James P. Hogan Read Online Free Page A

that Earnshaw was holding. “Pictures are permitted anywhere within the visitor zones. Thank you, and enjoy your stay with us. Next, please.”
    Still loping in bounds more than walking – because of their negligible weight near the spin axis – they followed a short ramp to a gate that led from the arrival area into the reception lounge. Groups of people were already forming around tables set, cocktail-party style, with assorted hors d’oeuvres, breads, meats, and cheeses. Earnshaw’s wrist unit, which looked like an ordinary computer-communicator, beeped almost inaudibly as they passed through the gate. He stopped a few feet into the lounge to press something on it and consult the readout.
    “That Russian was quite civilized,” Paula said as she stopped along side him. “Are you sure we’re in the right place? I thought they were all supposed to be monsters.”
    “Today, they’re all on their best behavior,” Earnshaw said. “Shop window to the world. Come on, let’s get a drink and eat.” They began moving toward the bar that had been set up by one wall. “Oh, incidentally” – he made it sound like an afterthought —” you’ve just been X-rayed.” Fortunately the special equipment they were carrying had been designed with that kind of possibility in mind, and would have shown nothing unusual.
     
    For the next half hour or so, the guests munched on snacks and stretched their legs as guests of the Soviet press agency Novosti, while two speakers delivered a double act that alternated welcoming remarks and a preview of the coming tour with a lament for misunderstood Marxism. Then the party moved on out of the reception lounge into a large, brightly lit gallery with corridors leading off in all directions, railed catwalks above, machinery bays below, doorways everywhere, and a confusing geometry in which verticals converged overhead and the floor was visibly curved.
    As they waited to board elevators for the half-mile “descent” to the rim, Paula looked around to reconcile the surroundings with the published construction plans that she and Earnshaw had spent hours memorizing. She wondered if it was significant that the tour didn’t take in any part of the hub system. The same thought seemed to have occurred also to a woman behind them, who was wearing a European Space Agency badge. “Excuse me,” the ESA woman said to the red-armbanded steward by the door as the group began shuffling forward into the elevator.
    “Madam?”
    “Are we going straight down to the ring now? We’re not going to see anything up here first?”
    “There is really nothing of special interest to see up here.”
    “Nothing? That’s surprising. What’s behind that far bulkhead, and the pipes back there, for instance – between here, where we’re standing, and the next spoke?”
    “Only storage tanks – fuel for the Earth and lunar transporters, various agricultural and industrial chemicals, and water.
    “You must store an enormous amount of everything. There’s nothing else?”
    “Just storage tanks, madam.”
    Earnshaw glanced at Paula and raised an eyebrow. That was where the launchers for some of the ejectable modules that Jonathan Watts had talked about were supposed to be located.
     
    After the long flight up from Earth orbit, the return to normal bodyweight as the elevator moved out to the rim felt like a debilitating heaviness creeping through their bodies; but in another respect, it was reassuring to emerge walking naturally again.
    Valentina Tereshkova contained three built-up urban zones inside its main torus, which in the official bureaucratese of the predistributed literature were designated, mind-bogglingly, “high-density residential-occupational social units.” The bureaucrats didn’t have to live there, however, and the Russian guides who accompanied the visitors down from the hub referred to them simply as “towns.” Each was clustered around the base of one of the major spokes, which formed