The lead line-weight came up from the deep shaft coated in the blue dust of a put out universe.
They had crossed the sound gulf and advanced another league into Entry hall 846, known in the royal records as the Sector of the Nebula Drift. Here, the floor of the Glacial Nave dipped into a wide, saucer-like depression two miles across, where thirty deep-water lengths of starlight ice were covered by an undisturbed blanket of fine, powdery settled mud four arm-lengths thick.
The dust did not blow in the dead air. It lay in soft, velvety drifts of deep, rainbow-bright indigo, sparkling with tiny flecks of silver and emerald that caught the glow of Yan Zhiqiu’s lantern like diamonds scattered across black velvet.
When Qiao Ming halted at the margin of the depression, his bare, salved feet sank three inches into the soft silt.
The sensation was extraordinary: the powder was dry as flour, devoid of grit or moisture, and possessed an astonishing specific gravity. It felt heavy as powdered liquid silver against his arches, yet it parted beneath his tread with the whisper of dry feathers.
“Arm the lead,” Qiao Ming murmured, kneeling at the edge of the drift.
