Звезда Пандоры

What they’d found was a starship, a living behemoth capable of FTL travel. It was not any kind of life that humanity understood, being neither a machine that had risen to sentience nor a spaceborn life-form that had evolved or been engineered into its current nature. However, the High Angel wasn’t forthcoming about its origin, saying only that its purpose was to provide a habitable environment to the planet-based species it encountered in the hope of learning about them. It was “resting” in orbit around Icalanise—for how long was also not divulged. After some negotiation over a radio channel it agreed to open three of its domes to humans, who would use the space primarily as a dormitory town for the astroengineering companies. The two most prominent clauses in the settlement agreement were High Angel’s veto on visitors and settlers, and its promise to inform its new human residents before it took flight again, whenever that might be.

Their shuttle maneuvered underneath the vast base of the New Glasgow dome and down along the tapering stalk underneath. The dome’s spaceport was situated just above the point where the pewter-colored stalk sank into the starship’s rocky outer crust, a thick necklace of airlocks and ports that ringed the structure. Several of them had shuttles attached, while larger docking cradles were holding cargo tugs that were unloading.

They docked with a slight tremble, and the plyplastic airlock irised open. “Thank you for traveling with us,” the steward said. “Please remember that after you disembark you will still be in freefall until the lift is moving.”

Oscar waited until all the passengers in front of him had gotten out before releasing his own straps. The corridor outside the airlock was disappointing: a wide silvery tube with a shallow curve taking it deeper into the stalk; there was no exotic feel to it at all. He drifted across it to the lift opposite. Like everyone else he let his fuseto soles stick him to the floor. Just before the doors closed, he saw Paula Myo and her companion glide past the lift, heading farther down the corridor.

Gravity slowly built as the lift slid up the inside of the stalk. That much Oscar could understand, they were accelerating, after all. When it stopped, he was still in a full standard gravity field. The High Angel had never explained that, or any other technical ability it possessed, like its power source, the nature of its FTL drive, how it shielded itself from particle impacts, where the mass came from to extrude its new domes.

Their lift was one of ten opening out into a big arrivals lounge. Oscar and Mac took off their overalls and dropped them into a bin, then headed eagerly for the exit. The transit building was at the center of New Glasgow’s Circle Park, an area of greenery five kilometers wide filled with so many trees it could almost be classed as forest. Behind the trees were the skyscrapers, as varied in shape and texture as those along any New York avenue. The difference here was the skyway loops that coiled around them, thin rails carrying personal pods between public stops at considerable speed. It was daytime, which meant the crystal dome above them had turned translucent, emitting a uniform white light close to Sol’s spectrum. The atmosphere was pleasantly warm, with a touch of summer humidity.

Oscar took a long moment, his head craned back, turning a slow circle. “I have to admit, this is hellishly impressive. Puts the old Second Chance into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Different strokes…” Mac shrugged. “We developed gateways and the CST network: every planet just a step away. If we’d spent three hundred years developing starships, I expect we’d be riding around the galaxy in something like this.”

Oscar glanced at him. “You’re impressed,” he decided.

“It’s a grand chunk of engineering, I admit. But it doesn’t give me an inferiority complex.”

“Okay, okay. So how do we get to Madam Chairwoman?”

Mac pointed through the woodland ahead. Small footpaths led away from the transit building, meandering through the trees. There was a stream not far away, the glimpse of a lake past the wider trunks. About fifty meters along the path ahead was a small white pillar with three personal pods parked around it. “They’ll take us as close as you can get,” Mac said.

The pods were simple pearl-white spheres with a flattened base. The doors were open ovals on either side, protected by a translucent force field. Mac eased through and sat on the small bench seat inside. Oscar joined him. From the inside, the pod shell was transparent. The force field doors flickered and strengthened.

“Chairwoman’s office, please,” Mac said.

The pod slid along the ground for a few meters, then the path surface dilated, exposing the top of a tunnel, and they sank down into it. There was no light in the tunnel, though the pod’s interior remained illuminated.