“No!” Clyde barked with surprising force. “The garden is the problem! I ain’t going back until I’ve found some other place we can occupy while we’re here.”
The systematic descent continued. Two levels beneath the garden, they came to a level where the ceiling was only about 10 feet high. It was divided into multiple wedge-shaped chambers, the main feature being vertical slabs of black, glassy material in which multicolored lights conveyed a feeling of unnatural depth.
The third level beneath the garden consisted of corridors in concentric circles. Lining the corridors were hemispherical cutouts of various sizes, each of which contained fractal metallic objects that glowed softly and had extremely sharp edges.
By the time they reached the fourth level down, Constance felt as if she were sleepwalking. The cavalcade of unfamiliar and enigmatic objects was blurring into a heavy gray fog. She saw that she wasn’t alone in this. They were in a space that suggested something of a gallery, in which platforms of various shapes and sizes emerged organically from the carpetlike floor in between columns that contained floating, multicolored glowing globules. The other members of the expedition were rubbing their eyes, yawning. Howard Ambrose had draped his portly frame over a platform that was roughly similar in size and shape to a couch and was quietly snoring. Abner Wade sat next to him, his heavy-lidded gaze alternately following Constance and drifting into empty space.
“Why do I feel so tired?” Rico asked, voicing the question that was surely on everybody’s mind by now.
“Maybe it’s something in the air,” Abner mumbled.
Constance shook her head heavily. “Look at the tooth-puller.”
Cassius, who had persistently refused to leave the elevator even to explore this comparatively inviting space, was slumped against the padded side, apparently asleep. If their theory held, anything in the air outside the shuttle should not have affected him.
“We should be going back to the garden,” Finnian suggested. “We’ll get some rest, tell ‘em what we’ve found so far and strike out again another day.”
“No!” Clyde barked with surprising force. “The garden is the problem! I ain’t going back until I’ve found some other place we can occupy while we’re here.”
“This level ain’t so bad,” Constance suggested. “I feel inclined to take a little rest here, at any rate.” She slumped onto the padded floor, leaning against the soft contours of another platform. She realized that, for the first time she could recall since their arrival at the tower, she felt hungry and thirsty. But so great was her fatigue at this moment that it seemed like too much effort to fish in her bag for a ration packet.
“Well, I reckon we can at least stop here for a mite…” Jackson was saying as he sat down heavily nearby. But Constance didn’t hear him finish the sentence. She was already fast asleep.
Monday: The Search