Chapter Five: Hatch
In another life, Ranglen wanted to be Hatch Banner.
The gray dish at the center of Annulus hung slightly below the ring-plane and was attached to it by six spokes. These spokes held transport tubes, and they followed the 15-degree slope of the ring’s surface from the inner rim to the outer edge of the dish. The shield, 20 kilometers wide, slanted inward at the same rate but then curved into a basin at the center. An open and complicated latticework filled that basin, holding a maze of storage facilities, workshops, hangars, warehouses, repair docks, gantries, cranes.
On top of these structures sat the black vanes of gravity-plates. Here the pseudo attraction, weaker than on the ring itself, reversed direction and made “downward” point up toward the center of Annulus.
