‘Oh. Sorry, my boy. If this were a space-yacht we might manage it. But we’re spinning down, sunside. You wouldn’t want to be blinded, burnt, and radiation-scarred all at the same time, would you?’
Gaal started to walk away.
The officer called after him, ‘Trantor would only be grey blur anyway, Kid. Why don’t you take a space-tour once you hit Trantor. They’re cheap.’
Gaal looked back, ‘Thank you very much.’
It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child, and there was a lump in Gaal’s throat. He had never seen Trantor spread out in all its incredibility, as large as life, and he hadn’t expected to have to wait longer.
2 (#u12a8d492-5cb8-5551-8c04-06804c0ccd9c)
The ship landed in a medley of noises. There was the far-off hiss of the atmosphere cutting and sliding past the metal of the ship. There was the steady drone of the conditioners fighting the heat of friction, and the slower rumble of the engines enforcing deceleration. There was the human sound of men and women gathering in the debarkation rooms and the grind of the hoists lifting baggage, mail, and freight to the long axis of the ship, from which they would be later moved to the unloading platform.
Gaal felt the slight jar that indicated the ship no longer had an independent motion of its own. Ship’s gravity had been giving way to planetary gravity for hours. Thousands of passengers had been sitting patiently in the debarkation rooms which swung easily on yielding force-fields to accommodate its orientation to the changing direction of the gravitational forces. Now they were crawling down curving ramps to the large, yawning locks.
Gaal’s baggage was minor. He stood at a desk, as it was quickly and expertly taken apart and put together again. His visa was inspected and stamped. He himself paid no attention.
This was Trantor! The air seemed a little thicker here, the gravity a bit greater, than on his home planet of Synnax, but he would get used to that. He wondered if he would get used to immensity.
Debarkation Building was tremendous. The roof was almost lost in the heights. Gaal could almost imagine that clouds could form beneath its immensity. He could see no opposite wall; just men and desks and converging floor till it faded out in haze.
The man at the desk was speaking again. He sounded annoyed. He said, ‘Move on, Dornick.’ He had to open the visa, look again, before he remembered the name. Gaal said, ‘Where – where—’
The man at the desk jerked a thumb, ‘Taxis to the right and third left.’
Gaal moved, seeing the glowing twists of air suspended high in nothingness and reading, ‘TAXIS TO ALL POINTS.’
A figure detached itself from anonymity and stopped at the desk, as Gaal left. The man at the desk looked up and nodded briefly. The figure nodded in return and followed the young immigrant.
He was in time to hear Gaal’s destination.
Gaal found himself hard against a railing.
The small sign said, ‘Supervisor.’ The man to whom the sign referred did not look up. He said, ‘Where to?’
Gaal wasn’t sure, but even a few seconds’ hesitation meant men queueing in line behind him.
The Supervisor looked up, ‘Where to?’
Gaal’s funds were low, but there was only this one night and then he would have a job. He tried to sound nonchalant, ‘A good hotel, please.’
The Supervisor was unimpressed, ‘They’re all good. Name one.’
Gaal said, desperately, ‘The nearest one, please.’
The Supervisor touched a button. A thin line of light formed along the floor, twisting among others which brightened and dimmed in different colours and shades. A ticket was shoved into Gaal’s hands. It glowed faintly.
The Supervisor said, ‘One point twelve.’
Gaal fumbled for the coins. He said, ‘Where do I go?’
‘Follow the light. The ticket will keep glowing as long as you’re pointed in the right direction.’
Gaal looked up and began walking. There were hundreds creeping across the vast floor, following their individual trails, sifting and straining themselves through intersection points to arrive at their respective destinations.
His own trail ended. A man in glaring blue-and-yellow uniform, shining and new in unstainable plasto-textile, reached for his two bags.
‘Direct line to the Luxor,’ he said.
The man who followed Gaal heard that. He also heard Gaal say, ‘Fine,’ and watched him enter the blunt-nosed vehicle.
The taxi lifted straight up. Gaal stared out the curved, transparent window, marvelling at the sensation of air-flight within an enclosed structure and clutching instinctively at the back of the driver’s seat. The vastness contracted and the people became ants in random distribution. The scene contracted further and began to slide backward.
There was a wall ahead. It began high in the air and extended upward out of sight. It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels. Gaal’s taxi moved toward one, then plunged into it. For a moment, Gaal wondered idly how his driver could pick out one among so many.
There was now only blackness, with nothing but the past-flashing of a coloured signal light to relieve the gloom. The air was full of a rushing sound.
Gaal leaned forward against deceleration then and the taxi popped out of the tunnel and descended to ground level once more.
‘The Luxor Hotel,’ said the driver, unnecessarily. He helped Gaal with his baggage, accepted a tenth-credit tip with a business-like air, picked up a waiting passenger, and was rising again.
In all this, from the moment of debarkation, there had been no glimpse of sky.
3 (#u12a8d492-5cb8-5551-8c04-06804c0ccd9c)
TRANTOR … At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency reached its climax. As the centre of the Imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations and located, as it was, in the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity the Race had ever seen.
Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate. All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all to few for the complications of the task. (It is to be remembered that the impossibility of proper administration of the Galactic Empire under the uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in the Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor …
Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor’s delicate jugular vein …
ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
Gaal was not certain whether the sun shone, or, for that matter, whether it was day or night. He was ashamed to ask. All the planet seemed to live beneath metal. The meal of which he had just partaken had been labelled luncheon, but there were many planets which lived a standard time-scale that took no account of the perhaps inconvenient alteration of day and night. The rate of planetary turnings differed, and he did not know that of Trantor.
At first, he had eagerly followed the signs to the ‘Sun Room’ and found it but a chamber for basking in artificial radiation. He lingered a moment or two, then returned to the Luxor’s main lobby.
He said to the room clerk, ‘Where can I buy a ticket for a planetary tour?’
‘Right here.’
‘When will it start?’
‘You just missed it. Another one tomorrow. Buy a ticket now and we’ll reserve a place for you.’
‘Oh.’ Tomorrow would be too late. He would have to be at the University tomorrow. He said, ‘There wouldn’t be an observation tower – or something? I mean, in the open air.’
‘Sure! Sell you a ticket for that, if you want. Better let me check if it’s raining or not.’ He closed a contact at his elbow and read the flowing letters that raced across a frosted screen. Gaal read with him.
