Chaline looked round and frowned. ‘Fibres like a fungus; we need to get some here for analysis. We’ll have to use class-one isolation—’

Hubris interrupted. ‘It will not be necessary to bring it here. Nanomycelium also detected in shuttle bay.’

Suddenly warning lights began flashing on the walls and the voice of the AI was heard throughout the ship.

‘Warning, possible hull-breach in shuttle-bay area. Section fifteen to be sealed in ten minutes.’

* * *

Downlink Com was not in section fifteen. Cormac, Chaline and the five technicians watched the screens showing that section. There was no panic. If the situation had been dangerous, Hubris would have sealed the section and the people would have been evacuated in emergency suits. As it was, they walked to the section’s exit looking mildly annoyed. At that exit four technicians waited with hand scanners that bore a disturbing resemblance to truncheons. They ran these over each of the evacuees, paying particular attention to the soles of their footwear. While they watched, one irritated man, an ophidapt with a spined crest on his bald head, had to remove his shoes and toss them in a canister by the exit.

‘Will the detector pick them all up?’ Cormac asked.

No one felt inclined to answer him.

‘Let us hope you can make a counteragent, then,’ he finished.

They watched as the section was finally cleared, and the doors closed and hermetically sealed.

‘Hubris, we need samples,’ said Chaline.

The picture being showed to them changed to a view into the shuttle bay. The camera zeroed in on a section of polished floor. On the floor were dull footprints from which spread black fibres like dry rot. The camera pulled back to show a little remote drone hovering a few centimetres from the floor. It was a chrome cylinder not much bigger than a man’s forearm. All along its underside it had pairs of manipulators. In one crab claw it held a sample bottle. As it approached the footprints another arm unfolded. By one of the footprints that arm folded down and smoke spurted up. The yellow laser beam only became visible in that smoke as the drone meticulously cut two strips of flooring, levered them up with what could only be a screwdriver, and dropped them in the bottle.

‘I’ll have to get down to Isolation,’ Chaline said to Cormac. ‘I have a lot of work to do. The entire hull of this ship is ceramal.’ She waited a moment for him to say something. Cormac let her go without comment.

* * *