Leaving the shop behind, you travel onward down the street. Up ahead, a large tower has collapsed into the street forcing you to take a side alley as a detour. You emerge into a small courtyard between the buildings and something catches your eye. Two squat tubes poke up from the ground next to a small single storey building. The tubes look like chimneys or some kind of vent which would make the shack some sort of service entrance. Doral checks the door over and finds nothing unusual. The key is of average make and doesn't take more than a moment to pick open. You take note of the sun and realize it is slipping away over the horizon. Soon you will have to decide whether to remain aboard the ship overnight or return to the comfort of the Rumbleball.
The door squeals on rusted hinges as Kraken pulls it open and peers inside. It is dark inside but for the light from the door. Inside you can see a work bench with tools scattered around. You see spanners, wrenches, pipe fittings, and numerous other tools that are not immediately recognizable. At the back of the room is a steel hatch with handles attached to the frame on either side. Seeing the hatch as promising, Kraken moves over and tries to lift it. He grunts and strains but fails to shift it. Whisper points to the special bolts securing it in place. A quick survey of the wreckage turns up a tool that fits it. With a few moments of work Kraken and Doral are able to remove the bolts and lift the heavy cover out of the way. Warm, slightly moist air wafts upwards from a tunnel that disappears into the bowels of the city-ship. Rungs have been welded to the inside of the tube. It looks like a tight fit, designed for utility and not comfort, but you think you will be able to fit down it.
One by one you squeeze down the tube. The rungs are slippery from the moisture but the tube is too small for you to fall far without being able to catch yourself. It is a long descent in the dark but finally you sense that the room below you has opened up into a larger area. Your questing feet meet the floor and you stand once more on sloping ground. A light is lit and raised to illuminate the chamber you are in. It looks to be a massive junction of piping. The protrude at all angles from the floor, meet, split, join, and exit again. Several of them sport great wheels to close or redirect whatever flowed through them. There are inscrutable gauges and meters attached to the pipes as well. Most of the needles on the gauges show no reading but a handful show a status. Some are in the yellow, red, or black ranges, but what that might mean is lost to you. A few pipes are cracked open from the crash and from one a bit of warm moist air emanates. Whisper is examining one of the damaged pipes when she lets out a gasp of surprise. You look over and see that she is pointing at a small ruptured pipe from which emerges a fleshy appendage about the size of a finger. It looks something like a fat worm, or maggot, and it probes the air for an inch or two through the opening in the pipe. It doesn't appear immediately threatening, merely bizarre.
