Dusty was beginning to wonder about the need for any road below when
his question was answered by a caravan of heavy trucks making their way
along the road. They zipped over the caravan and were gone by the time
Dusty realized that air-travel was not for heavy cargo.
* * * * *
The buildings at the end of the aisle between the spacecraft loomed
larger. The driver whipped along at his thirty-foot altitude, making no
attempt to climb over the buildings which were growing taller and more
massive at a frightening rate. Dusty's palms went wet; the buildings
had seemed minute when they turned into the aisle, but now they were
tall and massive and millions and millions of windows could be seen,
with magnificent arches between the buildings spanning the gaps.
The aircab whipped across an empty perimeter about the
hexagonal-pattern of landing blocks, sped above a low building, and
howled into the tiny space between two buildings with an arch above
and a roof below, and then went into a flat climb. The car rose slowly
in the canyon between the buildings that lined the street below. There
were people working in those buildings, men and women that sat at
their desks behind windows and paid no attention to the passage of a
hundred-mile-per-hour skycab within forty feet of them.
Then the car was above the roof-level but it kept to the street-lanes.
Below them were the streets, and in the valley was slow-moving traffic,
ground cars and air-cars that ran at different levels to avoid
intersection-collisions. Up in the higher strata were the fast-moving
aircabs, each moving in its lane, and each lane for a different
direction. Even with separate lanes the traffic was a turmoil; constant
jockeying to gain position, to avoid trouble, to move a level higher
or a level lower so that a corner could be turned without entering the
intersection at the wrong level.
To make a right turn the driver jockeyed himself to the top of the
altitude allowed that line of traffic, and in the block before his turn
he rose above his lane, made his turn, and then entered the right-bound
traffic pattern from below, mingling with the speeding aircabs. To make
a left turn, the driver dropped to the floor of his lane, fell below,
made his turn, and mingled with the left-bound turmoil from above their
upper limit of altitude.
They raced along in the middle-altitude at high speed; cars above them,
below them, to the left and right, before and behind.
"My God!" breathed Dusty, "New York at rush hour--in three dimensions."
Their driver turned and winked at them. He flicked a lighter with
one hand and lit the smoke that was hanging from one corner of his
mouth. "Yeah man," he drawled. "Some of them guys should ought to take
lessons."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account