Cities in Flight

It was a superb job of piloting. Amalfi made a mental note to see to it that the task of piloting the city itself was split off from the city manager’s job when Hazleton stepped down. Carrel was not a born pilot, and O’Brian was obviously the man Carrel would need.

At the beginning of the Hern VI conversion, the City Fathers had placed E-Day—the day of arrival of the marchers within optical telescope distance of Earth—at one hundred fifty-five years, four months, twenty days. Each report which came in from the big drone’s pilot cut this co-ordinate-set back toward the flying present as the migrating jungle lost its laggards and became more and more compact, more and more able to put on speed as a unit. Amalfi consumed cigars faster and drove his men and machines harder every time the new computation was delivered to his desk.

But a full year had gone by since installation had started on Hern VI before O’Brian sent up the report he had been dreading and yet counting upon to arrive sooner or later.

“The march has lost two more cities to greener pastures, Mr. Amalfi,” the proxy pilot said. “But that’s routine. We’ve gained a city, too.”

“Gained one?” Amalfi said tensely. “Where’d it come from?”

“I don’t know. The course I’ve got the drone on doesn’t allow me to look in any one direction more than about twenty-five seconds at a time. I have to take a census every time I pass her through the pack. The last time I went around, there was this outfit on the screen, just as if it had been there all the time. But that isn’t all. It’s the damnedest looking city I’ve ever seen, and I can’t find anything like it in the files, either.”

“Describe it.”

“For one thing, it’s enormous. I’m not going to have to worry about anybody spotting my drone for a while. This outfit must have every detector in the jungle screaming blue bloody murder. Besides, it’s closed up.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s got a smooth hull all around, Mr. Mayor. It isn’t the usual platform with buildings on it and a spindizzy screen around both. It’s more like a proper spaceship, except for its size.”

“Any communication between it and the pack?”

“About what you’d expect. Wants to join the march; the King gave it the okay. I think he was pleased; it’s the very first answer he’s had to his call for a general mobilization of Okies, and this one really looks like a top-notch city. It calls itself Lincoln-Nevada.”

“It would,” Amalfi said grimly. He mopped his face. “Give me a look at it, O’Brian.”

The screen lit up. Amalfi mopped his face again.

“All right. Back your drone off a good distance from the march and keep that thing in sight from now on. Get ‘Lincoln-Nevada’ between you and the pack. It won’t shoot at your drone; it doesn’t know it doesn’t belong there.”

Without waiting for O’Brian’s acknowledgment, Amalfi switched over to the City Fathers. “How much longer is this job going to take?” he demanded.

“ANOTHER SIX YEARS, MR. MAYOR.”

“Cut it to four at a minimum. And give me a course from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, one that crosses Earth’s orbit.”

“MR. MAYOR, THE LESSER MAGELLANIC CLOUD IS TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM THE ACOLYTE CLUSTER!”

“Thank you,” Amalfi said sardonically. “I have no intention of going there, I assure you. All I want is a course with those three points on it.”

“VERY WELL. COMPUTED.”

“When would we have to spin, to cross Earth’s orbit on E-Day?”

“FROM FIVE SECONDS TO FIFTEEN DAYS FROM TODAY, FIGURING FROM THE CENTER OF THE CLOUD TO EITHER EDGE.”

“No good. We can’t start within those limits. Give me a perfectly flat trajectory from here to there.”

“THAT ARC INVOLVES NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT DIRECT COLLISIONS AND FOUR HUNDRED ELEVEN THOUSAND AND TWO GRAZES AND NEAR-MISSES.”

“Use it.”

The City Fathers were silent. Amalfi wondered if it were possible for machinery to be stunned. He knew that the City Fathers would never use the crow-flight arc, since it conflicted with their most ineluctable basic directive: Preserve the city first. This was all right with the mayor. He had given that instruction with an eye to the tempo of building on Hern VI; he had a strong hunch that it would go considerably faster after that stunner.

And as a matter of fact, it was just fourteen months later when Amalfi’s hand closed on the master space stick for Hern VI, and he said:

“Spin!”