Звезда Пандоры

Dudley hated deceiving them, but it was a legitimate way of suspending the whole Dyson Pair observation project. He told himself that if he could just secure the evidence, then the impact it would have on their department and its budget would more than justify the small subterfuge. It was only during the last couple of months as he put up with all their complaints that he’d begun to think of the effect a verified envelopment might have on his own career and fortunes. Failure to back up the observation would have ruined him; success, on the other hand, opened up a whole new realm of prospects. He could well progress far beyond anything the Gralmond university could offer. It was a pleasant daydream to lose himself in.

The train started moving, pulling away from the platform and out into the spring sunshine. All Dudley could see through his window was the industrial landscape of the station yard, where hundreds of tracks snaked across the ground, crossing and recrossing like some vast abstract maze. Single wagons and carriages were being moved about by small shunting engines that coughed out thick plumes of diesel exhaust. The only visible horizon seemed to be made from warehouses and loading bays, where a spidery gridwork of gantry cranes and container stackers wove through every section of the big open structures. Flatbed carriages and fat tankers were being readied or unloaded within the mechanical systems that almost engulfed them. Engineering crews and maintenancebots crawled along several tracks, performing repairs.

Traffic began to increase on the tracks around them as they headed for the gateway; long cargo trains alternating with smaller passenger carriers. All of them snaked their way over junctions with sinuous motions, arrowing in toward the final stretch of track. On the other side of the carriage, Dudley could see a near-continual stream of trains emerging from the gateway.

There were only two tracks leading to the gateway: one inbound, one outbound. The Verona train finally slotted onto the outbound stretch, fitting in behind the passenger train for EdenBurg. A freighter bound for StLincoln slotted in behind them. A low warning tone chimed through the carriage. Dudley could just see the edge of the curving gateway roof ahead of them. The light dimmed fractionally as they passed underneath. Then there was just the wide shimmering amber oval of the gateway dead ahead, so reminiscent of an old-fashioned tunnel entrance. The train slid straight into it.

Dudley felt a slight tingle on his skin as the carriage passed through the pressure curtain that prevented the atmospheres of the two worlds from mixing. Even though it spanned a hundred eighteen light-years, the wormhole itself had no internal length. The generator machinery that created it had a considerable bulk, however; most of which was tucked away in the massive concrete support buildings behind the roof. It was only the emission units that were contained in the great oval hoop of the gateway, measuring over thirty meters thick. Given the speed the train was traveling, even that flashed past in a second.

Glorious copper twilight streamed in through the carriage windows. Dudley’s ears popped as the new atmosphere flooded into the carriage through the rooftop vents. He looked out at the massive expanse that was CST’s Verona station. There was no visible end to it, no glimpse of the megacity that he knew lay beyond. One edge of the station was a solid cliff of gateways, sheltering under their curving single-span roofs, each oval framing a slightly different colored patch of haze depending on the spectral class of the star whose world they reached. But for the rest of it, as far as the eye could see, trains and tracks were the sole landscape. Behemoth freighters rolled along, their engines dwarfing the GH7s that had so impressed Dudley; nuclear-powered tractor units pulling two-kilometer chains of wagons. Sleek white passenger expresses flashed past pulling dozens of carriages with multiworld commuters whose routes would take them through twenty or more planets as they rushed from gateway to gateway on a never-ending circuit. Simple little regional trains like the one Dudley was on shuffled between their larger, grander cousins. Verona station had them all.

As Earth was the junction world for all the planets in phase one space of the Intersolar Commonwealth, so Verona was the major junction for this section of phase two space, with gateways leading to thirty-three planets. It was one of the so-called Big15; the industrial planets established out along the rim of phase one space, a hundred or so light-years from Sol. Company-founded, company-funded, and company-run.