Survey hull, converted — expeditionary response
An existing survey hull taken up and rapidly converted in forty-six days, because a fixed station had just proved it could not reach the pockets. She is not a purpose-built ship and the books never let you forget it: a card taped to a door where a plate should be, a bay whose lighting went in the same package as everything else that did not arrive, a run of cable behind a connector that nobody cut a gap wide enough for. Everything about her arrangement is organised by one welded-in bulkhead her crew simply call the frame. ⭐ She comes back. In The Chosen Dark she is the hull that carries Sarah Bishop's replacement crystals and instruments from the Cairn wall to Hart on a leg she was making anyway — the same people, five years older, minus two berths, with the after-radiator spares Halloway will not cut for anybody and a raw-state emergence record from a rescue that turns out to be the anchor for everything Sarah proves three years later.
The one deck the books walk: office and working floor forward, the galley to port, the frame, the run aft, the after bay. "Nobody below the galley on this deck but the engineer" (The Last Cache, chapter 21). Fore-and-aft is what the crew mean by above and below.
Two boards, one chair, a table added later (The Last Cache, chapter 13), a shelf for the hull's book. The forward ranging board is here. The The Way Out Closes 'office' is the forward-starboard room of theInside the Window through The Last Cache working floor.
Off the floor, forward. Door on a hook.
The one compartment whose position is stated on both axes; the sheet is built outward from it. Vent seat, bench with a warm end, counter cut away, the quarter's sheets on the bulkhead, the library slot. Its fan is audible from the passage and comes up through the deck into the office (The Way Out Closes, chapter 8).
One locker to a hand, a shelf inside, a door.
Runs to the frame. The frame hatch: dogged, with a coaming, a circuit panel beside it, the ship's set and the shore-link handset (C1–C3). A step at the frame.
Aft of the frame. A crooked shelf on four loose screws, Wells's crate, a bunk. The reader lived on the shelf two years, then in a case. Whatever the cell holds later is never named on this sheet.
Door to door down the passage (Inside the Window, chapter 26). Sena's cabin has a door by 2342; the second cabin is the passenger berth in 2348. Which door was the Master's is never stated.
The other two-thirds of the original bay. An outboard hatch, fourteen lamp brackets in its beams, room for forty. Its lighting 'went in the same package as everything else that did not arrive'.
Gratings from the frame to the bay door. Cold. The taped three-coloured cable runs the port deckhead from the open port, through the frame, down three steps into the run. Panels over the forty-core after run (F4). The water card hangs on a nail on the passage bulkhead, six years thick by The Last Cache (D6).
One volume with the boat bay below. Inboard bay door with a coaming and a cloth at frame 84; the flap head, gallery and rail; the ladderway down. Warm at the head, cold at the deck; a bay heater. No fitted lighting — 'The after bay had never had lighting' (The Way Out Closes, chapter 21); the string is the lighting.
Reached by the after ladder / ladderway. The boat's ground, the keeps, the mount's bed, the stack space, the hold under the passage.
The lander comes down through the outer bay doors at the stern onto a cradle with marks (2334), hooks and chocks (2342). Bed one and bed two; the near and far cradles; eleven feet of walkway; three keeps in the floor with lids and a bar. The mount stands empty in its keeps at the bay's after end (The Last Cache, chapter 7).
An alcove off the after part of the bay: a door with light under it, frost on its deck, a frame opening, eight pockets, the seat on rails. The note in the plating for eight years.
Under the run. A second hold aft of it; one frame with a run behind it. Never described with fittings — none are drawn.
Behind the survey bay. Rated for ten until Halloway cross-connects the port side by hand over four days from Day 90 of 2334; then eight hundred a day, forty people at twenty each. Tanks are two thousand.
Two, aft.
Plant, tankage, and the fault the engineer can name exactly.
Nobody cut a gap wide enough. The fault cannot be traced at a wall because the run is under the frame, not through it.
Thermal boundary at the frame: cold from the frame aft.
Water forward of the frame under the galley and the office; the number is published, the placement is the drawing's.
Forward pair at the bow are drawn as a hull feature, not a compartment.
Key
Grade of every figure on these sheets
Each figure carries its grade: published (the books state it), derived (arithmetic on what they state) or fixed (the sheet's own decision, bounded by what the books rule out).
Length overall
60 m
fixedspec ruling 2026-08-31
⚠ NOT CANON. No length, beam, mass or tonnage is stated anywhere in 122 chapters. 120 frames at 500 mm is the drawing's, chosen to sit under the NV Dawnward's 72 m — a purpose-built survey ship should be the larger hull — while carrying a boat bay, a hold, an after bay and ten people.
Beam
10.4 m
fixedspec ruling 2026-08-31
Two boards, forward and after, and one reader that counts
The Way Out Closes through The Last Cache passim
One boat, one cradle, marks on the deck
The Way Out Closes through The Last Cache passim
Forty-six days, and never finished
The Way Out Closes through The Last Cache
The Surveyors, chapter 4
The Far Roads (two sets, a relay, a ship's channel into every space)
The Last Cache (a forty-core run behind panels along the after passage)
The Far Roads ('jets and the bank')
The Far Roads (three decoys, no weapon ever); The Chosen Dark register (point systems)
The books state distances aboard this ship. The drawing has to produce the same ones or it is wrong — so it is made to, and the working is shown. These run again on every build; a compartment moved by a metre fails them.
“The galley is forward of the frame, on the port side” The Way Out Closes, chapter 2
2-03 spans [30,46] band port; the frame is at 62. 46 < 62. The only fully-stated position in the ship; the sheet is built outward from it.
“One working deck and a level below it — not five decks” The Last Cache, chapter 21 ('Nobody below the galley on this deck but the engineer'); The Last Cache, chapter 7; The Way Out Closes, chapter 24; The Road Called Good, chapter 24; Inside the Window, chapter 1; The Last Cache, chapter 26
Office, galley, frame, run and after bay all sit on D2. Every 'down' in the books is the after ladder / ladderway into the bay, so the bay floor, keeps, stack space and hold are D1. Nothing above the working deck is ever named, so nothing is drawn there. Corrected 2026-09-21 from a five-deck drawing that the prose did not support.
“The boat bay and the after bay are one volume” The Way Out Closes, chapter 6, ch23:219, ch25:25; Inside the Window, chapter 1
2-10 (gallery level) and 1-01 (floor) share frames [84,116]. The boat comes through the outer doors at the stern and down onto the floor; the gallery with its rail is above the flap.
“The after bay is at least twelve metres long” The Way Out Closes, chapter 4 ('Tavish, twelve metres away with his back to both of them')
[84,116] at 500 mm = 16 m. Holds.
“The after passage is a metre and a half wide” The Last Cache, chapter 5
2-09 band [-0.15, 0.15] on a 10.4 m beam = 1.56 m.
“The cell is aft of the frame” The Way Out Closes
2-06 spans [62,72]; the frame is at 62.
“The locker run is reached at the frame” The Way Out Closes
2-04 ends at 56 and the cross-passage 2-05 runs 56–62 to the frame.
“The run behind the connector passes under the new frame” The Way Out Closes
0-01 spans [58,68], bracketing the frame at 62.
“The after board is at the after end of the bay” The Way Out Closes; The Last Cache, chapter 7
2-11 spans [108,116] inside the bay's [84,116]; the mount's keeps are at the bay's after end on the floor below it.
“Nothing on this sheet is borrowed from another hull or place” §2–3 (2026-09-21)
Removed: a hold and a brake position that were Threap's; a lock that was a ground's lock on a rock; a mess that was MV Tallow's; a bridge deck and a route table with no line behind them.
“No frame number is ever quoted FOR THE The Far Roads in 122 chapters” The Way Out Closes through The Last Cache
The one numbered-frame line in The Far Roads (The Last Cache, chapter 25 'frame nine to frame twelve') is Ewart's hull. hull.frames stays fixed; every position is relative to THE frame.
