~ Could have. And you’d have spent the next year or so biting my ear about not doing my duty to the Culture when I was asked.

~ Your only motive, I’m sure, Scopell-Afranqui said sniffily as the monorail car slowed. The module went off-line with an ostentatious click.

Prick, Genar-Hofoen thought, unheard.

The monorail car passed through another couple of habitat section walls, exiting into a crowded-looking industrial section where the keel skeletons of newly begun Affronter ships rose out of the haze like oddly inappropriate collections of spines and ribs, ornate elaborations within the greater framework of buttresses and columns supporting the habitat itself. The monorail car continued to slow until it drew to a stop within a web-tube attached to one of the structural members. The car started to drop, almost in free-fall.

The car vibrated. In fact, it was rattling. Genar-Hofoen had grown up on a Culture Orbital where only sporting vehicles and things you built yourself for a laugh ever vibrated; normal transport systems rarely ever even made a noise unless it was to ask which floor you wanted or whether you’d like the on-board scent changed.

The monorail car flashed through a floor and into another gigantic hangar space where the towering shapes of half-finished craft rose like barbed pinnacles out of the mist-shrouded framework of slender girders below. The bladed hulls of the ships blurred past to one side.

~ Wee-hee! said the gelfield suit, which thought Affronter free-fall was just a total hoot.

~ Glad you’re amused, Genar-Hofoen thought.

~ I hope you realise that if this thing crashes now, even I won’t be able to stop you breaking most of your major bones, the suit informed him.

~ If you can’t say something helpful, shut the fuck up, he told it.

Another floor rushed up to meet the car; it plummeted through to a vast, misty hall where almost-finished Affronter ships rose like jagged sky-scrapers. The car came juddering and screeching to a halt near the floor of the huge space - the suit clamped around him in support, but Genar-Hofoen could feel his insides doing uncomfortable things under the effects of the additional apparent gravity - then the car cycled through a pair of airlocks and rumbled down a dark tunnel.