Blue Remembered Earth

She tapped one last key, ripped the stick-on pad away from the panel. The door wheeled aside, recessing into a slot in the sidewall. The door’s bare metal edges were toothed like a cogwheel.

‘It was that easy?’

‘Easier than it looked. Wanted to make absolutely sure there was nothing nasty beyond the door, like fire or vacuum or sarin nerve gas.’

‘We’re in suits.’

‘I like additional guarantees.’ Jumai packed her equipment away and sealed the holdall. ‘No second chances in this line of work. Learned that in Lagos.’

They called back to the Quaynor, told them that they were passing through the door. There was still no aug reach, but for the moment simple comms were getting through.

‘We’ve reached a right-angled bend,’ Jumai reported. ‘It’s the only way forward. Looks like it runs all the way back out to the skin.’

‘That makes sense,’ Geoffrey said. ‘The Winter Queen fills the middle of the habitat, and her engines and aerobrake would block our progress if we tried to pass along the axis of rotation. We have to go up to move forward. Hector would have hit the same dead end coming in from his side.’

‘Assuming he got this far,’ Jumai said.

‘He was inside this thing for a while before calling for help.’

They started moving along the radial shaft. It was wide and set with multiple hand- and footholds, and to begin with there was no sense that they were climbing either up or down. But every metre took them further from the axis, thereby increasing the tug of centrifugal gravity, tending to push them still further from the axis. For a while, it was easy and pleasant to drift, but there came a point when it took more effort than anticipated to arrest his motion. In that moment Geoffrey’s inner ear decided, forcefully, that his local universe now contained a very definite up and down, and that he was suspended the wrong way up in what appeared to be an infinitely deep, plunging lift shaft.

Vertigo gripped him. He caught his breath and closed his eyes.

‘Easy,’ Jumai said.

He forced his eyes open. ‘Has to be a better way.’

‘Probably is, if we’d come in through the other lock. Can’t see many people putting up with this shit. Then again, did your grandmother get many visitors?’

‘No,’ he answered, as with great care he inverted himself so that the force of gravity was acting in the direction of his feet, not his head. ‘Just Memphis, and even then not very often.’

‘Take it one rung at a time, and don’t look down any more than you have to.’

‘We’ll never get Hector back up this shaft if he’s hurt.’

‘Comes to that, we’ll call for help from the Quaynor. They can lower us a rope, or use the ship’s thrusters to take some of the spin off the habitat.’

‘Anyone would think you’d done this a million times.’

‘It’s all just breaking and entering.’ He could imagine Jumai grinning. ‘Used to delude myself that there was something in my brain, some developmental flaw which might mean I was predisposed to criminality. Wouldn’t that be glamorous? But I was wrong. The scans came back and I’m . . . almost tediously normal. Not a single brain module out of place or underdeveloped. I just happen to be more than averagely competent at breaking into things.’

Geoffrey forced a smile of his own. He might not have dragged Jumai out of Lagos – she’d quit of her own accord – but he couldn’t deny that there had been a large measure of self-interest. However it had worked out, it was good to have her back in his life.

By turns, and his vertigo notwithstanding, he found a steady descending rhythm, always ensuring that he had three points of contact with the wall. The suit might well protect him in the event of a fall, but he had no desire to put that to the test.

When at last they reached the ‘floor’, they’d come – by the suit’s estimation – a total of seventy-five vertical metres. Ambient gravity was now one gee, or as close as made no difference, and since the Winter Palace was only a little wider than one hundred and fifty metres across, they must be very close to the interior surface of its insulating skin. In the restricted space at the base of the shaft, Geoffrey could do little more than walk a few paces in either direction before he reached an obstructing wall or door. The gravity felt convincing enough in terms of the effort required and the load on his joints, but his inner ear insisted that something wasn’t quite right.

Jumai was already tackling the door that was their only point of ingress into the rest of the habitat. It looked similar to the one they’d already come through, but when more than a few minutes had elapsed without her managing to open it, Geoffrey guessed that this door presented additional challenges.

‘You think there’s something bad on the other side?’ he asked, hardly daring to break her concentration but not able to stop himself.

‘There’s pressure,’ she said quietly. ‘And unless these telltales are lying, it’s not nerve gas or a wall of fire. That’s not the problem, I’m afraid.’

‘So what is?’

‘Door’s interlocked with the one back up the shaft. Give me a day, and more equipment than we came with, and I might be able to bypass that interlocking mechanism. But right now, and with this equipment, I won’t be able to get us through this one without closing the other.’

‘And thereby cutting off contact with the Quaynor.’

‘Give the man a cigar.’

Geoffrey thought about this before answering. He didn’t like it, and he doubted Jumai liked it either, but they had come a long way to turn back now. ‘Have you ever been in a situation similar to this, in Lagos, or anywhere else