Gridlinked

'Ian Cormac… Ian Cormac…'

'Yes, what is it?'

'Chaline told me to inform you that her probe is transmitting from the blast-site. There are some anomalies.'

Choline…

He rolled over and reached across the bed, vaguely remembered a disentanglement of sweaty limbs, a kiss on the cheek, a chuckle in the darkness.

'Tell her I'm on my way.'

He checked the wall clock: ten hours, and not many of them sleep. Feeling only slightly guilty he got out of bed and headed directly for his shower. Ten minutes later he was dressed in trousers and shirt, shuriken snug to his wrist, and heading for Downlink Com, which was the nearest Hubris had to a bridge or operations room.

The room was long, with a large circular chamber at its end from where the probes were dispatched. Its longest walls were packed with screens and other instrumentation. Before five consoles sat people clothed in the distinctive blue coveralls of runcible technicians. Some of them were auged in: optic cables plugged directly from their augs. These technicians remained still; all their activity was between their ears and in the various subminds of Hubris. Chaline was squatting on the floor, below one of the consoles, with a panel open before her and instruments and chips scattered all around. Cormac squatted beside her. She looked up, smiled at him, and he found himself unable to respond.

'Anomalies, you said.'

Her smile faded to puzzlement, then she shrugged and gestured with a debonding torch at a flashing light on the console above her.

'That's a contamination warning,' she said.

'The probe is at the blast-site,' he replied.

'We programmed it to ignore isotopes. We knew it was going to be hot down there, so the warning isn't about that.'

With a thoughtful expression on her face she laid the torch beside her and began plugging chips back into the panel. He could see she was pissed off by his lack of acknowledgement, but this was business; he couldn't let last night get in the way, could he? Emotion must not be allowed to interfere.

'I thought we might have a problem that diagnostics couldn't trace. Hubris ran a check as well. Everything seems all right here. The problem is with the probe.' She looked up at the ceiling. 'Hubris, have you finished running that check on the probe?'

'I am still checking. The probe seems to be developing structural weaknesses,' said the ship AI.

'You used the present tense,' said Cormac.

'The process is continuing. Initially the weaknesses were in its sampling arms, now more weaknesses have appeared.'

Cormac turned to Chaline. 'I know this is not my territory, but it might be an idea to get the probe into orbit or at least out of the blast-site, if that's still possible.'

'We'll want it back for study, you mean,' she said.

He nodded and she continued to look at him. After a moment she gave him a slow nod in reply, and a look that meant 'later', then she addressed the AI. 'Hubris, how far gone is the probe's integrity?'

'It is still capable of taking high G. The weaknesses seem to be developing only in the ceramal components. The probe has a foamed alloy skeleton.'

'What could cause that? The cold?' Cormac asked.

Chaline shook her head in perplexity. 'Ceramal? No… Hubris, what is the temperature outside the probe?'

'One-eighty Kelvin.'

'I don't know why I asked. Ceramal retains its structural integrity down to ninety Kelvin.'

'Acid? Some kind of caustic gas?' asked Cormac.

'No, has to be something more specific than that, else the sampling process would have picked it up… Wait a minute… Hubris, how old were the Samarkand run-cible buffers?'

'The Samarkand runcible was installed solstan 2383.'

'Yes,' said Chaline with satisfaction. Cormac raised an eyebrow and she went on. 'Wide-spectrum superconductors were introduced in 2397. The Samarkand runcible had the old sort; super-conducting ceramic-impregnated tungsten steel and bathed in liquid helium. The room-temperature superconductors they had then couldn't take the kind of surge a runcible buffer receives. We are talking about a huge EM pulse here.'

'And?' asked Cormac, wondering why she felt it necessary to over-explain her area of expertise.

'Don't you see? Tungsten steel impregnated with ceramic? That is what ceramal is.' Cormac nodded. 'So whatever screwed up those buffers is now screwing up your probe.'

Chaline said, 'Hubris, would it be possible to run an interior microscan of the probe?'

'Scanning.'

'What do you expect to find?'

'Sabotage… too specific to be anything else.'

'How?'

'Well, the buffers would have been too cold for some kind of manufactured virus, and are screened to everything bar neutron radiation, so it has to be nano-machines.'

'If it is nanomachines… can you do anything about them? Will you be able to set up your runcible down there?'

Chaline chewed on her knuckle. 'They would have survived a fusion explosion… Getting rid of them is like getting rid of a disease: there's always one bacillus survives to start the process off again. But… but they are not prone to mutation like a bacillus or virus. Once we get a sample, we should be able to make a counter-agent.' She glanced up at his puzzled expression. 'Counter nano-machines, ones with the singular purpose of hunting down and destroying the nanomachines there. It would take ages though, and years for Samarkand to be clear.'

'And the new runcible?'

'Oh, we can protect it. There isn't a great deal of ceramal used in its construction. The buffers are carbon-seventy-based superconductors. The nanomachines won't touch them. We will need to set up a proscription scan like that used for weaponry.'

Cormac waited for her to continue.

'To stop it getting taken off planet,' she explained, as if tired of dealing with an idiot. 'Samarkand would also have to be limited to runcible transport until it's clear. Therefore, no ships.'

'As a way station it wouldn't get many anyway,' Cormac said.

'True,' said Chaline, and returned to pushing chips back into place.

'Nanomycelium detected,' said Hubris, before the silence between them became too stretched.

'Mycelium?' asked Cormac.

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.