Revelation Space (The Inhibitor Trilogy Book 1)

by Alastair Reynolds

Before very long they reached the hub, cleared customs and boarded the shuttle, a non-atmospheric craft consisting of a sphere with four thruster pods splayed out at right angles. The ship was called the Melancholia of Departure, the kind of ironic name Ultras favoured for their craft. The interior had the ribbed look of a whale’s gut. Volyova told her to go forward through a series of bulkheads and gullet-like crawlspaces until they reached the thing’s bridge. There were a few bucket seats, together with a console displaying reams of avionics gibberish, latticed by delicate entoptics. Volyova thumbed one of the visual readouts, causing a small, traylike device to chug out of a black recess in the side of the console. The tray was gridded with an oldstyle keyboard. Volyova’s fingers danced on the keys, causing a subtle change to sweep through the avionics data. Khouri realised with a tingling feeling that the woman had no implants; that her fingers were actually one of the ways by which she communicated.