Free Far From Home: The Complete Second Series (Far From Home 13-15) by Tony Healey Page A

the older man had already finished the job. His helmet was off and tucked under his arm. He sniffed the ozone.
    "The air is cool, but old. Stale. It smells like a tomb in here."
    "Doctor, I'd prefer it if you didn't take such risks," Jessica said. "The air could have been poisonous for all you knew . . ."
    He didn't seem to hear her as he filled his lungs with ancient air. And minutes later, once they'd made sure that Dr. Gentry was not about to drop down dead, they all followed suit.
    Even the Captain.
    *
    "So there must be a way of getting down," Jessica said.
    "Over here!" Lieutenant Jackson called. They all walked to his location at the edge of the platform. He knelt on the floor, examining a wide circle embossed on the decking. "What d'you suppose this is?"
    Jessica got down on her knee and ran her hand over the marking there. Immediately, at the touch of her fingertips, the same glowing symbols they'd observed on the airlocks appeared. She looked up at the Lieutenant. "There's our answer, Jackson."
    "Aye," he said and watched as the Captain activated all of the symbols in turn. The two of them stepped back as the circle of metal rose from the decking in a round column until it stood over them at a height of three metres or more.
    "Wow."
    It was featureless save for a hexagonal embossed area on its front face, and it had risen from the floor without a sound.
    Dr. Gentry stepped forward, pressed his hand against it. The hexagon showed itself to be a door, and swung inward. Within the column were dim lights.
    "What is it?" Rayne asked.
    "An elevator," Gentry said. "I'd bet my hat on it."
    "Well, there's only one way to find out," Jessica said. She was first to step inside. "After all, they must have had some way of getting down there. Shall we?"

 
    26.
     
    C-1, or the habitat as some of them came to refer to it, was a bleak and somewhat boring landscape. Entirely devoid not only of life signs, but imaginative design.
    "It's as if an entire world has been built, purely to function," Dr. Gentry said. "Designed, and made, for purpose. No flair. No spedazzle!"
    "No colour," Jessica said.
    "Exactly," Gentry agreed. "Completely dull and utilitarian. I've never seen anything like it. Even on a starship, or a starbase, there is some whimsical feature. Some part of its design that links it to the designer. However, here I find nothing extraneous."
    "Fan out into your teams," Jessica ordered. "And I want one member of each team with a firearm at the ready. We still don't know what we're dealing with."
    They broke up and spread out. She instructed them to rejoin by the elevator one hour later and to remain in contact the whole time.
    "A surprise may present itself at any time," she warned them. But Jessica King had no cause for concern. There would be no surprises yet. C-1 was a habitat built for thousands of inhabitants – but not one of the teams found any evidence of present, or former, occupation.
    For all intents and purposes, the Enigma looked brand new inside. Which then posed the obvious question: If no-one had ever lived here, who had it been built for? Was it still, all these years later, awaiting its crew?
    The Enigma was a miracle of engineering, and must have taken untold resources to construct. And yet . . . here it was, abandoned.
    Who had been meant to live there, and why hadn't they yet? Why was the Enigma , a lifeless world all its own, left to orbit a similarly dead planet?
    It didn't make sense.

 
    27.
     
    Captain’s Personal Journal
    External log
    Standard Ship Time
    It’s been several hours since we reached the centrifuge. And as noted before, from what we observed of the Enigma 's outer hull, there would appear to be three separate sections. The vessel's constant spin creates a perfect one gee environment, with the inner walls of the centrifuge for the ground. There is air, but it is old, stale. And there is some kind of weather system in here, too, that's just starting to develop.
    The Enigma is a