Complex 13

THE STAIRCASE AND THE HANGAR

The staircase was open-sided, open to the air.

It was actually a tall-and-spindly spiralling structure that hung from the ceiling of an immense underground room. But this

spiralling staircase never reached the floor of the hangar—it ended abruptly thirty feet above the floor of the room, at a long straight catwalk that was itself suspended off the floor.

For in the centre of this hangar, on its base, directly underneath the long catwalk, stood the centrepiece of Complex 13.

A spaceship.