[capnq]

Milsu Sutre peered up into the dark shaft rising through the base of the Masters' abandoned city. An opening that huge had to have been some kind of hangar, he thought to himself. There was plenty of room to manuever the hovertruck inside; the only question was whether he could find a suitable mooring place that would let him get out to look around. It would have been easier if he'd waited until enough buoyancy cells had been repaired to get the city level again, but it had taken all his willpower to go back up to Jalwu City to register the salvage claim when he'd discovered what it was, rather than find a way inside immediately.

Sutre turned on the hover's forward lights, then slowly eased it up the shaft. The first view of the interior didn't look very promising, revealing only catwalks and a few retracted gantries around the periphery of the hangar. He'd risen nearly five stories before he found a partially extended gantry that was in a good position to moor the hover and climb onto a catwalk, but Sutre decided to see how far up the shaft went before he got out.

Another six stories up, the hover's collision avoidance alarm sounded. Sutre leveled off, then pivoted the center light up to see what was blocking the way. Looming above him, he saw an exposed construction girder; tracing it further with the light revealed a skeletal framework of girders, held in place by several extended gantries.

Sutre could hardly believe his luck; not only had he discovered one of the Masters' cities, but it looked like he'd found a construction yard. Whatever they'd been building appeared to fill the remaining four stories of the shaft. He could see external walls bridging the framework starting about two stories up, and it looked like there might be a doorway where the next gantry above that connected.

In his rush to get back down to the lower gantry, Sutre set off the collision alarm again. He guided the hover in more carefully until he could engage the mooring clamps. As excited as he was, he almost forgot to doublecheck the environment suit that protected him from Jalwu's corrosive atmosphere. The hover's door swung down as it opened, forming a makeshift bridge between it and the slanting catwalk. Sutre once again marveled at his luck; the tilting floor of the skycity would make it a little easier to climb the connecting ladders, which had oddly wide gaps between the rungs.

By the time Sutre had climbed all the way back up to the mysterious construct, he was panting from the exertion. He checked his hydrogen gauge, and was somewhat annoyed to note that he had less than an hour to explore before he'd have to make his way back to the hover. He located the gantry that connected to the doorway, and hauled himself up the handrail of the tilting catwalk. In the light of the environment suit's headlamp, the opening looked a lot like an airlock. It appeared that the Masters had been building a ship here. Unfortunately, any markings that may have once been on the doorway had long been oxidized away.

Getting inside wasn't going to be as easy as he'd hoped. There obviously wasn't any power available to open the interior door, and if there even was a manual override, it would likely be jammed shut after millenia in this atmosphere. May as well at least try it while I'm here, Sutre thought. He managed to find handholds to pull himself up to the door, but nearly fell when the Last handhold popped an access panel. He pulled himself up again to peer inside the exposed opening, finding a large, uncorroded handle.

Sutre laughed at the irony of finding the door's manual latch by accident, but not being able to use it. He could probably get enough leverage to turn the handle, but the door appeared to open inward, which meant he'd have to push up to get it open, and there was no way he could do that with the floor tilting away from it so steeply. After all that work, he was still going to have to wait for the city to be righted before he could see what was behind that door.