"Damnit," Catherine says despairingly "The DUNBAT was our best shot. I was really banking on it to work."

"Sorry. Do you need me to--go find a non-broken airlock and try to persuade whoever that was? Or is there another way to get down?"

"I doubt they'll have hung around, whoever they are," Catherine says. "There is the climber at Omicron. It's like an elevator that reaches all the way down into the abyss. The biggest problem is we'll need to get you into a power suit--that lightweight suit you're in won't survive down to those pressures. The DUNBAT cabin is pressurized, and it docks to a berth at Tau, so it wouldn't have been a problem if we could use that."

"Okay, do you know where the power suits are stored? Also, I'm, stupid question, can I put one on over the one I'm wearing or do I need to figure out how to--get out of--this one?" Wow, she really hopes that mental image she just got is not an accurate depiction of what she's going to have to do.

"They keep the power suits at Omicron," Catherine says. "I'm not sure if you'll be able to just put one on, but we can probably figure out a way to get you into one."

"Alright." She will just have to fight the mental image of pouring herself into a diving suit like it's a bucket all the way to omicron then. What if instead of that her imagination were to contain something more useful, like her memory of the site map. "We can get to omicron okay in the sub we have if you pilot it again, right?"

"Yep, shouldn't be a problem," Catherine says. "I'll just have the navigation take us over there."

"See you at the sub, then," she says, unplugs Catherine, and starts heading back the way they came, trying to distract herself from the thought of taking the suit off by thinking about how that whole thing with Brandon was utterly useless butterflies, some of which might not be dead octopuses. Octopuses probably still exist and are probably having a great time not caring about any of Margaret's problems.

The giant maw of the Theta main gate airlock ushers her back in, with the little Curie escape vessel taking up most of the deck space in the lock right where where Margaret left it, the door standing open and a few dripping puddles below the door sill still present. A swipe of the omnitool starts the big lock cycling. The massive door slides closed slowly with a hunk of klaxons, and then the water rushes back in, flowing up over the grated floor, then the handrails, then Margaret's chest and helmet, and then with a rush she's back under water as it crests over the shuttle roof, and finally finishes filling the space. After a long pause of pressure equalization, the outer door opens, revealing the canyon out of Theta's entrance, past the graveyard of those who committed suicide for the thought they had to for eternity among the stars. The Omnitool dock on the shuttle's control panel blinks a "ready" light, waiting for somebody to hook an omnitool to it.

Goodbye Theta; you won't be missed. And hello Catherine.

"Ah? Oh, the escape vessel, great," Catherine says. "Let me just get it sealed up, and we'll get on the way to Omicron." The door swings down and closed, and then the sub starts moving with a jolt "All right, well, we're leaving Theta with a submarine, at least," Catherine says. "It's not the DUNBAT, but we'll get to the climber and the abyss yet. It'll just take us a few minutes to get from here to Omicron."

It definitely beats walking. Once they set down at Omicron, Margaret says, "Time to go looking for power suits, I guess."

"Yep, good luck," Catherine says with finality, and the Omnitool shuts down as the hatch swings open. Unlike the cleared pad at Theta, here the submersible is parked on a bare scrap of roughly cleared path outside a collection of squared-off buildings. Tentacables cover parts of the outside, notable against the nearly brutalist architecture of the bunkers. Just below a sign saying "Omicron" is a personnel hatch and what might be several windows, each covered with several retractable shutters with stenciled biohazard markings on them. A body in a suit like Margaret's own is crumpled with finality just below the "push to open" button panel of the hatch. Around the corner, there's catwalks leading out around the edge of the building and over the edge of the inky depths, and a small secondary structure nearby is connected via several cables conduits and pipes.

The body in front of the hatch does not fill her with confidence about her ability to get in that way, but she's still going to try it. She steps up to the hatch and attempts pushing to open.

The door doesn't respond to the button, with a red light above the push button flickering scoldingly in response to the press of the opener.

Looks like once again she needs to go find door permissions, or another door. The catwalks around the outside of this building don't look trustworthy, so she'll try in the little outbuilding near where the sub landed.