Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 38
“A million people,” she said in wonder.
“Our biggest city,” Kee said. “There will never be another one this big. All the others are smaller, and all the future ones will be, too. Coriolis City is ten kilometers across. But we found that the ideal size is seven kilometers, five hundred thousand people. Some of the newer ones are only five kilometers. Much easier to keep in equilibrium, only two hundred fifty thousand people. A million is a little too much.”
Solveig watched the projection on the forward bulkhead all the way through the approach. The base of the city took up more of her field of view with every passing kilometer. The speed readout on the screen showed they were traveling at three hundred fifty kilometers per hour, but the city was floating on the same atmospheric rapids at the same speed, so the rate of closure was almost leisurely. She had expected the ride to be bumpy, but the shuttle hardly moved in the current. She had taken gyrofoil rides on Gretia that had been more unpleasant. It did not feel like they were traveling through the fastest-moving atmosphere in the system. She concluded that the shuttles had exceptionally capable AI to compensate for the movement of the currents, supremely gifted pilots, or a combination of both.
They came in low over the lip of the city base. The spaceport was in a wide, trough-shaped depression on the surface of the base. The torus of the city extended downward in her field of view, an immense silvery-white ring of flexible composite, inflated with ludicrous amounts of helium and hydrogen. Solveig knew the basics of the physics—in this dense atmosphere, even the breathable air under the dome was a lifting gas—but the book knowledge didn’t make the sight of a floating city any more believable. It was as if the Acheroni had tricked gravity somehow.
The shuttle touched down on its designated landing pad. A minute later, a large airlock door opened in the station wall in front of them, and the entire pad moved into the lock. Behind the ship, the door closed again to keep out the atmosphere. Then Solveig’s view blurred as several dispenser frames passed over the shuttle in rapid succession and doused it in foamy liquid.
“Decontamination,” Kee explained. “To neutralize the sulfuric acid on the hull. Not as friendly as air.”
An attendant appeared and offered refreshments while they were waiting for the decon process to finish. Solveig accepted some water and a small bowl of almonds.
“It must be annoying to have to wait this out every time you land,” she said. “Just when you’re ready to get off the shuttle.”
Kee smiled.
“Not at all. I want to think it’s like taking a shower when I get home from work. It cleans the outside world off. And it gets me in the mood to relax.”
Finally, the sensors seemed to be satisfied that the shuttle was clean. The inner airlock door opened, and the shuttle moved into the spaceport’s arrival ring. The attendants helped them out of the safety harnesses. It felt good to be able to stand up again. When the main door of the shuttle opened to let them deplane, the Acheroni attendants deferred to Solveig, gesturing for her to go first and nodding their heads respectfully. She thanked them in Acheroni, which got her more smiles. Then she walked across into the docking collar.
Here we go, she thought. My first steps on a different world.
The welcoming committee waiting for them in the arrivals lounge was several times larger than the little Ragnar delegation. Hanzo Industries seemed to be determined to make sure that Solveig didn’t feel slighted by a lack of people to greet her. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been a Ragnar family member on Acheron since the war began, and the attention she was receiving made it look like they feared it would be another ten years until the next one stopped by. She accepted a bouquet of beautiful Acheroni orchids and exchanged greetings and nods with a line of Hanzo representatives that seemed to renew itself constantly. Gisbert and the rest of the Ragnar delegation had their translator buds in their ears, but Solveig was determined to get a return on all those years of Acheroni, and she exchanged greetings in the local language, knowing that Kee was nearby to iron out any bumps in the discourse. Her efforts were far better received than she knew the quality of her Acheroni warranted, but it gave her a sense of accomplishment nonetheless.
Finally, the welcome parade came to a close. Solveig handed her orchid bouquet to Anja and let Kee and one of the senior Hanzo people take her into their middle for the walk out to what she presumed was their transportation into the city.
The spaceport had a main atrium, but calling it by that noun seemed hopelessly inadequate as a descriptor. Solveig let slip her second amazed gasp of the day. The side of the spaceport facing into the city was a massive viewport without any visible seams, at least two hundred meters from one side to the other and fifty meters tall. It gave an unobstructed view of the bustle beyond. Coriolis City was like the busiest part of Sandvik, but cloned and then stacked on top of itself three or four times, countless rows of tall, gleaming buildings competing for air and sunlight, crisscrossed by streets that looked like canyons carved through mountains. Gyrofoils were flitting down those canyons on many different