Part 13 (2/2)

McBride nodded. 'The girl was positive she could contact the Angels if only she could get deep enough into Lucifer's atmosphere. The ordinary starsuits are pretty handy bits of gear, especially compared with the emergency s.p.a.cesuits you used in the Lift, but the pod was designed to go deeper still. Thousands of kilometres, in fact. G.o.d only knows why she didn't wait until it was ready, rather than rely on a starsuit.'

Ace ran a finger lightly across the saddle for the instrument packs. 'Thousands? Just how deep is the atmosphere, anyway?'

McBride shrugged. She walked across the semicircular pod bay towards the monitor station, sealed behind a transparent part.i.tion. 'Actually, it's difficult to say. Deep down the heat and pressure are so great that even hydrogen is a metallic liquid.'

Ace followed McBride into the monitor station. 'So it's hard to tell where the atmosphere ends and the planet itself begins.'

McBride nodded. 'Hence the size of the instrument array. There's an ocean of liquid zelanite alloy down there, you know, floating in the sky: big as a normal planet.' McBride shook her head. 'The d.a.m.n thing's a bag of mysteries and no mistake.'

Ace skipped her fingers lightly across the tops of the consoles. She could see from the screen displays how the systems were designed to function. 'Nice system. Did Paula design it herself?'

'She specified the high*level design. Yukio wrote the software.'

'And now he's dead.' Ace frowned. 'Just like Paula.'

'You have a theory?'

'Naw, not really. It's just well, it's just that if whatever killed Paula was a software virus rather than an accident, then someone would have had to infect the suitbrain. That would implicate one of the system engineers someone like Yukio. The incident on the Bridge might have been a clumsy attempt by a third party to b.u.mp off the middle man.'

'Unless the same virus which attacked Paula's starsuit attacked Belial's neural net as well.'

'You're forgetting the Bridge functions are not controlled by human technology. The original, alien system, whatever that might be, is still running them.'

McBride huffed softly in acquiescence. 'Ever thought about becoming an Adjudicator?'

Ace grinned. 'I'd look like the flying nun.' She studied the rest of the monitor station. The back wall was lined with storage cabinets. 'What's in there?' she asked.

'Paula's research files. Simularities, mainly. Oh, and her diary as well. Why, do you want to take a look?'

'Do I ever.' Ace opened the first cabinet, scanned the hundred or so labels quickly, selected the most recent crystal and fed it into a reader. She blinked her contact lenses into place and began to watch the file.

'I think you might want to check this out,' Chas said.

Kosi left her plastic beaker of tea steaming gently on the nearest flat surface while she and Lars headed for the centre of the room. The elderly Chas Varley was peering in some confusion at an arc of screens which pulsed with read*outs and rippling waveforms. 'What's up?' she asked.

'You tell me, la.s.s.' Chas fine*tuned a few controls. 'I've never seen anything remotely like it.'

'Is software virus, maybe?' Lars asked.

'Yeah,' Kosi said, 'there seems to be a lot of it going around.'

Chas shook his head. 'No, look. It's a steady pattern. Not one of Lucifer's though.'

Kosi thought for a moment. 'Could it be the Angels, trying to talk to us at last?'

Before Chas could reply, Ace burst in from the main access corridor. McBride followed more slowly, wearing a worried frown.

'Oh, Rachel, I was just about to call you,' Chas said. 'The fifty*metre array is picking up an odd waveform. I've run a library comparison but none of the eigenvalues match with anything we've seen before. Do you recognize it?'

Before Rachel could reply, Ace walked quickly past them to the communications terminal. 'I have to talk to the Doctor,' she snapped angrily.

On Belial Base, Bernice and Cheryl walked back into the Operations Room, and into the middle of a furious argument.

At Miles's request, the two women had taken Alex Bannen and his son back to his quarters. He had curled up on to his bed at the first opportunity and fallen fast asleep. His son had just stood there, staring at them, until they left. They had returned to the Operations Room, where Bernice was surprised to hear Ace's voice as far as anyone knew she was recovering with the rest of her party on Moloch and even more surprised to hear it raised in anger and directed at of all people the Doctor.

'You didn't have to lie to me, Professor.'

'Ace, I don't understand '

'Oh shut up! You make me sick. You understand everything. And you use everyone, for whatever little scheme takes your fancy. Remember Jan, do you, back on Heaven? Remember what you did to him?'

'But that was different '

'What about this, then, eh?' Ace tried to thrust a ghostly neural net crystal underneath the Doctor's nose and only succeeded in pus.h.i.+ng it out of the image field. 'Don't try to deny it. I don't know why you didn't erase it after her death. Never had a chance, I suppose. But you didn't expect me to go rummaging around in Paula's diary, did you?'

'Ace, if you'd only let me explain! I thought we were friends '

'Some friends you grow out of, Doctor Doctor.'

A sudden bang and a gabble of panicky voices distracted Ace's attention. She looked sideways. There were a few more garbled words, part of an argument, then a loud noise and a scream.

Something sprayed across Ace's face.

'What the h.e.l.l ' she said, disbelievingly.

She tried to blink the red mist from her eyes, failed, and toppled backwards out of the image field.

Static.

Bernice gaped.

The Operations Room was engulfed by sudden chaos. Miles was mumbling to himself. Technicians were frantically operating systems. Piper was yelling, 'I couldn't give a toss for the time*lag on the frequency search*and*lock processor, just re*establish the b.l.o.o.d.y link! Cheryl, help him will you. Or take over, I don't care which.' She turned to the s.h.i.+vering Administrator. 'Miles, your daughter's spirit is not walking the base, and none of us are going with her to the afterlife. Now for G.o.d's sake pull yourself together. We need you here.'

Miles blinked. 'Of course. Sorry.'

'I should think so too.'

Only the Doctor had not moved, through all this confusion.

Cheryl said, 'I have a transmission.'

'From Moloch?'

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