The Pantech was the last module on a rod near the front of the ship. I'd paid a small premium for the outside berth, since I get claustrophobic if I'm stacked in the middle, surrounded by heavy crates that could crush me if they swung in the wrong direction.
I soon saw something odd. It was the crate Lou had abandoned on our way out to the ship. It seemed to have sprung a leak.
I could see it a few rings forward, and one rod over. The corner he had pried up to get in and out now sported a long, white tail. It reminded me of a picture I'd once seen of a tapestry from the Middle Ages. The artist had represented a comet as a many-rayed star with a long tail to one side as it arched across the heavens. This tail was ice of some kind—hard to tell what; hell, everything froze out here. For a while the leak had been in one direction as the ship accelerated. Then, in free fall, the liquid had seeped out in all directions, making a rather pretty Christmas-tree ornament.
I chose to take it as good news. Lou had detected something wrong with his proposed abode before it was even loaded on the ship, like a squirrel finding a leak in his hollow tree just before turning in for his winter's snooze. I hoped his new home proved a little more solid.
Of course, he might be freezing or starving or slowly dying of thirst and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help him.
So I drank a second dose of deadballs, turned the shelter opaque, and curled up in a warm blanket to sleep for a week. I hoped.
"Father, is this the Emerald City?"
John Valentine chuckled and squeezed his son's hand.
"It will do until something better comes along," he said.
They were riding in a half-full tramcar that traced the edge of Hyginus Rima, in the southeast corner of Mare Vaporum, known far and wide as the entertainment capital of the system. Had they taken the tram to the end of the line young Kenneth would actually have seen the Emerald City, pretty much as Dorothy, Toto, and company had approached it in 1939 on a yellow brick road that was partly on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soundstage and partly in the box of tricks of a process cinematographer.
There were those who called the Hyginus Line the Yellow Brick Rail.
The official name of the sector they were now entering was the Route of the Stars. The builders had taken their cue from the city fathers of Hollywood, U.S.A., but everything they did had to be a hundred times as large, a thousand times as spectacular—and even less substantial than the original.
Where the stars in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard had been nothing more than small squares of masonry and brass, the ones in Hyginus were holographs the size of billboards, easily seen and read from a speeding tram-car. The giant stars seemed hammered out of pure gold, and in the center of each was a forty-foot fully animated three-dimensional image of the honoree. The stars' names were spelled out in diamonds bigger than watermelons.
"So it's really Hollywood?" the boy asked.
"Son of Hollywood," said his father. "Not much around here that's all that original."
The real name of the area was the King City/Mare Vaporum Artistic and Industrial Park, but no one called it that. The King City part was gerrymandering of the most blatant sort. The actual city was over a hundred miles away, but the city limits ran on each side of the Hyginus rail until it reached Vaporum, where it ballooned to include all the area zoned for industry. The only real benefit reaped by the businesses there was the privilege of paying King City taxes.
As for industry, the only industry in Vaporum was The Movies. Whether anything "artistic" was happening was endlessly debated among the more acerbic critics back in the city.
Those who worked there called it The Park, The Vapors, or Hollywood, the Sequel. They spoke of going out to The Rima, or The Edge, or Yellow Bricktown. Everybody else just called it Hollywood. Since the original Hollywood was a memory, there was seldom any confusion.
"And besides," John Valentine said to his son, "Hollywood was always just a state of mind, anyway."
Young Kenneth pressed his face against the window beside his seat and watched the passing spectacle. The stars were only the beginning.
Behind them were mountainous holograms of the logos of motion-picture studios, past and present, solvent and defunct. Dodger knew they were holograms, but since he had no idea what a hologram was, they were as real to him as the car he was riding in. The apparent heights of these juggernaut illusions could be measured in miles.
There was a tapering iron tower sitting on the north pole of a half Earth globe, spitting stylized sparks and spelling out, letter by letter, A RADIO PICTURE. Next to that was a snow-covered mountain surrounded by drifting clouds and haloed with a starry diadem. A mile-high lion's head roared in the middle of an elaborate scroll of old-fashioned motion picture film, and then yet another globe, hanging suspended and massive above the barren plain, being endlessly circled by a winged machine. "An airplane, Father!"
"That's right. Universal."
"Look! Look!" the boy shouted, pointing to one he was more familiar with. "Sentry! That's where we're going, isn't it, Father?"
"If you don't knock the train off the tracks with all your commotion. Settle down, boy."
Dodger contained his excitement, and watched the armored warrior and bursting firework trademark of Sentry/Sensational Pictures. The gigantic figure went from attention to a position of challenge, his huge weapon held out before him at port arms. But soon he was fading into the distance, replaced by a circle and golden sunburst saying TOHO and a word he couldn't read. A horse with wings charged the tramcar and leaped over it. Dodger looked, but the Pegasus never landed on the other side. A gargantuan rooster flapped its rust-colored wings and ruffled its neck. A dozen multicolored flags snapped in a nonexistent breeze under the towering legend FILMWERKS.
Dodger wished he could fly over this wonderful plain. Recently Father had him memorize the script for Swift!, and he supposed it must look as if a child of Brobdingnag had upended his toy chest and then abandoned his mammoth fripperies out here in the wilderness. Actually, from above he would have seen nothing at all. It cost more to project a holo in all directions, and the designers of the Route of the Stars understood a principle known since the days of D. W. Griffith: make sure your budget gets on the screen. The Hyginus route was the electronic equivalent of dusty old western streets walked by William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers: false fronts propped up with two-by-fours.
They were just getting into the part of the route devoted to scenes from classic movies when the train pulled into the first Vaporum station. Dodger didn't really want to get off, but when Father took his hand he stood and followed him off the car.
They went down a slideway with a curved, transparent roof, right between the hairy legs of a giant gorilla chained to a big wooden cross. The beast followed them with his eyes, and father and son both looked up as they walked under him.
"Let's hope he doesn't have an upset tummy," John Valentine said, and his son collapsed in helpless giggles.
John Valentine led his son to a wide sofa in a big, nondescript waiting area outside the casting offices of Sentry/Sensational studios. There were many other couches, mostly filled with people. He sat him down, and then squatted in front of him.