Ilane Lanik wrote: >> One the right hand side as the boat enters they can see >> docking points along a smoothed rock ledge. A metal >> railing has been installed along the ledge and there is >> a metal mesh catwalk leading deeper into the asteroid. >> To the right of the ledge they can see what look like >> rooms cut into the side of the rock. There are large >> glass windows on some of the rooms looking out on the >> cavern. > > Taking in the vast *scale* of the place, Ilane asks no > one in particular, "Wow...what did Si Moby actually *do* > at this place? What was it all *for*?" > > Providing that the ledge appears to be structurally > sound, Ilane takes the ship towards the docking points on > the ledge, and attempts to dock at whichever one seems to > be in the best shape. Ilane eases the boat over and nudges its docking clamp over a bar on one of the docking posts and clamps on. There is a faint "Clump" heard inside the ship from the action of the boat's clamp biting down on the docking bar. The boat is securely held in place here against the ledge of rock. You are close enough now to see that there is metal mesh laid atop the rock of the ledge, it looks like the catwalks that cross the cavern and go around it's sides against the rock faces. To your right you can see a pair of umbillicals retracted up against the walls of the rooms cut into the rock. One of the umbilical is a meter across, the other is almost three across. From your experience you expect the smaller umbilical to house power and life support connections and the larger to be an airtight passage that can be connected to a ship's airlock. Sensors show low, but definitely above background, IR power levels coming from the far set of rooms on the other side of the cavern from where you docked. There are also low, but higher than background, IR power levels coming from the rooms to your right. In both cases the readings are diffuse, not point sources. IOW's the readings don't look like they are signs of *beings* in here, more like that there are active power sources providing a little heat in those areas. Sensors also show that the cavern is in hard vacuum. From a quick look around the layout, though, our asteroid miner's daughter thinks the interior once was air tight and pressurized...and probably could be made so again without *too* much work. You don't see any obvious holes in the walls of the "rooms" and there is a closed hatch on the side of one near where you docked. The hatch looks like an outer airlock hatch on a ship...or any of dozens of similar hatches Ilane has seen on asteroid habitats. If you want to explore you are going to have to EVA again. It should be relatively safe in here, though, no chance of just floating away, as long as you stay tethered to something and move carefully. Eris AKU GM
