The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

While Somerset fiddled with the ultrasonic scanner, Maris used a wand to confirm that the tank was leaking minute traces of an oxyhelium mix. Bruno showed her a clear spot in the otherwise ubiquitous coating of the vacuum organism, hidden behind one of the triangular struts that secured the tank to the motor’s spine. It was like a dull grey eye surrounded by ridged and puckered black tar; in its center, a fine seam defined a circle about half a meter in diameter.

“That is what gave us the clue,” Bruno said. “The vacuum organism must be an oxygen hater. Also, we find a current flowing in it.”

“It’s not just photosynthetic,” Ty said. He hung back from the tank as if ready to bolt, the patch cord that connected him to Bruno at full stretch. His white p-suit was painted with swirling lines and dots that echoed his tattoos.

“It generates electricity,” Bruno said. “Something like ten point six watts over its entire surface. Not very much, but enough-”

“I’m ahead of you,” Maris said. “It’s enough to run the tank’s internal heaters. Well, but it doesn’t mean that she’s alive. What do you see, Somerset?”

Somerset, hanging head down close to the tank’s sphere, his orange p-suit vivid against the stiff black sheets of the vacuum organism, was using the ultrasonic scanner. It said, “Nothing at all. It is very well insulated. Maris, you know that we have to tell Symbiosis.”

“If it is the missing passenger, she has to be crazy,” Bruno said. “Or why would she still be hiding?”

“She has to be some kind of thing,” Ty said.

“She has to be dead,” Maris said. “Let’s get her out of there.”

They set dots of plastic explosive around the almost invisible seam. They rigged the portable airlock over it. They took shelter behind another tank, and Maris blew the charges.

An aluminum disc, forced out by pressure inside the tank, shot to the top of the transparent tent of the airlock and bounced back to meet something shuddering out of the hole-another portable airlock struggling to fit inside the first. After nothing else happened for a whole minute, Maris sculled over to investigate. She pushed the visor of her helmet against the double layer of taut, transparent plastic, and shone her flashlight inside.

At the center of the tank, curled up in a nest made from the absorbent material and honeycomb vanes that had channeled the water, was the body of a little girl in a cut-down pressure suit.

***

They thought at first that she was dead: her p-suit’s internal temperature was just two degrees centigrade, barely above the freezing point of water, and she had no pulse or respiration signs. But a quick ultrasonic scan showed that her blood was sluggishly circulating through a cascade filter pump connected to the femoral artery of her left leg. There was also a small machine attached to the base of her skull, something coiled in her stomach, and a line in the vein of her left arm that went through the elbow joint of her p-suit and was coupled to a lash-up of tubing, pumps and bags of clear and cloudy liquids, and the three missing fuel cells.

“That’s what happened to the foodmaker,” Ty said. “She’s got some kind of continuous culture running.”

He hung just outside the hatch, watching as Maris and Somerset worked inside the tank, tying off the line into the little girl’s arm, detaching a cable trickling amps to her p-suit.

“She is hibernating,” Bruno said, his helmet jostling beside Ty’s. “I have heard of the technique. Soldiers on the other side were infected with nanotech that could shut them down if they were badly injured.”

“Then she’s a spy,” Ty said.

“I don’t know what she is,” Somerset said, looking across the little girl’s body at Maris, “but I do know that no ordinary child could have rigged this. We should leave her here. Let Symbiosis deal with her as I have already suggested.”

“I don’t think so,” Maris said. “The temperature inside her suit has risen by five degrees, and it’s still rising. I think she’s waking up.”

They waited until the Symbiosis ship was eclipsed by a freighter that was slowly rotating end over end thirty klicks beyond the shuttle, and then rode their sled to the hab-module. Halfway there, the little girl’s arms and legs spasmed; Maris held her down, saw that she was dribbling a clear liquid from her mouth and nostrils. Then her eyes opened, and she looked straight at Maris.

Her eyes were beaten gold, with silvery, pinprick pupils.

Maris touched her visor to the little girl’s. “It’s okay,” she said. “Everything’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll look after you. I promise.”