Consider Phlebas

from a very long distance away, but it wasn't either. He could feel something under his feet, too — that tremor, and there was some sort of pull, a tug that seemed to be dragging him forward, towards Lamm, towards the bows, as though he was in a weak field, or-

'Kraiklyn!' Mipp yelled. 'I can! There is! I — you — I'm-' he spluttered.

'Look, will you all just calm down?'

'I can feel something…' Yalson began.

Horza started running, pounding back down the corridor. Lamm, who had started to walk back, stopped and put his hands on his hips when he saw the other man running, away from him. There was a distant roaring noise in the air, like a big waterfall heard from far down a gorge.

'I can feel something too, it's as if-'

'What was Mipp yelling about?'

'We're crashing!' Horza shouted as he ran. The roaring was coming closer, growing stronger all the time.

'Ice!' It was Mipp. 'I'm bringing the shuttle! Run! It's a wall of ice! Neisin! Where are you? Neisin! I've got-'

'What!'

'ICE?'

The roaring noise grew; the corridor around Horza started to groan. Several of the opaque roof panels fractured and fell to the floor in front of him. A section of wall suddenly sprang out like an opening door and he just avoided running into it. The noise filled his ears.

Lamm looked round, and saw the end of the corridor coming towards him; the whole end section was closing off steadily with a grinding roar, advancing towards him at about running speed. He fired at it but it didn't stop; smoke poured into the corridor. He swore, turned and ran, following Horza.

People were yelling and shouting from all over now. There was a babble of tiny voices in both Horza's ears, but all he could really hear was the thundering noise behind him. The deck beneath his feet bucked and trembled, as though the whole gigantic ship was a building caught in an earthquake. The plates and panels which made up the corridor walls were buckling; the floor rose up in places; more roof panels shattered and fell. All the time the same sapping force was pulling him back, slowing him down as though he was in a dream. He ran out into daylight, heard Lamm not far behind.

'Kraiklyn, you stupid motherfucking son of a bitch's bastard!' Lamm screamed.

The voices yammered in his ear; his heart pounded. He threw each foot forward with all his might, but the roaring was coming closer, growing stronger. He ran past the empty state rooms where the soft materials blew, the roof was starting to fold in on the apartments and the deck was tilting; the holosphere they had seen earlier came rolling and bouncing out of the collapsing windows. A hatch near Horza blew out in a gust of pressured air and flying debris; he ducked as he ran, felt splinters strike his suit. He skidded as the deck under him banged and leapt. Lamm's steps came pounding behind him. Lamm continued to scream abuse at Kraiklyn over the intercom.

The noise behind him was like a gigantic waterfall, a big rock-slide, like a continuous explosion, a volcano. His ears ached and his mind reeled, stunned by the volume of the racket. A line of windows set in the wall ahead of him went white, then exploded towards him, throwing particles at his suit in a series of small hard clouds. He put his head down again, he headed for the doorway.

'Bastard bastard bastard!' Lamm bellowed.

'— not stopping!'

'— over here!'

'Shut up, Lamm.'

'Horzaaa…!'

Voices screamed in his ear. He was running on carpet now, inside a broad corridor; open doors were flapping, light fittings on the ceiling were vibrating. Suddenly a deluge of water swept across the corridor in front of him, twenty metres away, and for a second he thought he was at sea level, but knew he couldn't be; when he ran over the place where the water had been he could see and hear it frothing and gurgling down a broad spiral stairwell, and only a few dribbles were falling from overhead. The tugging of the slowly decelerating ship seemed less now, but the roar of noise was still all around him. He was weakening, running in a daze, trying to keep his balance as the long corridor vibrated and twisted around him. Now a rush of air was flowing past him; some sheets of paper and plastic flapped past him like coloured birds.

'— bastard bastard bastard-'

'Lamm-'

There was daylight ahead, through a glassed-over sun deck of broad windows. He jumped through some big- leaved plants growing in large pots and landed in a group of flimsy chairs set round a small table, demolishing them.

'— fucking stupid bast-'

'Lamm, shut up!' Kraiklyn's voice broke in. 'We can't hear-'

The line of windows ahead went white, cracking like ice then bursting out; he dived through the space, to skid over the fragments scattered on the deck beyond. Behind him, the top and bottom of the shattered windows started to close slowly, like a huge mouth.

'You bastard! You motherfu-'

'Dammit, change channels! Go to-'

He slipped on the shards of glass, almost falling.

Only Lamm's voice sounded through his helmet now, filling his ears with oaths which were mostly drowned in the smothering roar of the endless wreck behind. He looked back, just for a second, to see Lamm throwing himself between the jaws of the crumpling windows; he careened over the deck, falling and rolling, then rising again, still holding his gun, as Horza looked away. It was only at that point he realised he no longer had his own gun; he must have dropped it, but he couldn't remember where or when.

Horza was slowing down. He was fit and strong, but the above-standard pull of Vavatch's false gravity and the badly fitting suit were taking their toll.

He tried, as he ran in something like a trance, as his breath streamed back and forth through his wide-open mouth, to imagine how close they had been to the bows, for how long that immense weight of ship behind would be able to compress its front section as its billion-tonne mass rammed into what must — if it had filled the cloud bank they had seen earlier — be a massive tabular iceberg.

As though in a dream, Horza could see the ship about him, still wrapped in clouds and mist but lit from above by the wash of golden sunlight. The towers and spires seemed unaffected, the whole vast structure still sliding forward towards the ice as the kilometres of Megaship behind them pressed forward with the vessel's own titanic momentum. He ran by game courts, past tents of billowing silver, through a pile of musical instruments. Ahead there was a huge tiered wall of more decks, and above him were bridges, swaying and thrashing as their bow-ward supports, out of sight behind him, came closer to the advancing wave of wreckage and were consumed. He saw the deck to one side drop away into airy, hazy nothing. The deck under his feet started to rise, slowly, but for fifteen metres or more in front of him; he was fighting his way up a slope growing steeper all the time. A suspension bridge to his left collapsed, wires flailing; it disappeared into the golden mist, the noise of its fall lost in the crushing din assaulting his ears. His feet started to slide on the tilt of deck. He fell, landed heavily on his back and turned, looking behind him.

Against a wall of pure white towering higher than the Olmedreca's tallest spire, the Megaship was throwing itself to destruction in a froth of debris and ice. It was like the biggest wave in the universe, rendered in scrap metal, sculpted in grinding junk; and beyond and about it, over and through, cascades of flashing, glittering ice and snow swept down in great slow veils from the cliff of frozen water beyond. Horza stared at it, then started to slide down towards it as the deck tilted him. To his left a huge tower was collapsing slowly, bowing to the breaking wave of compacted wreckage like a slave before a master. Horza felt a scream start in his throat as he saw decks and railings, walls and bulkheads and frames he had only just run past start to crumple and smash and come towards him.

He rolled over sliding shards and skidding fragments to the buckling rail at the edge of the deck, grabbed at the rails, caught them, heaved with both arms, kicked with one foot, and threw himself over the side.

He fell only one deck, crashing into sloped metal, winding himself. He got to his feet as fast as he could,