'Maybe it
'Why build a starship with wings?' That was from Krzakwa .
'Why build a lander this big?' demanded Sealock.
Hu sighed. 'Two concepts: either they were from Iris, which I find difficult to accept, or there was once a mother ship.'
Sealock laughed harshly. 'A rather, um, large mother ship.'
'Well, I know one thing,' said Methol. ' LiHwould give a much higher specific impulse than Hyloxso , and that carbon-crystal matrix probably means the stuff doesn't have to be power stabilized. The patent on an idea like that would be worth a lot of money....'
As they began walking toward the forward end of the ship, the walls of the corridor gradually closed in, until they found themselves having to move in single file. Before they had gone far Sealock, who was in the lead, came to a sudden stop.
'What is it?' Hu, next in line, couldn't see past his bulk.
'I don't know. The character of the surface changes here. It looks almost . . . slick.' He took a tentative step forward and abruptly fell down, his legs scissoring apart as he dropped.
'Shit!' He grunted with pain and tried to roll over, moving forward in the tunnel as he did so. He failed to get up, pawing ridiculously at the floor, and began to slide slowly away from the others, gradually accelerating.
Methol crowded past Hu and launched herself after him. She tried to crouch like a skater but fell to a sitting position nonetheless. With her higher initial impulse, she quickly caught up with Sealock and, together, they began to recede.
Hu knelt and touched the beginning of the shininess. 'It seems to be a frictionless surface,' she said. Krzakwalooked over her at the others, who seemed quite far away now, and said, 'That's interesting, but I think we'd better go after them. I don't think it would do to get separated in here.'
'Agreed.' She braced herself, pushed hard with her feet, and sailed off on her hands and knees. The Selenite let her get a safe distance ahead, then crouched down and, with a movement common to low-g wrestlers, launched himself forward, electing an upright, seated mode of travel. They accelerated fairly quickly along the declivity of their inertial frame and Krzakwa found himself thinking, This is sort of fun. He imagined a sort of giant amusement park on the Moon, with the tunnel twisted into a giant slide . . . andtransparent. Suspended above the surface somehow. His lips worked into a wry smile. It was the kind of brief dream he'd had often as a child—but the Lunar authorities had never been interested in anything that might be characterized as 'fun.' One day, perhaps, that government might be overthrown by a furious rabble of amusement-starved hedonists, but until then they would still be gray men, living somberly and industriously beneath the lusterless gray stone. It was one of the many reasons behind his decision to leave. Noble ideals were all very well, in their place, but
'Hey, I think we're coming to the end of it,' said Sealock. 'The floor's about to . . .' He and Methol suddenly went tumbling as friction grabbed at them. Hu curled herself into a ball and halted much more gracefully. When his turn came, Krzakwa tensed his leg muscles and simply slid to a stop on the seat of his suit.
They stood up and looked around. It was another almost featureless chamber, but this one had an open hatch overhead, and they could see much brighter light shining down on them.
'Careless,' said Methol. 'Somebody forgot to shut the door when they left. No wonder they got their ship stuck inside an ice moon.'
Sealock nodded at that and, with vague surprise, found himself understanding the urge to make these sorts of inane statements. He was beginning to feel strong surges of unreality, as if prowling about this huge structure were depriving him of some capacity for rational thought. Fragmenting . . . One at a time, they jumped up at the hole, which caught them and pulled them through to rest on the far wall. The room in which they found themselves was not featureless. If anything, it contained too many details. Though not large, it had bristles erupting from almost every surface, with no regard for a preferential orientation. It almost looked as if some misbegotten moss had spread across the walls of the room and erected its sporophytes , up, down, and from both sides. It was a forest of poles of varying heights, and even pole was surmounted by a different-sized globe. The globes were stippled like golf balls, marked by the little nodes they'dcome to recognize as controls and thought of as 'buttons.' The only empty area was the small section on which they had landed.
Sealock stepped up to the nearest of the poles and took its globe between his gloved hands, peering at it closely. A moment later he shrugged and began tapping the buttons on it at random.
'We're going to get killed at this yet,' murmured Krzakwa .
'So what?' Hu picked a globe of her own and began prodding it with a finger. The Selenite watched them, feeling very strange, and thought, There's something
KHAAAAAAAHHHH.
