“The
“And all in just under eight minutes,” he said.
They floated on through the black tube.
“I can see a light up ahead,” said Edward.
Maurice saw it too: a pale light, the color of snow in moonlight. For a moment he had a flash of something, a memory from his childhood, then it was gone.
They floated on.
“The tube’s getting bigger,” Edward said, and it began to widen like a trumpet’s bell, then they floated out into a vast space that froze the breath in their lungs. They were now apparently drifting upwards, rising from a hole in some vast plain. They looked down and saw white patterns of frost curling in flames of fern beneath them, incredibly complex shapes curling around themselves in recursive patterns, painting pictures of cold fire across the ground.
“Where are we?” asked Edward.
“I don’t know,” repeated Maurice.
“It’s beautiful.”
They rose higher and higher. Now they could make out distant walls and a wide ceiling above them, shining in the pale blue light that illuminated the arctic volume of emptiness around them.
“I thought we were in space,” said Edward. “How can we be underground?”
“I don’t think we’re underground,” said Maurice. He was trying to remember something he had read years ago: how you used an active suit. You reached out your hands like this, and you turned them like this and…
Now he could feel the surface of the ice below. With the help of the suit’s augmented senses it was like he was running his hands along it. He could feel the cold metal that lay below the thin residue of frost, he could tap it and feel it ring hollowly through to the void beyond.
“What is it?” asked Edward.
Maurice was running his virtual hands along the distant floor; he was feeling the walls and ceiling, patting along them, sizing up the cavern.
“We’re in a long, flattened cylinder made of metal. There is air in here, Earth atmosphere but a lot thinner. Too thin to breathe, and too cold. Moisture has settled on the walls and frozen there. Hold on, Edward. I’m calling up a picture of the shape of this cylinder.”
The active suit set a mapping of the space before his eyes. Maurice knew what it was going to be even before it appeared.
“Edward,” he announced. “We are floating inside the
Edward was more confused than ever.
“But where have all the insides gone?” he asked. “Where are the engines and everything?”
Before Maurice had a chance to reply, a thin, unearthly sound filled the hoods of their active suits. A keening sound of utter agony, a cry of pain so pale and exhausted that it hovered on the edge of awareness, like someone trying to crawl away from life, only to find themselves tethered there by their pain.
“Make it stop!” called Edward. “Make it stop! What is it?”
Maurice couldn’t speak; he was vomiting, gagging. His suit was working hard to flush his hood clean, and still that dreadful screaming went on, keening above the hum of the extractors.
“What is it what is it what is it?” chanted Edward.
It was Miss Rose.
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