It made the brand-new dual carriageway that he was driving along seem strangely out of place, ahead of its time. A twin rail track ran parallel with it, also newly laid, linking the station’s marshaling yard with the starship project complex ahead. He saw a single DFL25 shunting engine rolling slowly in the opposite direction to him, pushing eight empty flatbed carriages ahead of it, the only sign of movement within eight kilometers.

It took ten minutes’ driving across the unused wilderness to reach the starship project. A long row of windowless pearl-white buildings materialized out of the powerful heat shimmer, protected by a six-meter-high fence. Guardbots trundled along the foot of it on an eternal patrol, smooth conical bodies concealing the weapons and sensors they were equipped with. There were three human guards on the gates. Wilson was scanned twice before they let him through, saluting smartly as he passed.

This whole complex smelled of money. He was familiar enough with fast-track projects to see an extraordinary amount of cash had been spent in a short period of time. Inside the fence, long strips of newly laid turf were neat and trimmed. Car parking spaces had names on the asphalt in fresh paint. The buildings were made from the new low-friction surface paneling that the construction industry was currently obsessed with, giving them a perpetually clean appearance. There were high doors set into most walls, all of them closed, with silvery rail lines running underneath the bottom edge. A row of pylons was visible at the back of the complex, stretching off toward the city’s largest industrial precinct, supporting slim red superconductor cables. The project was using up a lot of power.

Three stumpy, circular glass towers made up the heart of the complex, joined together at the base by soaring sheets of glass that looked like a solidified pavilion roof. The entrance lobby they formed was a huge atrium, with crystal pillars containing exotic big-leafed plants. A lot of people were hurrying across the stone floor, all of them with intent expressions. Work here was a serious thing.

Daniel Alster stood beside the long reception counter. He greeted Wilson warmly, introducing himself. “Mr. Sheldon apologizes for not being here to welcome you personally, he’s in a meeting which is overrunning quite badly.”

Wilson gave the lobby a thoughtful look, cementing his impression of unlimited budgets. Farndale had mounted big projects often enough, but that was different; their offices were built in cities, factories in industrial estates. They belonged. It must be the complex’s relative isolation that gave it such a sense of importance and urgency. “You mean Sheldon is managing the starship project himself?” he asked.

“Not the day-to-day details, no. But it is certainly high up on his schedule. He was quite relieved when you agreed to accept the captaincy.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I understand you’ll be taking over a number of administration procedures.”

“That’s right.” The quantity of data that the project had sent him over the four days since he agreed to captain the ship was phenomenal. Most of the information files were accompanied by requests from the department heads concerned. “But I need a while to settle in before I start slinging my weight around.” He’d actually felt a little overwhelmed walking into the lobby, facing up to the project all alone. Normally when he was involved in anything on such a scale he’d be accompanied by several of his own aides, and there would have been time for a thorough briefing beforehand. It was only last night he’d finally received a report on the Commonwealth ExoProtectorate Council meeting, which didn’t give him much time to mull over the political implications of the flight. The Farndale board had given his appointment their full approval, though, eager to climb on board the project.

“Of course,” Daniel Alster said. “Your office is ready for you now. But Mr. Sheldon suggested I should give you a quick tour of the facilities first.”

“Lead on.”

The complex layout was simple enough, with the three towers already housing the design and management personnel. A quarter of the office space was unused. “Crew training facilities,” Daniel Alster explained as they passed line after line of darkened glass cubicles.

“Has anybody been selected yet?”

“So far, only you. Just about everyone in our exploration division has volunteered, that’s technical personnel as well as the survey teams. Then there’s a couple of million hopefuls on every planet in the Commonwealth who are insisting they’re perfect for the job. This section of the Anshun cybersphere is having to be upgraded, we’ve had so much datatraffic. We’re waiting for you to draw up the requirement criteria before we start active recruitment.”

Wilson gave a resigned shrug. “Okay.”

The big hangarlike buildings outside the towers were where all the starship’s components were delivered, then rigorously tested before being taken through to the assembly platform. There was no manufacturing on-site, everything was shipped in through the planetary station’s gateway. Sixty-three percent of the components were fabricated on Augusta, including the wormhole generator mechanism that would act as the hyperdrive. The rest of the sections were coming in from all over the Commonwealth, contracts placed according to financial involvement and political clout. Wilson was pleased to see Los Vada had snatched over three percent.

As soon as the wagons delivered the containers, they were moved into clean rooms for testing. The assessment facilities that CST had built in such a short space of time were impressive. Sealed environment chambers could produce a huge combination of radiation, extreme thermal loads, vibration stress, electromagnetic irradiation, and hypervelocity particle impacts, all inside a good old-fashioned vacuum. There were also test labs where electronic components were subjected to all manner of improbable failure scenarios. Once they were certified, the components were moved out to the platform for assembly.

Nigel Sheldon was waiting at the gateway, which was at the end of the largest assessment building. He was wearing the same kind of white overall that Wilson had changed into. They both shook hands; still slightly wary of each other, like old friends who were patching up an argument.

“Ready for zero gee again?” Nigel asked. He put on a protective helmet, which molded itself to his skull.

“I guess so,” Wilson said. It had been a very long time, and as Daniel had been telling him during the tour, a lot of their assembly technicians had experienced mild to debilitating nausea when they were working on the ship. Not even continued exposure seemed to weaken the effect. The astronautics companies based at the High Angel had little practical help to offer; they either used robotic systems or personnel who’d been screened to find a degree of immunity. In desperation, CST had been deep-mining some very old medical papers on human zero-gee adaptation, some of which dated back to the Russian MIR station, to see what kinds of drugs or DNA resequencing they should be considering.

Wilson allowed Nigel to go first, following cautiously behind him. They were using the exploration division’s gateway, which had been taken off interstellar survey duties to provide a simple link between the complex and space above Anshun, where the assembly platform was orbiting a thousand kilometers out from the planet. A circular titanium tunnel had been built through the gateway, lined with bands of electromuscle that were capable of handling components up to eight meters wide and weighing a couple of hundred tons. The motion was like a throat swallowing, with the sealed containers riding forward on synchronized waves that rippled along the bands.

As Wilson walked forward, it looked as if they were going from the assessment building through a simple circular opening into a giant spherical chamber beyond. The assembly platform was a globe of malmetal that had been expanded out to six hundred meters in diameter. Its internal stress structure resembled hexagonal ribs, with gantry towers extending toward the center from the junctions. They supported a broad gridwork cylinder directly in front of the gateway. It was in there that the starship was taking shape. Right now, it looked like nothing more than an even denser lattice of girders. Hundreds of men and women in simple overalls were scampering along the framework, or anchoring themselves in place beside mobile constructionbots. White composite containers were sliding along the gantries, like pearls of condensation slithering down glass.