Dyer stood on the rock summit of a grassy knoll. On one side the knoll fell away steeply to become one wall of a deep gorge through which a stream flowed toward a lake farther below. Above him the slopes steepened rapidly, merging into jagged outcrops of gray rock silhouetted against the strangely violet hue of the sky. Above them the sky changed color gradually, becoming a normal blue directly overhead then darkening again into violet as it plunged behind the opposite skyline of the valley. The landscape below was more parklike than the rugged, natural-looking slopes and buttresses that formed the valley walls. The valley curved steadily upward in both directions along its length, eventually disappearing up and out of sight behind the two immense semicircular arches of the sky. A fresh, cool breeze rose from the floor of the valley, carrying with it the sounds of birds from the greenery lower down.
Opposite a point not far behind him, a smooth tower two hundred feet in diameter rose from a knot of buildings half hidden by trees on the valley floor, and soared high above the skylines that bordered the valley on either side. A lifetime's conditioning made his eyes see the sky as continuing uninterrupted way beyond the top of the tower, but he knew that this was an illusion; the spoke met the roof barely more than eight hundred feet above the center of the Rocky Valley sector of Janus.
Farther away along the valley floor in the opposite direction, almost at the limit of vision defined by the interposed archway of the sky, he could see the base of a second spoke, the one that terminated in the middle of Downtown. As he followed the valley floor with his eyes, the open patchwork of Rocky Valley transformed itself abruptly into a compact terraced sculpture of rainbow walls and gleaming roofs that became progressively higher nearer the curving precipice of the spoke, like an abstract rendering of an ancient ziggurat. The angles of the architecture and the apparent tilt of the spoke toward him before it vanished combined to tell him he was looking down on the metropolis of Janus from a height, while his sense of balance insisted that he was looking up at it. Even after nearly a month on Janus he still had to stare for a long time before his protesting brain managed to produce a consistent interpretation of the conflicting data coming in through different senses.
He turned back to face the boulder upon which Laura, clad in jeans and a tartan shirt, was silently contemplating the far side of Rocky Valley.
"You don't seem to be saying much today," he called out as he walked back to join her. "What's up? Don't tell me you're so much of a city girl that a little walk up a hill takes all your breath away." Laura acknowledged his words with a faraway smile but kept her eyes fixed on the sun-soaked slopes opposite them. Dyer looked down at her suspiciously. "You're not off into one of those transcendental things again, are you? Or maybe just thinking about something?"
"I still have to work at it to convince myself that it's all possible," she said slowly at last. She focused back on where he was standing and shook her head. "Tell me I'm dreaming. Tell me we're really on Earth and people didn't make all this."
Dyer grinned and looked apologetic. "Sorry, but that's not real sky. There are stars outside it and more under your feet. New York's a couple of hundred thousand miles from here, two stars down and to your left."
He sat down next to her and helped himself to hot coffee from the flask in the small knapsack which they had brought with them. They had left Downtown a few hours earlier and followed the north lip of the Rim eastward, through the outskirts of Paris and up onto the low rolling green slopes that bordered Sunnyside. At Vine County they had dropped down to the Rim Boor for a couple of beers at the pseudo-English pub that formed part of the social center surrounding the spoke. From there they had continued on across the Rim to pass through Berlin and on up a winding trail that followed near the crest of the south side of Rocky Valley. They had a little over half a mile to go now to reach the west edge of Downtown to complete their circuit of the Rim.
Laura turned her head away again to take in more of the view below.
"It really works, doesn't it," she said thoughtfully after a while.
"What does?"
"Science. It works."
Dyer stopped drinking and looked at her in mock surprise.
"Are you feeling all right today . . . no headaches or dizzy spells or anything like that?"
"It's okay. This really is me talking," Laura said. "It's just that . . . well, everything I've seen since we came here . . . it's all too incredible to be real, but it is. Whatever people had to learn to build something like this, they had to get it right. Know what I mean, there's no room to fool yourself when you take on this kind of thing. There are so many other 'ologies' and 'isms' and all kinds of stuff that people spend their whole lives believing, but they're all fooling themselves, aren't they. They never have to prove it by doing something like this . . . something where there's no getting away from the fact that it either works or it doesn't."
"You mean results," Dyer offered, screwing the cap back on the flask and returning the flask to the knapsack.
"Yes, that's it I guess. Results. If something doesn't produce any results outside your own head, there's no way you're ever going to know whether what you think about it is right or wrong. You could believe it all you want, but if you're honest you'd have to admit that you couldn't know."
"Christ, you are starting to sound like a scientist," Dyer told her. "Did you figure all that out just now?"
"No," Laura replied. "It's crossed my mind on and off for a long time. You ought to know. You've already said most of it."
"Somehow I always had the impression that my utterances of undiluted wisdom were falling on stony ground," he answered.
Laura gave a short laugh. "You sound like Chris. Okay, I know I sounded a bit mean at times, but don't forget I had a job to do. I was supposed to find out how you people thought and how you felt about things. Well, I wanted the full picture. I was curious to see how you handle people who were being obstinate as well as nice people who say all the right things."
Dyer looked up at her as the meaning of what she was saying percolated slowly through. His eyes widened and he slowly raised an accusing finger to point straight at her.
"You . . . bitch!" he exclaimed. "You conniving, scheming, calculating little . . . bitch! You mean that all that time you just sat there letting me make an ass of myself, getting hot under the collar and preaching all those principles . . . and all the time you . . ." His words trailed away.
Laura grinned and nodded her head saucily. "I needed to see what you'd do about it. I'm not that bad all the time really. I don't think you think I am either, otherwise we wouldn't be here, would we?"
Dyer was still gaping at her indignantly.
"I don't believe it," he declared finally. "What you really mean is it's just started making sense and you won't admit that your ideas were all screwed up before. So now you're saying it was always like that. You just don't like to admit you were wrong." He thrust out his jaw in a challenge.
"If you insist on believing what you want to believe instead of accepting the facts, that's up to you," Laura said sweetly. "But personally I wouldn't say that was a very scientific attitude. Sounds more to me like ingrained habits of thought starched in prejudice. You really ought to try and be a bit more impartial, you know."
"Do you know something," Dyer said, slipping the knapsack onto his shoulder as they stood up. "If there's one thing I hate in life it's converts. They argue until they're blue in the face and then one day something flips and they've turned into fanatics. Then they're all over the place trying to convert everybody else. I hate 'em."
"I'm not some kind of convert," Laura insisted. "I've always been keen on science. Why else do you think Zeegram gave me that job? Anyhow, you've been doing all the preaching so that must make you one."
"Baloney. I hate converts."
They had descended about one hundred feet toward the valley floor when a small procession of drones passed by, flying about ten feet off the ground and heading in the opposite direction, presumably off on some maintenance mission. There was a sphere drone, a crab drone, an electric toaster and a couple of others that Dyer didn't recognize immediately. One of them carried a small parabolic dish mounted on a short pylon projecting from its upper surface. One of the functions performed by this model of drone was to act as a relay of control signals from distant transceivers operated by Spartacus; thus the drones could work unimpeded at remote sites.
Dyer and Laura halted and grinned as they watched the bizarre troupe continue on its way. A lens in the sphere drone rotated toward them and the relay drone swung itself around in midair to face them without changing direction. The sight of it, sliding comically sideways while maintaining formation, caused Laura to burst into laughter.
"Good morning," the relay drone called jovially and with that it extended a claw and tilted its dish to give an uncanny imitation of somebody tipping his hat.
Laura leaned against Dyer's shoulder and wept; Dyer continued to stand speechless, gazing in openmouthed amazement after the diminishing shapes. He'd thought that he had already seen most of the jokes that the Army programmers had planted in the Spartacus system from time to time, but he'd never before come across that one.
"Ray, they're so cute," Laura said. "How could anybody imagine they could possibly hurt anybody?"
"Everything here's okay with Spartacus running the way it was designed to," Dyer replied. "But it's what happens if Spartacus ever gets sick that we need to find out about. Anyhow, tomorrow we'll be on the way to finding out once and for all. If everything works out okay, I'll buy you one of those for a pet, They're no trouble. You can even have your house computer send 'em for walks if you want to."
One month had been allowed for settling in on Janus. Tomorrow the experiment proper was due to begin.