Read Judgment at Proteus for Free Online Page B

behind her, my watchdogs again settling in at my sides.
    There were no bullet trains on our level, but two floors down was a major traffic corridor equipped with five-meter-wide fluidic variable-speed glideways at both edges, arranged as usual with the slower sections next to the central, non-moving part of the walkway and the faster ones at the far edges beside the walls. Aronobal got us to the corridor and onto the proper glideway, stepping nimbly across the flow until she’d reached the fast track.
    I’d run into this kind of glideway in other places across the galaxy. Their main advantage over a sequence of solid walkways was that there were no abrupt transitions from one speed to another, which made it easier for those with less than perfect balance to get across without falling. Their main drawback was that, since it was variable-flow, an unwary rider who stood in a normal forward-facing stance with his feet shoulder-width apart would find the foot nearest the wall slowly but steadily pulling ahead of the other one. More experienced travelers knew to stand with their feet in a straight line, which limited the drift problems to one shoe edge trying to outpace the other and was much easier to compensate for.
    I expected Terese to fall into the unwary category, and I was right. She nearly fell twice before Aronobal noticed her trouble and showed her the trick. I couldn’t see the girl’s face from where I was standing, but from the stiffness of her back I guessed that this wasn’t helping her mood.
    I’d never seen a quadruped on one of these things, and I watched with interest as Doug and Ty casually kept their two faster feet walking backward to stay in position with the slower pair. Unlike Terese, it was clear they’d done this before.
    It was also clear that if I ever decided I wanted to lose the animals, hitting the glideway wouldn’t be the way to do it.
    We rode the fast track about half a kilometer before Aronobal started us moving back across toward the slow lane. We made our final transition to the stationary part of the corridor, walked up a one-level ramp to the regular corridor system, and arrived at a red-and-gold patterned archway leading into an open space that seemed to be one of the neighborhood domes.
    {Ms. Terese German to see Dr. Usantra Wandek,} Aronobal announced us to the receptionist.
    The receptionist peered at her screen. {You’re expected,} she confirmed, waving us all through. {Enter, and proceed to Building Eight.}
    I’d expected the dome to be simply a large, gray-walled open space, six or seven decks up and a couple hundred meters across at the base, mostly there just to provide inhabitants and visitors a chance to stretch their eyes. To my surprise, I found myself walking into what appeared to be a EuroUnion Alpine valley, with rugged textured mountains rising up along the dome walls and giving way to an expanse of cloud-flecked blue sky at the top. Scattered across the dome floor were a dozen buildings of various sizes, designed to look like ski chalets. Aside from the corridor we’d entered by the dome had only one other exit, another corridor directly across from us that led farther inward toward the station’s core. “Impressive,” I commented as we passed the first of the buildings.
    “We are pleased you approve,” a voice came from behind me.
    I turned to see a heavyset male Filly in physician tans emerge through an open doorway of the chalet we’d just passed. His ears were noticeably wider than the average Filly’s, and his shoulders seemed broader, though that might just have been his general thickness.
    More importantly, from my current point of view, there was no sign of the oversized throat that I now knew to be a telltale sign of our new up-and-coming Shonkla-raa. “I do indeed,” I told him. “I’m also surprised that you would build an entire Earth-style treatment center on the off-chance that a Human or two might travel to the Assembly for your