The VIP transportation disk was as wide as the flawship was long. It ascended to within thirty meters of the axis, surface crawling with glowing sheets of charge picked up in the plasma field. The glow slipped away from the disk's upper surface like phosphorescent sea foam, and a circular opening appeared in the center.

The flawship's hatches opened then, and the guests leaped out through the connecting fields in orderly pairs and triplets, hanging on to each other, tracing to the opening in the disk. Olmy took hold of Farley and Lanier and Lanier held Patricia; Ram Kikura took Carrolson's and Heineman's hands. Together, they flew with the rest of the group.

The disk was little more than an enlarged version of the cupolas that had covered the gates just beyond the seventh chamber; except for a webwork of glowing lines, it had no visible lower half, and to Heineman's consternation, no platform or support to rest on. The party simply floated in the space immediately beneath, suspended in an invisible and all-enveloping traction field which was in turn shot through with smaller visible fields. All that separated them from the vacuum—all that lay between them and the walls of the Way, twenty-five kilometers below—was a barrier of subtle energies.

Lanier saw several homorph and many more neomorph pilots and workers at the edges of the disk, segregated from the entourage. He watched a spindle-shaped neomorph weaving its way through purple traction sheets, followed by boxes from another section of the flawship. On the opposite side, the eight Frants also waited to disembark. Their own Frant had returned to its fellows and had already homogenized with them, rendering Heineman's question academic.

Lanier reached out for a tenuous purple traction line and twisted around to look at Heineman.

"How're you feeling? He asked.

"Lousy," Heineman said.

"He's a sissy," Carrolson said, a little pale herself.

"You should love this," Lanier chided him. "You've always been in love with machinery."

"Yeah, machines!" Heineman growled. "Show me any machines! Everything works without moving parts. It's unnatural."

The disk began its descent as they spoke. The clusters of passengers excitedly exchanged picts; Patricia floated with arms and legs spread, one hand grasping the same traction line as Lanier.

She stared down at the terminal, watching the disks enter and exit ports near the base from four directions. Many more disks waited in stacks like so many pancakes, or fanned out in spirals within a holding column.

The disk descended slowly, giving them plenty of time to inspect the wall traffic around the terminal. Most of the lanes were filled with the cylindrical container-vehicles of many diverse shapes—spheres, eggs, pyramids and some of a blobby appearance, composed of many complex curves. Lanier tried to make sense out of it all, using what the data pillar had taught them, but couldn't—there was apparent order, but no easily discerned purpose. Patricia tracted in his direction.