Overhead, red lights flashed on the ceiling board, and the chime sounded again, deeper and more insistent this time: last call, and clear the platform. The roving vendors would be retreating to the shelter of the arches as the vacuum shields slid into place—not much use in the case of catastrophic failure, and everyone knew it, but regulations still required them. Outside the capsule’s bubble window, the light turned blood red as the platform was sealed. The PDE was running up to power, the full power necessary to move the train’s mass through the permanently open warp. Heikki could feel the capsule wobble as the field’s grip weakened. Ahead of the train, the barriers that sealed off the warp would be folding back, a gap too empty to be real replacing the comfortable grey of the massive doors; beyond that, the crystals that created and held the warp would be crackling, sparks snapping between them and out into the unreality of the warp. And at the heart of it all, the twinned central crystals, one on EP1 and one on EP5, would be glowing blue-white with the power they had absorbed from the cells, ready to unleash it, to fling the train capsule by capsule across the gap between stars.
Then the train lurched into motion, each capsule jerking forward separately. In the same instant, the shutters came down over the capsule’s windows. Heikki swore softly, half in exhilaration, and flattened herself against the yielding cushions. The capsule bucked once, crossing the “threshold,” and then she hung for an interminable moment outside all reality. Then the capsule was through, reality returning to body and mind, and the shutter lifted to show the familiar platform of Exchange Point Five’s Station Axis.
Overhead, the lights faded from red to normal-white as the capsule slowed in the clutching gravity field. Heikki touched the tractor, and waited while the safety netting reeled itself back into the housing. She stretched then, and leaned forward to look out the now-unshuttered window. She could just see the notice board and its flashing message: This train is proceeding to EP7. Transfer to platform 2 will begin in 15 minutes. She sighed, and reached for her workboard again, calling up the newsservice article on the lunar waste dump. She read it through twice more, paying solemn attention to each word, before the train was finally shunted onto the station’s second track, positioned in front of the warp that led to EP7.
There were no vendors on the platform outside her window. Heikki frowned, and then remembered that Exchange Point 5 restricted them to the outer station. Instead, a double row of dark red rubiglass pillars stretched along the platform’s face, casting weird shadows across the last hurrying travellers. It was a severe and somber architecture—typical of EP5, Heikki thought. For some reason, it and EP6, the other major FTLport, where most goods were brought into the Loop from the Precinct worlds that fed them, seemed to favor an aggressively functionalist design.
The warning sounded, and a few moments later the platform lighting went from white to red. The pillars glowed eerily in the changed color, and then the shutters closed and the train lurched into motion. Translation came almost at once, jolting away breath and thought, and then the capsule was through the warp, and sliding up to the platform on EP7. Heikki reached sideways a little stiffly and pressed the release. The safeties retracted into their housings, while in the same moment the door folded back, letting in the bright lights and the noise of home. She seized her carryall and levered herself out onto the platform, balancing herself almost absentmindedly against the rocking of the capsule, enjoying the familiar chaos of a newly-arrived train.
As a resident, she was entitled passage through the priority gate. The duty officer barely gave her a glance as he scanned carryall and papers, then waved her through the dissolving barrier field. “Thanks,” Heikki said, to his unresponsive face, and headed down the length of tunnel that connected the Axis to the main body of the Exchange Point. There would be jitneys available on the concourse.
There was a queue at the jitney stand, of course, and it was obvious that the ten jitneys pulling to a stop in a neat line would not be enough for half of the waiting crowd. Heikki swore to herself, and pulled the lens from her pocket. The chronodisplay read 1829: she could take a float, or be late. She swore again, silently this time, and joined the queue at the float platform. It was shorter—the floats were expensive, and only carried passengers across the open inner volume of Pod One—but even so she was still ten people away from the head of the line when the attendant shook her head.
“Sorry, full up. The next float will be along in five standard minutes.”
Heikki grimaced, and bit her tongue to keep from saying something immodest. To her surprise, however, it was only a few minutes before the next float swam gently up out of the lower levels, and into the platform’s grabbing arms.
“Let the people off, please,” the attendant chanted, barring the entrance with her body. Heikki schooled herself to wait, one hand already on the cash card in her belt. Finally, the last of the passengers had left the float. The queue moved forward. The attendant took Heikki’s card, snapped it through the reader, and returned it to its owner in a single smooth gesture.
“Move to the front, please, dam-i-sers, move to the front.”
Heikki did as she was told, edging along the row of seats until she could go no further. She was in a good position, near the middle of the car, between two window braces and just opposite the floor window’s widest point, and she felt some of her impatience ease. It had been a long time since last she’d ridden the floats through Pod One.
The float lay steady in the platform’s arms as the last passengers filed aboard, and the attendant closed the heavy door. The seals sighed into place, and then the arms snapped back. The float lifted slowly, light as a bubble, falling upward into the open volume of the pod. There was an awed murmur from the ring of passengers, people shifting in their seats to try to see in all directions at once. Heikki smiled, suddenly overwhelmed by a strange, fierce happiness. If EP1 was all metallic grandeur, an architecture of massive columns and gleaming arches, and EP5 a severe marriage of form and function, EP7 was air and fire. The open center volume of Pod One—unique in the Loop—was broken here and there by the glittering, multicolor webs of filament and slag crystal, spun by an artist who called herself Spider. Beyond those sculptures, more lights, blue-white, pink, fire-red, acid-green, and eye-searing purple, glowed through the crystal walls that enclosed the Pod’s working levels. Above and below, at the spherical pod’s twin poles, the crystals of the light traps glared and sparked, running together into a single mass of color. The float rose faster now, the multicolored bands of metal that marked the different levels blurring into each other. There was another murmur, first time riders glancing nervously around them, and then the float swung neatly over into the down-drawing beam. Glancing back, Heikki could see the distant mouth of the projector, thought she saw the crystal glowing red-black in its depths.
The float fell gently toward the farside platform, slowing as it came closer to the attractor. The platform’s arms swung up and out, and the float glided between them, landing against the platform with a dull thud. The seals released with a hiss, and the passengers began to get to their feet, reaching for bags and carrycases as the hatch swung open. Heikki followed them out onto the farside concourse, blinking a little in the strong light of the pole crystals.
There were plenty of jitneys available on this side of the pod. Heikki lifted a hand to summon the nearest, and swung herself into the passenger compartment as soon as the door popped up. “Explorers’ Club,” she told the voicebox mounted on the forward wall, and ran her cash card through the sensor. The jitney’s computer beeped twice, and the door closed.