This level was intended as a great ark, reminding the crew of their responsibility to preserve life and diversity, and to actively engage in conservation.
The atmosphere inside the facility goes from the stale air like one would find trapped inside a mausoleum for hundreds to a damp mossy smell.
Beyond the doorway is a rain forest.
You absorb your surroundings. Right before your eyes stands a wall of foliage that was as high as his chest—vines and plants with huge, green leaves. There are also dozens of tall, thick tree trunks spaced out at random. It is the thickest undergrowth you've ever seen, so dense that you doubt it could have existed in nature. There is too much overlapping greenery, too much vegetation in need of direct sunlight, for all of it to thrive under normal conditions. Still, it is teeming with life as you can hear a number of calls, whistles, screams, and similar sounds can be heard.
You stop, staring around at the rampant overabundance of nature that has somehow flourished here, in the depths of a deserted lunar hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth.
Those areas not covered with foliage are spread with dead leaves and vegetable matter, bones, rubbish, husks, and so forth, and earth is slowly spilling onto heretofore bare metal decks. Small creatures - animals, birds, insects, reptiles - can be seen darting here and there.
The whole zoo area was designed to give the impression of naturalness and space. There are tiers rising along the boundary of the place, each being about 5 feet higher than the next. Likewise, a tier descends towards the central lake, and then the islet in the center of that body is tiered in ten foot heights. These walls are made to appear as natural stone and are generally obscured by vegetation. Artificial burrows carefully built into the outer layers of tiers. Keepers could easily take care of these burrows by means of the work spaces underneath the rising tiers.
The flagged walkways are shown by dotted lines. The circular dotted areas are resting places with stone benches. Vegetation is so thick as to make it impossible to tell what direction a pathway goes. The "S" marks on the circular areas of flagstone are concealed entrances to the 'tween decks area below.
Serviceway lanes under the tiers have their access in the 10’ wide passage between the garden area and the periphery areas. Small, latched metal doors give into the den portions of the burrows.
Streamlets and Pools. The solid lines are small streams of running water. They vary in depth from 1 to 2 feet or so and are about as wide as they are deep. The shaded circles are pools, about 12 feet across shelved from 2 foot depth at the edge to about 10 foot (despite some silting) in the center. Life abounds in and near them - insects, colorful fish, amphibians, and so forth.
The swamp is an area of the garden where underground piping leaks badly. Combined with the rise of
the central lake, a boggy area has occurred with water from 1’ to 3’ or so deep between hummocks of vegetation.
Lake: This body of water was formerly a large, natural aquarium for the enjoyment of upper echelon personnel. Various water creatures of a harmless sort, or marine life confined to water and not overly dangerous, could be viewed from above and below in the under-islet viewing chamber (see islet, below). It still has numbers of fish breaking its surface now and then, as well as reptilian and amphibian sorts of creatures along its verge.
After spending some time marveling at the beauty of the lake and taking a few minutes to explore his immediate surroundings, you move onward.
There are several other self-contained habitats in the vicinity, facing onto a circular plaza decorated with an abstract mosaic. All of the other habitats look empty, forever waiting for new environments that will never come.
Islet: This centerpiece originally was the setting for the loveliest of exotic flora and its attendant fauna. There is no path on the small land space, but the way leads directly to a pair of doors which open at a touch of the key plate.
3. Underislet Marine Observatory.
A stairway spirals down to 50', 70’ and 100’ depth observation floors. If the base’s lights are on, the viewers will see various forms of large and small fish.