Cities in Flight

The jungle was almost at a halt now, already down to interplanetary speeds, and still decelerating. In another ten minutes, the cities were at rest with reference to the sun; and from the drone, Amalfi could see, not very far away as he was accustomed to think of spatial distance, something else he had seen only once before: the planet Saturn.

No Earthly amateur astronomer with a new, uncertain, badly adjusted home reflector ever could have seen the ringed giant with fresher eyes. Amalfi was momentarily stupefied. What he saw was not only incredibly beautiful, but obviously impossible. A gas giant with rigid rings! Why had he ever left the Sol system at all, with a world so anomalous in his very back yard? And the giant had another planet circling it, too—a planet more than 3,000 miles through —in addition to the usual family of satellites of Hern VI’s order of size.

Click.

“Make camp,” the King was saying. “We’ll be here for a while. Dammit, you guys at the base are still creeping on us a little. We’re going to have to stop here—can’t I pound that into your heads?”

“We’re decelerating in good order, Buda-Pesht. It’s the new city, the big job, that’s creeping. He’s in some kind of trouble, looks like.”

From the drone, the diagnosis seemed accurate. The enormous spherical object had separated markedly from the main body of the jungle, and was now well ahead of the trailing edge of the cone. The whole sphere was wobbling a little as it moved, and every so often it would go dim as if under unexpected and uncontrollable polarization.

“Call him and ask if he needs help. The rest of you, take up orbits.”

Amalfi barked, “O’Brian—time!”

“Course time, sir.”

“How do I know when this space stick comes alive again?”

“It’s alive now, Mr. Mayor,” the pilot said. “The City Fathers cut out as soon as you touch it. You’ll get a warning buzzer five seconds before our deceleration starts into the deep part of its curve, and then a beep every half second after that to the second inflection point. At the last beep, it’s all yours, for about the next two and a half seconds. Then the stick will go dead and the City Fathers will be back in control.”

Click.

“Admiral MacMillan, what action do you plan to take now—if any?”

Amalfi took an instant dislike to the new voice on the Dirac. It was flat, twangy, and as devoid as a vodeur of emotion, except perhaps for a certain self-righteousness tinged with Angst . Amalfi decided at once that in a face-to-face meeting the speaker would always look somewhere else than into the face of the man to whom he was speaking. The owner of that voice could not possibly be anywhere on the surface of the Earth, looking aloft for besiegers or going doggedly about his business; he was instead almost surely crouched in some subcellar.

“None, sir, at the moment,” said the cops’ Command HQ. “They’ve stopped, and appear to be willing to listen to reason. I have assigned Commander Eisenstein to cover their camp against any possible disturbance.”

“Admiral, these cities have broken the law. They’re here in defiance of our approach limits, and the very size of their gathering is illegal. Are you aware of that?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Command HQ said respectfully. “If you wish me to order individual arrests—”

“No, no, we can’t jail a whole pack of flying tramps. I want action, Admiral. These people need to be taught a lesson. We can’t have fleets of cities approaching Earth at will—it’s a bad precedent. It indicates a decline of interstellar morality. Unless we return to the virtues of the pioneers, the lights will go out all over Earth, and grass will grow in the space lanes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Command HQ. “Well spoken, if you will permit me to say so. I stand ready for your orders, Mr. President.”

“My orders are to do something. That camp is a festering sore on our heavens. I hold you personally responsible.”

“Yes, sir.” The Admiral’s voice was very crisp. “Commander Eisenstein, proceed with Operation A. Command Eighty-two, red alert; red alert.”

“Command Eighty-two acknowledging red alert.”

“Eisentein calling Command HQ.”

“Command HQ.”

“MacMillan, I’m taping my resignation over to you. The President’s instructions don’t specify Operation A. I won’t be responsible for it.”

“Follow orders, Commander,” Command HQ said pleasantly. “I will accept your resignation—when the maneuver is completed.”

The cities hung poised tensely in their orbits. For seconds, nothing happened.

Then pear-shaped, bumpy police battleships began springing out of nothingness around the jungle. Almost instantly, four cities raved into boiling clouds of gas.