Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“It’s started,” he said meekly.

“Where?” Julia hissed.

“Base of the spindle.”

A white worm of alien flesh was rising out of the new hole, waxy and pellucid, its tip swaying slowly, as if it was searching. He thought of a maggot clawing out of an apple, then the scale hit him.

“Bloody hell,” Victor mumbled.

Julia just giggled.

A second hole fell inwards. Cracks were spreading across the crater floor. The worm’s tip began to expand, engulfing the nearby section of the ring bearing. More white tips were reaching blindly out of the ruptured rock.

“What’s it doing?” Maria asked.

“Finishing off the second chamber for me,” Julia said. “That was part of the deal. I’ll have to ship up a lot of hydrocarbons to replace what it’s soaked up, but I’ll be saving money on the mining operation. Swings and roundabouts, it ought to show a profit in the end.”

The white bulk of the alien had completely enveloped the spindle bearing ring. In fact, Greg saw the whole of the crater floor was now a single expanse of undulating white mire. There was no sign of the bracing ribs. A tremor ran up the spindle.

“I hope it won’t warp,” Julia said in concern.

Greg thought the alien was flowing up the spindle, until he realized it was the spindle itself which was moving. With a lumbrous inexorability that made him wag his head in disbelief, the girders began to slide past the Falcon’s nose. The alien was pushing the spindle up out of the crater.

Light and shadows shifted round in the cabin as the huge foundry mirror was impelled away from the asteroid. Nobody had spoken for some time; even Sean Francis had remained quiet. Greg began to relax, soaking it all in; he would never have to buy another round in Hambleton’s pub again. I was there.

A white column of alien flesh was mounting below the base of the spindle, guiding it away. He guessed it was about three hundred metres high when the top peeled open, releasing the gold ring of the bearing. It must have imparted a final shove, because he was sure the spindle picked up speed. The white column sank back into the crater. For a moment the floor of the crater was covered by a lake of white flesh, then a dimple formed at the centre and began to deepen.

“You say it’s going to hollow out the second chamber for you?” Rick asked.

“Yes. Mine the rock, and refine it. Exactly what Royan dreamed of. You see, he was right. In the end.” The grin dropped from her face, and she glanced at Victor for reassurance. He gave her a narrow smile.

All that was visible of the alien was a thin white rim around the base of the crater wall, the rest of it had sunk out of sight, leaving a gaping shaft. A dove-grey globe, three hundred metres in diameter, levitated up out of the centre. The scene reminded Greg of an active-hologram poster he’d bought Oliver for his eighth birthday, time-lapse Earthrise from the Moon. Sedate and unstoppable. They watched it in silence.

“I wonder what that one is,” Julia said after the grey globe left the shaft. “It can’t be a metal, not with that albedo.”

The spindle bearing ring had cleared the top of the crater, with the globe a kilometre behind. A second globe emerged from the shaft, a light metallic blue this time.

“You mean they’re all going to be different?” Greg asked.

“Absolutely, yes. Minerals and metals all separated out, with a purity our large-scale refineries can’t match. That’s something else which will save me a bundle.”

A third globe was emerging, another metal one, its mirrorbright surface reflecting warped constellations.

Greg watched the alien disgorging globes for over three hours. Fatigue only affected his body, shutting it down. His mind remained alert, fascinated at the slow carnival of elements riding by outside. The majority of globes were either iron or silica, three hundred metres in diameter. But there were smaller globes, the rarer minerals, dark greens and yellows and blues. Eight batches of them had emerged in clusters at the same time as the ordinary globes, like satellite moons swarming round a gas giant.

It took a while for the end of the procession to register. The last globe, a brick-red colour, which Julia said was probably zircon, had travelled halfway up the crater before he noticed the alien flesh dilating out from the rim to recover the shaft.

“Is that it?” Maria asked.

“This is the last phase,” Julia said. “The cells will be regrouping; they’ve been spread pretty thin around the second chamber for the mining and refining. It’s a big area to cover, I’m glad half of it was complete before the alien started.”

“Last phase?” Victor queried.

“Departure.”

Greg wondered if it was fate again that put New London over the middle of the Atlantic while Europe was still in darkness, awaiting the dawn. The asteroid would be visible from four continents: Europe, Africa, and North and South America. All of them with perfect viewing conditions.

Did people make the era, or did the necessity of the time throw up the right people? Either way, Greg thought, God had singled out Julia, and no messing.

They had listened to some of the channels while the globes had risen out of the crater. The whole world knew something was going on up at New London, that the Co-Defence League’s geosynchronous Strategic Defence plaiforms had been used for the first time, that Julia Evans herself was up there, that she’d ordered an evacuation.

She told Sean to plug the asteroid back into the coinmunicanons net, mainly to try and reassure people that the emergency wasn’t life-threatening. The Globecast franchise office had been transmitting pictures of the refined globes back to Earth ever since. Greg could taste a sweet irony in that. What would Clifford Jepson be thinking?

Maria turned the Falcon again, pointing its tail at the northern hub. Greg could see the seemingly infinite line of sunlit globes stretching towards Polaris, like multicoloured stars raining down from heaven.

A bulge rose in the middle of the alien flesh, quickly distending, lengthening. It formed a conical spike six hundred metres high, then stopped. The tip began to lean over, tracing a widening spiral as the asteroid’s rotation carried it round.

Greg could sense the anticipation flooding out of the alien, a mix of excitement and fear. Julia’s personality had given it emotions, it could feel, and it was scared, nerving itself up.

Nothing lasts for ever, he told it sorrowfully.

The alien jumped. A vast spasm rippled down its flanks, hitting the base of the crater wall, and it let go. It was changing shape almost at once, contracting into a sphere four hundred and fifty metres in diameter.

Greg reckoned it was travelling a lot faster than any of the globes; its trajectory taking it away from New London’s rotation axis and the line of globes. When it slipped above the crater rim and into the direct sunlight the flesh changed colour, darkening to ebony.

“Do you want to follow it?” Maria asked.

“No,” Julia said. “We can see from here.”

New London was seven kilometres behind it when the alien began its metamorphosis. The flesh flowed again, flattening out into a lentoid shape. Greg saw a circular silver stain emerge at the centre and split into six arms, spreading out to the rim.

“That looks like metal,” he said.

“It is,” Julia agreed. “Titanium motes that are only a few atoms in diameter. The cells can manipulate them to form a surface coating quite easily.”

Greg gave her an uneasy glance, wondering again just how much of a union existed between them.

The alien was still expanding, a disk two kilometres wide now, the titanium completely covering one side, facing the sun full on, painfully bright to look at.