The flitter landed at a small pad outside the largest of the domes. It carried only Nilis and his two ensigns, in their best dress uniforms. But even so, blue-helmeted Guardians insisted on coming on board the ship and subjecting each of them to whole-body searches that lasted long minutes. This massive dome housed the principal headquarters of some of the Coalition’s most powerful ministries and agencies, and there were plenty of enemies of the Coalition who would wish to do harm here, given a chance—not just alien foe, but human rebels. Back in Arches Base, such a thing would have seemed no more than a theoretical possibility, but this was Earth. The ensigns submitted silently.

At last they were released, and Nilis led them into the dome itself.

The tremendous enclosed space was flooded with light, and spectacular buildings soared in contemptuous defiance of the laws of physics. There were arches and T-shapes and inverted cones, their frames studded with inertial controllers and antigravity generators; some of them even floated. People hurried across the floor in streams, or along walkways that threaded through the air between the buildings. There was a hubbub of noise, a constant shouting; it was the sound of merged human voices, a million of them in this one dome alone.

And above it all the gray Qax shell loomed, a rocky sky. Beneath its grand curvature, light globes clustered like stars. Some of the floating buildings nuzzled against the shell of the dome itself; perhaps they had penthouses built through the dome, to reach the sky.

Pirius reached for Torec’s hand, and they clung to each other. It was a city designed for giants, not mere humans like themselves.

Nilis hurried, barefoot as ever, his arms full of data desks. “We mustn’t be late. Mustn’t be late! All Luru Parz’s morally dubious arm-twisting has won us is a hearing before Minister Gramm and his subcommittee. It has to go well today, this latest war of words, or all our technological achievements will count for nothing.”

At last Nilis brought them to a doorway. It was itself huge, but was a mere detail at the base of the building above it. This, said Nilis, was a center of the Grand Conclave itself, the Coalition’s supreme body.

In the foyer they were subjected to yet more searches, by yet more Guardians. Nilis wasn’t allowed to take any equipment beyond here, and he had to download his data from his bots and data desks into copies provided by the Guardians. He had been prepared for this, but he fretted at the continuing delays.

When they were released, they hurried across the foyer to a narrow, silver-walled elevator shaft. In this expensive machine there was no sense of acceleration; Pirius had no idea how high they climbed—or perhaps, descended.