Doctor Who_ The Also People - Ben Aaronovitch [75]
The Spaceport was a vast hexagonal hole cut into the side of the sphere and open to space. Roz and Chris got a really good look at it because shortly after Chris asked how they should handle things the travel capsule took a short cut. It shot out of a concealed tunnel in the landscape and went ballistic across the interior of the sphere at a moderately significant fraction of the speed of light. Chris pressed his nose up against the transparent side of the capsule and swore that he could actually see the relativistic effect on the colour of the lights ahead.
Roz just swore.
It wasn't that she had any objections to flying, it was just that she would have preferred some form of notification in advance. Several days in advance in fact. She managed to get the shakes under control just as the capsule was beginning to decelerate.
Because the capsule had artificial gravity it was uncomfortably like diving head first into a huge pool of black water. Uncomfortable for Roz anyway; Chris was too busy pointing at things and making excited noises.
The spaceport facility was three thousand kilometres across and hung in the exact centre of the open hexagon like a green and white starfish. As the capsule approached Roz saw that the side facing the sun was entirely covered in a landscaped park with its own weather system, a range of hills and a small inland sea. Points of light moved to and fro from the edges of the facility, marking the passage of ships and drones as they shuttled between it and the vast docks that lined the edges of the hexagon. What looked like a second, much smaller city floated off the facility's port side; later they learnt that this was in fact the TSH !C-Mel, a spaceship the size of a city.
The travel capsule touched down on the edge of a park where others of its kind were lined up in neat rows in the rain. As they stepped unsteadily onto the wet grass a machine voice welcomed them to Starport Facility: 'The most unimaginatively named city in the sphere,' it said proudly.
They got directions from an information centre disguised as a small dripping conifer tree and ran for a cluster of grav lifts nestling amongst some trees to the west. The doorfield on the lift sucked the water from their clothes and hair as they stepped inside.
The grav lift dropped them through the bedrock and out into a transparent tube that ran down the side of a conical-shaped building that protruded into space. Around them they could see similarly inverted structures hanging from the rock base of the facility. A web of walkways and grav tubes ran from building to building. It reminded Roz of the overcities back on Earth; even the way the people moved about, as if they really had somewhere to go, seemed comfortingly familiar. She felt Chris straighten imperceptibly beside her, automatically adopting an adjudicator's habitual stance. They looked at each other and grinned. 'Hello, hello,' said Chris,
'what's all this about then?'
Roz laughed.
'Look at that,' said Chris in an awed voice.
A ship was closing slowly with the tip of the building, light from the windows of Facility glinting off the curve of its long wasp-waisted hull. There were a series of mirrored bulges evenly spaced around its nose. Weapons, observation galleries? wondered Roz. As they watched a hatch just forward of the waist irised open and the ship delicately manoeuvred until it had swallowed the first three storeys of the tip. It was big, at least two thousand metres long.
Roz had a horrible feeling that standard interrogation procedures were going to be wholly ineffective in this case.
'How do you want to play this?' asked Chris. 'Good cop, bad cop?'
Roz shook her head. 'Aristocracy drill,' she said. 'Good cop, downright sycophantic cop.'
The grav lift dropped them neatly through the iris hatch and into the S-Lioness's reception atrium.
'Hi,' said a friendly voice from all around them. 'I believe you wanted a word with me. Why don't you go through to my parlour where you'll both be more comfortable. You both drink' – the voice paused for