Arriving at the station, be saw a slow-moving line of carriages going by the long single platform and assumed he had got there just as a train was moving off or stopping. The railway operated on a universal fare system, so there were no formalities over tickets. A machine proyided him with a simple square of plastic entitling him to travel anywhere on the southern section for one day. He worked through knots of people and piles of freight onto the platform and stood waiting for the quietly drifting carriages to either speed up or finally come to a halt. Five minutes passed before he realized that neither of these things was going to happen; the railway really was continuous!
Tallon flicked the eyeset controls several times until he picked up a better view of the station and the system. The composite picture he built up showed an endless line of freight and passenger cars curving into the station from the east and vanishing to the north. None of the cars had an engine or any visible controls, yet they were moving quickly beyond the station and slowing down to about three miles an hour as they came alongside the platform. This puzzled him, till he saw that what be had taken to be a third rail was, in fact, a rotating screw mounted centrally between the wheel-bearing rails. It was then be began to appreciate the beauty of the system.
The cars needed no engines because their power came from the central screw, which was turned at a constant speed by small magnetic motors spaced about every half mile. Each car was attached to what amounted to an ordinary nut, which was pulled along by the action of the spinning screw. The cars needed no controls because their forward speed was governed by a device whose simplicity pleased the engineer in Tallon: where they approached the station, the pitch of the threads on the central screw was greatly reduced. This had the effect of automatically slowing them down to walking pace.
Momentarily bemused by his admiration for Emm Luther’s practical engineering, Tallon blended with a group of teen-age students who were waiting for the next passenger car to come by. He was looking through the eyes of a station official standing behind the group. As the car came close he moved toward it with the chattering students, then discovered he had overlooked an important feature of the continuous railway. The edge of the platform was a slideway moving at the same speed as the train, to let people get on and off safely.
Tallon’s right foot moved out from under him as he surged forward with the students, and he lurched sideways, completely off balance. There were startled protests as he grabbed for support and then fell awkwardly into the carriage, hitting the side of his head on the door frame.
Apologizing profusely, he dropped into an empty seat, hoping he had not been so conspicuous as to make anyone look closely at him. His right ear was throbbing hotly, but the pain was a secondary consideration. The blow from the door post had fallen directly on the part of the eyeset’s frame that concealed the miniature power pack, and Tallon thought he had experienced a brief grayout at the moment of impact. He was still receiving vision from the station official back on the platform, so he reselected on proximity, and got one of the students who had sat down on the opposite side of the compartment. After a moment Tallon relaxed; the eyeset seemed to be undamaged, and the other passengers apparently had forgotten his spectacular entrance.
The carriage gradually gathered speed until it was doing a smooth forty miles an hour in almost complete silence. The route northward kept close to the ocean. Occasionally the mountains on the other side receded to a distance of up to ten miles, but usually they were crowding in, limiting the living space, creating the pressures that were being felt back on Earth. The ribbon of flatland was a continuous suburban development, with commercial centers every few miles. A break in the continental spine became visible after half an hour, and another similiar train, going in the opposite direction, slid into place beside the one on which Tallon was traveling. He saw that at top speed the few feet of space that separated the cars at a station multiplied in the same ratio as the cars’ speed, so that they were quite widely strung out.
The students got out at one of the urban ganglia, but there was a continuous supply of other passengers to keep him provided with borrowed eyes. He noticed the women were more attractively dressed and more sophisticated than was usual in the colder north where the austere influence of Reformation, the governmental seat, was stronger. Some of the girls were wearing the new visi-perfumes, which surrounded them in pastel-tinted clouds of fragrance.
Once he used the eyes of a young woman who, judging by the way Tallon kept seeing himself in the center of his field of vision, was showing some interest in him. He flicked to another pair of eyes a few seats away and got a look at the woman. After noting that she had a bronzed, blond attractiveness Tallon, with the comfortable feeling of successful cheating, went back to her eyes to find out just how much she was interested by the number of times she looked at him.
Soothed by the movement of the carriage, the sun-lit warmth, the very presence of women, Tallon felt the first stirrings of sexuality that he had experienced in a long, long time. How good it would be, he thought drowsily, to be living normally again, to be swimming with the warm currents of life, to have a woman with red hair and whiskey-colored eyes… .
Tallon turned off his eyeset, and slept. He awoke to the persistent chiming of the public address system, and switched on the eyeset again. A man’s voice announced that the carriage was about to reach the city of Sweetwell, the northernmost point of the section, and would then be swinging to the east. Any passengers who wished to continue traveling north would have to get off and cross the Vajda Strait on the ferry. They would be able to board the central section train on the other side.
Tallon had forgotten that the bottom of the continent was separated from the rest by a narrow incursion of the sea. He began to swear silently, and was immediately astonished at the change in his attitude a few hours of comfort and safety had brought about. Last night he had been prepared to crawl to New Wittenburg on his hands and knees if necessary; today he was annoyed at having to change trains on the journey.
He stretched, and seeing himself perform the familiar action, realized that the blond girl was still opposite him and still showing interest. He turned his face until he seemed to be looking directly into his own eyes and smiled his best smile. The picture of himself looking pale and haggard, perhaps romantically so, remained for a few seconds before the girl’s gaze slid away to the passing buildings outside the train. He guessed she had smiled back at him for a moment, and he was warmed.
Tallon stood up as the platform came alongside; the man nearest the compartment door slid it open. The girl rose at the same time, and he knew she was smiling at him again. Outside, the platform was drifting by, and it was now imperative for Tallon to get off without falling. He had automatically motioned the girl to go ahead of him, then remembered that if she did he would be out of her field of vision.
“Sorry, miss,” he muttered regretfully, and elbowed past her to the door. She gasped, but his sudden rudeness had the useful effect of fixing her gaze firmly on his back. He got down onto the slideway and stepped safely on to the stationary platform. The girl continued to shoot angry glances at him when she was off the train, and until she was out of range he used her attention to guide him to the waiting ferry. It was about noon and the day was brilliantly clear. He was hungry again and decided to treat himself to a huge meal on the far side of the Strait, regardless of the cost. At his present rate of progress his money would be more than adequate.
The ferry turned out to be a primitive but fast ground effect machine, capable of crossing the mile-wide Strait in a couple of minutes. Tallon found the short trip exhilarating. The characteristic yawing ride of the hovercraft, the roar of the turbines, white spray flying on each side, the jostling of the other travelers in the stand-up passenger saloon — all combined to produce a cheerful vacation mood. The vessel waltzed up its ramp and into the dock. Tallon strolled through the group of people waiting to embark, and began looking for a good restaurant. There was a diner attached to the rail terminal complex, but it looked slightly squalid, and he had no doubt it would charge high prices for indifferent food.