by Gene P. Abel
Scattered around the outer perimeter of the main disc were what looked like docking mechanisms with massive clamps to secure the crafts and extendable airlocks and gantries ready to reach out and lock on, some of which already had vessels similar to their own parked in place.
Then there were the lights. At the very top of the upper disc a large red ball was brightly shining. A beacon of some sort, no doubt, but that was the least of it. In typical Old Vegas style, this station was far from being the drab gray metal military port some would have been. Lights lit up in rows running completely around the main disc, flowing in colored patterns that made it seem like a large sparkling gem. In the open region between the main and upper discs, holographic projections hovered in place, rotating with the station. Letters the size of buildings spelled out the name SPACE VEGAS, accompanied by fireworks-like displays and all the glitz one could ask for.
Between the main and lower disc hovered a series of smaller holographic signs, each advertising one hotel or attraction or another to approaching visitors. Takeoffs on Old Vegas names rotated slowly around the hub—The Astral, The Stratosphere, The Galaxy—some along with the names of supposedly famous acts performing there, though all the names were lost on those now watching. The lower disc itself was lit up with blue and silver running lights flashing around in swift circles, then pausing before reversing direction or briefly changing to a fixed pattern.
Taken as a whole, Space Vegas was enough to render everyone silent as it loomed closer. Even Claire was stuck for words.
As their craft got closer, its course altered to run parallel to the main disc, carefully sliding in closer while matching the rotation of the station. Closer in they could see that this disc was even taller than it had seemed from afar, and anything but slender.
“That must be fifty stories high,” Ben finally managed to utter.
Beside him Claire could only absently nod while her jaw hung open
.
Space Vegas Exterior
Space Vegas Interior
“Well,” Captain Beck said with a swallow, “leave it to Vegas to do things right. Lou?”
“Okay, so color me impressed,” Agent Hessman admitted. “But that’s a lot of space to search.”
As their course came to match the circular rotation of the great station, Claire’s hat drifted gently down into her lap and that odd feeling in their stomachs started to ease up. Closer they got until it was a vast, glittering wall before them. Aiming for one of the airlocks, they carefully approached, slipping gently in, until they were running parallel with it. The large mechanical clamp reached out for the front of the vessel, coming down surprisingly gently. Then a dull thud was felt, the sound ringing through the hull, and they watched as the gantry started reaching out. It was basically a square metal tube with an airlock door at its end surrounded by a thick rubber seal and a series of small clamps. It reached toward their cabin door; then moments later an even softer impact was heard, then a sharp hiss from just beyond the heavy door. All sense of motion ceased, weight returned to their feet, and the captain’s voice once again came out over the cabin speakers.
“We have docked. You may get up and leave the cabin just as soon as Tiffany opens the airlock door. You will find that the rotation of the station approximates Earth’s gravity when around the outer perimeter. Don’t forget any of your belongings, and have a great time at Space Vegas.
Claire nearly bolted to her feet, pushing Ben ahead of her, in her eagerness to see what lay beyond. Captain Beck, though, looked more relieved than eager. “At least my stomach feels normal again,” he stated.
A turn of the lock, a press of the red button, and the door automatically slid aside, revealing not a cold, metallic gantry but a plush, velvet-lined, brightly lit walkway with red carpeting beckoning them to enter.
“Ooh, the red-carpet treatment.” Claire beamed. “I feel like royalty.”
“You look like royalty,” Ben couldn’t help but reply.
Adjusting her floppy white sunhat and smoothing her dress, Claire was the first to step out onto the walkway, her face lit up with a smile nearly as bright as the lights ahead of them. Agent Hessman came alongside Ben as they passed Tiffany on their way out, with Captain Beck at their rear.
Once they were midway down the hall, Agent Hessman discreetly checked the detector in his pocket and was rewarded by a short readout. “We’re within range of Samantha’s locator chip,” he whispered to the others. “She’s definitely somewhere on this station.”
“Tracking her should be pretty straightforward then,” Captain Beck remarked. “How exact a fix can you get on her?”
“Not very. There’s any number of electronic signals interfering around here and a lot to look through from the looks of it. Best we have is a proximity alarm.”
As they approached the end of the walkway, ahead of them it opened up into a whole world of lights, sparkle, and glitter.
“It still shouldn’t be too bad, though,” Captain Beck said.
Ben and Claire came to a sudden stop where the velvet hallway joined the expanse beyond.
“Uh, you ever been to Las Vegas, Robert?” Ben asked hesitantly. “Because I think we have a problem.”
Captain Beck and Agent Hessman stepped up to join Ben and Claire for their first view of Space Vegas. The cavernous expanse of the foyer reached two hundred feet across, several stories up, and as many down, and was festooned with walkways with glass guard walls, platforms sporting rest stops with seating and computer-terminal kiosks, glass elevators scattered about, and a multitude of people milling about. Across the open gap they could see the edges of one level upon another, some with various bars and cafés running the length of their walkways, others with brightly lit corridors heading deeper into the innards of the station. The open foyer didn’t stop until five or six levels down, where it ended at some sort of promenade, and five or six levels above their heads, at a ceiling through which stairwells and more glass-covered elevators led.
Silvery balls hung suspended in the air between levels, around some of which floated images of either some local performer or directions to whatever hangout paid for the advertising. Music played, whatever the hit of the day happened to be, interrupted by the occasional announcement of flight numbers leaving or arriving, calling for some lost person to report to a numbered concierge desk, or simply welcoming visitors to Space Vegas.
Across at some of the bars hovered more holographic displays, as well as others beckoning down one hall or another. In short, the whole place sparkled; it was the Las Vegas Strip rendered in 3D, and this was just one foyer in a vast three-dimensional city.
The wild clothing they had seen in London now seemed tame by comparison, though, in truth, most of the more revealing outfits looked to be worn by employees of the adjacent cafés, bars, and gambling establishments. Statuesque young women in short-skirted, transparent dresses lit up by their own shifting displays that danced around the hidden portions of their beauty; hairdos that flowed with a life of their own, their colors gradually shifting from blond to brunette and back again; patrons in long dresses woven of shifting patterns of light, and one whose dress was barely a few strategically placed strips of lights and no cloth at all—this was just a sampling of the women’s fashion on display. Men passed by with their own unique looks, from glowing ten-gallon hats and foot-long handlebar mustaches to faux-leather jackets decorated with rhinestones that gleamed from their own inner lights.
It was a degree of glamor that stunned all there and had Claire looking shyly away from some of the passersby.
“It’s like Vegas times ten,” Ben stated when he could speak again.
“And this is just one of the entries,” Captain Beck said slowly in agreement.
“Would you look at what some of those people are wearing?” Claire remarked. “Someone was worried about how I might look? I’m starting to feel like the
guy in the business suit.”
“I guess that explains the electrical interference,” Agent Hessman stated, “but we may have another problem.”
“You mean this isn’t enough?” Ben asked.
“Ten o’clock left and two levels down,” Agent Hessman directed.
All eyes followed his directions, across and down, to the sporty entrance to one of the glamorous hotels; something with an apparent Egyptian theme. Alongside greeters dressed like Cleopatra and Marc Antony, they saw a couple of men in uniform—blue-and-green uniforms with a symbol on their chests that looked like three concentric rings around a capital T.
“The time cops from London,” Captain Beck said. “They’re still trying to track us down.”
“Yup,” Agent Hessman stated, “and we have to evade them while looking for Samantha. This isn’t going to be easy.”
“It looks like Jeffery was right,” Claire put in. “There’s always a chase wherever we go. So, everyone ready?”
From the bright smile on her face, one might have thought she was looking forward to the encounter.
18
Station Run
Agent Hessman led the way onto the landing before them, picking a walkway off to their left.
“Just keep it casual,” he cautioned. “They might not have spotted us yet. No reason to call attention to ourselves.”
They started walking, though Claire’s way of not calling attention to herself was to eagerly point at one sight or another and pull Ben along with her—basically, acting just like any other tourist. The walkway led them around the outer edge; to their right, a long window with a view of space that she could not help but pause to gape before.
“We’re standing on infinity,” she gasped. “Oh, Ben.”
“I’ll admit, I could stand here for hours just looking at it,” Ben agreed.
Agent Hessman cut in: “I rather think we have a much shorter time than that. Our pursuers appear to have spotted us.”
A glance across the foyer showed the two uniformed men riding up one of the glass elevators at the far side.
“We’ve got to run!” Claire gasped.
She already had her hand on her hat to hold it down and run, but Agent Hessman held her back.
“Quick walk, no running,” he advised. “We don’t want to stir up the locals, and I don’t think they do either. It’s their turf, and they know this is a closed environment with only so many places we can run to.”
“Then what do we do?” Ben asked.
“We find a new place to run to. Follow me.”
They quickened their pace, weaving through the crowd. A glance back showed that the two uniforms were just getting off their elevator on the same level as themselves and starting into the same quick walk. Agent Hessman led them left onto a crossing over a four-story drop to another landing. Pausing midway across one of the glass elevator tubes, he pressed a button before a clear door. Moments later the elevator came up and the doors slid aside. The uniforms were a couple hundred feet away when the doors closed behind them.
The inside had a panel like any elevator of their own day, with numbered buttons and a couple of service buttons on the bottom row. Lou immediately hit the highest-numbered button he could see. The two uniforms were still threading their way through the crowd when the elevator shot up out of sight.
They had a brief aerial view of the whole section when they shot up through the ceiling and up to the next level. In this brief interval between floors decorated with images of clouds projected all around them, they caught a fleeting glimpse of a level that looked like a glamorous food court done by way of Rodeo Drive, before they were gone again into the clouds and another level came into view. Here Agent Hessman slammed a hand onto a button marked with a large X. The elevator immediately came to a stop and eased down level with the floor.
“Everyone out,” he ordered.
The last one out, Agent Hessman hit a random selection of buttons, then slipped out before the doors closed shut and the elevator zoomed away.
“Old trick,” he stated. “Now just start walking.”
This section had a large open floor across which people came and went as they looked over the selections that circled them. It looked like a ring of high-class restaurants. On the left was one labeled “NY, NY” with projected images of the Statue of Liberty and other local landmarks of note, with a miniature reproduction of the Brooklyn Bridge sized perfectly for two people to walk across over a pretend river. A hundred feet past that one was a place with an underwater theme named Atlantis, followed by Hard Rock Café fifty feet later on the far side. Completing the other half of the circle was The Fifth Season, Gordon’s Grill, and The Player. Off to their right, a wide hall curved farther around the perimeter, with a holographic sign flashing “Rail.”
“Expensive eats,” Claire remarked.
“We’re not staying to eat,” Agent Hessman replied. “The rail.”
They hurried over to the hall on the right, stepping quickly along the carpeted floor until the curvature brought them out of sight of the restaurants and into view of what looked like a transit-pod station like back at Heathrow. There was a short line of people waiting as one long pod would speed into view from out of a tunnel in the left-hand wall, then pause to deposit its passengers and admit new ones before whizzing off through the wall to the right.
“I have no doubt that they can track our temporal signatures better than we can track Samantha,” Agent Hessman said as they fell into line, “so this will be challenging.”
“More so since we have neither their Net links nor any of their money,” Ben observed. “Just these transport cards.”
“If I’m right, that should be enough. If this is like our Las Vegas, they’re going to be comping a lot of stuff to keep people moving toward the casinos and shows.”
Their turn in line came up as the next pod slid into place to deposit its travelers. The gate opened before them, no card or money needed.
“Such as free transportation?” Ben ventured.
Once inside the pod, a map was projected in the air before them, with one dot to indicate their current location. Captain Beck pressed a finger uncertainly into the air, stabbing at a point away from the outer perimeter. Immediately the pod started moving. A swift flight through the wall and across what the holograms would have them believe to be soaring mountain heights was followed by a dive down into a deep rocky core.
“Even the cabs around this place are entertaining,” Ben remarked with a grin.
“If you like motion sickness,” Captain Beck replied.
“I think it’s wonderful!” Claire exclaimed. “I feel like an eagle.”
Agent Hessman, meanwhile, was back to looking at his tracker. “Still not close enough,” he stated, “though this tube is a good way to cover a lot of ground quickly. If I call out, someone make note of where the map says we are, and get this thing to stop.”
“Sure,” Ben uncertainly replied, “just as soon as I figure out how to work this thing.”
They made one last pass through what the holograms made them believe to be a watery canal before emerging into another rail station similar to the first. This time they stepped out into the middle of what looked like a circus and an arcade mall, with performers leaping through the air in their wire acrobatics, mechanical elephants giving rides to young kids, game booths strewn about a busy promenade, and of course the obligatory scantily clad young women there to direct people to the various activities.
“It’s just like Steeplechase!” Claire gasped.
“Only a few stories taller,” Captain Beck noted.
“Ooh,” Claire began, “can we—”
“No rides,” Ben said.
“Actually, a ride may be just what we need,” Agent Hessman stated.
They glanced through the crowd to where he’d indicated wi
th a nod of his head. Across the open arcade of game booths, rides, and entertainment, with its crowd of thousands, they spied two men in certain specific uniforms.
“How’d they even find us, much less make it up here before us?” Ben wondered.
“Multiple teams,” Agent Hessman answered. “But what I find more interesting is that roller-coaster ride over there.”
He led a hurried pace through the crowd to where a short line had formed for a multistory roller-coaster ride themed after rocket ships flying through an asteroid field. To the head of the line they hurried, with Agent Hessman making an odd remark to Claire: “Miss Hill, your hat needs adjusting.”
“What? Oh, thank you.”
As they approached the ride entrance, Claire made a small fuss of adjusting her large white sun hat while Agent Hessman glanced toward the pair of time cops. It didn’t take much for them to notice Claire adjusting the wide brim into place.
“There, that looks better,” she said.
“Good, they spotted us,” Agent Hessman said.
“That’s good?” Ben asked.
There was a young man controlling entry into the ride, and it was to him that Agent Hessman led the others while the time cops maneuvered as quickly as they could through the masses.
“Excuse me,” Agent Hessman quickly addressed the young man, “but where is the chicken exit?”
“Just up ahead, but you aren’t even in line yet, why would you—”
“Thank you.”
Brushing past the young man, all four hurried for the indicated exit, but not before Agent Hessman grabbed the hat off Claire’s head.
“Hey, my hat!”
Not bothering to reply, he slapped the large white hat on top of the nearest young woman about to board the ride.
“Present from Claire Hill, cross-temporal reporter,” he told the woman.
Leaving a happy young woman behind them, Agent Hessman led them in a jog for the exit door and then a quick run down the hallway beyond.
