Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn

Spiders had been informed of our change in plans.
    The inside of the maintenance building was pretty much the same as the one I’d seen once at Terra Station: big and open, with enough room for a Quadrail engine or a couple of cars. Crane tracks crisscrossed the high ceiling, the cranes themselves looking hefty enough to pick up one end of a car without exerting themselves. The Quadrail tracks on the floor mirrored the crane tracks above them, with one set coming straight through the doors at either end while others angled off to miniature sidings along the walls. The walls themselves were lined with toolboxes and parts cabinets, everything clearly designed to be operated by a drone’s leg tips.
    The Peerage car was sitting on the tracks by the door at the far end. At first glance it looked like every other Quadrail passenger car I’d ever seen, but as we moved closer I spotted the small touches that marked it as something special. An intricate design was etched subtly in the silver metal of the side, with an equally subtle reproduction of the royal Halkan crest beside the door. There was something about the wheels that seemed a little different, possibly an upgraded set of shock absorbers, and at the roof edge there were some embedded greenstone highlights. “Not quite what I expected,” I commented.
    “It’s designed not to be ostentatious,” Rastra explained. “Even the most powerful among the Halkas prefer not to flaunt their position.”
    “I would think the flaunting would be the best part of being in the Peerage in the first place,” I suggested.
    “The Halkas have always had ambivalent feelings about such things,” Rastra said. “The car’s interior should prove more to your expectations.”
    “How many does it sleep?”
    “There are ten sleeping compartments, plus dining and lounge areas and a small kitchen,” Rastra said. “The staff consists of a chef, two servitors, and High Commissioner JhanKla’s guard-assistant. All Halkas, of course.”
    With the three of us, that made for a total party of eight. “Do you have any other stops planned for Jurian space?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “I would not have burdened you with a long schedule if the High Commissioner hadn’t already planned to return home.”
    I tried to figure out how Rastra would have juggled his stated obligations to both JhanKla and me if the Halkas hadn’t been heading home. But I gave up the effort. Resolvers had a knack for bringing mutually exclusive options together and making them work. “So we’re looking at, what, about a five-day trip?”
    “Slightly less,” Rastra said. “We’ll be attaching to an express Quadrail which will stop only once, at Jurskala, before continuing directly on to Imperial Hub Twenty just inside Halkan space. From there you’ll be free to travel wherever you wish.”
    We reached the door, which irised open at our approach, and went inside. Passing the elaborately carved doors of the first set of sleeping rooms, we entered the lounge.
    Whatever ambivalence the car’s designer had been feeling while working on the exterior, he’d apparently gotten it out of his system well before he switched to the interior. The lounge sported a pattern of living filigree vines on the ceiling, whose delicate scent formed a nice counterpoint to the soft twittering and brilliant colors of the caged rainbirds in the four corners. The display windows were bordered by expensive velvette curtains, though there was no need for curtains of any sort on windows that could be opaqued on command. The chairs were made of hand-carved wood wrapped around memory cushions which, like the bar chairs Bayta and I had used on our last Quadrail, would configure to fit whoever happened to be sitting there. Unlike the bar chairs, though, these looked like they would be comfortable no matter how they were set.
    In the center of the room was a low table that seemed to have been carved out of a single piece of geodium crystal.