Lamont swallowed a lump in his throat. "Yeah, that's plan B," he croaked. "B for 'bollox.'"
"I'll follow that logic," Francis allowed, taking a sip of his drink. "What do you propose as the next step?"
Lamont thought for a moment, unconsciously draining what remained in the tumbler in his hand. There was an obvious proposal to be made, but the thought of it terrified him. Gazing at the cubes of ice in his otherwise empty glass, he thought of the monstrous geometries, the languid tentacles of oxygen that groped from the mist of the nearby moon.
"We could take the asteroid pod down along the tower," he offered quietly. "Probe for an entry point beneath the middle section."
The captain pressed his lips together in a thin line as he considered the suggestion. After a few seconds, he shook his head. "Between trips to the tower for personnel rotation, trips to the moon for materials, and work on the ship's exterior, we have the asteroid pod working nearly around the clock. Ed is nowhere close to reverse-engineering the vehicle that Ashton opened up, and doubts that he can spare the men to continue that work. I don't see how the pod could be spared anytime soon for mere exploration."
He made a face, as if the phrase mere exploration was one he disliked himself for saying.
"You said that you want to access the tower a the lowest possible point," Phobos pointed out, his hooded eyes regarding Lamont impassively. "The next obvious step would be to return to the surface of the moon with the next mining party. It would be a small inconvenience for them to drop you off near the base of the tower."
Lamont swallowed a lump in his throat. "Yeah, that's plan B," he croaked. "B for 'bollox.'"
Rosemary snorted loudly as she did when something struck her as unexpectedly funny. She looked at the stoic face of Francis and covered her mouth self-consciously.
"I gather that returning to the surface of the moon isn't a proposition that you find compelling," the captain observed.
"No, mate," the newspaperman admitted reluctantly. "I bloody hated it down there. But I'll do it if it's the only way."
"I'd like to join you, if circumstances allow," Francis said. "It sounds fascinating, and I'd like to see if there's anything we can learn about the construction of the tower."
"I hate to complicate your plans," Rosemary ventured, perching on an arm of the couch, "But we haven't discussed the really pressing issue yet. We don't know exactly how or why, but the colonists and crew that are aboard the tower are suffering."
"Suffering?" Carter asked, returning his eyes to the medic. "What do you mean?"
"When I returned from my overnight visit to the tower," Rosemary reminded him, "Milo diagnosed me with what looked to him like a week's worth of malnutrition and sleep deprivation. While I was recovering from that back here, Rico and a group of colonists decided to form up an expedition party to explore the levels beneath the garden. That's what they were doing when we arrived this morning."
The captain's eyebrows lifted at this news. "Really? What happened?"
"The same thing," Rosemary explained gravely. "Only worse."