Each part of the Grand Elevator was massive in size and hugely impressive. Taken as a whole, it was daunting, gigantic, overwhelming.
"Still want to talk about how we've almost caught up with them?" Hannah asked Jamie quietly.
"No," said Jamie, and left it at that.
"They're starting to think about an Elevator for Earth," Hannah went on. "It's probably been tried about a dozen times, but it never comes to anything. But this--this is ten times, a hundred times, more ambitious than what they have in mind for Earth. And this is for what is really a pretty minor world. The Metrannan population on-planet is only about twelve million or so, and essentially all of that is in one city. This structure is there for the benefit of something like the current population of Los Angeles plus London. There are Vixa worlds that have multiple Elevators, five or six of them strung around the equator, and all the orbit-side levels connected by a ring structure that goes clear around the planet."
"Okay," said Jamie. "If you wanted to make sure I was even more intimidated, you've done your job."
"Good," said Hannah. "We don't have the least reason in the universe to feel sure of ourselves."
"This I understand," said Jamie. As he looked out at the Grand Elevator, it seemed impossible that their clever little cover story about looking for a missing agent could ever stand up against the beings who built that.
A green light illuminated on the control board, and a cheerful beep tone went off. A message on the display screen confirmed that the Grand Elevator's Traffic Control Center had managed to lock in on their ship's nav systems, primitive though it might be compared to local designs. "The Sholto has received and accepted a final approach flight plan and will fly it on automatic," Hannah announced, reading the display. "Suits me. I wouldn't want to try flying through artificial grav bubbles and risk dinging their nice shiny giant dinner platter." She keyed in the approval code, and the Sholto immediately came about to a new attitude and began moving smartly toward their designated landing spot.
They flew over the edge of the inner side of the Main Landing Field about twenty meters up, the Sholto's landing gear extending and locking into place as they approached. The Sholto pointed her nose directly at the planet and her base at the field, sliding sideways over the featureless white expanse. They passed by three or four different ships as they went in, all of them far larger, far sleeker-looking, and far more beautiful than the stubby little Sholto. It was impossible not to feel like the ugly duckling in among the graceful swans, the grubby little child in rumpled pajamas allowed to come downstairs for a minute to gawp at the elegance and refinement of a fancy grown-up dinner party.
We don't belong here, Jamie told himself. We're not ready. He couldn't help but think of Special Agent Trevor Wilcox III. He must have flown almost the identical approach, alone in the Irene Adler, having no idea what he was being asked to carry or why, facing the awesome sight below without the benefit of the steadying influence of someone like Hannah, who had seen it all, done it all--and survived it all.
But Trevor got through it. He didn't let himself get intimidated. Or if he did, he didn't let that paralyze him or keep him from doing his job. Whatever it was that killed him was caused by the people who could build all this. But he kept fighting to finish his job, even after he knew he was dying. He did better than go down fighting. He went down thinking. We can't--I can't--let him down. And there was one other thing he could think of to help stiffen his spine. In the end, Trevor had beaten them. Unless Hannah and he were misreading all the clues so far, Trevor had stopped the people who had killed him from getting what they wanted.
The Sholto fired her attitude thrusters to halt their forward motion. They were over their assigned landing spot. The overhead thrusters fired once, very gently, to propel them downward onto the field.
Suddenly Jamie's stomach did an all-too-familiar backflip. "Hey!" he cried out. "Our gravity field just cut out! We're in zero gee!"
"Not for long," Hannah said. "Standard safety procedure. Unpleasant things can happen when one artificial gee field is inside another. Hang on. Our landing gear is just about one meter off the field now, so..."
They landed with a sudden, unceremonious bump.
"And we're down," said Hannah, checking her displays rather than the view out the window. Suddenly the whole ship shuddered for a moment, and there was a sound like the wind moaning past the hull.
"What was that?" Jamie asked. "We didn't lose pressure or something, did we?"
"Mmphmm. No. Just the opposite, in fact."
"What?"
"As of ten seconds ago, we have breathable air out there. Very close to a pressure match and gas composition with the surface of Metran. Cute. Very, very cute."
"They can't possibly be pressurizing this whole structure!" Jamie protested.
"Probably not," Hannah agreed. "But I wouldn't put it completely past them. When they decide to, the Elder Races can do practically anything. The show-offs. But my guess is that they use some sort of confinement field to create bubbles of pressurization where they need them. They just formed one around our landing point. Ain't that a neat trick?"
"Yeah. Really neat."
"Glad you enjoyed it. Don't feel even more intimidated or anything. Okay. I'm going to need about five or ten minutes to power us down and safe the ship's systems. Once we have that out of the way, we can work the really important problems. The big decisions."
"Okay, fine. I'll play the straight man. What big decisions?"
"What are we going to wear?"
It was a joke, of course. Except that it wasn't. Metrannans took dress very seriously. There were documented cases of humans getting themselves killed as a result of committing the deadly insult of meeting with a Metrannan in inappropriate garb. Supposedly, it was just as dangerous to show up dressed to the nines for the local equivalent of a picnic as it was to show up in rumpled work clothes to a formal reception.
The Metrannans imposed a more stringent rule on themselves when visiting human worlds, or at least indulged their love of dressing up, and often wore adapted versions of human-style outfits, with results that were often disconcerting or hilarious. Humans who dealt with Metrannans had to know how to keep poker-faced.
Supposedly, the human section of the Metrannan clothing database was larger--and more filled with errors--than that of any other species. To Jamie, that merely suggested that humans were the species second-most obsessed with clothing.
Fortunately, the dreadful mix-ups and errors of the early days had been resolved, and there was no danger of the database dictating that Jamie show up to a state dinner in a muu-muu and carrying a surfboard--an unfortunate occurrence from about sixty years back that would have been dismissed as urban legend if not for the photographs.
The dress requirements as stated for "generalized official business interaction activity" were far more sensible, and had them both in very conservative dark business suits. Jamie's charcoal-grey suit and blue shirt were of a cut and style and color that was not much changed since the later days of the nineteenth century, and Hannah's black jacket and knee-length skirt over a white blouse were almost as ancient a uniform.
Jamie didn't care for his fire-engine-red tie, and Hannah made it clear she had never been a fan of gathered lace at the collar, but both of them felt they had gotten off easy. Even if nearly all the bugs had been squeezed out of the Metrannan dress database, no BSI agent ever checked the database without worrying that it would require a tiara and roller skates.
"You look pretty good," Hannah told Jamie, straightening his tie. "Maybe it's time you thought about wearing something besides flight coveralls and flak jackets on missions."
"I'm wearing a flak jacket right now, underneath this getup," Jamie said, pulling his jacket closed. "It itches."
"Deal with it," Hannah said. "Come on. Let's get going."
They collected their duffel bags. Each of them also had a huge rolling suitcase--more like an old stone-age steamer trunk--full
of clothes suitable for all occasions. They tried to wedge themselves and their luggage into the Sholto's lower-deck air lock, but the big cases simply wouldn't fit with two people. They would have to do it in two passes--both of them going out together with the duffels, then Hannah waiting outside while Jamie went back for the larger cases. The pressure difference with the outside air was relatively small, and the lock cycled fast. The outer door swung open, and they looked out on a broad, strange, and oddly featureless milk-white plain.
Directly ahead of them was Free Orbit Level Station Nexus, the focal point of activity for Free Orbit Level Station, and, for that matter, the entire Grand Elevator. The wide silvery bulk of the cable cluster sprouted up out of the top of the Nexus, drawing the eye irresistibly upward into the black, star-spangled sky, up and up and up until the cable itself narrowed and vanished in the distance, and still up again--to the sight of Metran, directly and exactly overhead. The planet was in half phase, the terminator knife-sharp through the exact centerline of the world, sunset at the Groundside Station.
That, of course, put the local sun directly on the western horizon of the Main Landing Field as well, a reddish ball exactly bisected by the horizon. It should have been murderously, blindingly bright, but there was plainly some sort of dimming field in use that reduced the intensity of the light.
But if the sun was made a weakened shadow of itself, the planet directly overhead was a gaudy thing of blue-white-green beauty, seas and clouds and lands gleaming in the darkness, easily thirty times the size of the moon as seen from Earth.
As they looked upward, a lozenge-shaped elevator car, at first a barely visible glint of motion almost lost in the terminator, swelled up into visibility as it made its final approach to Free Orbit Station, riding its strand of cable straight through the roof of Station Nexus, even as another car launched itself upward toward the planet down below. Up toward the planet down below, Jamie thought in wry astonishment. The description was entirely accurate, but peculiar even so.
But the most startling, even daunting, part of the scene before them was the blackness of space all around. Viewports and portholes and windows in human-built spacecraft and spaceside facilities were small, for good reasons. They were expensive to build, and far more fragile in use than hull material. But there was also a psychological reason. Space-traveling humans were used to being sealed away from the vast and terrifying emptiness of it all.
But on the Main Landing Field of Free Orbit Station, things were quite the opposite. They were out in the open, exposed, the Sholto pinned to the surface of a vast and empty field, staring up--or was it down--at a terrestrial planet so big and bright it looked as if it was about to fall on them--unless they were about to fall on it.
"Okay," Jamie said. "Now it's official. I'm intimidated."
"And it's officially time to keep anyone from noticing," said Hannah. "Company's coming."
Three vehicles were headed toward them from Nexus. One was a robotic ship-servicer, of a type in common use in the spaceports of many worlds--including Center. It had, no doubt, already had a series of discussions with the Sholto, asking the ship what she needed in terms of power and supplies, negotiating amount and means of payment, and arranging the technical details, down to what sort of plugs and sockets and nozzles would be required to top up the ship's systems.
The second vehicle was basically a ramp on wheels. It drove straight up to the Sholto's air lock, automatically adjusting itself to bring its top end level with the bottom of the air lock hatch, thus providing an easy way to descend from the ship.
"Thank the stars for that," said Hannah as the ramp eased itself into position. "I thought we were going to have to deploy the hull ladder. I wasn't looking forward to climbing down in this skirt and heels in gravity that's twenty percent above normal."
"And I wasn't looking forward to getting the luggage down the ladder."
There were two cubical cartons on the lower end of the ramp. As soon as the ramp had stopped, its seemingly solid upper surface began moving upward, in the manner of a conveyor belt.
"Whoah!" Jamie said. "I was about to start walking down that thing. Any idea what's in the cartons?"
"Use your startling skill as a detective," said Hannah drily. "Or you could just try reading the labels on the top of the boxes. Restocking supplies for the ship."
Sure enough, printed there in Greater Trade Writing and, unexpectedly enough, in somewhat stilted English as well, was a packing list of human-digestible foods and other consumables, along with a list of repair supplies. A flashing panel on the upper left corner of the label was requesting verbal approval and authentication.
Feeling odd about speaking to a packing crate, Jamie cleared his throat and read the indicated words in Lesser Trade Speech. "I am James Mendez of the human United Government Vessel BSI-3369 Bartholomew Sholto. I am authorized to approve and accept these supplies. I hereby approve and accept delivery of the supplies listed on this container, and authorize payment for them out of human United Government accounts." The label stopped blinking and turned a cheerful shade of orange. He then had to go through the whole speech again with the other box. Hannah waited outside while Jamie wrestled the boxes into the Sholto and the heavy luggage back out. Once he was done, Hannah went through the slightly involved process of closing, sealing, and locking the outer air lock hatch--and arming the self-destruct system.
It was a small item, but it was the almost instant delivery of human-digestible foods that, as much or perhaps even more than anything, made Jamie feel as if he had been put in his place.
If a Metrannan ship had arrived at Earth with only two days' notice, expecting a stay of short but uncertain duration, it would have been considered a miracle of organization to provide reprovisioning supplies in less than a week. Specialists would have been rousted out of bed in the middle of the night. Chemists would have been called in to test and retest everything for fear of poisoning the visitors. It would have required a full-court press in order to get the order delivered before the ship was scheduled to depart--and if the job were done successfully, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate each other for not humiliating the human race.
Here, even though humans rarely visited--it was not unlikely Trevor Wilcox had been the last human here--human-suitable food was delivered by robots before the Sholto's thrusters had time to cool.
"Sealed and armed," Hannah said. "If you happen to be the one who opens up when we get back, try not to get the combinations wrong--or else the Sholto might leave a ding in their nice shiny landing field when she blows up." That wasn't exactly true. It was considered bad manners to rig a spacecraft to explode violently at someone else's spaceport. Hannah had rigged the groundside destruct system. It would simply melt or burn most of the ship's interior if anyone set it off, just enough destruction to render the whole vehicle inoperative.
"I'll bear that in mind. Let's get moving."
The two of them moved carefully down the ramp, not quite sure if it was about to turn its rigid surface back into a conveyor belt, and also not quite adapted to the slightly higher local gravity. It was easy to overbalance a trifle while rolling their heavy trunks.
The third vehicle that had pulled up to the Sholto was an open-frame personnel transporter--or at least that's what Jamie assumed it to be. It was unmarked, unlabeled, and didn't boast any sort of robotic voice telling them what to do. It was nothing but an open platform on wheels, with a ramp to allow entrance and exit on one side. Vertical supports held up guardrails at about human knee, waist, and shoulder height. The railing on the side with the ramp on it swung open to allow them in. They stepped aboard and got their luggage into the transporter. The gate swung shut and latched itself, then the ramp withdrew into the base of the vehicle. The transporter started moving, leaving Jamie and Hannah to hang on to the bars of their cage.
"What's this feel more like to you?" Hannah asked. "Riding in one of the rolling cages from an animal show, or riding the tumbr
el to the guillotine?"
"You read too many old books," Jamie said. "Until you asked, I was just thinking it was like riding in a golf cart. Thanks for the more comfortable imagery."
The vehicle did have one notably high-tech feature. It seemed to carry its own bubble of atmosphere along with it, and there was a distinct shift in pressure as it separated from the air bubble around the Sholto. As they moved, Jamie could see a sort of faint shimmering effect in the air around and above them, formed into a hemisphere centered on the vehicle with a radius of about five meters. They were, in effect, pulling the air along behind them, causing it to blow at them in all sorts of turbulence patterns that made it seem as if the wind was hitting them from every direction at once.
They rolled along the strange and featureless artificial landscape toward the Nexus, both of them feeling their eyes drawn irresistibly toward the cable cluster and the mighty planet, directly overhead. It felt like the eye of God himself was staring unblinkingly at them.
Jamie couldn't help thinking He couldn't be overly impressed with the two beings He was glaring down at.
SIXTEEN
LATER THAN SOONER
The Nexus grew closer. To Hannah's eye, at least, it seemed a small and even anticlimactic center to a place of such grandiose scale, not far different from a hundred domed settlements scattered about in human-settled space. Except, of course, for the cable cluster stabbing down through the top of the dome, and the Elevator cars hurtling back and forth every few minutes, she told herself. That's a little different.
Their vehicle slowed as it approached an opening in the high cylindrical wall that supported the base of the dome. The pressure field around their vehicle seemed to merge with a similar shimmering field that stretched across the opening in the wall. There was a slight popping noise, and a rush and a whir as the air in their bubble merged with the air inside the Nexus.
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