Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour Read Online Free PDF Page B

Especially when I agree with her.’
    There was a second of silence and then Adams’ face darkened and he opened his mouth. Indaia got in first. ‘Excuse me, but there is something else I think you should see.’ Everyone turned to look at her. Throughout the examination of Primly’s body and the argument, she had been quietly examining the functioning computers. ‘My sensor equipment appears to be non-functional,’ she went on when she had everyone’s attention. ‘However, prior to the shutdown, which occurred just before Mister Primly’s death, the system was detecting subsonic activity.’
    ‘It’s supposed to detect subsonic activity,’ Adams snapped. Aneka suppressed the urge to hit him.
    ‘Not when it does not generate the pulse. Your seismometers were also detecting slight tremors, and they continue to do so. These disturbances are not the normal shifting of the nearby faults. There is too much regularity, and there are no points of focus.’ She paused; if Aneka did not think Torem were capable of it, she would have thought it was for dramatic effect. ‘It is rather as if the entire area beneath us is coming alive.’
    ‘Perhaps it was for dramatic effect,’ Al suggested.
    Adams’ response was immediate, and predictable. ‘That’s impossible.’
    ‘It is not impossible,’ Indaia replied calmly, ‘because it is happening.’ She turned her attention to Aneka. ‘I believe it would be in our best interests to examine my equipment prior to leaving the area in as expedient a manner as possible.’
    Aneka pulled one of her pistols and made a show of checking the magazine. It was entirely unnecessary, but it stopped anything Adams might have said. ‘David, Delta, everyone has ten minutes to get their stuff together, then you take them to the shuttle. If Doctor Adams resists, stun him. Lieutenant Grumand, would you please arm yourself and come with Indaia and me?’
    ‘It would be my pleasure.’
    ‘But…’ Adams began.
    Aneka slammed her pistol back into its holster. ‘We can monitor the instruments from orbit, Doctor, but I’m not endangering more people unnecessarily. End of discussion.’
    ~~~
    They could see smoke rising before they got to the site where Indaia’s machine had been set up. It was thin, but it was still there, which seemed to indicate that something bad had happened.
    ‘The underground subsonic activity appears to have reduced in intensity,’ Al said as they moved closer. ‘It has not, however, stopped. The pattern corresponds to no known faults, and the form is extremely unusual for an earthquake swarm.’
    ‘Yeah… Jansen to Rice. Are you there, Lidia?’
    ‘Uh, yeah. We’re on our way to the shuttle now.’
    ‘Good. Is it possible for something to be living in the magma under the ground?’
    ‘No, of course not. You’re talking about something that could survive in temperatures of over a thousand Kelvin! Not even… Oh.’
    Aneka frowned. ‘Lidia?’
    ‘Well, it’s theory, no one’s ever discovered an actual example, but silicon has some of the same chemical properties as carbon. Polymerised with oxygen or carbon it can form long chains that could be a basis for a living organism. But it’s highly unlikely that such a creature could exist for long outside a very high-temperature environment.’
    They could see the large drum of the emitter now. Smoke was rising from holes in the sides, but Aneka was more concerned about the lumps of rock that were scattered around the area, all of them around ten centimetres in length and shaped like worms. They had not been there when they had set up the equipment, but they looked like the rocks Aneka had seen in the stairwell and her thermal overlay was reading them as hot.
    ‘Stop,’ she said aloud. Indaia and Grumand came to an immediate halt. Indaia looked toward Aneka questioningly, but Grumand lifted his carbine, scanning around for a threat. Aneka lifted one of her own pistols, using the sighting system to zoom in on