Not to mention, it was hard to tell how old Lantern-Eyes was, in the dark and malnourished as she was—but she was old enough to have been in the service at the time when the Republic had abandoned Kystrom.

I told the lieutenant, “Not yet.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR:

Field and Forest

“We can’t sit around and wait,” Lieutenant Gupta said. “I know what quadrant of the ship the Philosopher Stone data must be in—the part of the ship with the most traps and monsters, the only part of the ship I haven’t searched thoroughly. We can head there while you translate.”

“But you’ve been there before?” I asked.

“Once,” she said briefly. “And we didn’t get far. You have to do exactly as I say while we go there. Most of my team died trying to get through those labs.”

That would be the team whose names you don’t remember anymore, right, lieutenant? “Understood,” I said.

“Take these,” she added, and passed me a few rations, a real water bottle. “And let’s get moving.”

She led me through the hallways, confusing labyrinths of blackened rooms. It was a good thing Lantern-Eyes knew where she was going, because I couldn’t have found my way back to the room we’d just left. Flashlight beams were bad at picking out distinguishable landmarks, and everything looked the same in the dark.

Our journey across the ship came to an unfortunate pause in front of another of Lieutenant Gupta’s little rat-holes.

“How have you survived this long?” Lantern-Eyes demanded, from inside a tunnel that would not have fit a mouse.

I knelt outside her little tunnel, staring at the fragile broken edges of an ancient starship wall. “If I get stuck, I’ll die in there.”

“It’s much bigger on the other side.”

“What’s on the other side?”

A calculating expression formed on her thin, hungry face. “Come through and find out,” Lantern-Eyes said, and turned herself around in the miniscule space, crawling off.

It was a bold assumption that I wouldn’t take my chance for escape now that she’d turned her back on me. I lingered in the hallway, contemplating an easy escape.

What could be behind the wall?

I climbed in after Lantern-Eyes.

She was waiting for me on the other side, crouched in weeds of green and sickly brown. When I emerged from the rat-hole she grabbed my forearm and dragged me to the ground with her.

I landed on soil, rich and clumping with moisture. A vast field opened up before me, and a brilliant sun shone down upon tall grasses and twisted fruit trees. I blinked my half- blinded eyes. “Wow,” I breathed.

“The ship was supposed to support a crew for decades, if not longer.” Lantern-Eyes was speaking quickly and quietly. “It had to produce its own renewable supply of food. The solar lighting is on its own closed system; the Dreamer repairs it aggressively. When the last of the ship’s power finally fails, that sun will be the last thing to go out.”