Page 35

“ W hat?” Frank leaned back to see the tablet and after a moment, swore softly. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What?” I asked, unsure what he meant.

“Those aren’t bugs. Not any kind I’ve seen before.” He adjusted something on the microscope, and the picture became sharper.

I sucked in air. “If they aren’t bugs, then what in the universe are those things?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Tiny, translucent blobs moved around on the screen, although the movement wasn’t much.

It was more of a purposeful vibration, really.

Sort of like an old-fashioned windup toy jittering its way across a table.

But it was enough motion to be noticeable and to understand that it wasn’t the blobs being set in motion by some outside force.

What else could it be? They were in an enclosed environment. There was no air, no breeze, no accidental breath that might shift them.

“Whatever they are,” Frank said, “they are incredibly small. Let me adjust the magnification.”

He found the button he needed and watched the screen while he made the modification. All of a sudden, the blobs came into view.

For a second, Frank and I just stared without saying a word. Then I reached over and grabbed his arm, needing to hold on to something solid, stable, and reliable. “We’re in serious trouble.”

He nodded without taking his eyes off the screen. “These things have been dispersed throughout the ship. There’s no telling how many of them there are.”

“What are they, exactly? Because they look like bugs. Tiny bugs made of metal and glass.”

Gracie fluttered her feathers.

Frank sighed. “Sorry, Gracie. You were right.” He looked at me. “I do know what they are. They’re nanoids. Basically, tiny robotic machines, although these seem to be both mechanical and organic. I don’t think they can hurt us, but then again, I haven’t run any tests on these.”

“Then what’s the purpose of them? Why would the Ohuli have wanted so many of us to have them?”

“Information is my guess,” Frank said. “It’s pretty easy to give someone a spot-on psychic reading if you’ve been spying on them.”

I gasped because it made so much sense. “I knew it. I knew they didn’t have any kind of special abilities. Deep sight, my foot. We need to document this and figure out a way to exterminate these from every nook and cranny in the starliner. Otherwise, we’re cooked.”

“There’s something else.”

“What?”

“They’re probably the reason people are siding with the Ohuli. I don’t know for sure without assessing these things more thoroughly, but if they get into a person?—”

“Into?”

He nodded. “Look at the size of them. They could easily be inhaled or enter the bloodstream if someone had a small cut.”

I gasped. “Sten. He had that cut on his hand, and I gave him my pila to look at to distract him and keep him from fainting. And he was the first one to come in for meditation.”

Frank exhaled, then raked a hand through his hair. “I’m going to have to get a much closer look at these things and do some more testing. I need to figure out how they work and what makes them tick. Once I do that, hopefully I’ll be able to create a defense against them.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know.”

I thought about a movie I’d seen where bird-size robots had invaded a city. “Couldn’t we just blast them with an EMP and disable them?”

“Sure, but an electromagnetic pulse would shut down pretty much everything on the starliner, including life support.”

“Oh. Right.” So much for Attack of the Danger Bots . “There has to be a way, though, right? Because until we get rid of these things, the Ohuli will pretty much have eyes and ears all over the ship. And in people.” The very idea made my skin crawl.

He glanced up as if he was wondering if we were being listened to now.

“I think that’s a safe assumption. This deck, maybe not.

Hard to say how fast these things travel and what their range is.

My guess is that they’re designed to stay within a certain proximity to lifeforms, otherwise what good would they be to the Ohuli?

They need information about their potential marks and to be able to influence them. ”

“How can I help?”

He shook his head. “There isn’t a way at the moment, but thank you.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He smiled. “I would love a cup of coffee.”

“Coming right up.” I hesitated. “Could these things have also been responsible for changing those pictures I sent to Hazel?”

He thought a moment. “Anything’s possible.”

I sighed and went to the Instachef to order his coffee. Wouldn’t be great coffee, but it would get him through.

I was a little shaken. No, I was a lot shaken, if I was being honest. The fact that the Ohuli, who presented themselves as this altruistic, slightly primitive people, had technology like these nanoids seemed to call everything about them into question.

I carried the coffee back to Frank, who was working on putting tiny pieces of the pila into individual test tubes. I set it nearby. “Anything else?”

“No, I’m good.” He picked up the cup and took a sip. “This is going to take a few minutes, so if you want to knit, go right ahead.”

“Okay.” I got my knitting and brought it back to the chair, welcoming the distraction.

Even so, I kept looking at the images on the tablet screen.

Those tiny, mechanical pests that could potentially be all over the Athos .

Spying on us. Infiltrating our quarters. Crawling on us. Crawling through us.

I shivered involuntarily. It was creepy. Just like the Ohuli.

Frank transferred two test tubes, stoppers in place, to the small side chamber on the glove box’s interior, then slipped his arms out of the gloves and retrieved the test tubes from the outside of the chamber.

He carried the tubes to the analysis machines he’d used earlier, putting one into each machine and starting them up.

He came back to me, picked up his cup, and stuck one hand in his pocket. “Now we wait.” He took a drink, then gestured at my knitting with his cup. “Is that another sweater for Harry?”

“It is. Then I’m going to make a second vest for Gracie.”

He smiled. “Do you ever make anything in adult sizes?”

I laughed. “All the time. I just made Vashti that prayer shawl for her birthday, and I’ve made a few of the cardigans I wear. Made a sweater for Hazel some years back. Not sure she wears it much anymore. Seems like she’s always in uniform these days.”

“You do nice work. You’re very talented.”

Was he angling? I wasn’t sure. I started a new row of ribbing. “Would you like a sweater?”

He nodded. “I’d love one, actually.” He threw his shoulders back. “One of those sort of manly cardigans with the wide collar and toggle buttons.”

I knew exactly what he meant. It was the kind of thing popular on cold winter nights in his favorite state of Montana. “Shawl collar, I think you mean. I’ll show you a picture to be sure, but I could do that.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think I have enough yarn for it in my stash, but once I get the supplies, absolutely.”

“I’ll pay for the yarn.”

“Doesn’t make it much of a gift if you do that.”

He rocked on the balls of his feet. “Isn’t the good yarn expensive?”

I couldn’t say it wasn’t. I’d just been complaining about the price of nice wool at our last starport. “It can be, yes. But I don’t care.”

He was clearly amused. “Okay. Whatever makes you happy. Do I have a choice of colors?”

“We’ll shop for it together, how’s that?”

“That’s good.” He took a few steps toward the glove box, his gaze shifting to the pila shards. “I can’t believe those things are all nanoids. I can’t imagine how many of them are currently crawling over this ship.”

I shuddered again. “I don’t want to think about it. It’s creeping me out. Makes me want to get right into that decontamination chamber.”

“Sadly, I don’t think that would be very effective against these things.”

“Great.”

Someone knocked on the glass doors of the foyer. We both looked in that direction, as though we’d forgotten the outside world existed.

Hazel stood there, Captain Stuedecker at her side.

Frank’s brows rose. “I guess she didn’t want to wait for me to finish my testing.”

“Or she has news she needed to tell us in private.” I set my knitting down. “I’ll let them in.”

“Not a bad idea to speak to us privately. I wonder if some other system on the Athos detected the nanoids.”

I went through the decon chamber and opened the foyer doors. “Hi. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Is it all right if we came in and talk?” Hazel asked.

I nodded. “Of course, but we don’t have much new information.” Except about the nanoids, but I wasn’t telling her about those until we were back inside the lab.

“That’s all right,” Hazel said. She and Stuedecker came in, which was when I noticed Stuedecker had an official-looking attaché case in one hand.

I couldn’t imagine what might be in that.