Well, there was only one way to go. Michael started climbing.
The corridor ran a long way. Somewhere around halfway up he realized that the round room must have been in one of those spheres they'd seen balanced halfway up the cathedral space of the habitat. This corridor would be in one of the ducts that had angled up from them to join with the habitat's outer skin.
The habitat was designed for two entirely different species to use together. Herat, were he here, would doubtless be chattering on about all that. For once, Michael was glad his boss wasn't around; it felt much better to be panicking by himself and not having to do it for two. Herat wouldn't even know he was in danger in a place like this.
Michael's weight fell rapidly as he climbed. Finally the low corridor ended at a T-intersection. He estimated he was at about the level of those tanks Herat had seen. He would have to get higher than this; if two species inhabited this place, there should be another entrance at the rotational axis. There wasn't one on the shore of Lake Flaccid, but hadn't Corinna said something about there being airlocks at both ends of the sphere? Maybe there was one for each species.
The corridor he was in now curved off in both directions. It might well circumnavigate the sphere. There were square doorways at regular intervals. He picked a direction at random and walked, glancing with some apprehension through the first several doorways before passing them.
The doorways led to rooms of various sizes. These were filled with… sheets. Each room held dozens of vertical rods, always in pairs, and between these were tautly strung thick sheets of some clothlike substance. They were usually about three meters wide and six to eight long and were fairly tightly packed in the vertical; he counted up to fifteen stacked above one another. They filled the rooms right up to the door; the only way to get in would be by burrowing through these layers and maybe that was the idea: He pictured some sort of social animal, molelike, used to burrowing and being surrounded by friends and family. Among the taut sheets he glimpsed folded frames of some kind, as well as stacks of complex metal items and what looked like plain old ordinary boxes.
Tempting as it was to try to reach those, he had already had one close brush with disaster and who knew what traps awaited him in these strange chambers? Over and above that, he just shouldn't touch anything. This location was pristine and should be studied with care.
Before he was a quarter of a turn around the circle, he found another ramp going up— as well as one going down that he had no desire to investigate. He ran up the ascending way; it curved, indicating that it was following the outer skin of the habitat and not diving into the interior. By the time he reached the top he was weightless.
This was no longer a room, but something like the space between the walls of two cylinders, laid on their sides. He had no doubt that the inner surface was the floor that verged on the lake. He bounced around the space until he found a gray oval with an indentation next to it, set into the inner wall. He couldn't recall seeing anything like this from the lakeside, but if the aquatic residents of the habitat were blind then they wouldn't have signified the door with color anyway. He pushed the indentation and when the door had deliquesced, he borrowed Corinna's maneuver and flipped himself through it.
The light here was different— yellow and multishadowed. It came from floodlights that poised in the microgravity like cobras on their cables. He was inside the axis cylinder… and there were his people.
Rue Cassels perched on one hand on the edge of the lake. Beside her Evan Laurel was playing out line. Their eyes were intent on the surface below them, as if they could drill through it by eyesight alone.
The temptation was too great. Michael eased off his helmet and drifted over as silently as he could, careful not to cast a shadow over the two watchers. When he was right behind them, he said in his most innocent voice, "What's up?"
"Listen, we're going after him no matter what you say," said Rue without looking up. Evan did look, did a double take and shouted, "Hey!"
Rue looked up too. Then, "He's back, he's back," "We've got him, come back!" they were shouting. Both grabbed the lines that led into the aerogel and began hauling on them.
Michael watched them pull for a few seconds; then he said, "Aren't you going to ask me how I got here?"
"Sorry," gasped Rue. "We gotta get out of here."
"What…?" A gloved hand gripped the side of the lake and a second later Dr. Herat was flying through the air, scattering sparkling aerogel beads. He was mouthing something inside his suit— grinning, of course.
"There's been an explosion on the Banshee," said Evan. "We've got to get back there with the sleds right away."
"The bastard wanted us to leave you," said Rue. She pulled and Corinna Chandra's faceplate broke the surface. "We told him to get stuffed."
Herat had his helmet off now. "Bequith, good to see you! Nothing broken, not too shaken, I hope?"
"A bit shaken," he admitted with a grin of his own. "But nothing serious. Professor, I've found it! Proof of the multispecies theory."
Herat gave a whoop and threw his helmet. It flew up past the axis and splashed into the aerogel. "Oh, I guess I need that. Excuse me." He dove after it.
The marines emerged from the gray soup and immediately started gesturing in the direction of the strap palace.
Michael watched Dr. Herat retrieve his helmet. "What about this explosion?"
Rue sighed heavily. "I don't know. Crisler said it was in the main life-support stacks. Dr. Katz flew back right away to help save them. Crisler wanted us all to come back and the marines pulled everybody out of the lake. We told them to go yank themselves and went back in."
So that was why nobody had come to his aid. He didn't feel any better about having been abandoned, but still the news was chilling. Had the explosion been deliberate? If so, was somebody willing to risk suicide in order to stop the expedition? Because destroying their life support this far from home was just that: suicide.
"Was anybody hurt?" he said after an awkward pause.
She shook her head. "But if the stacks are blown… we won't be able to stay. We'll have to go back into cold sleep and try to make it back to Chandaka." He could hear the deep disappointment in her voice, though her face showed nothing.
He frowned. "Maybe not. I don't know about food, but we might be able to get our air from here." He told her about the passages he had gone through. Rue listened in silence, then pushed her hair back with a gloved hand and puffed out her cheeks.
"Okay," she said. "That's the first good news I've heard in a long time. Thanks, Mike."
"Move out!" commanded the lead marine. They secured their helmets, grabbed their instruments and data packs and one by one flew up to the strap palace.
They had no idea what awaited them back on the ship, but Michael found himself absurdly happy anyway. He had made a discovery, survived an adventure, and he had brought news that had made Rue Cassels happy. Maybe he had been right to come after all.
13
HALFWAY BACK TO the Banshee, Rue's radio crackled into life.
"Rue, they're locking us up! We haven't done anything, but the bastards are blaming us for the explosion!" It was Max's voice; he sounded outraged. "Hey, give me that, you—" The radio went dead.
Rue felt fury wash over her. "Crisler," she said. She'd been right not to trust him— he was a control freak just like Jentry.
The two sleds seemed motionless, while in the distance the two-lobed white shape of the Banshee approached. She could see a black smear on one of the lobes now: a torn section of hull, right where the life-support stacks had been. So Crisler wasn't lying about that, anyway.