Night Walk by Bob Shaw

just as a train

was moving off or stopping. The railway operated on a universal fare

system, so there were no formalities over tickets. A machine proyided

him with a simple square of plastic entitling him to travel anywhere on

the southern section for one day. He worked through knots of people and

piles of freight onto the platform and stood waiting for the quietly

drifting carriages to either speed up or finally come to a halt. Five

minutes passed before he realized that neither of these things was going

to happen; the railway really was continuous!

Tallon flicked the eyeset controls several times until he picked up a

better view of the station and the system. The composite picture he built

up showed an endless line of freight and passenger cars curving into the

station from the east and vanishing to the north. None of the cars had

an engine or any visible controls, yet they were moving quickly beyond

the station and slowing down to about three miles an hour as they came

alongside the platform. This puzzled him, till he saw that what be had

taken to be a third rail was, in fact, a rotating screw mounted centrally

between the wheel-bearing rails. It was then be began to appreciate the

beauty of the system.

The cars needed no engines because their power came from the central screw,

which was turned at a constant speed by small magnetic motors spaced about

every half mile. Each car was attached to what amounted to an ordinary nut,

which was pulled along by the action of the spinning screw. The cars needed

no controls because their forward speed was governed by a device whose

simplicity pleased the engineer in Tallon: where they approached the

station, the pitch of the threads on the central screw was greatly reduced.

This had the effect of automatically slowing them down to walking pace.

Momentarily bemused by his admiration for Emm Luther's practical engineering,

Tallon blended with a group of teen-age students who were waiting for the

next passenger car to come by. He was looking through the eyes of a station

official standing behind the group. As the car came close he moved toward

it with the chattering students, then discovered he had overlooked an

important feature of the continuous railway. The edge of the platform

was a slideway moving at the same speed as the train, to let people get

on and off safely.

Tallon's right foot moved out from under him as he surged forward with

the students, and he lurched sideways, completely off balance. There were

startled protests as he grabbed for support and then fell awkwardly into

the carriage, hitting the side of his head on the door frame.

Apologizing profusely, he dropped into an empty seat, hoping he had not

been so conspicuous as to make anyone look closely at him. His right ear

was throbbing hotly, but the pain was a secondary consideration. The blow

from the door post had fallen directly on the part of the eyeset's frame

that concealed the miniature power pack, and Tallon thought he had

experienced a brief grayout at the moment of impact. He was still

receiving vision from the station official back on the platform, so he

reselected on proximity, and got one of the students who had sat down

on the opposite side of the compartment. After a moment Tallon relaxed;

the eyeset seemed to be undamaged, and the other passengers apparently

had forgotten his spectacular entrance.

The carriage gradually gathered speed until it was doing a smooth forty

miles an hour in almost complete silence. The route northward kept close

to the ocean. Occasionally the mountains on the other side receded to a

distance of up to ten miles, but usually they were crowding in, limiting

the living space, creating the pressures that were being felt back on Earth.

The ribbon of flatland was a continuous suburban development, with commercial

centers every few miles. A break in the continental spine became visible

after half an hour, and another similiar