Kyra was a little more brave. She tentatively rested her rump upon another bench, and watched with interest as it re-formed itself around her body, gradually transforming itself into a comfortable chair complete with a backrest. “Not bad,” she said to Sandy. “Try it.”
“Like hell . . . !”
“Do it.” Sean nodded toward the doors; they remained open, and the tram was still at the platform. “I don't think this thing is going anywhere until we're seated.” Sandy scowled, then tentatively sat down beside Kyra, making a face when the bench flowed up around her.
They'd barely taken their seats when the doors shut, and the tram started moving. It didn't reenter the tunnel, though, but instead continued on its way through the biopod. Through the windows on the right side of the car, Sean saw the dark landscape they had just crossed. Clusters of light glimmered here and there upon the terrain; judging from their distance, it appeared that the monorail led across the top of the biopod's southern mountain range, just below the lower edge of the ceiling.
“Can we take these off now?” Sandy asked.
Sean didn't reply, but instead carefully pulled down his mask. He hesitated, then took a shallow breath. He didn't start choking; the air was cool and breathable. He grinned and nodded, and the two women gratefully removed their own masks.
“Thank God.” Kyra pushed back her parka hood and pulled off her goggles. “I was getting really tired of that.”
“You and me both.” Sandy unzipped the front of her parka and shrugged out of it. “It's warm in here, too.” She chuckled. “All we need is a hot shower and a cold brew, and we're set.”
Sean had been wearing his goggles for so long that they were stuck to his face; he winced as he peeled them off. Standing up to remove his parka, he noticed for the first time another control panel, this one on the tram wall opposite the door they'd come through. It was identical to one they'd found on the station platform, only this time a tiny yellow light slowly traveled across the upper-left edge of the hexagon.
It was impossible to tell how fast the tram was going. With the windows showing little but the darkness outside, he couldn't even guess at their rate of speed. But if the biopod was a thousand miles long, and if the tram was traveling atâsay, three hundred miles per hour, the average rate of a maglev trainâit would take a little more than three hours for them to reach the other end of just this one biopod. No telling how long it would take for them to get to Nueva Italia.
“I wouldn't count on getting a shower anytime soon.” Reaching for his pack, he unstrapped his sleeping bag and dropped it on the floor. “Might as well make ourselves comfortable. I think we're in for a long ride.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
B
Y THE TIME ANDROMEDA, D'ANGUILO, AND ZEUS REACHED the tram station, morningâor at least something that resembled morningâhad dawned within Nueva Italia.
“I don't think I'm ever going to get used to this.” Andromeda gazed down upon the biopod as the lift approached the top of the escalator. As the artificial sky gradually depolarized, sunlight filtered in through the ceiling, erasing the darkness that had lain across the rolling terrain. “I like it when the sun actually comes up, not . . . well, this.”
D'Anguilo gave a wry smile but said nothing. He was bent over his backpack, nervously checking it againâas he'd already done twice alreadyâto make sure that he hadn't left anything behind. By contrast, Zeus was stifling a yawn; he hadn't removed his pack since they'd boarded the lift, and it looked as if he was ready for a hike.
“I'm sure you're not the only one, skipper,” the chief petty officer said. “Isn't it the
soranta
who have some elaborate religious ceremony every morning?”
“That was before they adopted
Sa'Tong
.” D'Anguilo zipped shut a side pocket of his backpack, then opened another to peek inside. “Most of them ceased their sun rituals a long time ago.” He glanced up at the ceiling, beyond which countless other hexagons were beginning to make their appearance. “That's assuming, of course, that they have their own habitat.”
Andromeda followed his gaze. Again, she was reminded of the fact that humans were far from alone on Hex. Elsewhere in the vast Dyson sphere were other races: not just
danui
and
arsashi
, but also
hjadd
,
kua'tah
,
nord
, and no telling how many more. So far, humankind had met only a handful of other Talus races; there were dozens more yet to be encountered. Was it possible that they were all there? Only the
danui
knew . . . and they weren't telling.
“I'm sure we'll soon find out,” she murmured. “If all goes well, I mean.”
D'Anguilo straightened up from his pack. “I wouldn't worry, Captain. The
danui
asked you to come meet them. It wouldn't make sense for them to extend an invitation if they didn'tâ”
He was interrupted by a soft chime from the control panel, signaling that the lift had reached the top of the escalator. It slipped into a broad slot within the station veranda and came to a halt. Andromeda reached down to pick up her pack; without a word, she hefted it over her shoulder, then led the others off the lift and across the veranda to the platform.
As expected, the tunnel was empty. “Guess they want us to enter those coordinates before they send a tram,” Andromeda said. Putting down her pack, she reached into a side pocket for the scroll that Zeus had brought her, then walked over to the station control panel. The same message that she'd read yesterday was still there when she unrolled the scroll, its long string of
danui
numbers unchanged.
She was about to enter the first digit into the panel's top row when D'Anguilo reached forward to stop her. “Wait a minute,” he said, blocking her hand with his own. “You're getting it wrong.”
Andromeda frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the bottom row.” He pointed to the seven digits at the bottom of the screen. “If we're right, and that square is their version of a zero and the crosshatched diamond is their six, then they read from right to left, not left to right.” He moved his finger to the scroll. “You were about to start with the figure on the far left, when you should start with the one on the far right.”
“That makes sense, yeah.” Zeus was peering over their shoulders. “If the bottom row is their way of showing us their numerical system, the top row would be entered the same way.”
Andromeda nodded. Once again, she found herself being forced to admit that, however irritating Tom D'Anguilo might occasionally be, the expedition couldn't have gotten as far as it had without his intuition. Yet as she started over again, carefully entering the coordinates the way he'd indicated, she couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. She couldn't put her finger on it, but . . .
Never mind.
She forced herself to concentrate on entering the nineteen-digit string in proper sequence.
Whatever it is, it can't be important.
Andromeda entered the final digit, and the top row flashed in acknowledgment as, once again, a circular panel in the platform ceiling lit to capture the three of them in a shaft of light. They stood patiently while the station scanned them. A couple of minutes went by, then there was a rush of air from the tunnel as a tram appeared. It coasted to a stop at the platform, and its forward door cycled open, a silent invitation to board the vehicle.
Zeus started to step forward, but Andromeda raised a hand to stop him. “Just a sec,” she said, then she touched the headset of the long-range transceiver slung beneath her left arm. “Team Two to Nueva Italia. Com check. Do you copy?”
“We copy, Team Two. Over.”
Jason Ressler's voice was clear in her earpiece; if she'd wanted to, Andromeda could have walked to the veranda railing and waved to her first officer in the base camp far below.
“Affirmative, Nueva Italia. Over.” Andromeda switched to a different channel. “Survey Two to
Montero
. Com check. Do you copy? Over.”
A few seconds passed, then she heard Anne's voice, a little less clear than Jason's. “Montero
to Survey Two. Roger that. Good luck, Captain. Over.”
“Thank you,
Montero
. Over and out.” Satisfied that their radio lifeline was operationalâat least for the time beingâAndromeda switched off the transceiver, then bent over to pick up her backpack. “All right, then . . . let's go.”
The tram was identical to the ones that
Montero
's crew had ridden before; Andromeda suspected that it might even be the same vehicle. As soon as she stepped aboard, though, she realized that it was different. Her nose caught the faint aroma of ocean surf; the windows had water on them, and the benches were slightly moist. It appeared that the interior been soaked recently and hadn't completely dried.
“What gives?” Zeus asked. “Did they hose down this thing before they sent it to us?”
D'Anguilo noticed a small puddle on the floor. He knelt beside it and, before Andromeda could stop him, dipped a fingertip into the puddle and laid it on the tip of his tongue.
“Salt water,” he said. “What do you want to bet that the last habitat this thing visited has an aquatic environment?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Andromeda set down her pack. The doors shut behind them, but the tram didn't move. Perhaps it was waiting until they were all safely seated. She picked a bench near the windows that looked a little drier than the others; as before, the memory-material of its pad began conforming to her body as soon as she sat down. D'Anguilo and Zeus dropped their packs in the cargo space and took seats beside her, and without any further the delay, the tram started forward.
This time, though, it didn't reenter the node from which it had emerged but instead shot down the track until it entered a transparent tube running across the top of Nueva Italia's southern mountain range. Through the windows, they could see the valley spread out below them. Clouds had begun to form below the ceiling, casting shadows across grassy plains and wooded hills. No sign of habitation; the base camp was already lost to sight. Andromeda wondered if this was what Coyote had looked like to the crew of the URSS
Alabama
when they'd set foot on the new world for the first time.
“Funny,” Zeus said. “You'd think that, if we're being taken to meet the
danui
, they'd pick a more direct route.”
Andromeda nodded. The biopod was a thousand miles long; it would take hours to cross it. No wonder she'd been told to expect a long journey. “Maybe they want us to look over the real estate.” She turned to D'Anguilo. “What do you think? Is the rest of the hexagon going to look like this part of it?”
“Maybe . . . but I sort of doubt it.” He folded his arms across his chest, assuming a professorial posture. “If what I suspect is true, and the
danui
adopted geospheric design principles in building Hex, then we'll probably have a number of different environments. Desert, arctic tundra, maybe even miniature seas . . .”
“Okay, stop right there.” Andromeda held up a hand. “Tell me what you think is going on here.”
“I'm not ready to . . .”
“Oh no, you don't.” She shook her head. “This is at least the second or third time you've said that you suspect something about this place, but when I've asked you what you meant, you've backed off. Quit stalling.”
D'Anguilo gave her a sidelong glance; he appeared to realize that she was serious because he shrugged as though resigning himself to the inevitable. “Very well, then, but understand that this is all still tentative. Until we meet the
danui
, I'm not sure how much any of this is true.”
“Understood.”
“Okay . . . we know this is a Dyson sphere, and that it's comprised of billions of habitats, with each one probably unique to the race that inhabits it. Something of this scale and complexity not only suggests extraordinary engineering skills . . . It also suggests environmental control to a degree that we can barely imagine. If the
danui
hadn't accomplished that, then there's no way that Hex could function. It would become uninhabitable, no matter how well it was built.”
“All right, I follow you. Go on.”
“Good. Now, think about what we've seen so far. The solar sails and magnetic cables, and how they work together to keep Hex in proper rotation while supplying energy and shielding the biopods from cosmic radiation. The way the
Montero
was automatically . . . or, rather, autonomously . . . guided to this habitat, and the way that it was docked in the node. How the ceiling darkens by itself to furnish night and lightens again to provide daylight. How the tram stations operate . . . scanning us before we climb aboard, then sending a tram that has our own atmosphere, even though the race that used it last might have gills instead of lungs. Even these seats”âhe patted the bench they shared, which had risen to provide a cushion for their backsâ“change according to our needs. What does all that tell you?”
“That they've got one hell of an AI running this place,” Zeus said.
“Maybe, but think about that, too. Hex is . . . how big? One hundred eighty-six million miles in diameter? The biggest and best AI we've ever built would be able to control only this one habitat, and it would be a strain to do so. The
danui
are well ahead of us, technologically speaking, but I haven't heard of their being capable of building AIs of such magnitude. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing in
deus ex machina
.”