Chapter 9: The Residence

Nyk packed a case with belongings needed for the trip to Sudal. He rode the lift with Senta, summoned a tubecar and requested the train station.

He located the departure area and stood with her to wait for the Sudal Express. The train was capable of traveling at nearly the speed of sound. It could make the trip to Sudal, traveling down the eastern coast, in less than half a day.

The departure area was a large room with a row of sliding doors. A chime and an announcement indicated the train was ready for boarding. The doors slid open. Nyk and Senta each pressed their wrists against a scanpad as they entered the coach. Inside were two rows of seats. Senta sat by the window. Nyk could hear and feel the low vibration of equipment to run the train.

A double chime sounded and the coach doors slid shut. The train began to accelerate away from the station. Within the urban areas the trains ran through large, transparent tubes similar to the ones used by the tubecars. The coach was quite full, but Nyk knew from experience most of these passengers would empty out at the next stop, one of the larger residential areas on the outskirts of Floran City. Then the train ran as an express, stopping only at Tinam before terminating in Sudal.

The train ran at about a quarter of its top speed through the tube to the first stop, decelerated and came to a halt. A chime sounded, and the doors swished open. The coach emptied out leaving only Nyk, Senta and an elderly man as passengers. Senta leaned toward him. “See, no one wants to go to Sudal.”

A double chime sounded, the doors closed and the train began to accelerate again, this time to achieve its top speed. Nyk watched the cityscape turn into a blur.

The next station, where the express would not stop, was for the power plant and for a connecting monorail line running to the west and servicing the mining cities in the uplands. Off to the east, on the seacoast, Nyk could glimpse the domes and towers of the power generating plant, one of two on the planet.

The train abruptly slowed to Mach 0.3. The coaches’ inertial sinks permitted them to stop on a dime, if the need arose, and the passengers would feel nothing. The train passed the power plant station, then accelerated and sped through the Floran countryside.

Most of Floran’s population lived in the cities, so the intervening countryside was quite empty. Vast areas of the planet’s virgin vegetation whizzed by. The train was now traveling at its top speed of Mach 0.75, about 500 miles per hour -- too fast to glimpse nearby detail. Nyk looked out toward the west at the extinct volcanic mons rising into the planet’s stratosphere.

Nyk’s planet was younger than Earth by a half billion years or more. In its evolutionary progress it was about the equivalent to Earth during the late Devonian era. Most of the planet’s life existed in a sea covering nearly ninety percent of the planet’s surface. Life on land was limited to plants and microbes. There were no higher order land animals at all.

He could see the uplands on the lower slope of the mons. They were covered with a dense forest of tall, fernlike plants. The leaves were shades of deep violet, almost black, to soak up the low-energy orange sunlight.

Closer still were the plains, dominated by a scrubby, horsetail-like plant growing about knee high. The vegetation was primitive and reproduced with spores, though some analogues of Earth gymnosperms were emerging.

Nyk’s training taught him something about early life on Earth. He pondered what was to evolve on his homeworld during the upcoming half billion years or so. His people lived here five thousand Earth years -- an instant in geologic time. He wondered how they would influence the natural development of native life.

Senta began to drowse. She rolled away from Nyk and slept with her forehead against the window. Nyk stood and started down the aisle. He walked through the cars until he reached the lead coach and found an empty seat in the first row.

Nyk enjoyed a child-like pleasure sitting in the transparent nose cone of the train, looking down the maglev line as they sped southward. From this vantage, the train appeared to bore its way through the landscape at close to the speed of sound.

The train approached the station at Tinam -- a small town known as the gateway to the agridomes. Some of the smaller and older domes had been visible in the distance for a while. Here, the first of the modern domes were visible. They were deceptive, looking smaller and closer than they were. A vast array of these domes stretched southward, to the outskirts of Sudal.

Nyk could see the mouths of the guard tubes for the station. The train switched onto a side rail and lost speed. He watched as the coaches slowed and stopped adjacent to the boarding platform. A chime sounded to announce their arrival.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, turned and saw Senta. “I thought you’d be here,” she said.

“You were asleep. I know sitting here gives you vertigo.” A double chime announced the train’s imminent departure.

The train began to accelerate, its inertial sinks absorbing the forces so the passengers felt nothing. In no time, it had resumed top speed.

Senta glanced forward, then looked down. “Please, let’s return to our seats before I vomit.”

Nyk followed Senta through the coaches. He sat, looking forward at the empty rows. She leaned against him and began to drowse again. He brushed her hair from his face.

Finally, he heard a chime announcing the train was approaching the end of the line -- Sudal. Senta awoke, smoothed her hair, rubbed her eyes and yawned. Nyk stood and retrieved their cases from the luggage rack. The train slowed, entered the guard tube and came to a stop at the station. The doors swished open.

The first thing he noticed was the increased ambient temperature. Sudal was located at the southeast corner of his planet’s continent, near the equator in the tropical zone. The vegetation here was different than in the north, but it retained most of the same characteristics. The temperature averaged ten to fifteen degrees Celsius warmer than in Floran City. Nyk’s urban garb betrayed him as a visitor from the North.

Nyk summoned a groundcar for the drive to the Residence. He put their bags in the luggage compartment and climbed in. “Car, the Residence,” he commanded. The vehicle slid out of its parking stall and headed toward the east. The Residence lay about twenty kilometres outside the Sudal city limits.

“Do you know what I think we should do tonight?” he asked.