The lip of the lock was dozens of meters wide. I bent to peer up through the windscreen, to examine the thick edge of the lock and saw the plasteel doors tucked away inside them. The doors were meters thick, too.
Dalton whistled appreciatively as we moved through the lock, twisting his head to look at every centimeter of the structure.
Jai, Marlow and Fiori entered the bridge as we cleared the entrance of the lock, moved to the windows and looked out.
“Have you seen this before?” I asked them.
“I came here when I was a child,” Jai said. He shook his head, his gaze on the view. “It hasn’t shrunk to adult proportions since I saw it. It still looks enormous.”
“That’s because it is,” I replied.
There were another five ships inside the lock with us, all coming or going. Now we were through the gate, we could see the interior of the lock, which was a semi-dark squat cylinder lit only with proximity lights and warning lights. There were guide lights ahead, too, outlining a gate the same size as the external one.
Now we were inside atmosphere, I could hear the roar of the reaction engines throbbing against our hull, and not just feel the vibration through my feet.
“Switching to navigation engines only,” Lyssa murmured. She added, to me, “The city requires it.”
I nodded. That made sense. You didn’t want reaction engine exhaust fogging up your atmosphere. But that also meant we would be moving very slowly along the cylinder. “How far in is the Institute?”
“On the far end,” Lyssa admitted. “Close to the Lesser Lock. We will have to land close to this end, on the public platforms.”
I nodded again. “Lyth said he would meet us on the platform.” The statement hadn’t meant much at the time. I was used to thinking in terms of landing bays with closed doors, not open platforms.
We all fell silent as the Lythion approached the inner lock, then passed through into a bright, sunny day.
I winced at the brightness. So did everyone else. Dalton hissed.
“Sorry,” Lyssa said. The windows shifted to a brown filter, and the dazzle eased. “We’re close to the mirrors, up here,” she added. “But it’s also summer at the moment.”
“They have seasons?” Fiori asked, glancing over her shoulder at Lyssa.
Lyssa nodded. “The biosphere responds better to distinct seasons. I believe they also have scheduled drought years, and flood years, too.”
We all peered through the windows with even more interest.
I knew that the city spread across the interior of the cylinder. I’d even seen drawings and images of the place as a kid, but none of it had impacted me the way seeing it for myself did.
It was a nation, not a city. I could see vast tracts of trees, open green land, rivers, even farmed fields. In among them were pockets of buildings—but not cute, rustic single-use structures like Shostavich ran to. There were towers and glittering complexes, tiers and walkways. There were smaller buildings which I guessed might actually be single-use, dotted among them.
The patches of urban space and open areas curved in a great arc, up either side of the cylinder and overhead. Sixty-three kilometers around, I reminded myself. “How long is Wynchester?” I asked, for the far distant end of the cylinder was blurred by atmosphere and distance.
“Fifty-five kilometers,” Lyssa replied.
Marlow blew out a soft breath in reaction to that.
Everywhere, there were roads and pathways, winding in among the buildings and shooting through the open areas, all of them with ground cars and pedestrians, which were mere dots to our gaze.
The air overhead was thick with traffic, too, made almost entirely of tiny personal craft. We were the only behemoth in local space. No wonder they wanted us to sit our ass down as fast as possible.
One of the little craft matched our pace for a minute, and we all stared at it. I could see three people and a fourth empty chair inside the clear dome over the top of the craft. None of the passengers paid us any attention. They were too busy talking to each other. I couldn’t see anyone controlling the thing. I couldn’t see manual controls, either.
The craft peeled away from our vector and headed down toward the buildings eight or nine kilometers below.
“Descending,” Lyssa murmured, as the Lythion also sank toward the land beneath. “Gravity increasing.”
The navigation engines had to work harder to counter the gravity as it increased so we didn’t drop like a very large stone.
Everyone at the windows was bent to peer straight down beneath us. I went over to the window myself and looked down just as they were.
There were dozens of square, flat areas below, each a dull grey brown, some of them occupied by interstellar ships, some empty. One of them flashed green around the perimeter. Our assigned platform.
I could see a narrow road leading up to the platform from the land below, where it joined with broader roads, which snaked around the cylinder in broad curves. Buildings were tucked between the platforms and also beneath them. It was difficult to judge how high off the ground the platforms were raised, but it was more than a few meters.
Then the view was lost to us, blocked by the platform itself as we settled down onto it with barely a jolt. The engines immediately cut out.
“Thank you, Great Lock Control,” Lyssa murmured, vocalizing the end of her conversation with traffic control. She turned to me. “Lyth’s car says it is minutes away.”
“From the other end of the city?” I asked, astonished.
“I hailed them as soon as we emerged into normal space,” Lyssa said. “And the cars are fast, once they’re in the air.”
“Clearly,” I replied.
“I want to step outside. Smell fresh air,” Fiori said. “Can we?” She glanced at me.
“I suppose so,” I said slowly, for I was feeling a bit lost. “If we don’t go off the platform, I can’t see there would be an issue. Treat the
