The door snapped open, and the soft white light of the lift's interior was suddenly tinted by a sickly, green-yellow glow.
The curved door of the lift shuttle snapped closed, replacing the bemused countenances of Rico and Abner with a smooth, plasticine surface. Lamont found himself standing against the padded wall farthest from the door, and from Constance, in the small space. He desperately wanted to find something to do with his hands. He nearly pulled out another cigarette, thought the better of it, and shoved his hands in his pockets instead. Meanwhile, to his surprise, Constance had stepped into the center of the shuttle and was watching the navigation sphere slowly descend from its nest in the hemispherical ceiling. She watched their fish-eyed reflections in the chrome surface of the globe.
"Something's different about you, Miss Beckett," Lamont observed.
"Do you like it?" Constance asked. Her eyes remained fixed on the sphere as it settled into place at her eye level, between her and Lamont.
"I should think that's beside the point," Lamont answered carefully. "Say, what are you up to?"
The silvery surface of the globe had scattered into a cloud of glittering particles that resolved into the familiar cross-section of the tower. With precise movements of her hands, Constance pulled the representation closer until the map showed only the top three levels of the tower. Lamont thought that perhaps she intended to take them up to the domed top, where he had been when disaster had struck Westward. But she did the opposite, jabbing her finger at the level immediately beneath the garden floor.
"I want to show you something," she answered.
She stepped back from the map, pressing her back to the padded wall an arm's length from him. Lamont felt the magnetic pull of the wall holding him in place for one or two heartbeats before the glittering particles of the map collapsed into a single gleaming surface on the sphere, which returned upward into its nest. The door snapped open, and the soft white light of the lift's interior was suddenly tinted by a sickly, green-yellow glow. Palpable heat radiated against Lamont's unprotected face from the threshold, beyond which he could see the dim outlines of pipes and conduits.
"Come take a look," Constance invited. Unhesitatingly, she pulled herself from the grip of the padded wall and stepped through the invisible magnetic barrier of the shuttle's doorway.
Lamont took a deep breath and followed her. The moment he passed through the threshold, the heat against the skin of his face intensified so that it felt as if he were standing in front of an open oven. When he had visited this level with Rosemary, they had both taken one look outside and activated the bubble-helmets of their Martian vacuum suits. Seeing that Miss Beckett was not wearing a suit, Lamont resisted the urge and instead took an experimental breath. The air was indeed breathable, but so hot and thick with humidity that he nearly choked. There was a pungent, overwhelming scent that was both acrid and organic.
For a long moment, Constance simply stood near the edge of the platform that surrounded the central shuttle column, peering into the murky green depths of the space at the complex network of pipes, columns and vats. During those few seconds, her sand-colored hair became black with the damp heaviness of the air.
"This is the level just beneath the garden," she explained, her voice husky with the effort of speaking.