But Irkalla was also radically unlike any city she’d visited before, except perhaps what little she remembered from her trip to the Pioneering station. It was far more a space station than a city built on the ground—every surface was either metal or the semitransparent changeling slime. She hadn’t seen the city from a distance, since she had been brought directly into the city by wild changelings. But even so, she imagined it as the wreckage of an ancient starship, with many interconnected sections. There was rarely enough sky for a skyline, but where there were windows or openings into other areas, she could see tube-like walkways connecting one deck to the next.