The Revelation Space Collection

support packs. Other than that, Nightingale was as silent as when we’d approached. If the ship was aware of our intrusion, there was no sign of it.

We’d made maybe forty metres from the junction — at least a third of the distance we had to travel before hitting the centrifuge — when Nicolosi slowed. I caught a handhold before I drifted into his heels, then looked back to make sure the others had got the message.

‘Problem?’ Martinez asked.

‘There’s a T-junction right ahead. I didn’t think we were expecting a T-junction.’

‘We weren’t,’ Martinez said, ‘but it shouldn’t surprise us that the real ship deviates from the schematic here and there. As long as we don’t reach a dead end, we can still keep moving towards the colonel.’

‘You want to flip a coin, or shall I do it?’ Nicolosi said, looking back at us over his shoulder, his face picked out by my helmet light.

‘There’s no indication, no sign on the wall?’

‘Blank either way.’

‘In which case take the left,’ Martinez said, before glancing at Norbert. ‘Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ the big man said. ‘Take left, then next right. Continue.’

Nicolosi kicked off, and the rest of us followed. I kept an eye on my helmet’s inertial compass, gratified when it detected our change of direction, even though the overlay now showed us moving through what should have been a solid wall.

We’d moved twenty or thirty metres when Nicolosi slowed again. ‘Tunnel bends to the right,’ he reported. ‘Looks like we’re back on track. Everyone cool with this?’

‘Cool,’ I said.

But we’d only made another fifteen or twenty metres of progress along the new course when Nicolosi slowed and called back again. ‘We’re coming up on a heavy door — some kind of internal airlock. Looks as if we’re going to need Sollis again.’

‘Let me through,’ she said, and I squeezed aside so she could edge past me, trying to avoid knocking our suits together. In addition to the weapons she’d selected from the armoury, Sollis’s suit was also hung with all manner of door-opening tools, clattering against each other as she moved. I didn’t doubt that she’d be able to get through any kind of door, given time. But the idea of spending hours inside Nightingale, while we inched from one obstruction to the next, didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm.

We let Sollis examine the door: we could hear her ruminating over the design, tutting, humming and talking softly to herself under her breath. She had panels open and equipment plugged in, just like before. The same unwelcoming face glowered from an oval display.

After a couple of minutes, Martinez sighed and asked, ‘Is there a problem, Ingrid?’

‘There’s no problem. I can get this door open in about ten seconds. I just want to make damned sure this is another of Nightingale’s dumb facets. That means sensing the electrical connections on either side of the frame. Of course, if you’d rather we just stormed on through—’

‘Keep voice down,’ Norbert rumbled.

‘I’m wearing a spacesuit, dickhead.’

‘Pressure outside. Sound travel, air to glass, glass to air.’

‘You have five minutes,’ Martinez said, decisively. ‘If you haven’t found what you’re looking for by then, we open the door anyway. And Norbert’s right: let’s keep the noise down.’

‘So, no pressure then,’ Sollis muttered.

But in three minutes she started unplugging her tools, and turned aside with a beaming look on her face. ‘It’s just an emergency airlock, in case this part of the ship depressurises.’

‘But it isn’t on the schematic.’

‘It ain’t a blueprint, Scarrow. Like the old man told us, it’s just a guess. If people remembered stuff wrong, or if the ship got changed after they were abroad… we’re going to run into discrepancies.’

‘No danger that tripping it will alert the rest of Nightingale?’ I asked.

‘Can’t ever say there’s no risk, but I’m happy for us to go through.’

‘Open the door,’ Martinez said. ‘Everyone brace in case there’s vacuum or atmosphere under pressure on the other side.’

We followed his instructions, but when the door opened the air remained as still as before. Beyond, picked out by our wavering lights, was a short stretch of corridor terminating in an identical-looking door. This time there was enough room for all of us to squeeze through, while Sollis attended to the second lock mechanism. Some hardwired system required that the first door be closed before the second one could be opened, but that posed us no real difficulties. Now that Sollis knew what to look for, she worked much faster: good at her job and happy for us all to know it. I didn’t doubt that she’d be even faster on the way out.

‘We’re ready to go through, people. Indications say that the air’s just as cold on the other side, so keep your suits buttoned.’

I heard the click as one of us — maybe Nicolosi, maybe Norbert — released a safety catch. It was like someone coughing in a theatre. I had no choice but to reach down and arm my own weapon.

‘Open it,’ Martinez said quietly.

The door chugged wide. Our lights stabbed into dark emptiness beyond: a suggestion of a much deeper, wider space than I’d been expecting. Sollis leaned through the doorframe, her helmet lamp catching fleeting details from reflective surfaces. I had a momentary flash of glassy things stretching away into infinite distance, then it was gone.

‘Report, Ingrid,’ Martinez said.

‘I think we can get through. We’ve come out next to a wall, or floor, or whatever it is. There are handholds, railings. Looks as if they lead on into the room, probably to the other side.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Nicolosi said, just ahead of me. ‘I’ll take point again.’

Sollis glanced back and swallowed hard. ‘It’s okay, I can handle this one. Can’t let you have all the fun, can I?’

Nicolosi grunted something: I don’t think he had much of a sense of humour. ‘You’re welcome to my gun, you want it.’

‘I’m cool,’ she said, but with audible hesitation. I didn’t blame her: it was different being point on a walk through a huge dark room, compared to a narrow corridor. Nothing could leap out and grab you from the side in a corridor.

She started moving along the crawlway.

‘Nice and slowly, Ingrid,’ Martinez said, from behind me. ‘We still have time on our side.’

‘We’re right behind you,’ I said, feeling she needed moral support.

‘I’m fine, Dexia. No problems here. Just don’t want to lose my handhold and go drifting off into fuck knows what…’

Her movements became rhythmic, progressing into the chamber one careful handhold at a time. Nicolosi followed, with me right behind him. Apart from our movements, and the sounds of our suit systems, the ship was still as silent as a crypt.

But it wasn’t totally dark any more.

Now that we were inside the chamber, it began to reveal its secrets in dim spots of pale light, reaching away into some indeterminate distance. The lights must have always been there, just too faint to notice until we were inside.

‘Something’s running,’ Sollis said.

‘We knew that,’ Martinez said. ‘It was always clear that the ship was dormant, not dead.’

I panned my helmet around and tried to get another look at the glassy things I’d glimpsed earlier. On either side of the railed walkway, stretching away in multiple ranks, were hundreds of transparent flasks. Each flask was the size of an oil drum, rounded on top, mounted on a steel-grey plinth equipped with controls, read-outs and input sockets. There were three levels of them, with the second and third layers stacked above the first on skeletal racks. Most of the plinths were dead, but maybe one in ten was showing a lit-up read-out.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sollis said, and I guess she’d seen what I’d just seen: that the flasks contained human organs, floating in a green chemical solution, wired up with fine nutrient lines and electrical cables. I was no anatomist, but I still recognised hearts, lungs, kidneys, snakelike coils of intestine. And there were things anyone would have