The others were up and wandering. Irma stood, legs spread and head down, gasping in the low oxygen. Howard rubbed his head, cursing. Terry got to his feet and leaned on the wall beside the big window and breathed in and out in a systematic way, eyes ahead.
Aybe got unsteadily to his feet, slipped, caught himself. His eyes wandered and he shook his head, gasped. “See those?” he asked, pointing at slim, shiny fibers, electrical ribbons attached at all four sides. “They’re dischargers. That flash — even through this thick window, my hair stood on end. This must be an electrodynamic system.”
Cliff remembered e-lifts Earthside that worked by charging elevators and then handing the weight off to a steady wave of electrodynamic fields. This might be similar.
“Did you feel that tremor as it passed?” Aybe said. “It didn’t just shake — the floor, it sank a bit. That ‘train’ is heavy.”
Terry said, “How do we get on one?”
“Find out how to stop one, first,” Cliff said.
Terry smiled. “Then — where do we go?”
The big question. “Away from here,” Cliff said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all this time — move, dodge, try to learn.”
“What about finding Beth’s team?” Irma asked.
Cliff paused and felt their eyes on him. “I’d like to, sure. As far as we know, they’re in the hands of the Bird Folk. But where?”
“Maybe near the mirror zone?” Aybe asked.
“Because they sent that image from there?” Irma shook her head. “Could be just suckering us in.”
Cliff held his tongue. He hadn’t known when it happened how to discuss with the others the Beth image. He still didn’t.
“Y’know,” Terry said, “we’re going way out on a limb here.”
“Out on a limb,” Irma said, “is where the fruit is.”
Aybe said impatiently, “We need to get away! Why not take the first one we can get?”
They all looked at one another, as if realizing how little they knew and how few options they had — and nodded.
Cliff sensed a slight breeze. “Another one coming.”
They braced themselves. But this time there was no gale, just an amiable breeze carrying a
That distracted them from seeing the black carapace of a machine that stood on three legs beside a side wall. Its slender arms manipulated controls on a panel. It made a final move and the train stopped.
Down a side alley of the vast alien platform came bulky gray robots. Soundless, swift, they ran on tracks and held their big arms up, as if saluting. A team of six opened the side of one car and started unloading capsules stacked within. They moved with surprising speed, all coordinated and specialized — lifting, loading, moving the capsules down the alley and into the distant reaches. None of the robot heads turned to look at the humans watching through the viewport nearby; they worked like monomaniacs, which of course they were.
“See that control box against the side wall?” Howard pointed. “That machine used it and the train stopped.”
They studied the machines working, and Cliff felt a tremor beneath his feet. Again he had the sensation of something massive moving nearby. It seemed to pass perpendicular to the tracks he could see. “There’s another level,” he guessed. “The other axis of a grid, must be.”
“Sure, longitude and latitude on the Bowl,” Terry said.
“These tracks run to higher latitude,” Aybe said.
Irma asked, “How can you tell?”
Aybe grinned, nodded to her. “I have an innate sense of direction. In basic, remember when they set us down in a forest and told us to find our way home?”
Cliff did. He had flunked. It had made him fear being dropped, though he did well in the other field tests. “So?”
Aybe’s grin got wider. “I beat your asses, remember? I watched you straggle in.”
It had been embarrassing. Cliff felt his face burn at the memory. The Georgia pine forest was utterly flat, the trees packed in tight to get the best yield for pulp paper, so the going was tough — and the sky cloudy, so he couldn’t use the sun to navigate. He had finally paired up with a guy, then another, and they had found their way by using a search pattern, each staying within calling distance of the others. Not really a way to track in wilderness, when there might be predators or enemies, but it had worked. Sort of. Later he learned that he had nearly lost the cut for
Irma’s mouth twisted sardonically. “So?”
Aybe glared. “Just that these are the tracks we should take to higher latitude. This train is headed the right way. It’s freight, no passengers we can see…”
“And?” Terry asked.
Aybe was making them wait for his wisdom. “Let’s have it,” Cliff said sharply.
“If we jump on this one, stay in the vacant cars, nobody will see us.”
Irma looked dubious, eyebrows raised. Terry snorted. “We’d be stuck in a box!”
“Aren’t we stuck right now?” Aybe shot back.
“These are freight cars — ”
Aybe held up his phone, thumbed it to a slow replay. “I got this while the first cars whizzed by.” The lead car had windows, and through them they could see oddly shaped seats or couches. There were rectangular machines on the far walls. “Looks like passenger seats. Nobody in that one, as far as I can see.”
Terry said, “Seems risky.”
Cliff held up his hands. “How do we do it, anyway? I don’t see a way — ”
“There — ” Aybe pointed down a side corridor. “I saw a doorway to the left, and I’ll bet we can get to it that way.”
Terry shook his head. “I doubt we — ”
A clanking came at the big door they had come through. It was locked and secured with a metal bar Irma had found. They stared at the heavy door as the noise — rattles, bumps, jarring hits — got louder.
“They found us…,” Terry said. “Damn — ”
The rattles stopped and so did Terry. Pause. A buzzing sound from the large door.
Cliff said, “They’re cutting in.”
Aybe said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Irma raised an eyebrow. “To … where?”
Cliff looked at the robots. They were nearly done unloading. He leaned against the hard, transparent window and saw in a long perspective other docking platforms, with milling robots. It was a long train.
He didn’t like being forced into a move.
“Let’s do it,” Cliff said. “Now.”
Nods, some resigned sighs. They had brought most of their gear in backpacks and stuffed cargo pants. They ate some of their food as they watched the robots finishing up; less to carry. Cliff worried about getting on this train, but there seemed no other plausible option. How would they eat? When should they try to get off?
The robots were nearly done when they angled down the left side corridor. There were periodic windows. Cliff could see similar robot teams unloading or loading other cars. They trotted along, looking for the passenger cars. “Let’s pick it up,” he called out. If the train left and they were trapped …
They ran for five minutes until they saw the sole passenger car, the leader of a long line that stretched far into the rear. This one was longer than the freight cars and had big windows. And it looked vacant.
No robots seemed to be around it. They went through a kind of lock with a pressure seal flexible frame, and onto the dock. Robots labored in the distance but took no notice of the humans. The car door slid easily aside, and they spread out to see if anyone was aboard. Nothing, though the place had a damp smell like a zoo. A forward-
