Book 3: Chapter 24: Explorations
Herschel
April 2227
Kuiper belt, Delta Pavonis
Ants must feel like this.
The Others’ carrier, which we’d named Hulk-1, was massive. A ten-kilometer-long cylinder, one kilometer in diameter, it dwarfed even our Version-5 Heaven hulls. At the moment, I was slowly drifting down the central access shaft, while roamers painted numbers on each cargo door. I wasn’t just being anal—we’d discovered that we needed to refer to specific locations by something more helpful than grunting and pointing.
SUDDAR scans had revealed a lot of details about the ship and its contents, but sooner or later we would have to try powering it up. Those massive cargo segment doors wouldn’t be opening manually, never mind the one-hundred-meter-diameter hatches at each end.
“How’s it going, Herschel?”
“Fine,” I replied. “Almost done. 864 cargo bays. That number mean anything to you?”
There was a moment of silence before Neil replied, “It’s 600 base 12. And, come to think of it, the Others image that Bill retrieved had six feeding fingers on each side of its maw.”