Eon needs visual presentation. Mere prose cannot keep the images in the reader's mind - at least not in mine. On the floor of the corridor, each well or gate is set in a dimple and has a cupola hovering above it without any visible means of support. The explorers easily see that one well is open although we are not told what they see in or through it: descending well walls, the dark of space or something else?
Nearby, there are a platform bearing spacesuits and a plaque with writing in an unknown language. Between the plaque and the well, a warning is heard in spoken English: spacesuits are necessary in the high gravity and corrosive atmosphere beyond this gate. When the warning has been heard, the words on the plaque change into an English text that repeats the warning. One of the explorers ventures to address the cupola, which replies. However, since the explorers are unable to present authorization for a gate excursion, the twenty meter wide opening in the well irises shut and the spacesuit platform sinks into the surface of the dimple surrounding the well.
I have reread this passage carefully in order to present a summarized account of the well, dimple, cupola, spacesuit platform, plaque and sequence of events but have not mentioned either the physical description of the explorers' flying vehicle or the fact that these events occur inside the endless cylindrical corridor which, along this stretch, has an airless, chaotic landscape of gouges, marks and exposed corridor material - believed to be not matter but solidified space.
Can anyone reading the narrative remember to visualize all this while reading? I would like to see it in sequential art or on screen.
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