The Grand Wheel

A look of pain crossed Hakandra’s face. ‘You have been in the hands of evil people,’ he said, his tone urgent. ‘Don’t you understand? The Legitimacy is fighting to ward off chaos, to make life safe and controllable for mankind. On all sides there are threats and dangers. The Grand Wheel is one of the worst of them.’ His eyes burned into Shane’s. ‘We have to stand firm. You see that, don’t you? We have to do our duty!’

Shane looked away and sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I guess you’re right. For a while it looked as if life might be fun with the Wheel, that’s all.’

Hakandra sat down, suddenly very, very tired. He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘Yes, Shane,’ he said woodenly, ‘I expect it did.’

FOURTEEN

The lucid globe had clearly carried them a considerable number of light years. Scarne could see, standing out against the starry galactic background, a more brilliant point of light that was obviously a fairly recent nova, and which had not been visible from their point of departure.

He took his eyes from the sky and studied the ground as the sphere fell towards it. The view was so open that, although the sphere contained a stable inertial frame, all within it automatically put out their arms to steady themselves.

The globe touched ground and, to Scarne’s mild surprise, continued to sink into it until the patch of desert they stood upon made a seamless fit with the somewhat lighter soil outside. What had happened to the earth the globe had presumably displaced he could not imagine.

Müller was the first to risk leaving the space bubble. When no harm came to him, the others followed. There was no sign of vegetation on the landscape, but the air was fresh and invigorating, and the gravity, too, approximated to Earth-normal – more signs that the planetoid had been artificially modified. The horizon was considerably less than a mile away. Its clean, sharp line was interrupted in one direction by the outlines of buildings that jutted up from just beyond it.

Where the asteroid’s illumination came from was a mystery. Their bodies cast no shadows. It was as if the air itself was aglow; not brightly, but with a cool, sterile light that, had there been a moon, could have been taken for moonlight.

Dom gestured to the distant shapes. ‘That’s it, I imagine. Let’s walk.’

They kept silence while trudging across the cinder-like soil. Soon their destination revealed itself as a complete installation that could have been a town, a fairground, or any of a dozen other hypothetical sites. Scarne guessed it was some sort of commercial gaming area. The entire planetoid, in fact, could have been an alien version of the game-ships the Grand Wheel deployed on the fringes of man-controlled space.

They walked between modestly-sized nondescript buildings which had a steely sheen. Further off, Scarne saw a large concourse, or midway, lined with booths.

The installation appeared to be deserted. The first indication of life was when a lighted sign began to flash on and off over the entrance to one of the larger buildings which had a domed roof.

‘PLEASE ENTER HERE.’

‘Our own language, too,’ Dom remarked wryly. He led the way through the arched openings and into a sort of foyer. A second archway led to a spacious round chamber beneath the building’s dome. There, seated on a high chair with an expansive crescent-shaped table at the level of his feet, waited one of their hosts.

The creature was humanoid, but considerably larger than a man – when standing, he might easily have stretched eight foot tall. He wore what seemed to be a tailored suit of outlandish cut whose soft colours altered when he moved.

Studying his too-large face, Scarne was struck by a fascinating fact. It was not a human face, the distribution and shape of the features being wrong, yet it reminded him forcibly of the face of Marguerite Dom. It was creased much as Dom’s was, and possessed the same over-ripe magnetism, the same air of decadence and ancient toughness. There, too, were the intensive eyes Scarne had first noticed on Dom – and, by an odd coincidence, they were the same shade of brown.

Dom was faced with a kindred soul.

‘Please be seated,’ the Galactic Wheelman said, indicating the human-sized chairs arranged around the table. His voice was resonant, rich with all kinds of strange overtones.

They complied, Dom taking the centre chair. Once seated, Scarne could see that the crescent of the table continued into a full circle, a fact which had not been evident when they entered the chamber. Or was it only an illusion? They seemed to be separated from the other half of the table by a semitransparent curtain. Behind it were vague seated shapes – their opposite numbers in the galactic team. It was impossible to say whether the curtain was a real physical barrier, or only a screen for some kind of projection.