walls were covered with dings and scratches, as if the car had seen a lot of
heavy use moving cargo. There was a meter-wide porthole in the back wall of
the car, likewise a bit dinged-up, and another like it in the ceiling.
However, there seemed to be nothing but blackness to see. "Hang on just a
second," she said. "We have to move the car through an airlock. Pressure
difference. And. ah-well, something happened to the air where we're going."
She worked the controls, and the car lurched forward a few meters. They
heard a hatch seal behind them. There was the whir of air pumps and then,
through the viewport, they saw another hatch open before them. Sonsen pushed
another button and the car started to move, not up or down, but sideways.
Lights on the exterior of the car came on, showing the way forward. The
tunnel they were in was circular in cross-section, and dark pink in color.
The tunnel ahead trailed off into what seemed an infinity of darkness. Luke
felt as if they had been swallowed by some huge creature and were rushing
down its gullet, toward an appointment with the digestive system. "We might
as well start out with Hollowtown," Son-sen said. "It's what everyone always
wants to see first." "Hollowtown?" Lando asked. There was a second's awkward
pause before Sonsen spoke. "You're not all thai well briefed, are you?" she
asked. "Things have happened kind of fast," Luke said. "There hasn't been a
lot of time." "I guess not. Well, let me start from scratch. Hollowtown is
the open space in the exact center of the central sphere. It's a spherical
hollow about sixty kilometers across. Where you docked was just about at the
join between the North Pole-that's what the locals call the cylinders, the
North and South Poles-and the central sphere. We're now moving parallel to
the axis of rotation, sideways, in toward Hollowtown. We have to pass
through about twenty kilometers of decks and shells first. A shell is what
we call real high-ccihnged deck, anything over about twenty meters or so.
There are about two thousand levels all told. We're accelerating pretty fast
right now. faster than you think. We'll come up in Hollowtown in about five
minutes, and then start moving downslopc, toward the heavy-gravity areas.
Farther out from the axis you go, the more of a spin, and the higher
effective gravity, of course." "The spin must get to be an awful nuisance,"
Kalenda said. "Why haven't you shifted over to standard artificial gravity?"
"We've thought about it. Cap Con Ops-sorry-the capital construction
operations office-has done about a dozen studies on de-spinning the station
and using standard artigrav." Luke managed lo translate that last as
"artificial gravity" and tried to nod encouragingly. "So what do the studies
come up with?" "Too expensive, too complicated, too disruptive, and too many
unknowns. The station's structure might or might not respond well to the
shifted stresses. But it's your problem now. You can de-spin it all you want
as far as I'm concerned." "I take it you want out," Luke said. "Do I ever. I
was into real short-time when the first flare went whump. I was almost down
to counting the days on one hand-and then, well, you know the rest," "Lousy
briefing, remember?" Lando said. "Wait a second. You people don't know about
the ftaresT' "First we've heard of them," Luke said. "We just broke through
the interdiction field into the system a few days ago." Sonsen let out a low
whistle. "Broke through the interdiction field? That's something, all right.
I'll bet whoever is creating that field isn't real happy with you just now."
Kalenda frowned. "Hold it. You're generating the field." "What? What are you
talking about?" "The field. The interdiction field is centered on this
station. Centerpoint Station is generating the interdiction field. And the
communications jamming, for that matter." "Burning stars. It is?" "You
didn't know that," Lando said. It was not a question. "Nope. None of us here
did. Looks like my briefing wasn't so good either." Luke was getting more
confused by the minute. How could the people running the station not know
the station was creating the field? And what were these flares Sonsen was
talking about? It was becoming plainer and plainer that things were not as
they appeared. But it was also becoming progressively less clear how they
appeared in the first place. "I think we have a few things to talk about,"
said Luke. The turbovutor moved smoothly toward Hol-lowtown.
CHAPTER SIX
The View From Inside What you've got to understand about this place is that
no one understands it," Sonsen said. "We just live here. It's here, so are
we, and that's about it. No one thought much about why things were the way
they were. We didn't know why Centerpoint did most of the things it did, but
we knew what most of them were. At least we thought we knew, up until a
while ago. Up until the terrorists started showing us a few tricks." "We
just got here," Lando said. "What terrorists?" Sonsen shook her head. "I'd
love to know the answer to that one. There have been attacks-nasty ones. But
no one has claimed responsibility or made demands. Not so much as an
anonymous tip. We have suspects-the TraTaLibbers, the Two Worldcrs, and so
on, but they all denied having anything to do with it. Besides, if they
could pull off the stuff that's happened here, they wouldn't waste time
making threats. They'd just move in and take over. Of course, the station's
been cut off from everybody since the jamming started up. The investigators
on the ground could have wrapped up the case, solved it completely, and we
wouldn't know about it." Luke made a guess that TraTaLibbers meant the
Tra-lus and lalus Liberation Party, or some such. Two Worlders probably
meant some crowd that wanted separate governments for each planet. Guesses
were good enough. He had an idea what Sonsen meant, and he had a hunch the
groups in question were not worth worrying about. "Tell us about the altacks
themselves." Sonsen went to the turbovator car's viewport. "You'll be able
to see for yourself in a minute or two. Hollowtown used to be quite a place.
It grew enough food for the whole station, with a surplus. It had parks, and
nice homes, and lakes and streams. Green and blue, coo! and lovely. Then
someone started messing with the Glowpoint." "The Glowpoint being a sort of
artificial sun?" Luke asked. "Thai's right," said Sonsen. "And someone made
it go crazy." "Who normally controls the Glowpoint?" Lando asked. "No one.
of course," Sonsen replied, as if Lando had just asked where she kepi the
on-off switch for the galaxy's spin. "As I said, it's just there, the way
the whole station is. We didn't build it. I guess it was here when we got
here-whenever that was." "The Glowpoint is just there," Lando repeated.
"Anyone know how it works? How it gives off lighl?" "There arc theories of
one sort or another. One idea is that the Glowpoint draws its power directly
from the gravitational interrlux between Talus and Trains. But no one has
been able to come up with an instrument to test the idea. There's nothing
conclusive." "You don't know how the power source for half y
our food
production works?" Gaeriel asked. "No," said Sonsen. "Do you know how the
hyper-drive motors that got you here work?" Luke had to smile to himself.
Jenica Sonsen had a point. There was scarcely a human being alive who
completely understood every bit of technology he or she used. The
Centerpointers, it seemed, were just a bit more obvious about it. "Anyway,
we're coming up on Hollow town, if you want to get a look at it." The other
humans joined her at the viewport, leaving the two droids off by themselves
in the back of the ear. A spot of light began to gleam through the end of
the tunnel up ahead. "That's the Glowpoint," Sonsen said. "It's back to
normal, at least for the moment. That's what it used to be like ail the
time." The turbovator car moved closer and closer to the tunnel, giving the
illusion that it was moving faster and faster as it got closer to the light.
The humans in the group shielded their eyes against trie sudden brightness.
In a moment that seemed to take forever to arrive and then to happen all at
once, the turbovator car burst out of the end of the tunnel and, with a
stomach-dropping lurch, began to move straight downward. But no one in the
car paid much notice to the violent change of direction. They were too busy
looking at Hollowtown. Or what was left of it. The Glowpoint was just that,
a glowing point of light suspended in midair, in the precise center of the
huge spherical chamber. It looked like a miniature sun, warm, bright,
comfortable, inviting. But there was nothing comfortable about the landscape
below. Hollowtown had been burnt to a crisp, charred down to a blackened
land of ashes. Hazy clouds of dust floated everywhere. Luke could see the
skeletal remains of burned-out buildings, what had once been neatly planted
orchards that were now nothing but rows of incinerated tree stumps. A lake
had boiled dry, and the lake bottom was exposed, the remains of ruined
pleasure boats lying there like children's toys left behind when the water
was drained from the tub. It was a terrible place, a nightmare place, made
all the worse because it had so plainly been lovely, well tended, not so
very long before. "Normally I'd stop the car at one of the intermediate
stops and let you get out and look around," Sonsen said. "But there's just
about no free oxygen left in there. All of it got consumed in the fires. 1
don't know how we'll ever get breathable air in there again. For that
matter, it took some doing to get breathable air in this turbovator car. It
didn't use to have its own air source, just a compressor that pulled air in
from the outside. The air in the tunnel and near the spin axis was always
too thin to breathe. After the first flare, the techs installed a full air
system so I could still use the car. It's the fastest, easiest way from the
equator to the docking zone and the techsec. where I met you. The engineers
yanked the compressor and hooked up some air tanks and a carbon dioxide
scrubber." "What happened, exactly?" Lando asked. "The first flare was about
thirty or forty standard days ago," Sonsen said, her voice suddenly sad and
tired. "Up until then, everything you see here now was parkland, or
farmland, or luxury estates. It was beautiful to see. The Glowpoint would
shine down constantly. The farmers would use shadow-shields to block the
light and simulate seasons. From the inside of the shields, it could be as
light or as dark as you liked, just by twisting a dial. From the outside,
the shield could look like shadows, or like silver bubbles, or squares of
gold-however you wanted to set them. People decorated their shields all
sorts of ways. There was a special feeling, knowing it was always day
here-but that under every spot of gold was a secret little patch of night.
All of it gone now. Gone. Gone when the flare hit." "That was before the
jamming started. I came into the system about that time," Kalenda objected.
"I never heard anything about this. It should have been big news. The
biggest." "We tried to keep it as quiet as we could," Sonsen said. "The
Fed-Dub government was weak enough as it was. and what terrorists want most
is publicity. The Feds were afraid that if this got out, it could spark a
panic or even a rebellion here. And I guess they were right. We could keep
news of this"-she gestured toward the devastation out the window-"from
getting to the other worlds, but the refugees all had to go to Talus and
Tralus. The word spread, and we got our rebellions, all right. One on Talus,
two on Tralus. One group or the other-I don't even know which-landed a bunch
of fighters somewhere on the South Pole a while back, claimed the station
for themselves." Son-sen shrugged. "What was I going to do? Fight them off
by myself? I left them alone, and they did the same to me-until you chased
them off." "What do you mean, by yourself?" Gaeriel asked. "Are you the only
one still on the station?" Sonsen shook her head. "Probably not. It's a big
place. We tried to evac everyone, but my guess is someone got left behind. 1
haven't seen anybody, but that doesn't mean anything." "You keep talking
about the first flare," Lando asked, "'How many more were there?" "Just one
more. Two in all. The second happened just about a day or so before the
interdiction field and the communications jamming carne on. And don't ask me
terrorize, and there's nothing left to burn." "Uh-huh," Lando said, a bit
distractedly. "This station is exactly at the centerpoint, the barycenter
between Talus and Tralus, right?" "Right," Sonsen said, giving Lando another
strange look. "Were you people briefed at all'?" "I knew that much," Lando
said. "I just wanted to confirm it. The Glowpoint. It's at the exact center
of Holiowtown? And Hollowtown is at the exact center of the station?" "It
might be off by a centimeter or two. Feel free to get a measuring stick and
cheek if you want." Lando ignored Sonsen's sarcasm. He pointed out across
the huge spherical space, toward the far side of the rotation axis, and then
tilted his head back to look through the overhead viewport. "Those conical
structures coming up out of the North and South Poles, right on the rotation
axis. What can you tell me about them?" Luke looked through the overhead
viewport, and then through the forward view. Up until just a moment ago,
they had been too close to one cluster of cones to see it clearly, and the
other had been lost in the glare of the Glowpoint. But Lando seemed to have
spotted them in the moment they became visible. Almost as if he had expected
to see them. The two clusters seemed to be identical a larger central cone
surrounded by wha t looked to be six smaller cones, all with similar
proportions of height to width. Sonsen shrugged, a bit theatrically. "I can
tell you that one set is called the South Conical Mountains, and the other
is called the North Conicals. I'll let you figure out which is which. People
try to climb them once in a while, but even in the near zero-gee zone at the
spin axis, it isn't easy. Anything else of vital interest you need to know?
Like the names
of the boats in the bottom of the lake bed?" "No," said
Lando, his mind clearly somewhere else. "I think that's all I need to know."
"Great," said Sonsen. ''Sometime I'll have to spend five minutes learning
everything important about your homeworld." "Hmmm? What? No, no. I'm sorry.
I didn't mean it that way. I mean, I think I know enough to understand
what's going on." "After five minutes? No offense, but our ITA people have
been trying for just a bit longer, and we haven't worked it out yet." "ITA?"
Luke asked. "I believe in this context, the reference is to Intclli- gence
and Technical Assessment," Threepio said in a helpful tone of voice. "I'm
sure you've got good people," Lando said, "and I didn't mean to sound rude
or condescending. It's just a question of viewpoint. You've been seeing this
thing from the inside out your whole life. I happen to be in a position to
see it from the outside and-" Just at that moment, Artoo let off a low,
unsettled-sounding whistle. His view lens swiveled up to take in an overhead
view, and then he turned to Threepio and let off a series of beeps and
whistles that were too fast for Luke to follow. "Very well, Artoo, I will
inquire, ihough it is very rude of you to interrupt." Threepio turned toward
Jen-ica Sonsen. "Pardon the intrusion, Administrator Son-sen, but my
counterpart wishes to know, rather urgently, if the two previous Glowpoint
flare events started suddenly, or if there was a gradual increase in the
Sight source's brightness." It was plain that Sonsen was less and less sure
of this crowd of visitors with every moment that passed. "Interesting droids
you've got," she said to no one in particular. "As best we're able to tell,
the brightness came up gradually, over the course of about half an hour. We
don't know for sure because no one who was in here to see it got out
alive-and of course all the recording instruments were destroyed as well."
Artoo rocked back and forth on his roller legs and whistled urgently, his
head whirling back and forth. "Oh, dear!" Threepio said. "I quite agree. We
must depart at once." "What?" Lando asked. "Why? What's going on?" Threepio
turned stiffly toward Luke and stared at him in surprise. "You have not
noticed? Oh! Of course. My apologies. Your eyes compensate so automatically