The first spacecraft had risen from its surface about 5,200 years before, a short flight to orbit. Much had happened since. The first outward expansion, led by those known only as the Ancient Engineers, made nearly every planet in the Milky Way inhabitable. From rocks to gas giants and everything in between, the Ancient Engineers terra-formed first millions, then billions of planets, seeding them in an explosion of life called puffing. In less than a thousand years, the Galaxy was populated — and blissfully at peace.
Then something happened. A collapse? A civil war? A rebellion? No one knew for sure. Almost 70 percent of the Galaxy's history had been lost over the centuries; lost or kept as close secrets by those in power. But this much was known: The rise of the First Empire had been fueled by the discovery of ion-ballast propulsion, the technology that put the stars within easy reach. The Second Empire uncovered Supertime, in which spacecraft could travel nearly twenty times faster than ion-ballast propulsion, at almost two light-years a minute. This allowed the Second Empire to reclaim much of what the First Empire had lost. Then the Second Empire fell, again for reasons unknown. Came at least one dark age and then the rise of the Third Empire, of which just about all knowledge was lost.
Then the Fourth Empire emerged, and along with it, those known as the Specials. This very extended, deistic family had controlled Earth now for more than five hundred years.
They were in the process of reclaiming the Milky Way once again.
Much of the Earth's surface was covered with huge triangular slabs known as triads; they were what made the Mother Planet shine. Some of these massive sections measured more than a hundred miles long. They were built of terranium, a superhard metallic material that had the ability to feed on the earthy crust, making it amenable to growing fauna.
The triads had also been created by the Ancient Engineers some time during the last years of the First Empire. But just why they chose to lay down these huge fabrications was another piece of history lost in the haze. (An attempt to reclaim surface area lost to rising ocean levels was one possibility.) For whatever reason, the triads covered more than half the planet and were arranged in such a way that Earth now supported just two enormous continents, one in the east, the other in the west.
What remained of the oceans was located in between. Water drained off from the poles traveled along huge canals. that separated the triads in many places, feeding the terranium and the life it held above. As a result of this massive engineering project, every coastline on Earth was now uniform, every river and lake drawn perfectly straight.
The triads were connected by more than 5,000 bridges. Some were hundreds of miles long and even linked the two continents at their closest points. Others were barely ten feet in length. The spans were never used — or at least not anymore. Unlike the triads, no one was quite sure who built them or why. They'd appeared some time after the triads had been put in place and before the height of the Second Empire. In any case, they were considered sacred and off limits to all.
As was Earth's Moon. It still hung in the sky, bright as ever, a pearl orbiting a diamond. But it was considered even more sacred than the mysterious bridges.
In fact, no one had set foot on the lunar satellite in more than 3,000 years.
The capital of Earth — indeed of the entire Galaxy — was Big Bright City.
It was a gigantic metropolis located in the northeast corner of the western continent. More than twenty million su-perskyscrapers of all shapes and sizes made up this place, with miles of hovering roadways, air car tubes, and water canals woven in between. Military bases, rocket pads, and space docks were everywhere, thousands of cloud bars, jam bars, nightclubs, sports clubs, dance clubs, and sex clubs were mixed in as well, especially around the huge City Arena.
Then there were the lights. They were everywhere! All colors, all shades, all tones. All burning brightly, day and night, bathing everything in an eternal neon glow. Not only was this a city that never went to sleep, it hadn't caught its breath in nearly five centuries.
At last count, more than two billion people called this place home.
To the first-time visitor, falling out of orbit, it seemed as if a layer of perfectly shaped clouds was in hover over Big Bright. On closer inspection, the visitor would realize these weren't clouds at all. They were floating cities. Dozens of them orbited the huge capital, moving easily, seemingly at the whim of the breeze. This is where many of the Specials lived, exactly one mile above the surface of the Earth. Condensation tended to gather under the bottoms of the cities, especially at night. This created the illusion that they were floating on top of the clouds. The biggest floating city of all was Special Number One, home of the Imperial Family. It was more than ten square miles around, twice the size of the other floating cities. Special Number One looked like a huge castle in the sky. Hundreds of spires, glowing in odd, iridescent colors, dominated its center. Long, sloping passageways crisscrossed these spires like trelliswork. The imperial buildings themselves were a mixture of futuristic design and ancient recreations, some of which had been put together brick for brick, nail for nail, from structures found buried on Earth thousands of years before.
Like Big Bright City below, Special Number One's surface layout was a jumble of side streets, back alleys, and courtyards running off of massive avenues.
Counting the high military personnel, the diplomats, the extended imperial family, and five separate corps of security troops, more than one million people lived up here.
It was the first day of the Great Saturnalia.
The two-week, planetwide celebration led up to the grandest of all events in the Galaxy: the Earth Race. This yearly contest pitted the best starfighter pilots in the Empire against each other in a 25,000-mile, obstacle-strewn, multidimensional competition. Some of the most famous fliers in history had taken this challenge over the centuries. Many had failed. Some had even gone mad. The Earth Race was that difficult, that dangerous. The Emperor Himself had. great affection for the contest, though, as he frequently claimed to have been a starfighter pilot in a previous life. This made the competition a huge social and political event as well.
Wagering on the race, by the trillions of citizens across the Galaxy, was staggering. Untold riches were showered on the race winner, including a permanent residence on Earth itself. Neither he nor his family would ever want for anything again; in fact, the largesse would be so vast, the winner's descendants would be well off for generations to come.
The excitement of the Earth Race was equaled only by the celebrations it generated. While the Great Saturnalia was observed just about everywhere on Earth, the promi-nence of a party was most evident by its location. The preeminent fete of all was held, no surprise, up on Special Number One, in the Gold House, the massive, sacred structure located right next door to the Imperial Palace itself. By tradition, the invitations for this intimate gathering of 3,000 were sent out one hour after the previous Earth Race had been concluded.
This gave those people privileged enough to attend an entire solar year to plan what they would wear.
It was about thirty minutes before midnight when the large air-chevy began its mile-long climb up to Special Number One.
The flying car's bright emerald color scheme identified it as the personal vehicle of Vanex, the Captain of Engineering, Clocks, Bulbs and Wires, for the floating Imperial City. This mouthful was actually his ceremonial title. Essentially, Vanex was Special Number One's head custodian.
The guards at the imperial front gate spotted the big green air-chevy shortly after it launched from Earth. They all knew Vanex, and he knew them — and that was the problem. Even by contemporary standards, Vanex was an ancient man. He was at least 700 years old, older than Emperor O'Nay Himself. Vanex carried with him a few dozen stories, oft repeated, each time with a new twist or turn added. He'd been everywhere and had done everything in the Galaxy in his long, long life. He even claimed to have knowledge of the mysterious Third Empire, a piece of history that practically no one knew anything about.