A couple of stewards helped us along the zero-gee corridors in the center. The crossover chamber was a wide cylinder, with four hatchways on the toroid end and another four hatches at the dock end. Halfway between them was the seal, allowing the two halves of the cylinder to rotate without losing any air. Plenty of people were crossing between them, casually air-diving in and out of the hatches. It all seemed so crude to me, but then I’d grown up in a world that had come to live Connexion’s slogan: Everywhere is one step away.

We pushed, wiggled, and knocked elbows along the corridor to airlock 17B, where our passenger ferry was docked. The cabin was a small cylinder, with thin padding on the walls, and twenty-four simple metal seats in a couple of rows, with a lone seat at the front for our “pilot,” who did nothing but monitor the G7Turing that actually flew us. Apparently that dates back to the days when autopilots were taking over more and more aircraft functions, but people still wanted a human in the control loop. Personally I’d trust the G7 over a human pilot any day.

I hauled myself along the cabin and claimed a seat beside one of the small windows. The dock grid stretched away out to the stars, its structure cluttered with tanks and cables that were covered in silver-white thermal blankets. Like everything in space, it was either sharply lit by sunlight or sheltering in the utter darkness of shadows. The contrast between sections was immediate and striking.

We left the dock with a soft motion and loud knocking sounds that reverberated down the cabin as the vessel’s tiny rockets fired in short fast bursts. I saw the dock fall away behind us. The flight was due to take twelve minutes. At three minutes, the reaction control rockets began to fire again, rotating the craft.

The Salvation of Life slid into my line of sight. I’d seen enough images and diagrams of it, but even so, looking out at the real thing was a hell of a moment. I stared at it the same way jet pilots used to gaze at airships, with a twinge of envy and false nostalgia for a still-birthed alternate history where those giant, serene craft were kings of the world. To travel among the stars in an artificial planetoid would have been an awesome existence.