her cat, who turned from a passage heading to the interior of the ship to one running the length of the ship, and too dim.
As they walked, Levona kept her hand against the inner wall, fingertips picking up dust and grime, but her mind drawing maps as they went, correlating with what she’d seen outside — a symmetrical vehicle top to bottom and side to side for four-fifths of the ship. The last fifth of the ship, the nose, angled to about three stories. From the feeling of that particular space, Levona thought the pilots and other crew who controlled the ship had their own living space there.
She frowned. The most important ... most intense and heaviest feeling came from mid-ship, several stories above the wide entrance doors. A phrase about ships floated to her mind, Captain’s Quarters. Yes, several tiny rooms with thinner inner walls between them.
The nose had one large room … for the pilot? But others with bunks. The ship contained fewer long dormitory rooms than Levona would have thought, more little rooms on each side of the main hallway. Because people liked privacy? She thought so.
Interesting, though.
Here! Pizi said, and held a paw to a circular door hole with a cracked-open portal. Levona put her hand on the part that swung in, no hinges on the outside, only on the inside. By the time she stepped to the far side of the door, Pizi had disappeared. Long, long up, but fun! And, I think, lots of nice smells along the way!
A tube climbed at about a forty-five-degree angle, with staggered openings on each level, and rough hand-holds-foot-holds along the way. Pizi hopped up, and with narrowed eyes, Levona thought she saw the cat use psi power for a boost. Feeling stronger and safer, Levona created and sent a glow light before her little friend. Levona tilted her head and studied her cat … and the flow of the atmosphere around them. Yeah, Pizi pulled extra psi energy from the atmosphere and used it. Amazing.
They climbed a long time, up sixteen levels, and each time they passed a portal, Levona pressed her hand against it and sent a whisper of her own psi down the space. She confirmed what she thought, the configuration of the halls, little rooms and gathering rooms matched exactly from one level to the next … except for four floors on the opposite side of the ship. A huge space full of … dirt … and the beginnings of growing things?
Another idea she’d never considered with regard to the ship. Of course they’d need to have … crops? Maybe a park, even?
The idea occupied her mind until Pizi stopped and slunk through the opening of another metal portal. Levona widened it and did the same, followed the dust trail of her cat for a handful of meters, smothering sneezes on her arm from the rising dust, and another scent of … other lands, she supposed.
Finally they stopped at a bulb of no walls and more girders.
Our nest. We can stay here, and near the other peoples, too!
That rang an alarm in Levona’s brain, but also intrigued. Straining, she tried to sense people moving through the vehicle, and she could! No doubt her psi-gift got a boost from being in a high-psi environment, like Pizi’s had.
Pizi helped Levona make their “nest,” pushing rags into heaps while Leona muttered spells with her fading energy to clean the space as best she could.
Then she pulled out all of her clothes and the thin special-tech camping blanket that would keep them warm, if not cushion them. But as she lay down, she realized the temperature of the ship had been steady and comfortable. Her mind finally slowed enough to allow more sensory stimulation – for her to miss the freshening breeze of the mountains, the thin high-altitude air, fresher than city air, the rustlings of other life around her. No bugs or beasts below or above her, here.
It felt … odd … sleeping in a metal construct, like a city building far above the ground, especially since she’d been living outside the city for two years, moving from campsite to hut to old park cabins that one wealthy guy or another had been given by the gov. Usually the rich spent little time on one of their many estates, so the outbuildings or former visitor centers provided good shelter for Levona.
Shutting her eyes, she began to breathe deeply, a childhood trick to lure sleep, despite the strangeness