Dominion by Scott McElhaney Page B

breath out of us, so we pulled the other one in here.  We didn’t want to get trapped in here with no way to return.”
    A wooden plank appeared, angling into the chasm as it grew in length.  Hawke and Night Rain took hold of the other end and rested it on the metal edge.
    “Did you send anyone to the surface to find more wood or something else to create a better way to cross over?” Night Rain asked.
    “Yes, they will be bringing back some wood to fashion a wider and more permanent bridge,” he replied, “Come on over.”
    Hawke stared down at the plank, very much aware of why they were using two boards initially.  This particular board was no more than two feet wide, which wouldn’t be a problem in ordinary circumstances.  But when being used as an unsecure bridge above an eternal fall, two feet was much too small.
    “I’m not so sure about that,” Hawke muttered.
    “Yeah, I get what you mean,” Night Rain said.
    “Look, I’ll hold onto this side and you can just crawl across one at a time,” Sky Listener said, “There are six of us over here and no one died yet.”
    Hawke groaned, but his curiosity got the best of him.  He turned to Kashuba and asked if she would feel better going first or second.  She agreed to go second.  He breathed out the last of his anxiety, then knelt to the edge of the bridge and grasped firmly to both sides.  He crawled forward, distressed suddenly at how much it bowed beneath him.  He was already beyond the point of no return, so he continued quickly to the other side where another man took a firm hold of his wrist and guided him into the large room.
    He let out a gasp of relief, then thanked the unidentified man for his help.  He returned to the doorway where Sky Listener continued holding the board.
    “Come on, it was easier than I thought,” he offered as encouragement.
    Kashuba knelt onto the board and crawled forward at a much slower pace than Hawke had.  When she was close enough, Hawke took both her hands and slid her the rest of the way into the room.  She hugged him tightly before he reminded her that they had another person in their party. 
    Night Rain crawled across the board rather quickly and joined them in the gymnasium.  The others in Sky Listener’s party had been placing bane lamps throughout the room, dragging a crate of the lamps with them across the floor as they went. 
    Hawke recognized the room as a gymnasium just as Sky Listener had already stated.  They had entered the gym near the left side of the court near the basketball hoop.  A small set of bleachers separated them from the other side of the court.  A layer of dust carpeted the gym, disturbed only by their footprints and the marks of the sliding crate.
    “Well, the air is breathable and I don’t feel sick,” Night Rain stated.
    “Definitely a good sign, although it does smell a little musty and stale in here,” Hawke stated.
    He located three doors from where he was currently standing.  There were two along the wall opposite them and there was one directly to his left.  All the doors were reminiscent of the sturdy rectangular hatches found on Navy vessels from Earth.  Each door had a large manual lever on the left side that he hoped would open the doors.  If the doors could be manually opened, they would have no problems navigating throughout the ship without power.
    “Should we take a look around?” Hawke asked, “I’d love to see what the future version of my engine looks like.”
    “That’s what we’re here for,” Sky Listener stated, approaching him with a folded sheet of paper.
    Sky Listener unfolded the page and showed him a drawing of the ship as seen from above.  A simple bar symbolized the ring, which intersected an elongated ellipse just a little right of center.  Three protruding rectangles jutted from the presumed rear of the elliptical ship.  If it had secondary thrust engines, those rectangles would most likely represent the exhaust funnels.  The