, and let out a gasp.

  “What is it?” N’tini asked.

  He ignored her and got on the com to Rohit and Jodge.

  “You need to get out of there, right now,” he said.

  Jodge’s voice came back, barely a whisper.

  “In case you haven’t been paying attention, we’ve got our hands a bit full. But Rohit’s UV will deal with it.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Davide said, almost shouting. “We can’t send the submersible down the tube.”

  “Why not?”

 

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