That spinning doughnut made the rim of a half-mile wheel.
The spokes were plastic tubes that held power lines and supply ducts and elevator shafts.
The hubs were thick cylinders that projected from the poles of the ice asteroid.
An inner slice of each cylinder, spinning slower than the spokes, was pierced for the valves that let ships enter the air docks.
The outside end of each hub, driven with a counter-spin that kept it at null-G, held its telescopes and laser dome motionless with respect to the stars.
Old Habibula appeared to enjoy the tour.
His affection for machines seemed genuine.
He lingered fondly about the atomic power plant shielded deep in the ice.
He wanted to see the biosynthetic batteries that recycled our water and restored our air and produced the most of our food.
He admired our intricate research gear.
Somewhat to my surprise, he even seemed to understand it.
“One question, Captain,” he wheezed at me.
“You’re showing us a lot of lovely machines, modern as tomorrow.
What I can’t quite see is the prehistoric design of the station itself.
Why this spuming ring with its clumsy imitation of gravity, when you could have used gra-vitic inductors?”
“Because of the anomaly,” I told him.
“Space is different here— nobody knows precisely how or why.
Gravitic and electric and optical devices don’t work well—you know what happened to the space-drive on Scabbard’s ship.”
His earth-colored eyes blinked apprehensively.
“What is this mortal anomaly?”
“A spot in space where the common laws of nature don’t quite fit,” I said.
“If you want the history of it—”
“Let that wait till dinner, Giles,” Lilith put in gently.
“I’d like to see the station first.”
She still puzzled me.
Though she didn’t claim to love machines, she seemed at home with them.
Her quiet questions showed a keen brain, I thought, and a surprising technological background.
We were just entering the observation dome at the north hub of the station, where the night of space came into the station itself, drowning the faint red glow of the instrument lights in icy midnight.
We were in zero-G there, and I handed old Habibula and the girl little hand-jets.
Both knew how to use them.
Leaving Habibula admiring the gloomy forest of bulky instruments bolted to the inside wall, Lilith soared easily away toward the vast invisible curve of the transite dome that looked out toward Nowhere.
“Captain Ulnar,” she called.
“Come with me.”
Soft and clear, her voice held that odd tone of sure command. Surprised at myself, I followed her silently.
She had paused above the looming instruments, trim and small and perplexing against the vaster riddle of the anomaly.
For a few moments she drifted there, looking out at the dust and mist of stars and the universal dark.
Looking past her toward galactic north, I could see where a few stars were slightly blurred and reddened.
Even that took a practised eye.
The fearful shape of Nowhere revealed itself only to our special instruments.
Yet something gave me a sudden queer feeling that she knew more about it than I did.
“Tell me something, Captain.”
She turned quickly to me, her face grave and lovely in the cold starlight.
“What is the atomic composition of this dome?”
When I told her that it was a transite casting, it turned out she knew not only what transite was made of—she knew that the process of manufacture had been changed three times since that remarkable synthetic was first invented.
She began to ask for precise technical specifications: date of manufacture, isotope analysis, index of refraction, density and curvature and thickness. Though such questions seemed trivial to me, her manner was deadly serious.
Young then, I still had an excellent head for numbers.
I had prepared myself carefully for the duties of that first command, and I was able to tell her promptly what she wanted to know.
“Thank you, Captain.”
Her lean, pleased smile set my head to spinning like the station.
“Now we’d like to hear all about Nowhere.”