The controls of this airship were simple: a steering handle, a joystick; it was the work of a couple of minutes to set the course. Then Joshua yawned and stretched.
‘Why don’t you hit the sack for a few hours, Joshua? I don’t need sleep, if I adjust my settings. You get some shut-eye; I’ll play Robert the robot.’
‘Who? Never mind. OK, Lobsang. Though I think I’ll fix some supper first …’
Joshua slept well, waking long after dawn.
At a glance out of his window, all he saw at first was ocean and forested land, bathed in morning sunlight. Then he realized that the airship appeared to be circling, running in wide, gentle sweeps; he could see its shadow shift across the ground.
There must be something down there. Presumably nothing urgent, or Lobsang would have woken him.
He showered, shaved and dressed. He collapsed his bed back to a sofa, and folded away the partition that divided his cabin from the rest of the gondola. Passing through the small galley area he turned on the coffee perc and drank a slug of orange juice – except that it wasn’t orange, not quite, but a compress from one of the many unfamiliar citrus types native to this band of worlds. Then, glass in hand, he joined Lobsang at the forward windows.
Still the Shillelagh banked and turned, and land and sea wheeled beneath.
‘So,’ Joshua said.
‘I wanted you to see what’s down there. But I wanted you to get your beauty sleep too, so I kept the ship running. I figured that shutting down the engines would alert your famous hair-trigger Daniel Boone senses—’
‘All right, all right. You wanted me to see what?’
‘Take a look. We’re at the coast of New York State, or its footprint. Below us is Long Island. It’s taken a battering from the storms and waves; its vegetation cover has been pretty much flattened.’
Joshua looked down at the island. A strip of silver, running east to west, lay across the scarred landscape.
At first glance it looked like a road to Joshua, or perhaps a rail track. It arced away to the west, running inland as far as he could see until it became a fine line, still dead straight, lost in the misty morning air. To the east, towards the sun, it strode across Long Island on slim pillars, and then on across the sea.
‘Wow. That’s what you wanted to show me. What’s it for? It looks like a roadway. But I see no traffic.’ Joshua imagined some immense invasion force falling from the sky, tank brigades sweeping along that mighty viaduct …
‘Unknown, for now. I can make some guesses, but we need to see more. I do have some details. What it’s made of, for instance – well, the outer surface at least; spectroscopy told me that. Steel. Nothing terribly exotic. No doubt built with materials mined here on this Earth, just as we saw the beginnings of back in New Springfield. And as to who made it—’ Lobsang had a tablet, loaded with telescopic images. He showed this to Joshua now. ‘It took me some time to find them. Not many of them about …’
In the magnified images Joshua saw silver beetles, a small party of them – five, six, seven. They hurried along the surface of the roadway – if it was a roadway – pausing every fifty yards or so to press what looked like instrument packages to the surface. Seen from a height they were very cockroach-like.
‘So the beetles built this.’
‘Evidently.’
‘Are they testing it? Checking it out?’
‘Something like that, I imagine.’
Joshua looked east again, towards the ocean. The viaduct stretched away, heading dead straight for the rising sun. ‘I wonder what’s supporting it out there. Beyond the continental shelf you’d need pretty long pillars.’
‘Pontoons and anchors, perhaps?’ Lobsang suggested. ‘Like oil rigs. Joshua, that is one of many details to be determined.’
‘Then what do we know?’
‘That the viaduct extends at least from horizon to horizon, aligned precisely east to west – and that is east-west according to the Earth’s rotation axis, not the magnetic compass directions. Given we have come across its span here, having essentially arrived at a random point—’
‘Ah. You think it could go on for ever.’
‘All around the Earth at this latitude, yes. Why not? Spanning the ocean to Europe and beyond, crossing the continental forests on great pillars. It would be interesting to see what allowance is made for the higher ground, such as the Appalachians to the west of here. Does it follow the contours? Or is it driven at a constant height through the mountains, with bridges and tunnels?’
‘Well, we’ll have to track it to know that.’
‘And again, given we came across this so quickly, starting from our random origin, it’s hard to believe this band is unique. The only one of its kind, happening to be at this particular latitude, so close to home? It’s more likely there must be many mighty structures like this across the face of this world. I did tell you we’d find something largescale, Joshua.’