The atrium was a towering void that ran the entire height of the starscraper. There were arcs of piping hanging in the space, suspended by invisible cables. It took Olzan a moment to realize he’d seen something similar in the Glass family starscraper back in Santesteban, but that one had been filled with water. It was a water-sculpture: if the pumps had still been powered, a thin stream of water would have poured down the atrium, twisting towards one wall due to the Coriolis effect, and redirected by the arcs of piping into graceful curves and helices. He looked down over the railing and could see his helmet lamp’s beam reflecting off a murky surface. It looked as though the water had kept flowing for a while after the pumps had failed.
There was what looked like a stairwell on the far side of the atrium. Olzan led Keldra around the walkway towards it. Halfway to the staircase, Keldra suddenly stopped. ‘We’ve got company,’ she hissed.
Olzan followed her finger. High above the spouts of the empty water-sculpture was another cluster of bobbing lights.
Olzan did a frantic mental calculation. They could go back, but that would mean going back to Mr Glass empty-handed. ‘It’ll take them a while to go down those stairs. They don’t know where we’re going. We can lose them.’
Keldra didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t say anything.
‘Keep your head down,’ he said. It was still possible the others hadn’t spotted them. He dimmed his helmet lamp, angled it at the floor, and jogged for the stairs.
He counted the loops of the spiral staircase until they were on the correct level, then found the radial corridor that would lead to the hangar. He risked a glance upwards. The others were still above them, their lamp-beams bobbing around agitatedly. Olzan couldn’t tell what they were doing.
They left the atrium behind them and struck out towards the hangar at the edge of the starscraper. Even the emergency lights were dead on this level. The entrance to the hangar was an airlock, with a simple mechanical fail-safe to keep it shut; after they levered it open it closed automatically behind them.
They emerged onto a gallery overlooking Anastasia Zhu’s collection hall. The darkness made the space seem vast, the far wall only dimly visible in the light of their helmet lamps. What they could see of the room was in disarray. It looked like most of the smaller exhibits had been removed hurriedly, leaving toppled plinths, and the decorative hangings that had covered the bare walls were now scattered across the floor.
One large object dominated the centre of the room, something with a curved white surface, spotlessly clean. Olzan’s beam caught a name inscribed on the surface: EAS-S4 Seagull. He felt some of his worry disappear. At least finding it hadn’t been hard.
They ran their torch beams across the Seagull, trying to get an impression of its shape. It looked like a shuttle, but not like any Olzan could imagine being built in his time. It had a cylindrical body and a rounded nose, with the sleek curves that characterized Planetary Age technology. There were two odd fins stretched out from either side of the fuselage, far larger than most shuttle heat radiators. ‘What are those?’ he asked, half to himself.
‘Wings.’ Keldra’s voice was hushed, like a devout believer inside a chapel. ‘It’s a spaceplane. The wings are for flying in atmosphere. That craft, the Seagull…it would have landed on Earth.’ She held one arm out straight as if it were a wing, and moved the other hand above and below it, demonstrating something. ‘The top surface of the wing is curved, so the air pressure—’
‘Save the lecture. We need to get it out the doors so the Names can pick it up.’
He descended the metal steps to the hangar floor and scanned the far side of the room with his lamp-beams. The hangar doors and the personnel airlock were both hidden behind a set of floor-to-ceiling display cases. Hopefully there would be some way to remove them without using the explosives, so they wouldn’t have to risk damaging the spaceplane. He trudged over to them, stepping around the debris from the hasty evacuation, his boots splashing in the thin layer of oily water that covered the floor.
The display cases were airtight, climate-controlled modules designed for storing delicate artefacts. They were empty, save from some grit and curled brownish things that might have been leaves from a preserved plant. Olzan worked at the crack between two cases with his suit knife, trying to see if the cases were free-standing or attached to the wall. ‘Keldra! Give me a hand with this.’
Olzan looked around for her. She had climbed a metal stepladder that was set up next to the Seagull’s nose, and was now peering through its cockpit windows, her gloved hands almost but not quite touching the hull. ‘It’s a shell,’ she said, resentfully. ‘All the workings have been removed.’
‘Of course, they have. Taking it apart means more artefacts to put on display. What, did you think we’d be able to fly it out? Get the hell over here.’
Keldra tore herself away from the spaceplane and joined Olzan by the hangar door. She examined the display cases, crouching down to look at them from every angle. ‘They’re wired into the city’s power and hab systems. It looks like the airlock has been dismantled and its power and support lines are feeding these cases instead. Removing them will be tricky.’
‘Then we’ll have to blast them.’ Olzan unclipped the bag of explosives from his suit and dropped it on the floor in front of the cases.
‘It’s tricky, but I can do it.’
He hesitated. ‘Brenn! Time check.’
‘One hour twenty-two minutes to Black Line.’ Even Brenn’s voice was starting to show some worry.
‘I can do it in half an hour,’ Keldra said.
‘All right, but I’m planting the charges now. If you’re not done in half an hour we blow it.’
‘All right.’ She opened her tool bag and set to work.
Olzan walked up the row of display cases, fixing the explosive charges between them and wiring in remote detonators he could control from his suit. With more time he would have been able to blow the hangar door open with fewer, carefully placed charges, but for now overkill would have to do, even if the shuttle took damage. Meanwhile, Keldra had managed to get one of the display cases away from the wall and was tinkering with what remained of the hangar mechanism.
The charges in place, Olzan took a look around the room, breathing deeply to try to control his nerves. Abandoned display plinths seemed to stare at him, some of them lying broken in the shallow water. The Seagull loomed over them, shining like a statue of a benevolent god, wings outstretched, the slow motion of the water casting a subtly shifting reflection of his torchlight on its polished surface. Maybe there was something to Keldra’s obsession, he thought. That artefact had survived unscathed through the Worldbreaker disaster and the early city resource wars that had wiped out all the achievements of Planetary Age civilization and reduced the human race to a tiny remnant. It would be a pity to let it be damaged now.
Another movement of light caught his eye. Up on the gallery, the door they had come in by was opening again. A wobbling torch beam shone down on them.
Olzan froze. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Keldra still tinkering with the hangar mechanism; it looked as though she hadn’t noticed the others. ‘Keldra, stop,’ he whispered over the helmet connection.