Six Days by Philip Webb Page A

don’t like it much – it feels like you ain’t really there.
    The
Aeolus
gets bigger till it fills the screen. I can’t tell how large it is, but the surface looks pretty close now, like wrinkled shell and shot through with pink webs and blue streaks. And then these tentacles peel out of the surface, swaying like reeds underwater.
    “What are
them
things?”
    “There’s nothing to worry about,” mutters Erin. “It’s just the ship docking with us.”
    There’s a soft thump on the roof above us and a squelching noise.
    “Them feelers,” I go. “It’s … alive?” “Yes,” answers Peyto. “It’s alive and it’s smart.” “Whoa, that thing’s a creature. And we’re going inside it?” “No, not a creature. It’s an organic machine for space travel.”
    “But you’re saying it’s got a brain?”
    “Not exactly,” goes Erin. “Its intelligence was designed separately using a machine, then transferred into a living organic shell. The process is like fusing body and mind – we call it birthing.”
    I must be gawping like a loon. “You made a spaceship what can live and think?”
    Peyto tries to explain. “Not us, our ancestors. Ordinary machines just break down in space. The best way to make a ship really last is to make it alive so it can repair itself.”
    “Docking complete,” goes Erin.
    Then something grows out of the wall opposite me. It bulges like a giant zit, before popping open and squirting me with a warm gust of cheesy air.
    “Blimey, gut rot! Does it usually guff like this?” Erin ain’t amused. “It’s not in prime condition.” “You can say that again – smells like it’s been eating something right dodgy …”
    “It doesn’t
eat
anything,” she sighs.
    I suppose that should put my mind at rest a bit, but as we squeeze past the zit flaps into the ship proper, there’sthese ridged walls flickering with bluish light, and I can’t help thinking it looks like the inside of a giant gob.
    Erin calls out, “Hello?”
    Nothing.
    “Should it be saying stuff back?” I go. I psych myself for a huge, booming voice to reply.
    “It should,” mutters Peyto. “But there’s some kind of communication fault.”
    “Like what? Is it deaf or asleep or something?”
    “No, the messages are just getting lost in transit, I think. It’s just malfunctioning,” goes Erin. “Communication has been … patchy since the emergency.”
    “
Emergency?”
    “There’s a hull breach.”
    “You mean there’s a flippin’ hole in it?” Even I know that ain’t good news. “Ain’t we gonna run out of air or something?”
    “Don’t worry, we’re sealed off from where the breach is in the central shaft. We’re safe in here.”
    Safe? Inside a wounded space monster? Safe is tucked up in my sleeping bag in our hut … in Elephant and Castle … thirteen miles away. But it seems to me we’re a good deal farther away than thirteen miles.
    I glance about at the walls like they’re all set to cave in. “What made the hole?”
    “I told you it’s
safe
,” insists Erin. “The
Aeolus
mightnot be a hundred percent, but it’s not ready to fall apart just yet.”
    Neither her nor Peyto seems that freaked out right now by the “emergency” – maybe it’s under control. I try to relax a bit.
    The main chamber inside the ship is speckled green, and ever so gently it
throbs
. And it’s wet – not something you really want to touch, but I ain’t got a choice on that front cos the only way to move is to shove yourself off the walls. Waving your arms and legs like you’re underwater just leaves you where you are. The
Aeolus
walls are warm and stringy – the gunge glues itself to your fingers, but that makes it easier to get a grip on things so you can swing from one hold to the next. It don’t seem to bother Erin and Peyto, but I don’t like the way the gunk clings to your skin.
    “So this ain’t normal, then, the way it’s all sick?” I go.
    “It’s not an animal, Cass,”