They watched the great sphere drift along a thousand metres below and some distance ahead of them. It was an eerie sight and a perplexing one. What was Dragon? A living creature or a machine of flesh? There would never be agreement on that point. Aiden slowly increased their speed and drew them closer.
'Not too close. I don't think it would like us to land on it,' said Cormac.
Aiden eased back and matched speeds. 'Hubris reports no response on any channel, even underspace, but it's been picking up a backwash of some powerful scanning of the planet,' he said.
'It can't not know we're here,' said Thorn doubtfully.
'Do we want it to know?' asked Carn, and returned his attention to his instruments.
Cormac stared at Dragon. Where was the rest of it? Why was only this one quarter here? Had it come for the dracomen? Had it simply sent its agents here to destroy the Samarkand runcible, and was now here to pick them up? What did it have to do with that other thing under the ground? He realized he desperately wanted to talk to it, no matter how convoluted its answers might be. No matter what ridiculous games it might play.
'Prepare to transmit this to it on all channels,' he said.
Aiden set the instruments and leant back. 'All channels open, except underspace. We don't have the capability on this shuttle. Do you wish me to link with HubrisT
Cormac shook his head and concentrated on what he was going to say. The transmitter hissed and made strange whining sounds. He stooped towards it. Hubris had received no reply; might he?
'Dragon, this is Ian Cormac. Why are you here?'
The whining increased in volume. Cormac continued, dredging his memory of their last encounter.
'To be human is to be mortal. Do you play chess? I know you like games, Dragon, though you do have a tendency to cheat.'
The whining ceased.
Aiden said, 'Hubris reports the scanning of the surface has ceased.'
'I think you attracted its attention,' said Cam, without relish. 'Its surface is moving.'
Cormac looked and saw ripples spreading. A curved line cut the surface, and the ripples concentrated around it. The line thickened, dark as old blood. It was a split.
'Get us out of here, now!'
Aiden jerked up on the joystick, just as pseudopods exploded from Dragon in a giant grey fumarole. Acceleration knocked Thorn and Cam to the floor. Cormac caught a glimpse of a giant cobralike head swerving towards the shuttle. There was a thump. The shuttle slewed sideways. Then they were away, and the fountain of pseudopods was falling back to the surface of Dragon.
Cormac looked round and saw Cam and Thorn dragging themselves over to their seats. He, too, strapped himself in.
'It's coming,' said Aiden. He looked at the readings on the instrument panel. Then he looked again. 'Accelerating at eight Gs.'
'Jesus!' said Cam.
'Everybody strapped in?' asked Aiden.
'Give me one fucking second!' Cam shouted.
With his hand poised over a lever to one side of the joystick, Aiden glanced back. After a moment he nodded and turned back to the screen.
'Acceleration,' he said, and then he hit the boosters.
Cormac diumped back in his seat so hard he was sure he contacted its framework. Something not tied down went crashing into the back of the shuttle. He heard Cam swearing monotonously before running out of breath. It was as if something was trying to drag the flesh off his bones. He could just see the instrument panel, greying out as he watched it.
'Ten… Gs…' he managed, then blacked out.
'You broke my fucking arm,' was Cam's protest - and the first thing Cormac heard as he came to. He felt as if someone had gone over him with a lawn roller while he was lying on a cobbled street. It took him a moment to pull himself togedier. He tried to blink away the lights that were fizzing at the edge of his vision. Ahead of the shuttle he saw the doors to the Hubris's shuttle bay opening.
'How far behind?' he said, when he was sure he could speak properly.
'About three minutes,' said Aiden.
The shimmer-shield touched the nose of the wing, then slid back over it as if they were entering a vertical pool. It engulfed and passed the cockpit in an expanding circle, and they were into the bay. Aiden fired the front and side retros to slow and turn them. As they came to the centre of the bay floor, the cockpit was facing the shimmer-shield. Gravity came on and eased them down. The shutde settied with a clunk.
'Stay in the shuttle, and secure shutde for impact,' came Hubris's voice from the panel. Red lights were flashing in the shuttle bay. Aiden's hands ran over touch-pads, his fingers a blur. Cormac felt the dull thuds of the grabs coming up out of the floor and taking hold of the shuttle.
Hubris now spoke the words it was probably voicing throughout the ship. 'Secure for impact. Secure for impact. All personnel to emergency modules.' Cormac felt the shuttle vibrating, and a glance through the shuttle-bay windows confirmed that Hubris was accelerating. The view of Samarkand slid from the portals to the shimmer-shield, then quickly past. The irised door closed across the shield, then heavier armoured shutters slid in from the sides. Armoured shutters also closed across the portals.
'Impact in three minutes and fifty seconds. Mark. Correction. Impact in two minutes thirty seconds. Mark. Secure for impact.'
Cormac glanced at the rear-view screen. All of the internal shuttle-bay doors were closed now. An armoured shield had closed off the entrance to the drop-shaft.
'Impact imminent! Impact imminent!'
Cormac braced himself against his seat. This was going to be bad. People were going to get hurt.
It was worse.
The sound was like a giant gong being struck - and cracking. Cormac felt as if his skull had just broken and his guts had been pushed back past his spine. He heard the scream of metal being wrenched and twisted, then snapping. The grabs had broken. The shuttle left the bay floor and hit the doors. The impact threw
Cormac against his straps. He felt blood spraying from his nose. Blackness threatened, withdrew, threatened again. He shook his head and saw blood dripping on the screen in front of him. The chainglass cockpit had not broken, of course, but it had been shoved back into the body of the shuttle. The shuttle itself was resting at an angle against the bay doors. But that was not the end of it. He could hear a wrenching tortured sound working its way through the ship as, like a great bubble, it sought to regain its spherical shape.
'Oh shit oh shit oh shit…'
Cormac looked back up at Cam, who was hanging belted in his seat, clutching his broken arm. Thorn hung next to him, unconscious, blood dripping from his mouth. Aiden was the first to move. He undipped his harness, dropped down to the screen, then shoved his hands into the distorted metal to one side of it. Somehow he got the required leverage, and kicked down with legs like hydraulic rams. Cormac was not quite sure he believed what he was seeing. The screen moved forwards with a crash. Two more kicks and it hinged away, on the distorted metal to one side of it, like a domed lid. Aiden immediately hauled himself up and over the flight console, and then across his seat to reach Cam. As Cormac freed himself, he winced at the feel of broken ribs moving in his chest. Very carefully, he lowered himself down from the shuttle. There he took hold of Cam, whom Aiden lowered to him with a single grip on the collar of his coldsuit. Thorn came next. Soon all four of them were safely on the shutde-bay floor. Using the shuttle medical kit, Aiden splinted