As the crew finished the procedures, there was little left for them to do except monitor the systems on standby and enjoy the remainder of the ride. All video monitors in the small room showed the landing dome, now only a hundred meters directly below them.
Fain relaxed for the first time since the shuttle left the flagship and joined the others in watching the landing. He returned his attention to the screen just as an opening appeared at the crown of the dome.
The landing bay of the Imperial dome was the largest single enclosed space Adela de Montgarde had ever seen. The port facilities on Gris were tiny by comparison. Even the starport on the Imperial planet, certainly the largest on any of the Hundred Worlds, had nothing like this.
She sat in the fifth row of a special section reserved for those personally invited by the Imperial Court, accompanied on either side by members of her scientific staff. She recognized many of the other invitees despite their formal attire, but realized that there were even more that she had never seen before. She quickly surveyed the section and noted that, with the exception of the row directly in front of hers, nearly every seat was filled. Adela wondered inwardly, looking along the empty row, why that obnoxious Bomeer and his group of sycophants had not yet arrived. Surely he had been informed of the change in arrival time. Probably wants to make an entrance, she thought.
Her eyes scanned the vast chamber, trying to take it all in. The ceiling was fully four hundred meters above her, and it was necessary to look closely to make out the separation lines between the movable doors at the top of the dome and the gently curving walls that rose to meet them. There were several catwalks regularly spaced on the walls, and the lighted windows of numerous workstations, viewing rooms and technical facilities glowed brightly on the various levels.
Below the lowest of the catwalks were the spectator galleries which, like the dome itself, had been constructed especially for this momentous occasion and nearly sparkled in their newness. Arranged irregularly around the perimeter of the landing bay, the galleries gave the facility the appearance of a sporting arena, although the odd layout of sections throughout the dome reminded Adela of no athletic event she could imagine.
Each section was packed, with few empty seats visible. The dome had begun filling many hours ago: The spectators had been waiting patiently for the Emperor’s arrival through most of the afternoon. The gallery level was well separated from the upper, technical reaches of the dome, and each section was widely spaced from the next. Adela noted the hundreds of lightly armed security personnel, each in formal dress uniform, who strolled the lower catwalk as well as the wide areas between the sections themselves.
The entire area was dominated—or perhaps dwarfed would be a better word—by the enormous landing platform below, criss-crossed with a glowing grid pattern. It was the grid markings themselves that gave astute observers a clue to the true size of the place: Adela knew the grid lines were spaced twenty meters apart, but from this distance they looked as close together as lines on graph paper.
A heightened buzz swept through the crowd and she turned in her seat to see the source of the excitement. Immediately above them a viewing room had opened, and the Prince himself sat ready to witness his father’s arrival. He stood, raising a hand in salute to the crowd, and the room swelled with the sounds of cheering, applause, whistles and shouts.
The joyful noise continued unabated until the Prince rose and moved to the rear of the room, out of Adela’s line of sight. He returned minutes later and she assumed by his unhurried manner that he’d merely taken care of some routine business or had been called away momentarily by an aide. Javas remained standing at the edge of the room, hands clasped behind his back, and scanned the Imperial section, picking her out. When their eyes met, a smile came to his face and he nodded in greeting. His eyes lingered a few moments longer before sweeping out across the crowded chamber. He waved again to the crowd and took his seat.
A faint humming sound, more felt than heard, and a sudden brightness in the air took her by surprise. She looked up and watched as an air shield snapped into place around her entire section. Elsewhere around the massive landing bay, shielding was coming on section by section, and the surprised gasps of scattered spectators not familiar with the security precaution reached her ears. Gasps invariably gave way to nervous laughter, however, when those more used to the technology explained to their neighbors what was happening.
The air filled with three sharp blasts of a warning horn that immediately silenced the crowd. Dozens of rotating lights ringing the topmost catwalk drew all eyes upward. Another shield was forming at the top of the dome. It brightened as it formed, gradually expanding until the entrance doors in the ceiling were completely covered.
The crowd stared in silent awe as a soft hissing sound filled the chamber. The spectators did not seem as startled by the sound as Adela might have expected, and she had assumed that the uninitiated had been forewarned that the evacuation of air from the space between the air shield and the doors themselves was normal procedure.
The hissing faded away, punctuated by a single, steady blast of the horn, and the doors parted in the center with a rumbling that sent vibrations through the entire dome. Although the landing bay was brightly illuminated, even Adela was not prepared for the brilliance of the shaft of light that burst through the opening. Many in the crowd looked quickly away, eyes stinging from the sudden brightness, and watched the path of light as it rapidly widened on the landing platform below until they grew accustomed to the intensity and returned their gaze to the opening above just in time to see the doors clank into place at their widest point.
Nothing happened for what seemed a long time, then a sudden chattering and a collective gasp spread through the crowd. It started at the lowest rows, where spectators nearer the center saw it first, then spread quickly up through the galleries.
My God, it’s huge, Adela thought as the landing gear and the underside of the shuttle appeared over the opening. The sunlight reflecting off the spacecraft’s gleaming, white surface brought tears to her eyes and she squinted, rubbing them occasionally on the backs of her knuckles. Above the air shield dust and smoke swirled violently in incongruous silence in the narrow open space just inside the doors, but the swirling abated immediately when the standby thrusters were shut down. Caught securely in the landing bay’s gravity harness, the ship lowered smoothly and steadily through the opening.
The landing feet touched the air shield first, causing the entire glowing surface to shimmer momentarily. The air sparkled around the gear as the craft lowered through the shield, and glowing ripples spread across the width of it as on the surface of a pond. As the shuttle came through the shield, Adela became aware of the increasing sound level. Mechanical hums and the descending whine of the thrusters as they continued through their shutdown cycle came from within the craft itself, while sections of the gleaming metal skin popped and creaked as it began to equalize to the internal dome air temperature.
The shuttle had just barely cleared the shield when the doors started slowly closing again. As it happened, the doors thunked shut at nearly the exact instant the shuttle came to rest dead center on the landing platform. The full weight of the craft settled suddenly on its gear as the gravity harness was released. Adela looked at the massive lander, her eyes sweeping along the front where the smoothness of its surface was marred only by the bulge of the control bridge halfway to the top. She could see the crew moving inside the cramped space, going through their postlanding checks.