to have to put up with a lot of teasing.'
He reached into the computer's tank and told it to bring up the exterior handling software that controlled the grapples and configurable cables. Gabriel continued to nudge the ship's nose a little to one side of the body to bring the lift access close to it.
The ship inched around and came to rest relative to the body, which was simply drifting now, no longer spinning. Gabriel let the ark's manipulation field snug in around his hand as the grapples extruded themselves from Sunshine's side and snaked out gently toward the body. The grapples were 'negative feedback' waldo-bands with sensor-augmented faked sensation so that your hand could 'feel' what the grapples felt through the software as they engaged with a solid object. Gabriel felt his way toward the body, opened the fingers of the grapples, and closed them carefully around it. The sensation was peculiar, slightly squishy.
Slowly he pulled the body closer and flicked one thumb to open the lift access, then he pushed the body carefully into it and closed the access again. Gabriel put on light gravity in the lift and instructed it to come up to ship level while filling with parasitic air siphoned out of the main cabin. The lift clunked into place. Gabriel watched the lift's pressure gauge in the tank until it matched exactly with that of the cabin. Finally he was satisfied of a perfect match and touched the control to open the lift door. Enda was already up out of her seat, heading aft. He went after her.
They stood and looked down at the body on the floor of the lift. Despite its short time out in space, it seemed already well frozen, the arms flung out forwards, one of the legs oddly bent. There was the large glossy headpiece, cracked but otherwise intact, glazed inside with a silvery metallic compound. The e- suit covering the body, though, was most peculiar. It looked like greenish plastic-but the green of the plastic was not even. It looked lighter in some areas, darker in others. Enda knelt down beside it, reached out a hand toward one of the slits that the explosion had apparently torn in the e-suit, then took the hand back again, glancing up at Gabriel.
He put one booted toe out and nudged the body slightly. Over the greenish e-suit were shoulder pads and shin coverings and a breastplate of what might have been some kind of dark armor. It was faintly ribbed and looked less metallic than chitinous, as if it had been wrought from the wing casing of some large beetle. The armor was by no means complete, though, and much of the body was left uncovered. It appeared to have been partially blown away from the lower left leg, and splintered bone was visible. There was little blood, even clotted blood, but from underneath the plastic material of the e-suit where it had been torn, something pallidly green was oozing.
'The suit's filled with something,' Gabriel said. 'Not air, either.' He too put a hand out as if to touch that strange e-suit, then thought better of it and withdrew it.
'I confess to having been eager to see who pursued us,' Enda said, pursing her lips, 'but now I am less eager. I do not like the thought of investigating this being much further without specialized protective gear, which, alas, we do not have.'
Gabriel thought about that for a moment. 'I bet I know who does have some, though,' he said. 'Oh?'
'Doctor Delde Sota.'
Enda blinked at that. 'You are considering taking this body back to her for autopsy?' Gabriel shrugged. 'Spacefarers going about their lawful occasions are supposed to assist the authorities in investigating unusual occurrences, especially in system space, where the occurrences could cause danger to life or limb.' He glanced back toward the cargo bay. 'Our limbs were pretty well endangered, if you ask me. Legally, Doctor Sota would have to assist us. This is a 'public health' matter. And anyway, what is this creature, Enda? A new alien species of some kind? If it is, people should know about it, and that it's fairly aggressive when it gets you alone out in the dark.'
'I would find it hard to argue with that.' Enda stood up. 'Well, we should wrap it up and keep it as intact as we can.' She stood up, thinking for a moment-then turned to the nearby cabinet that contained the phymech and stroked its front panel. The panel lit up and displayed available settings. 'I thought so,' Enda said. 'Here. 'Corpse wrapping.' '
'That's going to use up all the disinfectant film,' Gabriel said, looking up past her as the machine displayed its materials requirements.
'Yes, well,' Enda said, 'what would you recommend we use instead?'
Gabriel sniffed the air. It was already becoming sharply rank with the scent of the green gel that was dripping out of various punctures and rips in the creature's protective suit as the air warmed it and the once-frozen liquids began to melt.
'Never mind,' he said hurriedly, 'I think you're right; we'd better just do it.'
Enda told the phymech to put down its handling arms. It extruded them, wrapped them around the strange body and lifted it, preparatory to wrapping.
'When it's finished,' Gabriel said, 'I think we'd better put it in the cargo bay and vent the hold.' Enda made a little sniff of laughter. 'If the hold is not already well enough vented. But, yes, that should successfully stabilize it. At least, we will hope so.'
The phymech got on with its wrapping. Soon there was nothing left but an opaque, silvery-sheened, ungainly, and not very human-looking bundle, for neither Gabriel or Enda wanted the body forced into an unnatural shape that might destroy some useful piece of equipment or other evidence. The shape was awkward. They had some difficulty getting it into the airlock between the forward area and the cargo bay, but it fitted at last after some tugging and pushing. When the airlock was closed again, Gabriel activated the secondary grapples mounted inside the cargo bay, the ones used for handling rocks inside the bay, and carefully opened the other airlock door.
'There remains the problem of exactly how we handle this body when we get to Iphus,' Enda said. Gabriel finished up with the grapples and closed the airlock door again, pausing to look at the inert lump lying there in the light gravity he had left turned on. 'Probably,' he said, 'it wouldn't be a great idea to haul it through the corridors.'
'No. I would think we might be able to get the doctor to make a house call, though, especially if there was an illness aboard ship.'
'Oh?'
'Yes. I was just thinking how unwell you look, Gabriel.' 'What?'
'Oh, most unwell. I think you have eaten something bad. Contaminated stores, perhaps.' Gabriel blinked at her, then made a few experimental retching noises. 'Maybe there was something wrong with that last batch of meat rolls?' he suggested.
'Certainly there was,' Enda said. 'I cannot believe the amount of hot spice with which you ordered them made. They are nearly inedible, but perhaps there was some bacterial contamination as well.' 'Something that the phymech can't handle.'
'Well, it has never been as strong on nontraumatic problems or simple systemic infections as it is on trauma. Perhaps there might be something wrong with the phymech as well. Yes, some kind of error in installation-or better still, another software problem that the installer missed even though it caught the other one.'
Gabriel shook his head and turned to make his way back up to the pilot's seat. 'I begin to see why fraal are such a long-lived species,' he said.
Enda looked after him with some concern. 'Why would that be?'
'Sneakiness,' Gabriel said. 'Come on. I'm going to go sound sick on the comm back to Iphus.' Smiling very slightly, Enda came after him.
Chapter Thirteen
ABOUT FIVE HOURS later they were docking once again in the main ring on the Iphus Collective. Gabriel had been in no hurry to get there quickly, partly because he was 'sick,' partly because he wanted to give some of those big VoidCorp ships time to go away. Indeed when Sunshine arrived, they were all gone, which also made Gabriel wonder slightly. What other part of the system have they gone off to intimidate, and why?
Doctor Delde Sola was there at the docking ring to meet them. She came up in the lift, stepped into Sunshine, and held quite still while she glanced around her. It was slightly amazing to Gabriel how her height made the ship around her look smaller than it really was. Equally surprising was the look she trained on him as she stood
