Re: Within the Asteroid
In reply to Jedec Istec (msg # 960):
They moved out from the village, on the trail of the raiding party from the day before.
Jedec easily picked up the trail. The back-trail led away from the elevator they were using to get to their forward base camp. Instead, it went in the opposite direction, leading through thick overgrown forest. The woods were not silent, filled with birdcalls and the rustle of small woodland creatures. It didn't seem likely that there were larger animals prowling around, but then this whole vessel seemed rather improbable.
After a kilometre's travel they came to a series of massive 100m long vents set in the forest floor. They had been inoperative for a long time, perhaps a century or longer. They were so overgrown that it was difficult to tell at first what they were. The tracks they followed continued past and so they followed. They came across more series of vents, also examples of the ship's incredible redundancy of design but illustrating that even that can fail over time. Finally after a few kilometres they came to an operating vent with warm moist air issuing forth from deep below, so at least something still worked. The tracks led to a closed hatch that lay on the ground to the side of the vents.