Channel Twelve was the northernmost pressure relief duct connecting the lower vaults to the outside hull of the Ark.
Located forty deep-water lengths above the main water gate-gates, the channel was a narrow, circular tunnel six feet in width, lined with thick rings of glassy heavy clay tiles that resisted the scouring action of outer cosmic sand. At the outer terminus. There, the channel met the infinite black void of the drowned heavens, stood Observation Station North-Three: a tiny stone blister jutting out from the Ark’s huge dark rock hull, fitted with an ancient brass periscope three arm-lengths long.
Here, high above the underground roar of the water-courses, the air was bitterly cold and fully still.
Qiao Ming stood inside the cramped stone blister, his bare calloused feet resting on the frosted granite flags. His oilskin coat was buttoned tight against the icy draft leaking through the periscope packing gland. He wiped the brass eyepiece with a scrap of dry flannel, leaned forward, and peered into the glass lens.
Through the thick quartz prisms of the periscope, the cosmic deeps unfolded before him in chilling, silent majesty.
The sight array was an exquisite relic of the First Epoch. Three nested rings of ground rock-crystal lenses, mounted in brass gymbals and counterbalanced by lead pendulums, removed the colorful aberration caused by the huge thickness of the outer void-salt water. By turning the knurled brass height screw, Qiao Ming could shift the focal plane from the barnacled outside skin of the Ark…
