Death Sentence (22 page)

Yalananav looked up at Taranarak with a baleful expression. "He's dead, of course, so the duty is yours. See that you don't end up the way he did."

FIFTEEN

UP IS DOWN

Whoever had done the general intelligence report on Metran hadn't wasted any time trying to learn the local names for buildings, structures, and so on. That was, perhaps, understandable, given the difficulties that human tongues had with the Metrannan language, but it did take the poetry out of things. It seemed especially true of the Grand Elevator. The terms for its various components were accurate enough, but not quite in keeping with the heroic scale of a Space Elevator. It was as if the
Mona Lisa
had been labeled "Portrait of Unknown Female Subject" or the Coliseum in Rome were called "Ruin of Obsolete Mass-Entertainment Structure."

But, as Hannah pointed out to Jamie, gen-intell reports weren't supposed to be poetry. They were supposed to tell you what you needed to stay alive.

The
Bartholomew Sholto
cut her engines and came to a dead stop relative to what the intell reports called the Free Orbit Level Station of the Grand Elevator, five kilometers ahead of it in orbit. Hannah sat in the pilot's seat, Jamie standing behind her left shoulder. Even at five kilometers' distance, the massive structure that was Free Orbit Level Station took up nearly the entire field of view--and it was merely
part
of the Grand Elevator.

Free Orbit Level Station resembled a giant rimless plate, roughly three kilometers in diameter, with the concave side facing the planet's surface. Gravity generators provided normal gravity over as much of the inner surface as was convenient at any given moment. At the center of the Main Field was Free Orbit Level Station Nexus itself, in effect a small domed city, with the cable clusters running through it.

The orbit-side end of the Elevator was parked over the equator of Metran, in an exact stationary orbit. The shaft of the Elevator dove straight down to the far-distant surface of the planet, a massive pillar of impossible length and impossible strength, seemingly supporting the weight of the Free Orbit Station Level, and, thousands of kilometers farther out, Counterweight Level Station as well.

That was illusion, of course. The connection to the ground was not a tower or any kind of rigid structure. It was a tether, a cluster of cables, and the Free Orbit Station Level was in fact in orbit, with no more need to be supported than the Moon needed to be held on a string to keep it in place around the Earth. The cable cluster merely provided a physical connection with the ground, a path along which the Grand Elevator's cars could travel back and forth to the surface of the planet.

The cable cluster leading to Counterweight Station served a similar purpose to the cable to groundside. Counterweight Level Station mainly consisted of a small asteroid tethered to the Grand Elevator in order to balance the weight of the groundside cable, thus lifting the center of gravity of the Elevator as a whole up to Free Orbit Level's altitude.

Far below, at the equator of Metran and invisibly far away, stood Groundside Station, atop an artificial mountain built for the specific purpose of supporting the Station high enough to get clear of the thickest part of the sensible atmosphere.

The huge structure moved passengers and cargo back and forth between space and the planet's surface with the greatest possible efficiency. An Elevator car would leave the planet's surface, riding its cable, moving through the lower and upper atmosphere at relatively low velocities of no more than a few hundred kilometers an hour, and then accelerate to a speed of several thousand kilometers an hour once it reached space. It would race up the tens of thousands of kilometers to Free Orbit Station, riding on super-high-efficiency electric motors, with no need for pilots or navigation or orbital computation or course corrections or fuel tanks. The cars could even recover a large fraction of the energy used to lift them by regenerative braking on the return trip.

Each part of the Grand Elevator was massive in size and hugely impressive. Taken as a whole, it was daunting, gigantic, overwhelming.

"Still want to talk about how we've almost caught up with them?" Hannah asked Jamie quietly.

"No," said Jamie, and left it at that.

"They're
starting
to think about an Elevator for Earth," Hannah went on. "It's probably been tried about a dozen times, but it never comes to anything. But this--this is ten times, a
hundred
times, more ambitious than what they have in mind for Earth. And this is for what is really a pretty minor world. The Metrannan population on-planet is only about twelve million or so, and essentially all of that is in one city. This structure is there for the benefit of something like the current population of Los Angeles plus London. There are Vixa worlds that have
multiple
Elevators, five or six of them strung around the equator, and all the orbit-side levels connected by a ring structure that goes clear around the planet."

"Okay," said Jamie. "If you wanted to make sure I was even more intimidated, you've done your job."

"Good," said Hannah. "We don't have the least reason in the universe to feel sure of ourselves."

"This I understand," said Jamie. As he looked out at the Grand Elevator, it seemed impossible that their clever little cover story about looking for a missing agent could ever stand up against the beings who built
that.

A green light illuminated on the control board, and a cheerful beep tone went off. A message on the display screen confirmed that the Grand Elevator's Traffic Control Center had managed to lock in on their ship's nav systems, primitive though it might be compared to local designs. "The
Sholto
has received and accepted a final approach flight plan and will fly it on automatic," Hannah announced, reading the display. "Suits me. I wouldn't want to try flying through artificial grav bubbles and risk dinging their nice shiny giant dinner platter." She keyed in the approval code, and the
Sholto
immediately came about to a new attitude and began moving smartly toward their designated landing spot.

They flew over the edge of the inner side of the Main Landing Field about twenty meters up, the
Sholto
's landing gear extending and locking into place as they approached. The
Sholto
pointed her nose directly at the planet and her base at the field, sliding sideways over the featureless white expanse. They passed by three or four different ships as they went in, all of them far larger, far sleeker-looking, and far more beautiful than the stubby little
Sholto
. It was impossible not to feel like the ugly duckling in among the graceful swans, the grubby little child in rumpled pajamas allowed to come downstairs for a minute to gawp at the elegance and refinement of a fancy grown-up dinner party.

We don't belong here,
Jamie told himself.
We're not ready.
He couldn't help but think of Special Agent Trevor Wilcox III. He must have flown almost the identical approach, alone in the
Irene Adler
, having no idea what he was being asked to carry or why, facing the awesome sight below without the benefit of the steadying influence of someone like Hannah, who had seen it all, done it all--and survived it all.

But Trevor got through it. He didn't let himself get intimidated. Or if he did, he didn't let that paralyze him or keep him from doing his job. Whatever it was that killed him was caused by the people who could build all
this.
But he kept fighting to finish his job, even after he knew he was dying. He did better than go down fighting. He went down
thinking.
We can't--I can't--let him down.
And there was one other thing he could think of to help stiffen his spine. In the end, Trevor had beaten them. Unless Hannah and he were misreading all the clues so far, Trevor had stopped the people who had killed him from getting what they wanted.

The
Sholto
fired her attitude thrusters to halt their forward motion. They were over their assigned landing spot. The overhead thrusters fired once, very gently, to propel them downward onto the field.

Suddenly Jamie's stomach did an all-too-familiar backflip. "Hey!" he cried out. "Our gravity field just cut out! We're in zero gee!"

"Not for long," Hannah said. "Standard safety procedure. Unpleasant things can happen when one artificial gee field is inside another. Hang on. Our landing gear is just about one meter off the field now, so..."

They landed with a sudden, unceremonious bump.

"And we're down," said Hannah, checking her displays rather than the view out the window. Suddenly the whole ship shuddered for a moment, and there was a sound like the wind moaning past the hull.

"What was
that
?" Jamie asked. "We didn't lose pressure or something, did we?"

"Mmphmm. No. Just the opposite, in fact."

"What?"

"As of ten seconds ago, we have breathable air out there. Very close to a pressure match and gas composition with the surface of Metran. Cute. Very, very cute."

"They can't possibly be pressurizing this whole structure!" Jamie protested.

"Probably not," Hannah agreed. "But I wouldn't put it completely past them. When they decide to, the Elder Races can do practically anything. The show-offs. But my guess is that they use some sort of confinement field to create bubbles of pressurization where they need them. They just formed one around our landing point. Ain't that a neat trick?"

"Yeah. Really neat."

"Glad you enjoyed it. Don't feel even more intimidated or anything. Okay. I'm going to need about five or ten minutes to power us down and safe the ship's systems. Once we have that out of the way, we can work the really important problems. The big decisions."

"Okay, fine. I'll play the straight man. What big decisions?"

"What are we going to wear?"

It was a joke, of course. Except that it wasn't. Metrannans took dress very seriously. There were documented cases of humans getting themselves killed as a result of committing the deadly insult of meeting with a Metrannan in inappropriate garb. Supposedly, it was just as dangerous to show up dressed to the nines for the local equivalent of a picnic as it was to show up in rumpled work clothes to a formal reception.

The Metrannans imposed a more stringent rule on themselves when visiting human worlds, or at least indulged their love of dressing up, and often wore adapted versions of human-style outfits, with results that were often disconcerting or hilarious. Humans who dealt with Metrannans had to know how to keep poker-faced.

Supposedly, the human section of the Metrannan clothing database was larger--and more filled with errors--than that of any other species. To Jamie, that merely suggested that humans were the species second-most obsessed with clothing.

Fortunately, the dreadful mix-ups and errors of the early days had been resolved, and there was no danger of the database dictating that Jamie show up to a state dinner in a muu-muu and carrying a surfboard--an unfortunate occurrence from about sixty years back that would have been dismissed as urban legend if not for the photographs.

The dress requirements as stated for "generalized official business interaction activity" were far more sensible, and had them both in very conservative dark business suits. Jamie's charcoal-grey suit and blue shirt were of a cut and style and color that was not much changed since the later days of the nineteenth century, and Hannah's black jacket and knee-length skirt over a white blouse were almost as ancient a uniform.

Jamie didn't care for his fire-engine-red tie, and Hannah made it clear she had never been a fan of gathered lace at the collar, but both of them felt they had gotten off easy. Even if nearly all the bugs had been squeezed out of the Metrannan dress database, no BSI agent ever checked the database without worrying that it would require a tiara and roller skates.

"You look pretty good," Hannah told Jamie, straightening his tie. "Maybe it's time you thought about wearing something besides flight coveralls and flak jackets on missions."

"I'm wearing a flak jacket right now, underneath this getup," Jamie said, pulling his jacket closed. "It itches."

"Deal with it," Hannah said. "Come on. Let's get going."

They collected their duffel bags. Each of them also had a huge rolling suitcase--more like an old stone-age steamer trunk--full of clothes suitable for all occasions. They tried to wedge themselves and their luggage into the
Sholto
's lower-deck air lock, but the big cases simply wouldn't fit with two people. They would have to do it in two passes--both of them going out together with the duffels, then Hannah waiting outside while Jamie went back for the larger cases. The pressure difference with the outside air was relatively small, and the lock cycled fast. The outer door swung open, and they looked out on a broad, strange, and oddly featureless milk-white plain.

Directly ahead of them was Free Orbit Level Station Nexus, the focal point of activity for Free Orbit Level Station, and, for that matter, the entire Grand Elevator. The wide silvery bulk of the cable cluster sprouted up out of the top of the Nexus, drawing the eye irresistibly upward into the black, star-spangled sky, up and up and up until the cable itself narrowed and vanished in the distance, and still up again--to the sight of Metran, directly and exactly overhead. The planet was in half phase, the terminator knife-sharp through the exact centerline of the world, sunset at the Groundside Station.