“That gives us plenty of time for morbid speculation,” Lamont suggested. “Do you fancy a game of ‘How Many Tentacles?’”
Lamont decisively punched his finger at the base of the miniature tower and set his jaw, pressing himself against the padded wall next to Rosemary. The three-dimensional image of the tower drifted into the center of the shuttle and momentarily dissolved into a nebulous chaos of glittering particles before resolving again into a representation of their current location. The red pill shape that indicated their lift appeared maintained a stationary position near the surface of the dull gray orb while the silvery webbing that depicted levels of the tower moved upward past it in a blur, the top and bottom extremities fading into nothingness. Lamont felt the tug of acceleration pulling his stomach toward his throat; it felt a bit more intense than it had in the past, but he could not decide whether this was a real change in sensation or a psychosomatic effect produced by the rapidly changing map. One thing he was certain of, however, was that the magnetic pull of the padded wall against which he stood had become noticeably stronger. It took real effort to tug his head even two inches away from its soft plastic surface.
Beside him, the medic’s green eyes were wide and round as they watched the ghostly representation of their descent in the center of the lift. The individual levels had become an indistinguishable blur. “I’ve been trying to calculate how fast we’re moving,” she eventually said. “It’s no use.”
“It could be over 100 miles an hour,” Lamont estimated. “A space elevator usually travels at around 90, right?”
“Something like that,” Rosemary agreed. “Even so, it could take an hour or two before we reach the bottom.”
“That gives us plenty of time for morbid speculation,” Lamont suggested. “Do you fancy a game of ‘How Many Tentacles?’”
Rosemary turned her head slightly to look at him curiously. “The other levels we’ve visited today haven’t been as overwhelmingly idyllic as the garden, I’ll admit,” she observed. “But we’ve yet to encounter anything overtly menacing. Why the doom and gloom?”
“You weren’t on the surface of the moon,” Lamont noted grimly, bobbing his chin downward with a tangible effort. “There was something unspeakably ominous about it.”