Station Security converged from various points around the Commons. Several men and women in innocuous grey uniforms arrived in their wake, carrying everything from capture nets to tranquilizer rifles and riot shotguns. Discreet black lettering across grey uniform pockets read Pest Control. Their stalwart corps had risen considerably in status ever since an outbreak of Black Death on TT-13-and that wooly rhinoceros fiasco on TT-51-had been traced to station managers’ refusals to pay for adequate pest control services. Nobody argued now with anything a Pest Control officer requisitioned.
Bull Morgan, a stocky man who wore his suit like a casino pit boss wore a scowl, shouldered his way through the crowd, a fireplug on legs. Worry had creased his brow above a nose broken in one too many fist fights. Mike Benson, head of La-La Land’s security, followed in the Station Manager’s wake, blue eyes narrowed as he scanned the air for the first telltale sign of the new gate’s location: He spoke urgently into a walkie-talkie.
Bull high-signed someone with a scanner. “Has anybody-?”
”Oh, shit!
A dozen scanners were pointed straight upward.
Then the ceiling opened up. A chronometer board vanished into blackness. The air dopplered through the whole visible spectrum in a chaotic display. Kit clamped hands over his ears in reflex action, even though the gesture did nothing to damp out the sound that wasn’t a sound. Everyone tourists and ‘eighty-sixers alike, backed away from the area, leaving wrought-iron benches empty near the center of Victoria Station. The gate widened, ragged and pulsating unsteadily near the edges It shrank visibly, then expanded with a rush like an oncoming freight train, only to collapse back toward its center again just as fast.