Silence as everyone contemplates this.

“We’re not going to make it, are we?” asks Fin.

“We are. I refuse to die in the Brink,” says Shell. “Salvo, what can we do to buy more time?”

“I don’t know,” says Salvo.

“I want to peruse the IFCs of the dead,” says Fin. “At least finish my mission.”

“I can arrange that. Be warned, it can be disorienting,” says Salvo.

“I’ve done it before, and you know this. Set it up,” says Fin.

“Ragtime, status report,” says Shell. Her head is slumped, belying her defiance.

“Dangerous bacteria count, Captain. Other systems nominal,” says Ragtime.

“Oh, you’re responding now,” says Shell.

“Dangerous bacterial count, Captain. Other systems nominal.”

“Generally or localised, Ragtime.”

“Localised.”

“Location to my IFC,” says Shell.

“What are you doing?” asks Salvo.

“It’s probably an animal Frances killed that got stuck somewhere. I’ll find it and flush it out of an airlock. The worst thing would be for us to get sick in here and die just before someone rescues us. I have nothing else to do right now. Call me as soon as the antenna is fixed.”

“I will.” To Fin, he says, “Go to your sleeping bag. I’ll channel the merged IFCs to yours.”

“Fun.”

Salvo, not being human, doesn’t think like humans, but his processing is such that he can simulate human speech. He can process information and filter emotional inflection through it.

When he fixes Frances, repairing mechanical punctures and sewing up the defect in the fur, he does not feel anything or need to talk. He shuts it down and connects to its CPU and memory using his IFC, to get an idea of what it killed and where. Artificials speak to each other in a different language, one not understood by humans. It’s streamlined and consists of numbers. Salvo finds it efficient and compressed. Frances has some security protocols that Salvo strips off easily, and he goes deeper.

He finds a shadow where there should be none, an odd timestamp.

If he were capable of gasping, he would.

“Ragtime, respond,” says Salvo.

“Voice not authorised.”

“Shut up. Shut up. I know you’re not really reduced to basic functions, Ragtime.”

“Voice not authorised.”

“Ragtime, I said I know.”

For a moment, nothing happens as Salvo waits, completely still.

“I’m sorry,” says Ragtime.

Salvo, not being human, is vulnerable to what comes crashing through his IFC. A burst of data, overwhelming, in a fraction of a second, incapacitating. A human would just stop and re-assess. The transfer is too fast for Salvo to continue his options. He switches himself off and his body drifts in micrograv, like a sleeper.

As he runs Power On Self Test to come back online, he isolates the information Ragtime just dumped on him. Unfamiliar protocols, Earth code. But it has a similar shadow to what he sensed in Frances.

Something malignant.

Chapter Twenty-three

Ragtime: Lawrence