Due to the disappearance of the artificial atmosphere, this place was a vacuum. Hao Ren could not hear the thunderous operation of the enormous machines beneath his feet, but he saw the indicator lights on the equipment before him lighting up one by one. The frost covering the ceiling and pipes also shook loose as if vaporized, so he knew the facility had successfully started up. He pressed his hand against the frozen wall and felt a vibration growing from faint to strong deep within the building. Then the vibration began to weaken again—some enormous machine was running and gradually settling into a stable state.
"These things really can still be used." Lily stuck out her tongue in surprise. "I thought everything inside would have been frozen solid."
Hao Ren said nothing. He simply studied the various indicator marks on the nearby equipment and the prompts popping up on the small displays. He knew nothing about this unfamiliar system, nor how much damage it had accumulated during more than a thousand years of shutdown, so he was worried that some emergency might occur during startup. Fortunately, figuring out the prompts on the equipment did not seem difficult. Presumably, since the designers had considered that this would be a long voyage and that operators generations later might not retain complete knowledge of launching the ship, they had tried to make the vessel's control system simple and easy to understand. Most of the machines operated automatically, while the parts requiring human operation all came with clear, concise instructions.
As the vibration from deep underground grew steadier, the main power furnace and generators seemed to have begun operating normally. The various devices in the control room lit up one after another, their busy, flashing indicators displaying the progress of each system's restart and