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Updated: May 2, 2025
The Ravick people were either saying nothing or arguing that Belsher was doing the best he could, and if Kapstaad wouldn't pay more than thirty-five centisols, it wasn't his fault. Finally, the call bell for the meeting began clanging, and the crowd began sliding over toward the elevators and escalators.
Facing them, four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the escalators. Two were commonfolk retainers; hired gunmen, to be precise. They were at pains to keep their hands plainly in sight, and seemed to be wishing themselves elsewhere. The man in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined with pale blue silk.
"If you show us for real, and it is not a trick, we will have to believe you." When they emerged from the escalators, Alpha was just touching the western horizon, and Beta was a little past zenith. The ship was moored on contragravity beside the landing stage, her gangplank run out.
"Two small detachments collide, and each sends back for re-enforcements, and the next thing anybody knows, there's a full-size battle going on where nobody wants to fight one. We're going to fight our main battle at the head of the escalators from the twelfth floor." "You've done this sort of work before, Literate," Coccozello grinned. "You talk like a storm-troop captain. What else?"
It was plain that he was possessed of a secret we are only just beginning to learn that of utilizing air-currents as escalators up and down which he can glide at will with the expenditure of the minimum amount of energy, or of using them as a ship does when it sails within one or two points of a head wind.
In both cases, the attackers seemed to expect no organized resistance. They simply jumped onto the escalators, adding their own running speed, and came rushing up, firing pistols ahead of them at random. The defenders, however, had been ready: the fire hoses caught those in the lead and hurled them back.
Murmurs arose. Someone at the head of one of the escalators, in a panic pulled an alarm-switch. It flared green into the sky, flashing its warning. The interior-guards seated at their instrument tables in the lower rooms of the official buildings had seen Georg in their finders. The alarm was spreading.
"Let's go," he said. "Our host is calling up his troops; I think the guests ought to find battle-stations, too." The gaily-dressed crowd formed a semicircle facing the landing-stage escalators; everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity, those behind craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had drawn up their shawls in frigid formality; many had even covered their heads.
The delay was fortunate; when he got to the escalators, he was met by a rush of men hurrying down the ascending spiral or jumping over onto the descending one. "Sono guns!" one of them was shouting. "They have the escalator head covered; you'll get knocked out before you get off the spiral!" He turned and looked toward the freight lift.
The crowd stopped shifting, the buzz of voices ceased. At the head of the landing-stage escalators there was a glow of color and the ducal party began moving down. A platoon of guards in red and yellow, with gilded helmets and tasseled halberds. An esquire bearing the Sword of State. Duke Angus, with his council, Otto Harkaman among them; the Duchess Flavia and her companion-ladies.
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