An MSV can’t match that kind of manoeuvrability,dariat said. The visitor performed a fast looping spiral around a grainy black curlicue, shooting off in a new direction parallel to Valisk’s shell, fifteen kilometres distant. Visual resolution was improving. The visitor was about a hundred metres across, appearing like a disk of ragged petals. Even a voidhawk would have trouble making rendezvous.
The visitor darted behind another frayed column of blackness. When it re-emerged it was soaring almost at right angles to its original course. Its petals were bending and flexing.
They look like sails to me,dariat said.
Or wings. Although I don’t understand what it could be pushing against.
If this continuum has such a low energy state, how come it can move so fast?
Beats me.
Several spaceport dishes started tracking the visitor. They began transmitting the standard CAB xenoc interface communication protocol on a multi-spectrum sweep. Dariat allowed his affinity bond to decline to a background whisper. “Come on,” he told a frowning Tolton. “We’ve got to find a window.”
The visitor didn’t respond to the interface protocol. Nor did it show any awareness of the radar pulses fired at it. That was perhaps understandable, given that they produced no return signal. The only noticeable change as it spun and danced ever-closer was the way shadows congealed around it. Visually it actually appeared to grow smaller, as though it were flying away from the habitat.
That’s like the optical distortion effect which the possessed use to protect themselves with,dariat said. he and tolton had found a snug bar called Horner’s on the twenty-fifth floor. The two big oval windows were misted over inside, forcing Tolton to wipe them clean with one of the coarse table cloths. His breath kept splashing against the icy glass, condensing immediately.
Well we did choose a realm suitable for ghosts,the personality said.
I’ve never heard of a ghost that looked like that.
The visitor was within five kilometres of the shell now, about where the filigree of nebula strands began. There was only empty space between it and the habitat now.
Maybe it’s scared to come any closer,the personality said. I am considerably larger.
Have you tried an affinity call?
Yes. It didn’t respond.
Oh. Well. Just a thought.
The visitor left the convoluted weave of the nebula and flashed towards the vast bulk of the habitat. By now its deceptive
It streaked over to within fifty metres of the shell then veered round to follow the curve, wriggling wildly from side to side. The quick serpentine orbit allowed it to cover a considerable portion of the habitat’s exterior.
It’s searching,the personality said. That implies a degree of organisation. It has to be sentient.
Searching for what?
A way in, I imagine. Or something it can recognize, some method of establishing communication.
Do any of the spaceport defences still work?dariat asked.
You have to be bloody joking. We need all the allies we can get.
Before we fused, you used to be the mother of all suspicious neurotic bastards. I think that would be a preferable attitude for you right now.
Well that’s the effect of your mature calming influence for you. So you’ve only got yourself to blame. But don’t worry, I’m not going to send the MSV after it.
Thank Tarrug for that.
Our visitor should be coming over your horizon any second now. Perhaps your eyes will do better than my sensitive cells.
“Wipe the glass again,” Dariat told Tolton.
The soaking table cloth smeared the moisture in long streaks. Tiny flecks of frost were glistening dull white over the rest of the big oval. Tolton switched off two of his lightsticks. Both of them peered forward. The visitor arched over the rim of the shell, lensing thin spires of vermilion and indigo light as it came. They wavered in the runnels of water, wobbling insubstantially before sinking back down into the visitor’s core. Now all that remained was a black knot in the continuum’s fabric racing over the dark rust-coloured polyp.
Tolton’s weak grin was bloated with uncertainly. “Am I being paranoid, or is that heading towards us?”
In the earlier time and place, long ago and far away, they had called themselves the Orgathй. Now, names had lost all meaning and relevance, or perhaps they themselves had devolved into something else, such was the way of this atrocious existence. There were many others adrift in the dark continuum, sharing their fate. Identity was no longer singular. A myriad of racial traits had blended and faded into a singleton over the aeons.
