Orlandine eased the Heliotrope in past a vertical cable a hundred yards thick. Locating herself on a three-D map in her mind and by recourse to microwave beacons throughout the structure, she altered her course past a row of giant joists to which clung arboreal leviathans—generators, reactors, gravmotors. Through exterior sensors she noted the cloud her vessel was creating: the adjustments made by its thrusters causing ices to sublime, blowing up crystal sulphur and the numerous odd compounds that condensed here inside. The cloud would probably go unnoticed, but she slowed considerably and took more care with her course. An hour later, forty miles in, she sighted her destination.

The cylindrical pillar was a mile wide, and vertical rather than slanted like the joists. The inner structure of it, she knew to be almost ligneous. Each hexagonal-in-section cell stood about sixty feet from floor to ceiling, and thus the pillar contained thousands of them. It was for storage space, maybe living areas—that being something to be decided in the distant future—a general-purpose structure placed here prospectively, it being more convenient to do so while the entire segment was under construction. Orlandine brought the Heliotrope down to the base of the pillar, folded out the tips of each half of the ship’s claw, and switched their inner faces to gecko function. She eased the ship forward until the claw’s gecko surfaces bonded to the pillar face, then eased out the head of a plasma cutter from the rear of the claw. Reaching out with the cutter to the full extent of its triple-jointed arm, she began slicing a circle as far as feasible beyond where the claw tips bonded.