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74.
After the depressing and harrowing journey into the dead city, Maryan and Alex agreed to venture in the other direction, into the forests in the vast cylinder. Here at least were air, and life, and light.
They had no possessions to go back for, so they started out for the far end of the station. Skirting the deadly hillock by a mile, they worked their way along jungle trails, always in the direction of that great glowing moon face that looked as though it lay beyond glass windows.
Twenty miles across tortuous terrain was a long way. It seemed like a thousand miles. Here and there, they found an easy spot, a clearing they could stride across, where twisted bushes struggled toward low light in low gravity. At times they followed one of the many undulating ridges that twisted through the dense growth. These ridges were usually about ten or twenty feet above ground level. “See a pattern?” Maryan said breathlessly, her face smeared with mud and whipped by stray thorny branches.
Alex stopped, gasping, and stood arms akimbo. At the moment the air felt hot and stifling, though he knew it could soon become chilly and damp.
She explained: “They figured out a way to maximize the surface area. Instead of making it flat, they made it egg-crate. That’s why we’re stumbling up and down through all these holes and bumps.”
“At!” A light went on in Alex’s mind. “I see. Doing some quick arithmetic—I bet you could almost double the surface area that way. Clever. Then maybe the surface area is twice what we thought—more like 600 square miles. Incredible.”
“Yes, and I bet it strengthened the station structurally.” She added: “Not enough to withstand a huge impact, though.” At times the ridges were not wide enough on top for a path. At other times the ridges widened into clearings and then quickly narrowed again. The rest of the time, Alex and Maryan had to slog through wet underbrush and mud. Often they encountered brambles and thorns, and those slowed them down even further.
They also kept an eye over one shoulder. There was always the dread that Nizin or something like him might be following them. Sometimes they heard the distant bellow of a large animal. Once in a while they got a creepy feeling up and down their backs upon hearing a twig snap or a leaf rustle nearby.
Together, they gradually figured out that the station was not only rotating on its lengthwise axis to produce artificial gravity, but also end over end while turning on its third axis, so that the moon passed repeatedly through its day-field, but each time a little bit farther to the right than the day before. During each day, the moon passed slowly from top to bottom of the visible field at the end of the station. It was always the same face, and they began to recognize the larger craters and features almost as if they were in their back yard. They looked so much closer than when seen from Earth, and yet still so distant and inhospitable that they almost seemed haunted.
In the L5 cylinder were small lakes and rivers. The bodies of water were typically no more than about twenty feet deep at most, murky, and warmish. The rivers were long and narrow and had sluggish currents, while the lakes and ponds seemed faintly elevated on the same side as the cylinder’s direction of motion. Alex had yet to figure out how one induced a river current here—maybe with a solar turbine? And where was such an engine? The station presented more mysteries than answers.
Alex and Maryan swam across one large river that seemed to zigzag across the landscape. Its water was cool, but comfortable. The color was a rich greenish yellow with bits of vegetation floating in it, and its smell hinted at decay but overall was fruity with a faint metallic undertone. It wasn’t pleasant, and it wasn’t familiar, but it was tolerable. Before crossing the forty feet to the other side, they sat on the bank in the shade of a large tree and watched carefully for any signs of predators—or the elusive small humanoid hunters like the one whose corpse they had found—but the area remained quiet and gloomy. There was always a lively undertone of insects, wind in leaves, small animals scurrying. One saw flashes of a small tail, a white underbelly, a sniffing nose, on a variety of tiny mammals resembling rodents. When the two humans finally slid into the water, their trip lasted only a few uneventful minutes. Alex noticed a pronounced undercurrent that pushed to his right, and when they emerged on the other side they had been carried several yards downstream. On the way across, they dove down a bit. They couldn’t see the river bottom. Alex’s small stone chipping and scraping tool escaped from his grasp and twirled way. He muttered a curse that came out in bubbles that echoed around his ears in the pickle-colored water. Small fish nuzzled by in schools of ten or twenty to explore these trespassers. The stone dropped, briefly colored grayish-white in the penetrating light and then disappearing into the unsounded depths.
Back on the surface, and glad to be out of the unknown waters, Alex and Maryan squeezed their clothes dry. The air felt cooler now that they were wet, and they picked up the pace to burn off the dampness.
“No crocodiles,” he said.
“No sharks,” she added.
They kept their conversation curt to conserve breath as they moved quickly along. Alex’s main urgency was to get as far from a possible Nizin, or any Siirk, as possible.
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