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"Do you feel light-headed at all? Nauseated?"
"I didn't get radiation poisoning, Imala. I wasn't exposed long enough. I should have known they'd be radioactive. They're funneling gamma plasma. The ship has a ramscoop drive. It collects hydrogen atoms as it flies through space and uses the subsequent gamma radiation both for fuel and as a weapon. Did you see the nozzles? Every few feet there are T-shaped nozzles on the back of the pipes that extend up to the hull and the irises. If we had a way to close off those nozzles, the plasma couldn't fire. We'd render the ship defenseless."
"There are tens of thousands of irises, Vico. Thus tens of thousands of nozzles. You couldn't close them all even if you had an army of helpers. And you can't access most of them anyway. They're behind the inner wall and run the length of the ship."
"I didn't say it was possible, Imala. I'm making an observation."
Victor froze. A half dozen Formics in heavy, protective suits had just crawled out of a large shaft across the room, pushing two massive carts. The shaft was at least four times the width and height of the shaft Victor was in.
Four of the Formics removed a large sheet of metal from one of the carts and carried it to where a portion of the inner wall had fallen away. They positioned the sheet over the exposed pipes, and the other two Formics sealed the metal plate into place.
"A repair crew," said Victor. "To cover the pipes. They must know when radiation leaks into the ship."
"You'll need to find another way out," said Imala. "You can't get back to the original shaft this way without being seen."
"First the helm," said Victor.
He turned away from the cargo bay and headed up into the shaft. It was dark and narrow and littered with dung and dust. Victor blinked out a command and his suit began to create a map of his progress. He passed glow bugs and intersections and side passages. At times the shaft widened to accommodate another track, but Victor stayed true to his original course, heading toward what he hoped was the heart of the ship. He had expected to encounter more cart Formics, but he saw none. His ankle had swollen despite the cool pack and increased pressure, and the pain had settled into a dull, throbbing ache.
Soon the path began to clutter with discarded carts, all anchored to the track in a long continuous row on the right side of the shaft, with no harnesses or Formics attached. Victor maneuvered around them, squinting into the blackness ahead of him. He had decided it was too risky to use any artificial light and had thus been relying on the glow bugs for any illumination. The bugs had thinned in number recently, however, and the way before him now was as black as space. He slid his hands along the wall, feeling his way forward.
And then the shaft ended, opening up into a much wider but darker space. Far in the distance was a small circle of light, like the end of a long tunnel. Victor strained to see anything in the room, but he saw little definition in the blackness.
He risked a beam of light from his glove and shined it on the walls just ahead. The room was like a circular cave lined with honeycomb, with each cell as wide as Victor's shoulders and a meter and a half deep. All of the cells near the entrance were empty save for grime and dirt and dung. Between the rows of cells were narrow ladders that extended the length of the room toward the distant light.
"What is this place, Vico?"
"Not sure," Victor said. "Food storage maybe. A hatching site."
"I say we turn back," said Imala. "I don't like surprises."
"This whole ship is a surprise, Imala. I say we push on and get past this as quickly as we can."
He maneuvered to one of the ladders and began to climb, listening for any sounds of movement ahead of him. The rungs were too narrow and close together to fit the toes of his bulky boots, but he was able to pull himself along with his hands.
When the shaft was a distance behind him, he paused to catch his breath and turned to his immediate right, where a Formic's face was inches from his own.
Imala cried out and Victor recoiled, pushing off and kicking away from the ladder, shooting backward, all control lost. He crashed into the honeycomb on the opposite wall behind him, the waxy substance crushing inward on impact. His hand wrenched his gun free and brought it up, ready to fire on the attacking creature.
Only, no Formic came.
He waited, finger on the trigger, heart pounding, but nothing lurched at him from the darkness. Finally he pointed his light and found the Formic across the room where he had left it, still tucked in its cell, unmoved.
"Is it dead?" Imala asked.
Victor looked to his right and left. Around him were other Formics, all in the same state of repose, their large black eyes staring outward. Victor reached out and scanned the nearest one with the sensors in his glove. "It has a heat signature, Imala," he whispered. "It's alive." He shined his light ahead of him and saw that between him and the light at the end of the chamber were dozens of Formics tucked into their cells. "This is a sleep chamber, Imala."
"Get out, Vico. Now."
Calmly, slowly, wincing at every sound he made, Victor freed himself from the damaged honeycomb and made his way to the nearest ladder. Shards of honeycomb floated in the air around the crater he had made in the wall, and Victor saw that by some miracle, he had landed in a cluster of empty cells surrounded by sleeping Formics.
He turned back to the ladder, feeling sick.
He looked ahead of him and behind him, judging the distance to the nearest exit. Instinct told him to flee back to the relative safety of the shaft. That was the quickest way out and the one with the fewest Formics in his path. And yet he found himself putting one hand over the other, continuing his climb toward the unknown, moving quickly now. Imala remained silent, and for that he was grateful. He wanted to be able hear any rustling or movement, however slight, around him. He passed Formics on all sides, their faces near his own, their vacant eyes staring outward. One of them could be awake and he wouldn't even know it, he realized. He pushed the thought away, focusing on the next rung in front of him. And the next. And the next.
Minutes passed and then he was clear, drifting up and out of the chamber, exhaling deep, his arms tingling with exertion. Bright light was ahead of him, and he floated forward, shielding his eyes. He caught himself on a mesh netting in front of him and blinked, letting his eyes adjust. The sight before him made him almost forget the room he had just left. Beyond the netting was a lush, dense garden four times the size of the cargo bay and as wide as the middle of the ship. It was spherical in shape, and the inner wall was lined with thick jungle vegetation growing inward toward the center. The exception was a wide, circular section of wall on one side that glowed like a sun, bathing the garden in a hard white light.
It was like nothing Victor had ever seen. Trees with massive branches twisted and reached outward, their long wispy leaves floating about them like a woman's head of hair. Oddly shaped flowers with petals as broad as Victor's arm span and stems as thick as his legs. Massive pillars of lichen stretched from floor to ceiling at various angles like stalactites and stalagmites that had met in the middle, thick and solid and covered with mosses. Bushes and fernlike plants with leaves that fanned out in every direction. Grasses tall and short. Ivy that twisted around tree trunks and snaked up branches and then extended their reach beyond the treetops to wrap around the pillars or trees on the opposite side, creating a latticework of green and gold that moved slightly with the currents of air, as gentle as a spider's web.
