The Foundry — crystal and precision fabrication hall

The supervisory level. Reached by a stair from the main floor; the gallery window looks down the hall.

1. FD-GAL Office gallery and shift board Fr 52–72 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'the shift board was in the office gallery, chalk on a painted panel'

   ⭐ THE RECORD. The Friday evening shift, by surname and initial against a line number: chalk on a painted panel, run down at the bottom where damp got to it. Nineteen names. Sarah copies all nineteen onto the back of a light sheet in pencil under the gallery window, wiping her lamp glass every fifteen seconds, because it is chalk and it is the only record there is.

The hall. A cold hall with a warm floor two days into the dark, and a temperature gradient a person can feel by standing up straight.

1. FD-APRON Roller shutter, personnel door and canopy — the apron end Fr 1–8 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: the personnel door with a set drift to the handle; the shutter as the way in; the canopy over the loading apron

   The personnel door on the apron side has a drift against it up to the handle and the drift has set. The roller shutter is the way in — bottom edge free, track iced at the top. ⚠ Above the shutter is a canopy over the loading apron, and above the canopy a roof vent. On 20 March the ice off the canopy edge comes down in one piece and then in several and kills Teague. Outside is four hundred metres of open concrete with the wind straight down it, a gatehouse, a fence and a gate.

2. FD-BANK Annealing bank — eight furnaces, north wall Fr 8–48 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'a bank of eight annealing furnaces along the north wall with a metre of refractory in the walls of each of them'

   ⭐⭐ THE THING THE STATION SAW. Eight annealing furnaces along the north wall, a metre of refractory in every wall, holding at temperature on Friday afternoon and giving it back into a dark building ever since. Fifty hours on, Sorensen puts a hand near the second one and takes it away. From high orbit it reads as a block-sized thermal anomaly that has not moved and has not cooled in two passes – NOTHING THERE, on the board, in the evidence column, with the caveat the same size as the claim. The vents in the roof above it wear beards of ice a metre long, and the whole windward face of the building is white from the gutter down.

3. FD-FLOOR Main floor — chambers, cranes, benches Fr 8–50 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'the main floor'; Crystal Foundry (The Chosen Dark technology): layered vacuum chambers, precision masks, metrology

   The working floor: the layered vacuum chambers where hard-state crystal is grown a tested layer at a time, the cranes (a woman off the cranes is one of the five who go below), the benches. On 20 March: a mug with something frozen in the bottom that has split the glaze; a hand trolley left across an aisle in a way nobody would leave a hand trolley. They call from the middle of the floor and from the east end.

4. FD-CRIB1 First crib room Fr 50–55 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'the two crib rooms'

   Walked and called on 20 March.

5. FD-CRIB2 Second crib room — and the door in its back wall Fr 55–60 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'five metres by four with a table and six chairs and a cupboard and a sink'

   ⭐⭐ Five metres by four. A table, six chairs, a cupboard, a sink. And in the back wall a steel door painted the same colour as the wall, with a number stencilled on it at eye height and no word under the number. Walked and called on 20 March. Nobody opened the door, because nobody in the party knew what it was; every foreman in the building had spent thirty years telling people not to go through it.

6. FD-LOCK Locker corridor Fr 60–70 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'coats on the hooks in the locker corridor'

   Coats on the hooks. Walked and called.

7. FD-STAIR-G Stair to the gallery Fr 50–54 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'the top of the stair to the office gallery'

   Choi comes up it twice while Sarah is copying the board.

8. FD-ANNEX The eight annexes Fr 70–92 published Terminal Black – Nothing There / Last Ground: 'we haven't been through the annexes'; One Road Out – The Wall: 'eight annexes nobody's walked'

   ⚠ NEVER WALKED. Eight annexes off the east end of the hall. On 20 March the party had four people, one of them under the canopy ice, fifty minutes of light and the time Ortiz gave them. Still unwalked at the end of the trilogy. What is in them is not on this sheet because it is not in the books.

9. FD-FREIGHT Freight side Fr 92–100 published Terminal Black – Nothing There: 'we haven't been through the freight side'

   ⚠ Never walked. The compressed-air house and the chemical store that One Road Out sends a lifter for are somewhere on this side; the prose does not place them more exactly than that.

⭐ THE ROOM. Under the annealing bank's hearths. A metre of hearth refractory, then a metre of concrete, then a room. 'There's nothing else on this settlement built like that except the pit.'

1. FD-STAIR-D The stair down — twenty-two steps and a turn Fr 48–52 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'the stair went down twenty-two steps and turned'; 'off the east end of the main floor, behind the second crib room'

   Off the east end of the main floor, behind the second crib room, through the numbered door. Twenty-two steps, then a turn. ⚠ Twenty-two steps and a fire door and a metre of concrete: Meera Bhatt came up it at six-thirty on the Friday, at ten, and on the Saturday morning, and stood on the main floor and called, and got nothing. The party of 20 March stood on the same floor and called, and she did not hear them either.

2. FD-HOIST Goods hoist (dead) Fr 52–55 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'a goods hoist beside it that hasn't worked in years'

   Beside the stair. Has not worked in years.

3. FD-PATT Pattern store Fr 8–48 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'a concrete room forty metres long with pattern crates stacked down both walls'; 'ran the length of the annealing bank and about half its width'

   ⭐⭐ Forty metres of concrete room with pattern crates stacked down both walls, under the eight furnace hearths. The warmest place in the building for forty years — where a Foundry shift goes to sit on a pattern crate and drink somebody's tea when the apron's bad. Five bed places made up out of pattern-shop felt along the wall under the ceiling void. A hand lamp on the floor in the middle, turned down as far as a hand lamp goes. Meera Bhatt kept this store for nineteen years and kept the days on a crate with a nail.

4. FD-VOID Ceiling void — jacket-water header tank Fr 8–48 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'there's a header tank in that void. It's the jacket water off the bank'

   ⭐ THE ONLY REASON THERE IS ANYBODY DOWN HERE AT ALL. The jacket-water header tank off the annealing bank, in the void above the store. About four litres a day between them off the drain cock: industrial water out of an industrial tank, which made both survivors extremely unwell twice.

5. FD-FAR The far end — behind the fire door Fr 1–8 published Terminal Black – Last Ground: 'they're in the far end. Past the crates. We put them there and we shut the fire door on it'

   Past the crates. Three people are here: a man of sixty-one from the annealing floor, a woman off the cranes, a boy of nineteen three weeks in the job. The fire door was shut on the eighth day and neither survivor went down that end again. Nobody went back for them on 30 March and nobody proposed it.