The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton Page B

It was squirting out a pale white liquid, a thin fountain that was over three metres high before it started to break apart into a shower of globules that kept on going, oscillating
wildly as they sprayed out into the vacuum.
    ‘Did the Viking get any?’ Laura demanded as Ayanna tried to regain control of the tumbling lander, slowing the gyrations and stabilizing the trajectory.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The samplers in the drill head? Did any of that stuff touch them before the pressure blew it off?’
    ‘I think so. Hang on.’
    The pale fountain was slowing, shrinking. Within seconds it was just a tiny runnel of syrupy fluid trickling out of the puncture hole. A thin fog swirled gently around it as it began to vacuum
boil.
    ‘If all the globes are full of liquid, then Ibu and Rojas can’t be inside them,’ Joey said.
    Laura glared at the globe and its bubbling wound. ‘Then where the hell are they?’
    ‘Same place as the
Vermillion
and the Mk24s.’
    ‘You’re not helping.’
    ‘I’ve got the Viking stable,’ Ayanna said. ‘The drill samplers did get something.’
    They both turned to watch the display screen on the console bring up the preliminary spectral analysis.
    ‘Hydrocarbons,’ Laura read the raw data, the routines in her macrocellular clusters running analysis. ‘Water. Sugars. What’s that? Looks like a protein
structure.’
    ‘The fluid’s organic,’ Ayanna said in shock. ‘The globes are alive.’
    The cabin lighting went off, to be replaced by the low blue-tinged glow of the emergency lighting. Somewhere in the shuttle a fire alarm was shrieking.
    *
    It had taken a power screwdriver from the equipment locker to prise the panel off the passenger cabin bulkhead. By the time they did that, the composite panel was blackening
and starting to blister. There were no flames inside, but the power cell was glowing. Spraying it with extinguisher gel wasn’t the answer.
    Laura yanked one of the emergency suits out of its overhead wallet and jammed her arm into the sleeve. The glove had just enough insulation. With Ayanna cutting through the power cell’s
surrounding cables and mountings, she tugged it out and lumbered her way down to the payload bay. The whole suit went into the airlock, wrapped around the now-sizzling power cell. She slapped the
emergency evacuation button. And the smouldering mess went flying off into space when the outer hatch peeled open.
    ‘Got another one,’ Ayanna was calling from the passenger cabin above the multiple alarm sirens.
    Laura started opening lockers, hunting for some decent tools. Her hand was blistered where the power cell’s runaway heat had soaked through the suit glove’s insulation. She hauled
herself back to the passenger cabin, lugging a utility belt.
    In the end they had to remove four of the shorted-out power cells and physically inspect the rest. There were seventeen in the shuttle.
    ‘Just brilliant,’ a shaking Ayanna said when they checked behind the last panel. ‘There have been so many Void glitches they finally induced a genuine problem.’
    Laura’s u-shadow managed to link to the power cells’ management processor. ‘Power surge broke the cut-offs here, but they fused in safe mode. We need to replace the main
circuits if we want to enable the systems it supplies.’
    Ayanna gave the passenger cabin a disgusted look. The blueish emergency lighting was somehow cooling, and the panels floated about chaotically, along with fragments and broken cabling
they’d cut free. One of the portable atmosphere filters they’d brought in to deal with the fumes was creating a steady breeze, which stirred all the fragments. They were constantly
flicking them away from their eyes. ‘We don’t have time to deal with this crap,’ she said. ‘It’s only the backups which have failed, not the main fusion tubes. And
there are still a whole load of power cells left. It was just the ones in here that absorbed the surge.’
    Laura followed her gaze