Zero World by Hough Jason M

Author:Hough, Jason M. [Hough, Jason M.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Hard Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction, Thrillers, Espionage
ISBN: 9780553391268
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2015-08-18T05:00:00+00:00

CASWELL WENT STRAIGHT to a cabinet door on the back wall and flung it aside. Dust fell in great clumps and spread into the rancid air. With desperate madness he began to paw through the contents, examining silvery packets and flinging them aside with growing frustration.

Finally he found one that met his criteria. He twisted off its cap, tilted it above his mouth, and sucked the contents down in four gigantic swallows.

“Slow down,” Melni said. “You will just vomit it up if you eat that fast.”

He nodded without looking at her, ashamed at his lack of self-control. Then a violent shiver ran through his body. He quickly inhaled the second packet. Then a third.

Melni left him to his desperate feast and took in the cramped cabin of the spacecraft. It resembled the one she had visited in Hillstav down to the last detail, but nothing gleamed. It was like viewing a beautiful work of art and then seeing it again, faded by time, half-hidden under grime and dust. Her treadmellows left imprints on the floor. Melni knelt and trailed a finger along the surface, watching the brownish material return to white. Her fingertip brushed across a groove. She traced it, revealing another porthole like the one above. Aboard Caswell’s craft she had glimpsed the same feature through the gap in her blindfold. “Why,” she asked, “do these vessels have a door on the floor as well as the ceiling?”

Caswell had to swallow a mouthful of food before answering. “The bottom one has no airlock. It’s used only to connect the vehicle to other modules.”

“What kind of modules?”

He shrugged. “You name it: habitats, labs, engines, other landers. Link enough together and you’ve got a city in space.”

“I see.”

Her fingertip squeaked across a round window inset into the porthole. Melni froze. She’d expected to see mud below, as she had in Caswell’s craft, or perhaps swaying plants in the depths of the river. Instead she saw what appeared to be a wall of dark blue material a few feet away, broken only by a glowing green line inlaid perfectly into its surface. “What is this one connected to?”

“Nothing.” He turned, a water container in his fist, squeezing the last few drops into his mouth through a blue straw. “It was connected to a ship called the Venturi, until Alice fled in it.”

“Well, there is something down there.”

A vertical worry line creased his forehead. He knelt beside her and wiped grime from the glass with one swift swipe of his forearm.

She pressed her face to the glass next to his.

“What the fuck?” he gasped.

Another room waited. Something separate from the lander. The dark blue of the wall curved gracefully at its edges to meet a floor and ceiling. Dimly glowing green lines ran along the surfaces in elegant patterns of no discernible purpose, though Melni sensed they were not simply decorative.

In places, holes six inches in diameter receded into darkness within the wall. They were spaced at regular intervals, as far as Melni

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