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wanted to be convinced. But now the scientist in her asserted itself,
searching for the flaws. "Why rotate it at all?" she asked. "If it's on Earth
and in a gravity field to begin with, why bother?"
"Because of the curvature that can be built into the structure," Rashazzi
answered. "A static platform would have to be flat, like a washer. It could
never support the illusion of being the inside of a big hamsterwheel, as it
would have to do to look real. But banking it introduces a vertical component
of curvature and gives you a floor that does indeed bend upward as it
recedes."
Paula stared down at Rashazzi's sketch dubiously. She thought for a while,
then took the pencil and on another sheet drew a pair of curves coming inward
from the sides as if from behind an observer, and then retreating and
converging to one side. It was a representation of Rashazzi's racetrack as
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seen by somebody standing on it. She added a series of radial lines sloping
down at intervals from its higher, outer edge to the inner, and then some
crude human figures at varying distances.
She inspected the result critically, tipping her head first to one side, then
to the other. The others remained silent. Finally she said, "No, I still can't
buy this. However much you try and disguise it, it's still going to look like
a banked racetrack. The people will start to lean over as they get farther
away. It won't look anything like this." Beside it she drew another
perspective view, this time with the two curves converging upward and away
directly in front of the observer, and with the cross-lines appearing as
horizontal rungs. It was a hamster's view of the inside of its wheel. Again
she added some human figures.
"See, they're nothing like each other. The people should stay vertical, and
foreshorten." Paula gestured back at her first sketch. "If you blocked off all
the long sight lines, then maybe you could get away with it. But this place
isn't built like that. I've just driven from Turgenev, and everyone here's
been outside. You can see all the way from Novyi Kazan to the edge of
Ag Station Three. It's the same everywhere. Long lines of sight aren't
obstructed around the colony, yet you don't see a banked racetrack. So how
could it be the way you're saying?"
Rashazzi took back the pencil. "That was something that puzzled us for a long
time, and why we at first rejected the racetrack explanation," he said.
"This is how you do it." He drew an imitation of Paula's first sketch and
superimposed on it a pair of lines cutting across the curve of the track and
forming a section of straight strip, as would the edges of a piece of ribbon
laid flat along the sloping rim of a dinner plate. Then he added a series of
verticals along the lines, connected them with horizontals to complete the
illusion, and added a couple of figures as Paula had done.
Rashazzi covered the parts outside the walls with his hands to leave just the
view looking along between them. The result came uncannily close to the second
sketch that Paula had made. "You build walls," he said. "The colony we are
inside is a replica of the real Tereshkova -- the one you were taken to in
May. But it is a replica with a difference. Instead of being circular, it
consists of a series of straight segments with sides that don't veer off
laterally, just like the real one, and, by the geometry I've described, with
floors and roofs that curve and yet possess perpendicular gravity everywhere,
just like the real one. There are six long segments, running between the bases
of the spokes. In addition there are what amount to another six short segments
that form the complexes around the spoke-bases themselves -- three towns and
the three agricultural stations." Rashazzi rummaged through some of the papers
that he and the others had been discussing when Paula and Istamel arrived, and
produced a plan view to show what he meant. "That means you'd have to turn
through a thirty-degree angle between segments," Paula commented. "Then--" She
broke off as the further implication struck her.
"The architect who designed the towns wasn't a nut," Earnshaw supplied, as if
reading her mind. "They're that way on purpose, to make you lose your sense of
direction."
"Or at least, sufficiently mislead you into not realizing that you're coming
out thirty degrees off from the direction you went in," Rashazzi said.
And that explained why the towns and the agricultural stations forming the
intersection zones were all built high; to obscure the views to the far side.
From relatively close distances the rising structures formed a screen, while
from farther back the dip of the roof interceded before it was possible to see
over the top of any of the zones and into the next long, straight section.
"The odd bits of sky that you think you see behind the intersection zones from
some places are no doubt optical images projected onto screens built in among
the higher levels of the architecture," Haber said. "From even a short
distance away, the difference would be impossible to distinguish. The overhead
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views of the hub and the stars at some places are also graphics simulations."
"And so there isn't any hub, and that's why he couldn't have gone there,"
Earnshaw said, gesturing at Istamel's inert form. "And why security is so
tight around the spokes." Paula looked back at the papers on the table,
accepting what was on them now, but still needing time to absorb it fully.
"And suggestion did the rest," Earnshaw said. "There is some residual
distortion, but the unevenness of the valley-sides hides it -- you won't see
it if you're not looking for it. The gravity does vary a bit from the centers
of the long sections to the ends, and the banking angle increases slightly
toward the outside.... But what dominates everything else is that you know you
came here physically through space, and that knowledge shapes your perceptions
-- it was your own first reaction. And being surrounded by people who
reinforce the belief..." He shrugged. "What reason would there be to question
it?"
"Why did you question it?" Paula asked.
"Me? I didn't. Ask these guys. They were being scientists while you were
saving the world."
Paula had asked for that, and let the remark go. There were so many questions
bubbling in her head now that she didn't know where to begin. "All the people
out there? Surely they couldn't all have been through the same treatment. Not
on that scale."
"The Russian officers and so on are no doubt just playing parts,"
Earnshaw said. "And probably a lot of the prisoners are, too. But some are
genuine, like us -- probably to give us an authentic layer of immediate
contacts to interact with."
"I meant the inhabitants of the colony generally," Paula said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]