The third largest building in the UK in terms of volume loomed menacingly above the minibus as it made its way towards the cavernous entrance at the far end. In the rear seats, Tompkins and the crew of the Garden Wall gazed expectantly through the windows as the rusty exterior wall glided by.
Tompkins sat in the rearmost seat. He’d been visiting the Garden Wall regularly over the past few months, but the others had not been here for nigh on a year. The ship was now complete, ready for launch, and dressed to kill. It had finally shed its duffel coat of scaffolding and exposed its gloriously tailored suit of marbled green paint. Tompkins knew his team would be lost for words when they saw it.
The minibus rounded the corner of the hangar and drew to a halt beside its vast doors. Tompkins opened the back door of the minibus and the crew piled out. He slammed the door and slapped it twice. The minibus sped off back to wherever it had come from as they turned and headed towards the building. Before they reached it, a door of normal proportions set at the foot of one of the great hangar doors opened and a man came out and greeted them, shook hands with everybody and showed them into the building.
Inside it was surprisingly light considering the lack of windows. There was little artificial lighting but there were plenty of gaps and cracks between the wall panels that let in splayed fans of sunlight. It all seemed much less solid than it actually was.
And it was bare. The last time Eradani and Richter had visited, the floor had been crammed with all manner of manufacturing equipment, from small tools, such as spanners and pliers, to huge industrial cranes and powerful arc-welding machines. Now it was as empty as a new house. All the construction equipment had gone, all the scaffolding had been taken down and everyone had left. The hangar was now host to just one solitary item.
But what an item.
A huge, towering spaceship, glinting vainly in its exquisite green paint job. It was beautiful. The sleekness of form surprised even Dr. Richter, who had never imagined it could look so graceful and so poised. It reefed iconically upwards above them, as sleek as the most lavish yacht, as powerful as the beastliest oil-tanker. Here and there maybe a join or a hatch was faintly visible and perhaps a few lighting devices poked out from the hull, but generally the whole was as smooth and unbroken as could be - the sheer aerodynamics of the thing were phenomenal, its drag coefficient almost immeasurable. This served no practical purpose because in space there is nothing for it to drag upon, but nevertheless it turned the ship from a mere vehicle into a work of art the likes of which the space industry would never see again. On top of which, it was a nice colour.
‘Like I said,’ Tompkins began, ‘it is so much more than just a mere space craft.’
‘Definitely,’ agreed Dr. Richter, still agog. ‘It’s just so... it’s just...’ He ran out of words.
‘Very nice,’ said the Captain eyeing up the ship in an all too approving manner. ‘Very nice indeed. Looks kinda like a green Discovery. But why’s it on its ass?’
‘Ah, yes, very interesting that,’ said Richter. ‘You see, originally we planned to use solid rocket boosters strapped to the back of the ship, just like your space shuttle. But then we discovered that jettisoned booster rockets were responsible for many of the unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. They fell onto planes and boats, you see, causing them to sink without trace. So we took a different route and incorporated the booster rockets within the actual spacecraft. That’s why it gets a little bulky towards the bottom.’
‘Incredible,’ gasped the Captain, his eyes gleaming. ‘People tell me I know what I like. And I like this. The Garden Wall.’
Dr. Richter beamed from ear to ear. He was delighted to get the Captain’s approval.
‘Well, I am pleased you all appreciate the ship’s exterior so much,’ said Tompkins. ‘However, I do believe the real achievement awaits us inside. The interior, and I don’t believe I exaggerate when I say this, represents the very pinnacle of design and craftsmanship.’
Eradani pulled a face at this pompous statement but the Captain was entranced.
‘So what are we waiting for?’ he said excitedly. ‘Let’s go look!’ He let Tompkins lead the way forward.
They stopped at the foot of the ship. Close up, it took on gargantuan proportions. It reminded Richter of a dream he’d had about flying whales, although he couldn’t say why. ‘It really is a big ship,’ he observed, in a few words expressing what everybody was thinking.
‘This is the main entrance,’ indicated Tompkins. He stood by a hatchway set flush with the hull. It was very well concealed, melding in perfectly with a design pattern that ran like a frieze around the bottom of the Garden Wall, giving the ship a wonderful, unbroken symmetry.
Tompkins opened a small compartment door to reveal a numeric keypad behind. ‘For security reasons,’ he explained. ‘Don’t want anyone stealing it, do we?’ He prodded in a five digit number and the doorway opened outwards with a hiss.
‘Sturdy,’ said the Captain, noting the foot-thick composition of the door and the hull.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ said Richter. ‘Shall we enter?’
They stepped through the doorway. They found themselves in a small, cramped, empty cubicle of a room. Ahead of them was another door, again operated by a digital entry code. Tompkins stepped up and typed in another number. The door behind them closed tightly with a hefty clunk. Fifteen seconds later the inner door opened. It was as well-made as the outer door.
‘Airlock,’ said the Captain.
‘Precisely,’ said Richter. ‘You’ll see when we get in that it’s effectively just a box attached to the inner wall.’
The party made their way into the interior of the ship. The airlock was, as Dr. Richter had described it, simply a solid metal cube stuck to the inside of the hull. The room they’d entered had a curved wall that extended either side of the airlock cubicle to the outer wall and was a particularly attractive shade of pastel orange.
‘This is the reception area, if you like,’ said Richter. ‘There will be nothing in here other than some spacesuits and room to get changed into them.’
‘Where are the suits?’ asked Eradani.
‘They’re not arriving until next week,’ said Tompkins. ‘They’re among several minor things that haven’t yet been finished. Like the Levcro uniforms.’
‘Levcro?’ asked Denise, reaching inside her pocket to grab her notebook.
‘Yes,’ explained Richter, ‘they’re to aid mobility. I mean, in space, there’s obviously not going to be any gravity, so we devised a method that will enable us to walk normally around the ship. Others have tried to solve this problem by attempting to introduce artificial gravitational forces by spinning the ship around and so forth, but we decided just to stick you to the ground instead. If you haven’t already noticed, you’ll see that all available surfaces are carpeted with a material similar to velcro. The uniforms have strips of the complementary material sewn into them, thus enabling you to walk around as normally as possible. We decided to call the system Levcro because it will seem as though you’re defying gravity as you run around on the ceilings and walls and so forth. Although ironically I suppose the suits will actually be simulating gravity rather than defying it...’
‘You can sit on all the seats, as well,’ added Eradani.
‘Good point. All just to make life a little easier during transit.’
Tompkins led them across the reception room and into the heart of the ship. They found themselves in a long passageway that connected presumably every room on board. Again, it was all decorated in warm reds and yellows and was really very cosy considering it was basically a corridor. The lighting was moody and thoughtful, the switches and handles that were on show were finished with a luxuriant brushed steel effect and everything had a feel of real quality about it. It was everything Tompkins had described and more.
Thanks to the current orientation of the ship, the passageway didn’t run ahead of them, but instead disappeared vertically above their heads. Levcro was present on all the surfaces and there was no obvious distinction between walls, floor and ceiling.
‘There is no up or down in space,’ explained Richter, noticing one or two confused faces. ‘I’m sure it won’t take much getting used to. In the meantime, however, we have to climb.’
He moved to one of the walls (which, in space, would be a floor, or a ceiling, or even a different wall, depending on how you looked at it) and grabbed a metal rung set neatly at shoulder height. Looking up the passageway, Denise could see dozens of these rungs running right up to the very top, forming a crude ladder of sorts.
‘What’s through here?’ asked the Captain, indicating a door opposite the reception room.
‘Engine room,’ said Richter. ‘No point in looking in there, though. It’s a bit cramped.’
Eradani couldn’t resist a quick peek however and reached out to open the door. Annoyingly, the handle broke off as she pulled.
‘Will you stop doing that?’ said Dr. Richter disapprovingly. ‘Anyway, as I was about to say, let’s carry on to the next floor.’
‘So we’re going up... there?’ asked Denise, staring nervously upwards.
‘Yes,’ said Richter. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks. And we can stop off at each room on the way, so you don’t have to climb too far in one go.’
‘Well, okay,’ said Denise. Richter turned back to the rungs and started climbing. Eradani followed him, then Tompkins, then Denise with the Captain bringing up the rear. By the time the Captain had got onto the first rung, Richter was already up to the first floor and had disappeared into a room.
‘This,’ he began when all his companions had made it safely into the room, ‘is one of the Suspended Animation Chambers. As you can see, there are two capsules...’
Unlike the beautiful finish applied to the rest of the ship’s interior, this room came across as a hotchpotch of cables and breadboards that had been thrown together by a science fiction fanatic bent on some wildly optimistic experiment to produce a time machine. It wasn’t, of course - it was a highly complex piece of machinery, with monitoring equipment, catheters, intravenous drips and all sorts of other medical bits and pieces. The capsules themselves were small, pod-like things, just large enough for someone to lie down in, and were attached either side of a central column that contained all the electronics needed to keep a human being alive for six years. The room was completely empty otherwise.
‘... in here. The other two are located in a similar room across the corridor.’
‘Doesn’t look very futuristic,’ said Denise, noting the wires and tubes sticking out all over the place amongst the omnium gatherum of electronic components.
‘Well, of course, what more do you expect? This is the real world, you know,’ said Richter, ‘not some weird and wonderful sci-fi fantasy. This represents the best that today’s technology can provide. I’m sorry if it doesn’t look quite as good as the Federation Starship Enterprise, but it works and that’s all that matters. I think the rest of the ship more than makes up for the aesthetic difficulties of these two rooms.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Denise. ‘I’m sorry.’ She realised at this moment that the Garden Wall meant a lot more to Dr. Richter than he had previously let on. She made a mental note to try and be a bit more tactful in future when talking ship.
‘Right, onwards and upwards, then,’ said Tompkins, deciding that keeping the tour moving swiftly was a wise move. Richter seemed to agree and swept out of the room purposefully.
<=> <=> <=>
The Captain stood in the lounge and regarded it with the air of somebody who’s just found themselves in a room filled with dancing courgettes. Denise was trying out one of the armchairs for comfort.
‘This is the lounge,’ said Dr. Richter.
‘I can see what it is,’ said the Captain, ‘but what’s it doing here?’
‘Ah, I see,’ said the physicist, not surprised that the Captain was somewhat confused. ‘Basically... ooh, sorry, I hate that word, I do try to avoid using it. Um, we felt that the crew, which Eradani and myself are now part of, might not want to spend the entire journey snoozing away in suspended animation. So we popped a lounge in. And a dining room across the way.’
‘A dining room?’ said the Captain. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so preposterous! This is a spaceship for heaven’s sake, not a bijou loft apartment.’
‘You don’t have to come in here if you don’t want to,’ said Eradani.
‘Well, it’s here now isn’t it? Probably end up in it at some point. We didn’t have anything like it on the Shuttle you know. There we had to make do with a bit of spare space on the floor of the cabin. This is just... pretentious. That’s what it is’
‘Quite,’ said Richter, slightly miffed that this room had come under criticism as well. The tour wasn’t going quite as well as he’d hoped. ‘Right. Shall we head right up to the top?’
‘The bridge?’ asked the Captain.
‘Yep,’ said Richter. ‘The heart and soul of the ship.’ He led them back out of the room and climbed the final stretch of corridor. He stretched his foot out and pulled himself through the topmost doorway.
The bridge was much larger than the other rooms, occupying the entire bow of the ship. They found themselves, rather bizarrely, on the back wall. The corridor protruded slightly into the room so there was a recess either side of them. The seats and instruments were bolted onto the wall (or floor) in front of them and the main window was directly over their heads.
Denise tried to mentally rotate the room round in her head but found it impossible to visualise.
‘Trust me, you’ll soon get used to it when we’re in space,’ said Richter, sensing her confusion. ‘You’ll be able to walk up the walls, along the roof, anywhere where there’s Levcro. It’s all been carefully planned.’
‘I hope so,’ said Denise.
The Captain had moved along the wall a bit and was looking around quite determinedly. The front window arched right the way round the front of the ship, and there were four command posts located in front of it, lined up neatly in a very slight curve. Each consisted of a touchscreen computer console attached to an adjustable platform mounted atop the left arm of a chair.
‘Is that it?’ asked the Captain. ‘Where are the banks of switches and the flashing lights and the dials and the comms stations and the life support systems?’
‘They’re all there,’ assured Dr. Richter. ‘It’s just all controlled by computer now. There are four stations, one for each crew member. One is for navigation, one is for life support, one is for communication and the other is a general workhorse for the remaining little systems that were left out of the other three.’
The Captain whistled. ‘Times change,’ he said.
‘They do indeed,’ said Tompkins. ‘Well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m famished. Anybody fancy a burger?’