"All right," Kesley said. He rose and stared down at the blind man. "I won't ask again."
He had asked too many people too many questions, without result. Now he would save his breath.
As he stood there, a door opened silently out of the wall.
"What's that for?" he demanded. Then, realizing the blind Daveen was unaware of the occurrence, he added: "A door just opened in the wall."
"Doors are for leaving rooms," Daveen observed.
"I'll take the hint." Kesley hesitantly stepped through—and saw Antarctica.
He was standing on a short, jutting balcony that hung a few feet out over the distant street below. Sudden vertigo gripped him as he looked down, down. It was five hundred—no, a thousand—feet to the ground!
Tiny dots of color moved rapidly far below on unceasing slide-ramps. Down the center of the street, graceful cars of blue and gold and red, topped with plastic bubbles, raced along. Buildings rose on each side of the street—towering edifices, mighty vaults of steel and plastic. Kesley sucked in his breath sharply.
The sky overhead was warm and bright, and just below the clouds, far in the distance, a curious, tingling, purplish light illuminated the sky. That's the barrier, Kesley realized. The intangible wall of force that separated Antarctica from the rest of the world.
It was a mind-numbing sight, this fantastic city. It was like no city he had ever seen in the Empires; it stretched to the horizon, tower after massive tower. A graceful network of airy flexibridges hung like gossamer in the air, linking building to building far above street level.