Free On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds

time of the accident. No survivors or bodies anywhere, as far as she could tell.
    ‘How are you doing, Gonithi?’
    The other woman sounded much more confident now. ‘Got the survivor bagged and stable. I’ve tagged the location and am completing my search. What about you?’
    ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here, but I want to make absolutely sure before we tag it as searched.’
    Chiku had swept the basement of the other dome, but it had not connected through to this one. She could see into the lower level at the point where the ceiling fragment had penetrated the floor. A staircase existed, but it was now buried under the rubble of the dome’s collapsed roof. The ceiling fragment itself offered a kind of makeshift ramp, if she dared trust it not to shift or collapse. The quilt of illumination elements studding the panel’s uppermost face – it had flipped over at some point after falling from the ceiling – promised enough traction to enable her to climb or scramble down.
    Chiku moved to the edge of the gap in the floor and stood with her toes on the very brink. It was four, maybe five metres down to a scree of rubble piled up on the basement’s floor. To reach the steep slope of the ceiling fragment, she would have to leap across a good metre of clear space, and then hope that she maintained her footing. Hesitating, she bent down and scooped up a chunk of debris as large as her helmet. She hurled it at the ceiling fragment, the suit amplifying the power of her swing. The chunk shattered in a silent eruption, blooming into a blue-grey cloud. The fragment had absorbed the impact without a hint of movement. It appeared to be solidly fixed.
    Chiku took a couple of paces back, then leapt across the threshold. She landed roughly, one foot slipping into empty space, but her other found a purchase. She grabbed hold of a pair of lighting elements and stabilised herself. The jump would not have fazed even Ndege or Mposi under normal circumstances, but she was alone, in a dangerous place, with only a spacesuit between her and vacuum, and for a few moments her heart surged on a rush of adrenalin and relief.
    Chiku descended carefully, spidering down the quilt of lighting elements until her feet touched debris. The ground crunched, then supported her. She stepped gingerly off the ramp and turned around slowly, sweeping the beam over the jumbled and unwelcoming surroundings. Even the dust kicked up as she moved curtained back down with indecent haste.
    ‘Chiku,’ came Namboze’s voice. ‘I’m done here. There’s no one elsealive so I’m heading outside. I think I can manage the preserver on my own.’
    ‘Good work,’ Chiku said. ‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
    Leaning around a buckled metal pillar, she took cautious steps deeper into the basement. It had been subdivided into two large rooms, but the intervening wall had collapsed when the ceiling fragment came down. She stepped over and around chunks of knee-high rubble, watching where she placed her feet.
    Namboze asked, ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Just completing a sweep of the secondary basement. It’s open to vacuum, but I wanted to be sure. Doesn’t look like there’s anything down here, though.’
    Chiku fell silent, heart jamming her throat. She had been about to put her foot down into what looked at first glance to be a shadowy space between two chunks of debris. An instant before committing herself, she realised it was a void, not shadow.
    There was a hole in the floor.
    Namboze must have heard her draw breath. ‘Chiku?’
    ‘Still here. Nearly lost my balance.’
    Chiku steadied herself. She poked at one of the boulders on the edge of the void. It teetered and fell in, increasing the diameter of the void. It had been big enough to swallow her foot to begin with. Now it was big enough to swallow Chiku.
    If the boulder landed on anything below, it did so without a hint of impact. She found the void troubling in a way that felt monstrously