Len unrolled his leather route book across the flat coarse grey rock ledge of an empty embrasure. He used the faint, greenish twilight filtering through the arrow slit to examine the inked elevations.
Beside him, Ivara held a small tin grease-shield over her monocular. She peeked through the three-inch slit into the deep, lit up deep gap of the Star tower’s inner domestic courtyard.
Fifty feet below their ledge, the lower domestic terrace lay spread out like a stone-built diagram. It was a narrow, paved ledge carved into the living rock between the huge foundations of the central dome and the sheer cliff edge of the northern cliffs. On the western side stood the domestic barracks. A grim, two-story block of dark granite where the families of the chief technicians and senior draftsmen were housed under armed surveillance. On the eastern side, connected by a narrow iron footbridge, sat the old medicine room and the lower terminus of the service tram.
“Here is the layout,” Len whispered, his right index finger tracing the route across the linen page. “Quarters Four is on the ground floor of the domestic block, the third door from the laundry arch. Between that door and the medicine room siding lies seventy yards of open flat stone slabs.”
