“And the tendrils?”
“The organic matrix is an extension of the AI core,” the ship replied smoothly. “These have infiltrated pre-existing systems and have the capacity to operate as a parallel control system if needed. They pose no danger to crew.”
“No danger to crew?” muttered Wak. “I beg to disagree.”
Quirinus remembered how one animated stem tried to garrotte the professor during their earlier holovid conversation. “Ship? Care to comment?”
“Recent traumas compromised the safety of the ship. I have therefore taken the liberty of developing a limited defensive capability. Do you disapprove?”
“You’re asking me?” Quirinus scratched his head, puzzled. Artificial intelligence systems were not supposed to be so obviously self-aware and he wondered whether he should be looking deeper into what the growth hormones had done to his ship. “No, I don’t disapprove. It would perhaps however be polite to warn someone before throttling them.”
“Confirmed,” replied the AI.
Wak gave Quirinus a hard stare. “You cannot take a half-repaired ship to Tau Ceti!”
“My daughter is in trouble. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Ravana is in trouble?” exclaimed Zotz, startled. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Wak reassured him. “She never met the ship at the depot to call her father, that’s all.”
“She would not forget a thing like that!” retorted Quirinus.
Zotz looked solemn. “No, she wouldn’t.”
“See?” said Quirinus. “Something’s wrong!”
“This heap wouldn’t get you to Aram anyway,” Momus pointed out. “It’s a Mars-class ship. If you didn’t burn up on entry you’d never get back out of the gravity well.”
“She’s on Falsafah, not Aram,” said Quirinus irritably.
“But he’s right,” said Wak. “Surface gravity on Falsafah is less than that on Aram but still around point eight gee. The Platypus only has enough thrust to break orbit from point five, maybe point six. It was built to operate from Ascension, remember.”
“I’ll think of something,” muttered Quirinus, his mind already working overtime. “Ship! Reschedule for minimum repairs, maximum haste!”
“New schedule confirmed,” intoned the AI. It did not seem too happy about it.
Zotz had not been back to the Dandridge Cole since it was abandoned and was shocked by how much of the hollow moon was now out of bounds to its human crew. The cavernous interior beyond Dockside was bitterly cold and the air had long gone stale. The artificial sun had been the primary source of warmth as well as light and the two kilometres of rock between the inner chamber and deep space had not prevented residue heat leaking away as the asteroid continued its long orbit around Barnard’s Star. Mobile heaters were set up prior to the evacuation to try and save crops, but with fuel supplies low his father had decided it was not worth keeping them going once he became the only person aboard.
The fields lay under a heavy frost and not a living thing stirred in the dark. Some livestock had taken up residence in Dockside or made the trip to Newbrum on the Indra; the fauna and flora left behind was dead. Restoring the sun would be just the first step in bringing the hollow moon back to life and as Zotz stared through the window at the dark, icy landscape he wondered whether it would ever be the same again.
He still did not understand the obsessive attachment his father had with the century-old colony ship. Wak had long ago assumed responsibility for maintaining the hollow moon’s life-support and other systems, a job that had gradually taken over his life. Wak remained on the Dandridge Cole when everyone else departed on the Indra on the grounds he was awaiting the return of the Platypus, yet still insisted on staying even when a rescue team from Newbrum arrived to take Quirinus and crew away. Wak’s excuses veered between expressing a fear of space travel, to pointing out he was needed to feed the remaining animals and to make sure the robot maintenance teams behaved. Zotz knew his father preferred solitude when working but suspected there was more to it than that.
Zotz had finished the few tasks he had been given on the repairs to the Platypus and would not be needed again for a few hours. Bored, he retreated to the Dandridge Cole’s small gaming suite, where he soon immersed himself in rewiring a virtual reality booth so it could intercept broadcasts from the transceiver he and Endymion had fitted inside Ravana’s electric pet. He often wondered what the world looked like from a cat’s point of view.
Jones was a fully-interactive electronic cat Ravana had received for her sixth birthday, back on Yuanshi when her mother was still alive. The pet’s brain was an organic AI unit that enabled it to learn all the bad habits a real animal would have. It had long ago developed an annoying habit of wandering off without warning and a penchant for eating random electrical items, but over the last few months its behaviour had become more erratic still. Zotz knew that Ravana believed the growth hormones released by Taranis’ cloning experiments, having caused the AI unit of the Platypus to sprout strange tendrils, had also done something to her cat. When Zotz and Endymion secretly opened up the electric pet to fit a wristpad transceiver, they found Jones was indeed suffering from Woomerberg Syndrome, with wispy strands growing from the AI chip throughout the cat’s electronic innards.
Zotz sat engrossed as he encouraged the cat, via the VR link, to creep up on Momus aboard the Indra. Momus, having drawn the short straw, was preparing the tanker for a trip to Thunor and moaning more than usual. Zotz did not see his father enter the room and remained unaware until Wak leaned through the open door of the VR booth and tapped his shoulder. Startled, Zotz spun around on his seat, pulled off his headset and tried not to look guilty.
“I wasn’t doing anything!” Zotz protested.
The holovid relay monitor on the wall next to the booth showed a cat’s-eye view of the Indra’s flight deck. The odd angle and shaky image was down to Jones chewing upon a power cable to the life-support unit. Wak looked at the screen, confused.
“Never mind all that,” he said, sounding flustered. “You can play your games later. I came to say something. Quirinus thinks that, err… I’ve been neglecting you somewhat. Actually, he told me off for hiding away here and forgetting I had a son.”
“I thought you stayed behind to fix the hollow moon,” said Zotz, not realising his father was trying to apologise. “I don’t mind living with Quirinus and Ravana.”
“I know,” replied Wak. “But I am your father. I shouldn’t be relying on others to look after you. Your mother was most concerned when I told her about the evacuation.”
“Mum called?” exclaimed Zotz. “When?”
“Three weeks ago,” the professor confessed. “That’s the other thing I came to tell you. She left you a message. I meant to forward it on to you but it totally slipped my mind.”
“A message?” cried Zotz.
He slipped from the booth in a chaotic blur of limbs and came to rest at a nearby computer terminal, disturbing a large goose hiding beneath the desk. Within seconds he had called up his account and located the waiting holovid message. His raven-haired mother, an astrophysicist from Welsh Patagonia, had been away on Earth for almost a year, dealing with the tangle of business interests left in limbo following the death of Zotz’s grandfather.
As the holovid began to play, it was clear she had expected to find Zotz aboard and ready to talk to her in person. Her message to him was one she had hastily recorded at the end of her conversation with his father. Zotz was surprised to see her speaking from an open-air holovid booth at a tropical coastal resort, for all the pictures he had previously seen of Patagonia were of a cold and dreary slice of South America that his father assured him was just like Zotz’s late grandfather’s homeland on Cardigan Bay.