Free Living Hell by Catherine Jinks Page A

-!’
    ‘ I’m not sitting around here, waiting for the sczzzz . . . ’
    ‘Dygall! Wait! You can’t! They won’t let you!’
    ‘ How are they going to stop me? I’m coming .’
    ‘Dygall . . .!’
    But he had signed off. And when I tried to call back, he wouldn’t give me a clear-to-send.
    Dad, meanwhile, was feeling the back of Lais’s chair. I heard a slight tearing noise as he pulled his hand away.
    ‘It’s tacky,’ he said, in complete astonishment. He looked up, and his gaze met Mum’s.
    ‘Look,’ she said, pointing. ‘Look at the base.’ Where the shaft of the chair met the floor, there was a puddle of almost translucent pink material, shot with something hard and yellowish. ‘It’s everywhere.’
    ‘Arkwright, get up!’ Dad exclaimed. ‘Everyone get up!’
    ‘The floor as well,’ Lais whimpered, and she was right. When I raised my left foot, there was a slight – a very slight – resistance. As if I had honey on the sole of my boot.
    Suddenly, I was terrified. Truly scared. This was different from the burn. From the emission wave. From anything I’d ever known before.
    This was real.
    ‘Mum . . .?’ I croaked, like a little kid, and she came to me. She put her arm around me. I thought: Get a grip on yourself. Now .
    I took a deep, calming breath.
    ‘I’ve got a stand-by alert from BioLab!’ Haido said, in shaky tones. She, too, was out of her chair, dabbing gingerly at the console. ‘Ship-wide standby! Stand by for analysis data . . .’
    ‘Ottilie?’ Arkwright seemed a bit lost. Without his chair and his console, he looked untethered – a thin, gangly, awkward figure, bent at the knees as he shuffled around helplessly in front of his Array. ‘Ottilie, what’s the news? Have you got a fix on this stuff?’
    The reply, when it came, was on Vindow. Ottilie’s head appeared, hovering in plasma: a seamed, drawn, colourless face under a swirl of grey hair. Ottilie was the oldest person on board. She had legs like drinking straws, and a voice like the rustle of thermosheets. Behind her, I caught a glimpse of BioLab, with all its piping and stowage. The piping looked vaguely odd, I thought. Less defined than usual. Less angular.
    ‘It’s protein-based,’ Ottilie crackled.
    ‘What?’ said Arkwright.
    ‘It’s protein-based tissue, containing amino acids. Some of the strangest amino acids . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Barely identifiable,’ she said, through tight lips. The picture flickered. ‘These molecules . . . we’re talking transition elements. Metalloids. There’s osmium in the peptide bonds. Osmium!’
    I heard Conal catch his breath. ‘There’s osmium in the ship’s struts,’ he gasped. ‘Tuddor? There’s osmium in the casings, I’m sure. Osmium composites.’
    ‘Ottilie?’ said Dad. ‘What does that mean, exactly? Are we talking absorption, or what? Are we talking metal-eating bacteria?’
    The picture broke up for an instant, before stabilising again. Ottilie was frowning. She was shaking her head in perplexity. ‘We’re talking tissue . . . we’re talking cells -’ ‘But what kind of cells?’ Mum requested. ‘Bacterial cells?’
    ‘I would say . . . collagenous cells.’
    ‘ Collagenous cells?’
    Mum’s squawk made us all jump. Ottilie said quickly: ‘There’s no direct correlation, Quenby, this stuff is new, it doesn’t fit the traditional classifications . . .’ Her picture wavered, as Lais turned to Mum.
    ‘What’s a collagenous cell?’ she asked shrilly.
    ‘Membrane,’ Mum replied, without taking her eyes off Ottilie’s distorted form.
    ‘ Membrane?
    ’ ‘Ottilie, you’re breaking up,’ said Arkwright. It was true: the picture was deteriorating fast.
    Dad said, ‘Get her on a linkup,’ and patched through to Sibber. ‘Sibber?’ he said. ‘Do you have the data through from BioLab?’
    ‘ That’s affirmative, Tuddor, but - ’
    ‘It’s protein. Membrane cells.’
    ‘ Yes, but what do we do? You have to give me