The Nostalgia for Infinity was ~4km in length. She rode the spinal trunk, the four-kilometre-long shaft which threaded the entire length of the ship. She had b

The Nostalgia for Infinity was ~4km in length. She rode the spinal trunk, the four-kilometre-long shaft which threaded the entire length of the ship. She had boarded somewhere near the nominal top of the shaft (there were only 1050 levels that she knew of) and was now descending at ten decks a second. The elevator was a glass-walled, field-suspended box, and occasionally the lining of the trackless shaft turned transparent, allowing her to judge her location without reference to the elevator's internal map. She was descending through forests now: tiered gardens of planetary vegetation grown wild with neglect, and dying, for the UV lamps which had once supplied the forest with sunlight were mostly broken now, and no one could be bothered repairing them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe